Since the election, the Democrats have been pretty clearly fated for some "What's next for our tribe?" self-examination. Some Democrats--e.g. Chris Geidner--have recommitted themselves to reaching out to convince others of their views. Yet others have determined that the Democrats failed because they just weren't liberal enough. My sympathies lie more with the former than the later, but what do I know? My knowledge of what works for Democrats extends mostly to New York, where overwhelming numerical superiority makes any need for strategy irrelevant.

But speaking of overwhelming numerical superiority and a lack of outreach, take a look at the non-news from academia. A few weeks ago the New York Times notes that liberals outnumber conservatives in academia. One would have thought a brief trip through the faculty lounge at NYU would have been sufficient, but no, the NYT reports on actual studies and all:

One of the studies, a national survey of more than 1,000 academics, shows that Democratic professors outnumber Republicans by at least seven to one in the humanities and social sciences. That ratio is more than twice as lopsided as it was three decades ago, and it seems quite likely to keep increasing, because the younger faculty members are more consistently Democratic than the ones nearing retirement, said Daniel Klein, an associate professor of economics at Santa Clara University and a co-author of the study.

In a separate study of voter registration records, Professor Klein found a nine-to-one ratio of Democrats to Republicans on the faculties of Berkeley and Stanford. That study, which included professors from the hard sciences, engineering and professional schools as well as the humanities and social sciences, also found the ratio especially lopsided among the younger professors of assistant or associate rank: 183 Democrats versus 6 Republicans.

The exit polls show that Kerry won 55% to 44% among those with post-graduate degrees, but this split pales by comparison with the reported disparity in party affiliation among university faculty. (I have no idea whether the latter reports are reliable. Opinions?) Of course, academics are especially likely to have been alienated by the rightward shift in the Republican Party -- in particular, by the anti-intellectual spirit of that shift, as expressed in the administration's attacks on science. But I think that our blithe confidence in the integrity of our hiring practices is disingenuous. We are well aware that biases can be unconscious. Why, then, are we so quick to believe our own protestations of impartiality? Shouldn't we at least entertain the hypothesis that we are unwittingly influenced by subtle signals of a candidate's political views?

But then there's the other side of the liberal debate, which seems determined to make certain that no further heart is won or mind is turned. Personally, I think we conservatives should link, re-link, and keep re-linking to such people, since any moderate who sees their words can't help but move a bit more towards our cause. In that vein, I requote with little commentary:

Philosophy Professor Ron McClamrock of the University of Albany, SUNY:

We outnumber them because academic institutions select for smart people who think their views through; and if you're smart, open-minded, and look into it carefully, you're just more likely to end up with views in the left half of contemporary America. Which is just to say: Lefties are overrepresented in academia because on average, we're just f-ing smarter.

As to [the intellectual merits of Republicanism], surely there isn't going to be a real argument about the fact that a lot of standard Republican positions (not conservative, not libertarian, but the kinds of positions taken by George W. Bush, the "miserable failure" as you, among others, dubbed him) are rather hard to defend if one is fully, or even partially, informed.

And one other priceless commentator from Left2Right:

Or look at the political inclinations of the undergraduate student body at Harvard, which, in a recent survey, went only 19% for Bush. Considering that a very large number of the undergraduates are accepted in virtue of what amounts to Red State Affirmative Action, that number is impressively low. (Moreover, I'm pretty sure I recollect that, at least in the breakdown by classes in the 2000 election, even the incoming freshmen in very dramatic proportions inclined Democratic.) Now Harvard, to this day, gets an extraordinarily high proportion of the very best students across America, as suggested by the number of National Merit Scholars, SAT perfect scores, Intel Science Award winners, etc. It's hard to look at this without concluding that there is something about intellectual ability that inclines one Democratic.

While one might think that the supersmart righties just go on to business or professional schools after college, and stay away from academe, it's very hard to see in figures like 19% (or indeed lower if one eliminates the considerable effects of Red State Affirmative Action) how that can possibly be true to any significant degree.