Left-wing ‘groupthink’ risks silencing university debate

EIGHT in 10 university lecturers are Left-wing, which creates a danger in the institutions of “groupthink” where dissenting opinions are neutralised, a report has warned.

The Adam Smith Institute said that the number of academics who were liberal or Left-wing had been steadily rising since the 1960s.

“Conservative and Right-wing academics are particularly scarce in the social sciences, the humanities and the arts,” according to the survey.

“Social settings characterised by too little diversity of viewpoints are liable to become afflicted by groupthink, a dysfunctional atmosphere where key assumptions go unquestioned, dissenting opinions are neutralised and favoured beliefs are held as sacrosanct.”

Authors said the imbalance was not linked to intelligence, but could be explained by “openness to experience” as “individuals who score highly on that personality trait tend to pursue intellectually stimulating careers like academia”.

The authors of the report, Lackademia: Why do academics lean Left?, urge universities to address ideological diversity among their staff in the same way that they seek to increase gender, class and racial diversity.

It warned that “ideological homogeneity” within academia could have a number of adverse consequences, such as “systematic biases in scholarship; curtailment of free speech on university campuses and defunding of aca- demic research by Right-wing governments”. The report said universities must be alert to double standards, encourage collaboration between Rightwing and Left-wing colleagues and place an emphasis on the benefits of ideological heterogeneity.

Last month, Sussex University was accused of undermining free speech after one of its leading professors held a workshop for academic staff of how to “deal with Right-wing attitudes in the classroom”.

‘Social settings characterised by too little diversity of viewpoints are liable to groupthink’