Liberals have the remarkable ability to ignore evidence that fails to comport with their cockamamie worldview. Thus, they can hold two diametrically opposing points of view in their brain simultaneously and then wonder why people think they're nuts.
Take Todd Wolfson, the president of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP). Here's a guy definitely stuck in the 1960s, when all the really cool professors tried to look like groovy students.
Professor Wolfson, a Rutgers associate professor of journalism and media studies, is also a vice president and board member of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT). AAUP joined AFT last year and has, if anything, become more radical.
Wolfson is the perfect leader for this group. He's called J.D. Vance a "fascist," and in 2024, AAUP endorsed diversity, equity, and inclusion criteria in faculty evaluation. Criticism was labeled "politically motivated."
Speaking of being "politically motivated," the AAUP abandoned its historic opposition to academic boycotts, claiming they could be “legitimate tactical responses to conditions that are fundamentally incompatible with the mission of higher education.”
You guessed it: Israel.
The AAUP is “increasingly indistinguishable from the activist left,” wrote Samuel J. Abrams, a professor of politics at Sarah Lawrence College and American Enterprise Institute fellow.
Abrams quipped that recent statements from the AAUP “sound more like campus protest flyers than professional standards.”
What does Professor Wolfson have to say to that? He was asked by the Chronicle of Higher Education (CHE) why a recent Gallup poll showed how little confidence the public has in higher education and cited the universities' political agenda as the top reason.
"First and foremost, they exist because people like Ron DeSantis [Florida’s Republican governor] and Chris Rufo [a right-wing anti-DEI activist] have been speaking very loudly, unfairly disparaging higher education for a very long time, without the appropriate response from higher-education workers, higher-education institutions."
What would be the "appropriate response?" And why, in the United States of America, does it matter how fricking LOUD the criticism is? Wolfson will brook no opposition unless it's quiet and timid.
Wolfson's social media postings have been rabidly anti-Trump and, before that, rabidly anti-Republican. The level of vitriol has risen tenfold since Trump took office.
Blaming DeSantis and Rufo for pointing out the many shortcomings of professors and administrators in higher education serves to show Wolfson's true colors. He wants the opposition to sit down, shut up, and stop criticizing.
Perhaps most unbelievably, Wolfson refuses to accept the fact that he and his members are hysterical partisans for the Democratic Party.
CHE asked Wolfson why so few conservatives are professors: "It depends on the field, but the ratio between liberals and leftists to people on the right and far right — it’s pretty skewed. Do you see that as an issue?"
"I would love to see the data on that. If there is actually data, I’d really love to see it," Wolfson responded. "Again, I would say — like, political science has a whole field of international relations. Part of that field is looking at where you put nuclear bombs to deter warfare. It’s a much more complicated terrain than the right has painted. I think it’s much more complex than people being browbeaten."
First of all, what do nuclear weapons have to do with partisan hackery? And as far as the data showing academia skewing left, I've got the receipts.
According to recent research, the percentage of university professors who vote Democratic varies depending on the methodology used, but all studies indicate a significant liberal majority. In 2024, a study found that 45% of professors were registered Democrats, with many others registered as unaffiliated.
- Voter registration and affiliation: A 2024 working paper analyzing a state's public university system found that 45% of professors were registered with the Democratic party, 42% were unaffiliated with either major party, and a smaller percentage were registered Republicans.
- Self-identified ideology: A survey of Duke University faculty in 2024 found that over 60% identified as liberal or very liberal. A study published in the journal Frontiers in Education in November 2024 reported that 74.5% of its sample of undergraduate professors identified as liberal.
- Political donations:
- An analysis of political donations by academics during the 2022 election cycle found that 93% of contributions from professors went to Democrats.
- In 2023, nearly 100% of political donations from Yale professors went to Democrats.
And yet, he can hold the belief that the AAUP is non-partisan.
Related: Harvard Prof, an Expert on Honesty, Fired for Academic Fraud
"Does the AAUP formally define itself as a progressive or left-wing organization, and should it?" asked CHE?
"No, I don’t think ‘progressive.’ What AAUP defines itself as is an organization that believes that higher education should be a common public good for everyone."
Wolfson is not blind. He doesn't believe his organization is "non-partisan." He knows very well that the AAUP is a radical, progressive organization that couldn't give a crap about "the public" as long as they keep voting in politicians who will shovel money to higher ed.
In this respect, he's as much a sniveling, lying sack of horse manure as any other leftist, only worse.
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