Blog 2: Essay Topic

As for the essay topic that I was supposed to choose for class, I chose an article in our textbook called "Professor's Liberalism Contagious? Maybe not."  The article digs deep into the popular notion that colleges and universities around the country promote liberalism more heavily than conservative ideas.  It is also believed that student's political beliefs are often swayed by their professors.  According to the author of the article, these are simply urban myths and there is no solid evidence to prove any of these accusations.  Through his research and the research of many others, political orientation has been more heavily linked to one's upbringing and home environment; two factors that mainly shape one's political beliefs well before reaching college.  This has been the subject of a very heated debate between liberals and conservatives for years, and it has even gotten to the point where the conservative party is calling for "supervision" over colleges and universities in order to ensure political diversity on our campuses.  The author then goes on to argue that even with such supervision, the opinions of students would rarely change, as their minds have been made up about what they believe long before reaching college.  I chose to do an analysis of this article because I am a Political Science major, and I find this debate to be very interesting due to the fact that I see evidence of this debate everyday both in class and in outside social situations.