Political Diversity in Six Disciplines
Klein, D.B. & Stern, C. (2005). ”Political Diversity in Six Disciplines.”Academic Questions, 18(1): 40-52.
Klein, D.B. & Stern, C. (2005). ”Political Diversity in Six Disciplines.”Academic Questions, 18(1): 40-52.
The inclination toward the political left in the American academy has existed as a presumption for decades. Recently, faculty and students, who found themselves marginalized by reason of the party they support or their religious convictions, have been advancing the cause of intellectual diversity. Their appeal would seem compelling, given the mission of higher education, but it has met opposition in an institution where diversity is defined as sex and race preferences that outweigh alternate considerations in admissions, hiring, and other areas. Until recently, one impediment to their push for intellectual diversity has been the lack of an adequately rigorous body of research to identify and quantify the presumed political imbalance to which they were responding. Daniel Klein et al. have now provided that research base in two studies of faculty affiliation. The first, a nationwide survey of six fields in the humanities, and the second, of party registration of faculty at two schools in California, reveal that an overwhelming and monolithic majority of professors support the Democratic Party. Republicans, conservatives, and libertarians constitute a negligible minority. Klein’s revelations received broad media coverage after an 18 November 2004 New York Times article (A23) directed readers to the data and conclusions via the NAS web site at www.nas.org. The two studies appear formally in print below for the first time.
Related content: Working Paper No. 53
Klein, D.B. & Stern, C.
2005
2022
Economic and Industrial Democracy.
Sweden’s institutionalized employment protection legislation, ‘LAS’, is interesting theoretically because parts of it are semi-coercive. The semi-coerciveness makes it possible for firms and unions under collective agreements to negotiate departures from the law. Thus, the law is more flexible than the legal text suggests. The present study explores intended and unintended consequences of LAS as experienced by managers of smaller manufacturing companies. The results suggest that managers support the idea of employment protection in principle but face a difficult balancing act in dealing with LAS. From their point of view, the legislation’s institutional legitimacy is low, producing local cultures of hypocrisy and pretense. The article gives insights into how institutions aimed at specific, intended behavior sometimes end up producing unintended consequences fostering the opposite.
The article in total can be read here.
2022
Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 202, 694-702.
Occupations are segregated with respect to sex, even in modern, egalitarian societies. There are strong pressures to eliminate segregation and therefore strong reasons to correctly theorize why segregation persists. The dominant view underpinning most public policies is essentially that environmental factors nudge women and men into different occupational paths. Nudging, however, ignores research suggesting that psychological traits that influence occupational choice differs between women and men, on average.
Some of the most well-documented and persistent average sex differences between men and women suggest that the taken-for-granted assumption that an egalitarian society would exhibit a more or less equal distribution of men and women across the occupational landscape may be mistaken. Rather, models of occupational choice informed by individual differences in preferences, broadly understood, would help us better explain how men and women behave in the labor market. Differences in occupational preferences will affect choices. Therefore, differences in proportions of women and men across professions may be in line with an egalitarian society and the well-being and best interest of both men and women in society.
The article can be read here.
2022
National review.
Stern, C. (2022). How the Swedish Labor Market Really Works. National review. https://www.nationalreview.com/2022/07/how-the-swedish-labor-market-really-works/