How Politically Diverse Are the Social Sciences and Humanities? Survey Evidence from Six FieldsDaniel B. Klein and Charlotta Stern Abstract: In Spring 2003, a large-scale survey of American academics was conducted using academic association membership lists from six fields: Anthropology, Economics, History, Philosophy (political and legal), Political Science, and Sociology. This paper focuses on one question: To which political party have the candidates you’ve voted for in the past ten years mostly belonged? The question was answered by 96.4 percent of academic respondents. The results show that the faculty is heavily skewed towards voting Democratic. The most lopsided fields surveyed are Anthropology with a D to R ratio of 30.2 to 1, and Sociology with 28.0 to 1. The least lopsided is Economics with 3.0 to 1. After Economics, the least lopsided is Political Science with 6.7 to 1. The average of the six ratios by field is about 15 to 1. Our analysis and related research suggest that for the social sciences and humanities overall, a “one-big-pool” ratio of 7 to 1 is a safe lower-bound estimate, and 8 to 1 or 9 to 1 are reasonable point estimates. Thus, the social sciences and humanities are dominated by Democrats. There is little ideological diversity. Academic Questions, 2004

How Many Democrats per Republican at UC-Berkeley and Stanford?Voter Registration Data across 23 Academic Departments

By Daniel B. Klein and Andrew Western Abstract: Using the records of the seven San Francisco Bay Area counties that surround University of California, Berkeley and Stanford University, we conducted a systematic and thorough study of the party registration of the Berkeley and Stanford faculty in 23 academic departments. The departments span the social sciences, humanities, hard sciences, math, law, journalism, engineering, medicine, and the business school. Of the total of 1497 individual names on the cumulative list, we obtained readings on 1005, or 67 percent. The findings support the "one-party campus" conjecture. For Stanford, we found an overall Democrat to Republican ratio of 7.6 to 1. For UC-Berkeley, we found an overall D to R ratio of 9.9 to 1. Moreover, the breakdown by faculty rank shows that Republicans are an "endangered species" on the two campuses.

Academic Questions, 2004

Some clusters of Limits to KnowledgeScaling and SimplificationSCALING (observations at one scale may not help understand or describe another)SIMPLIFICATION (parameterization)HOW VARIABLES ARE SELECTED (system identification)WHAT FEATURES ARE CONSTANT - not knowing them or having them changeWHAT MATHEMATICAL FORMS ARE USED (dynamical)COMPUTATIONAL LIMITSERRORS IN DESCRIBING INITIAL CONDITIONS (magnified over time)ERRORS IN FORECASTS OF EXOGENOUS VARIABLES (including perturbations)EXTREME SYSTEM SENSITIVITY (regime shifts)DataTECHNOLOGY DOES NOT PERMIT OBSERVATIONQUALITY OF DATA, HETEROGENEITYEXTRAPOLATIONS BEYOND MEASURED RANGESINTRINSIC VARIABILITYPROBLEM OF WORKING BACK FROM SURVIVORS (can't see “the disappeared”)LIMITED REALIZATIONS, SMALL SAMPLESROLE OF UNMEASURED VARIABLES (no signals reach us…)TOO MUCH DATA (information pollution)CULTURE, TABOOS, INHIBITIONS (prevent knowing or researching or measuring)CONTRACT KNOWING (only know what customers pay for)COST or DURATION (system too big to measure, or time required too long, or costs too much)BehaviorACCESS TO MENTAL STATES (need to know what is in the minds of others)ASSUMPTION OF RATIONAL BEHAVIOR (when snake brain controls key human action)

A strategy: STATISTICAL DESCRIPTIONS, PROBABILITIES (in lieu of “detailed knowledge”)