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Political Professors and the Perception of Bias in the College Classroom

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 June 2021

Scott Liebertz Open the ORCID record for Scott Liebertz [Opens in a new window]  and
Jason Giersch Open the ORCID record for Jason Giersch [Opens in a new window]
Scott Liebertz
Affiliation:
University of South Alabama
Jason Giersch
Affiliation:
University of North Carolina at Charlotte
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Abstract

This article addresses three related questions. Does voicing a political ideology in class make a professor less appealing to students? Does voicing an ideology in class make a professor less appealing to students with opposing views? Does the intensity of professors’ ideology affect their appeal? We conducted survey experiments in two public national universities to provide evidence of the extent to which students may tolerate or even prefer that professors share their political views and under which conditions these preferences may vary. Results from the experiments indicate that expressing a political opinion did not make a professor less appealing to students—and, in fact, made the professor more appealing to some students—but the perception that a professor’s ideology is particularly intense makes the class much less favorable for students with opposing views. Students are indifferent between moderately political and nonpolitical professors.

Type
Article
Information
PS: Political Science & Politics , Volume 54 , Issue 4 , October 2021 , pp. 755 - 760
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the American Political Science Association

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References

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Supplementary material: Link

Liebertz and Giersch Dataset

Dataset

https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/LLI8HS
Link
Supplementary material: PDF

Liebertz and Giersch supplementary material

Online Appendix
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