Where It Begins: J-students and Faculty Seem to Lean to the Left

By: Charles Geraci When Northwestern University assistant professor Michele Weldon recently discovered the president of the university's College Republicans was in one of her classes, she was stunned. Weldon estimates that 70-80% of the journalism students at Northwestern are politically liberal. Bob Zelnick, chairman of the journalism department at Boston University, agrees that his students "on most of the issues, they lean more liberal than the general population."

But does this stereotype hold at most j-schools, especially those based far from major cities? At St. Bonaventure University in Olean, N.Y., Lee Coppola, dean of the j-school, says the majority of the j-students are "moderate-to-right" but those choosing a newspaper track tend to lean left. But Maria Marron, chair of the journalism department at Central Michigan University, in Mt. Pleasant, said prospective journalists there "are a fairly conservative bunch."

While there is anecdotal evidence to suggest there is something to the notion of the liberal j-student, the level of political involvement among them appears low. Zelnick says that the students don't care much about politics but there are values they hold dear, including environmental protection, gay rights, and a woman's right to an abortion. "Journalism tends to attract wide thinkers ? people who are idealistic and not narrow in their beliefs," says Northwestern's Weldon.

How much are these students, from any or no political stripe, influenced by their teachers? Many professors concur that the faculties at journalism schools lean liberal. "You are more likely to see liberal faculty at Columbia, but this is not a comment on how they teach journalism," says Nicholas Lemann, dean of the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism.

Most of the journalism faculty members at New York University are liberal, according to Jay Rosen, chair of the journalism department. "They certainly would be Democrats if you asked them," he says. When asked if any conservative professors came to mind, he could not name one. Out of the 23 full-time j-faculty at Boston U, about 17 of them are liberals, Zelnick guesses. "Bush would be lucky to get five or six votes against Kerry," he says.

But none of these educators believe liberal "indoctrination" is an issue. Every semester for 14 years, David Rubin, dean of the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University, has been reading teaching evaluations of its journalism professors. "With very few exceptions, I don't read student complaints that professors were indoctrinating them on some social issue," he reports.

Rosen says that if faculty indoctrination exists at New York University, "it would have to do more with the culture of the newsroom and the ideology of the profession, not necessarily political ideology."

Not everyone agrees. Editorial Director Ken Chandler of the Boston Herald slams college instructors: "A lot of people who teach are left-wing, and they fill their heads with a lot of crap. It's one thing to have a social conscience, but you need to be able to see both sides of a story."