Have you ever met a Republican professor?

Economics and Accounting classes at Portland state University and the University of Oregon. They never screamed ”I hate brown people and woman” but I am fairly certain they were Republicans.

At the university level at a state school in Southern California. Of course Republican professors exist. Both my significant other and I have taken classes with them.

I was in Portland too at a small Christian College. It was in the late 70’s and I was kind of shocked. It was before Regan made God a Republican.

Yes, at the University of California at Santa Barbara. There were a few in the Economics Dept. (we also had a couple of Marxists.) And one I had in the History Department.

But they were more Rockefeller/Lindsay Republicans, couldn’t stand Reagan or Goldwater. A couple of Econ Profs were mixed on Nixon because they didn’t like wage/price controls, but did like him floating the dollar against other currencies.

Early seventies, Chicago area, Christian college, sociology professor. Defended Tricky Dick long after he resigned. But he was also tolerant of other peoples’ views, which I think made him a good professor. I was more radically leftist than I am now (if you can believe it!), and we had many lively exchanges, in and out of class, but we had a mutual respect for each other as human beings that far outweighed our politics.

I don’t think I’ve personally met one that has even been to college.

My dad was a Republican professor back in the 70’s. He still was a Republican until the early 2,000’s and then he finally changed his voter’s registration to Democrat. I’m surprised it took him that long to convert. He taught in NYC by the way at a University. Sociology professor. The take over of the Republican party by the religious right finally became ridiculous and that is why he eventually changed. I guess that goes with what was said above about God became a Republican.

I’m pretty sure there are quite a few Republican Professors in the bible belt so I probably have met some and didn’t know their political affiliations.

@jerv That I find hard to believe. I thought you lived in the south for a while?

@JLeslie The only people I really had any dealings with during my time there were either uneducated, or apolitical.

Of course. I went to college in South Carolina. Quite a few were right-wingers.

I attended three different colleges in Pennsylvania and New Jersey and earned my Associate’s, Bachelor’s, and Master’s; and I did not know the political party that any of my professors affiliated with. I do recall one English professor proudly mentioning that a Republican Congressman from our state (NJ, which is largely Democratic) had attended that school – that’s the only reference to politics that I remember. That Congressman is still in office 25 years later.

@hearkat Good point, I never knew the political affiliations of any of my professors. Nor my teachers in K-12. No idea. I didn’t take political oriented classes, which might tip some students off I guess. I made a similar point to an exboyfriend of mine who has gone by the way of the Republicans (a little shocking to me. He wasn’t political at all when I dated him) when he started talking about the Democrats and Liberals taking over the education system and although he did not use the word brainwashing, that is what he was getting at, brainwashing our youth of today. I asked him if any teacher in our school, high school, evervtalked about politics or if he knows what party any of them affiliated themselves with. His answer to me was, “I plead the 5th, because it might have negative repercussions with my wife and family.” They make shit up. Drives me crazy. He is the only child out of 5 who finished High School. He didn’t go to college. Doesn’t matter. Even college educated people have it in their minds teachers and professors are all trying to brainwash children and young adults to be secular and liberals. Oh, and that is another thing, teachers and professors never talked about religion either. I never felt like someone’s religion matteres at all while I was growing up.

Yes, but it was in an era when Republican was not defined as the opposite of intellectual. They were plentiful in Midwestern universities, but I was surprised by the level of combativeness between the 2 camps on New England campuses. Political debate was vigorous, open and loud.

I’ve met a lot of American professors in my time… but I have no idea how any of them vote. Are they supposed to wear lapel pins or something?

@stanleybmanly Good point; there was a time when “Republican” was not synonymous with “batshit insane”. Maybe part of why I haven’t met any Republicans that have even been to college is that all the smart ones left the party loooong ago and became unaffiliated Conservatives.

My stepdad is a professor at a small Christian college. Not only is he Republican, but he’s Tea Party. I think most of his colleagues are Republican as well, but he calls them liberals because they aren’t as conservative as he is.

Of course. There are sociopaths in virtually all professions. Even at major schools, not just small Christian colleges.

And, no shit, the the professors who are Republikans are often the most odious of Republikans. The naive stupids that make up the bulk of the Republikan horde usually don’t make the cut.

Any top-rated business school is rife with Republican professors. Those guys (and I, suppose, with a few of those gals tossed in) live happily off the largess of Wall Street.

At the selective women’s college outside of Boston that I attended during the Eisenhower era, the professors never mentioned their political affiliations. It was a progressive campus intellectually, with about 50% of the tenured professors being women. Certainly many of the students came from moderate Republican families but it was a decade of conventional and polite behavior, by and large, among the groups I hung out with.

Met? Married to a Ph.d Republican professor for decades. We rarely mentioned politics. He was more into his guitar and the Rockies.

@Aster Guitar playing Rockies fan -gotta love it!

Our former department chairman in the Communication Department where I teach (university) is a card-carrying Republican. Even though we’re in Texas, he was a Republican before moving here.

Actually, I know a lot of Republicans among the university faculty. And very few of them are from Texas. The days of going to college and learning “Godless liberalism” is a thing of the past – most schools have a good mix of Repubs, Dems and Independents.

Independents = socialists!

@gailcalled , all of the best teachers I have ever had made sure to teach so objectively that we didn’t have a clue about their political leanings. They sometimes played devils advocate but they were good at presenting arguments on both sides.
I think that with Social Studies teachers and Clergy the best ones can see the point of view of all political sides and never let own their own personal bias.

WJudi: All of the best teachers I have ever had made sure to teach so objectively that we didn’t have a clue about their political leanings. They sometimes played devils’ advocate but they were good at presenting arguments on both sides.

Where and when?

Yeah, I have met several. Two of which were very good instructors and were profoundly influential to me. Believe it or not one was an English prof. Usually they were engineering or technical professors. Only a couple were openly conservative, most were closet right-wingers. Overall they were still a minority campus-wide. In general though it’s not uncommon to find that the engineering dept to be slightly conservative in many universities.

A friend of mine is a college professor of Psychology and a Republican. She is a woman in her 30’s. She is at a university in a city in Illinois.

@gailcalled, mostly Jr High in Eugene, Oregon. I learned more there than any other time in my education. I wish I would have stayed in Eugene for college.

@Judi; Interesting. What happened in high school.U. of Oregon is huge. Many undergrads are overwhelmed by a school of that size. When I was in the ed. biz, I remember a survey stating that people looking back on their college years treasured being on a campus that 1) had fewer than 2000 undergrads 2) provided mentors and 3) had a clear values foundation.

My Jr High was run like a college. Language Arts had dozens of choices. 2 classes that stood out were Folk, Rock, Blues Lyrics as Poetry and Animal Farm and Other Animal Stories.
In Social Studies we could choose traditional history classes or classes like Sociology, Debate or Ecology.
It was a 3 year Jr High and in the final year (9th grade) they started an alternative school that I went to the second half of each day. They taught the problem solving process and we could choose any question we wanted and research it using the process. They must have gotten grants or something because as long as we could show that we needed it to prove our hypothesis there seemed to be money available to do a lot of cool things.
When I went to High School it was very traditional. I lived close to the district borders and didn’t go to the same school as most of my Jr High classmates. Without friends I quickly fell in with the drug crowd and eventually, in order to re set graduated from a High School Completion program at 17.
The Conservative Christian College was a HUGE shock. I think I would have fit in better at the University of Oregon.

I also went to High School in Eugene. I split my time between South and Churchill. I never remember thinking about the politics of the teachers. Maybe I was just to stoned to notice.

@gailcalled That’s interesting. I wonder how they came up with those stats? I wound up at one of the largest schools with the largest campuses and I loved it and I think most students there do. I never would have thought I would like such a big school, but luckily I wound up there. Probably being at a smaller school you can get more specific guidance more readily, I can see that. I went to a community college intially, and what I do know is I much much preferred living on campus first arriving to school, and recommend that to everyone to at least try it.