A “Foreign Policy conducted survey”:http://www.foreignpolicy.com/story/cms.php?story_id=3299 reveals some interesting statistics on international relations education in America. Here are some of the numbers:
* 69% of international relations professors describe themselves as liberal
* 13% see themselves as conservative
* overwhelmingly opposed the U.S. war in Iraq
* 77% of them support free trade
* 10% believe the United States should beef up its military budget
* No women rank among the top 25 scholars with the greatest impact on the discipline over the past 20 years
I found this very interesting as well:
bq. When professors do reach for the theoretical toolbox, they frequently pull out the classics, notably realism, with its focus on states and power, and liberalism, with its emphasis on economic interdependence and international institutions. Beyond these two schools of thought, however, some interesting results appear. Constructivism, which highlights the power of ideology and beliefs in international politics, is the hot new thing in academic research; more than 80 percent of scholars report that it is on the rise. Nevertheless, it gets little airtime in introductory classes. Marxism, on the other hand, may be on history’s ash heap, but it still finds its way onto the reading list. Indeed, nearly 14 percent of introductory course material is still devoted to Marxist ideas.
I know we must have a number of IR people out there ( _ahem_ , “Dr. Dan and bp32″:http://duckofminerva.blogspot.com/), what say you?
_Wot! Wot!_ goes out to “Grendel”:http://www.grabic.name/
In fairness, Marxism can be useful. Likewise, political genetics may be up and coming…
Feminism has been ghettoized into feminist theories of political science, which is too bad as it has a lot to contribute to geneticist and construcitivist discussions.
Interesting, despite a rather liberal ideological tilt (free trade, low military spending, Iraq War pacifism, etc) not too much Europhilia. And pretty strong francophobia, too
I can tell you that in my four years of undergrad education, constructivism never came up once. My professors are overwhelmingly liberal (but not radically so) and all but one opposed the war in Iraq. However, this doesn’t make them bad professors, and indeed, one of my best classes was a one-on-one tutorial with a professor who opposed OIF (I supported it) and we went back and forth for a couple hours every week. It’s nice to meet like-minded people, but debate is more constructive. It would be nice to see the introductory classes at my school (Ohio University) expand a bit beyond Realism/Neoliberal Institutionalism/Marxism.
Addendum: My academic advisor is a woman and my thesis advisor is also a woman and they are both outstanding in many ways. Of course, they both have children and need to devote considerable time to that, so I think it’s remarkable they’ve contributed as much as they have!
The only figure from the survey that surprised me was that 77% support free trade.
I suppose we might attribute that in part to the recent success of Thomas Friedman, Jagdish Bhagwati, Martin Wolf, et. al. for popularizing globalization.
Still, my undergraduate and graduate education has left me with the impression that more than 13% of IR professors would voice at least some opposition to, say, trade liberalization under the WTO, free-trade areas, Bush’s trade policy agenda, etc…
I’d be interested to know the exact wording of this particular question, to know how those profs. would qualify their support of free trade, and to know how they would define “free trade.”
Marxism is at best useless, at worst dangerous. Teaching about Marxism (a far thing from promoting Marxism) is useful (for understanding what people were/have been thinking as they promoted this system). Not teaching about Marxism may be dangerous.
All these radical students in Korea who went to college learning in study groups about Marx and Cumings, they did so because their teachers wouldn’t (usually couldn’t) address Marxism: Marxism was the enemy. So instead of channeling the debate into a useful discussion of the merits and especially the failings of Marxism, they turned it into an enticing taboo. And that gives you the Korea Democratic Labor Party, thank you very much.
As for my IR teachers, they were about half and half (using pro-Bush or pro-Gore and pro-Sunshine Policy or anti-Sunshine Policy as lithmus tests). None of them, as far as I’m aware, thought the War in Iraq was a wise policy, but most did support sending ROK troops to Iraq.
What say I? Liberal and Conservatism are not the problem. Both are true values of the America conscious. Leftist and people on the Right are the ones who can destroy America, if we let either take hold. Leftist are for the masses and the Right are for the few, America is not truely represented by either, but must include all.
Anarchists must be watched, communal societies must be wooed, individualism must be encouraged, and totalitarian societies must be destroyed.
I studied IR in undergrad myself, and now I do international trade issues for my job so it’s really quite a bit different. To be honest, I didn’t even realize that IR was all about politics when I joined up. I thought it would be more concentrated on culture and languages. There were a few classes like that (international and comparative race relations) and those were definitely my favorite ones.
Personally I guess I’d come down on the free trade/liberal end of the IR ideology breakdown. When countries depend on each other they tend to be more reluctant to fuck around and start a war.
My professors in the IR theory classes I took tended to be pretty conservative actually. My Korean Foreign Policy teacher, to name one, was the very quotable Balbina Hwang from Georgetown and the Heritage Foundation.
bq. To be honest, I didn’t even realize that IR was all about politics when I joined up. I thought it would be more concentrated on culture and languages.
Yeah I sort of discovered this as well in about my 3rd year of undergrad. I wish I had of taken Geography, which would have been a perfect segue into what I am doing now, and what I am and was truly interested in. If I were to do it all over again I would take a lot more modern history courses and definitely some Econ courses. Linguistics was an interesting and formative experience, but not altogether useful for what I am doing now. Oh well, I guess a large breadth of experience is an advantage I have over my classmates, which are all History/PoliSci majors.
Is there any field of study that liberals don’t form a majority of the professors? I know that many liberal profs are fairminded and balanced, but it still is a bit depressing that every field seems to be overwhelmed by liberals. For all the study of Marxism, is there equal treatment given to the positives of Capitalism?
I think not, as it seems that society (Korean and Canadian) is overwhelmingly indoctrinated with the idea that corporations and the pursuit of money are evil (it seems that an individual pursuit is ok, especially in Korea, but not by companies). Maybe it’s the people I know and work with (teachers mostly), but I very frequently hear comments about how evil and greedy corporations are. It’s truly tiresome.
“…an interesting and formative experience, but not altogether useful for what I am doing now.”
I almost burst out laughing at truth in this. I wonder what percentage of liberal arts graduates would agree.
Liberal Arts education is supposed to be something more than just job training. That may not be appropriate for everyone, but I think it’s certainly a good option.
I was a double major in English Lit and E Asian Studies with a decent number of history classes and a smattering of all kinds of liberal arts classes, and I think they’ve basically served well. Looking back, there are certain weak classes that I wish I could trade for maybe having had at least basic econ or something, but the idea of majoring in finance or some other purely workplace oriented major just gives me the chills.
Is there any field of study that liberals don’t form a majority of the professors?
Yup, its called economics…and technically, capitalist theories of economics are based upon classical notions of liberalism :)
I know I am a little late to the game here but I have written a brief reaction to the study over at the Duck.