SALON

Friday, Jun 1, 2007 7:20 PM UTC

The liberals are speaking, the liberals are speaking!

A conservative group complains about leftist bias in college commencement speakers, but its methodology could use a little work.

By

Topics: War Room, The Washington Times,

Where, oh, where won’t those insidious leftists strike next?

The Drudge Report and the conservative Washington Times are both highlighting a new study from the conservative Young America’s Foundation, which purports to show that, in the words of spokesman Jason Mattera, “college administrators are using commencement ceremonies to send their students off with one more predictable leftist lecture.” And while it does appear to be true that more liberals spoke at commencement this year than conservatives, just a cursory look at YAF’s study shows that the disparity is nowhere near as wide as the group pretends.

YAF lists 49 speakers as being a “liberal activist, Democratic Party official, and/or representative of the old, liberal media,” compared with just eight who are a “Republican Party official, conservative activist, and/or representative of the new media.” (Some of the people on the list are speaking twice this year, and are for the most part counted as such.)

But that tally is laughably skewed. New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, for instance, is listed as a liberal — he’s a Republican.

Beyond that, there are many people who, at least judging by the YAF’s stated reasons for including them on the list, don’t even fit the YAF’s stated criteria.

There are, for example, the two people who apparently made the list of liberals solely for their support of affirmative action. And there’s Columbia University president Lee Bollinger, who is on the list for not punishing students involved in an incident in which they disrupted a speech by the anti-immigration Minutemen harshly enough, as well as Duke University president Richard Broadhead, who was counted because he didn’t do enough to stand up to “leftist professors and racists, including Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, [who] accuse[d] members of the Duke lacrosse team of rape.” Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute president Shirley Ann Jackson (at one point incorrectly referred to as president of the University of Rochester), on the list as speaking twice this year, is included for praising Democratic Sen. Hillary Clinton — when, YAF neglects to mention, Clinton was speaking at the school — and supporting affirmative action.

Then there are the people who have clearly been invited for nonpolitical reasons, but have been counted because of some liberal misdeed, like Microsoft CEO Bill Gates, on the list for donating to causes “including gun control ballot and tax hike initiatives as well as ‘family planning and reproductive health’ organizations”; YouTube co-founder Jawed Karim, for having once signed a petition calling for divestment from Israel; Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus, a pioneer in microcredit, because he criticized President Bush and said “the military response to terrorism is not a solution”; businesswoman Elizabeth Van Ella, for making contributions to two Democratic politicians in 1996 for a total of $500; actor Paul Reiser, for having contributed to Democrats; and businessman James T. Stephens, for giving money to former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean.

And of course, since belief in man-made global warming must be a liberal position, there are the people who made the list just for that reason, like John Doerr, a venture capitalist who cried when discussing the subject; Ralph Cicerone, president of the National Academy of Sciences; and Jared Diamond, professor and author of “Guns, Germs and Steel,” for “strongly believ[ing] in the leftist positions of overpopulation and man-induced global warming.”

The YAF also counted every representative of “old” media as liberal, which, admittedly, it stated upfront as part of its criteria. Some, like New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, former PBS anchor Bill Moyers and “Meet the Press” host Tim Russert — who did once work for former Democratic New York Gov. Mario Cuomo — we’ll give them. But other representatives of “old” media, CNN anchors Wolf Blitzer and Soledad O’Brien, NBC News anchor Brian Williams and former ABC News anchor Ted Koppel, seem like padding.

And finally, the YAF counted some people as neutral when they are in fact clearly conservative. There’s conservative Newsweek columnist and editor Fareed Zakaria. (Perhaps not coincidentally, Zakaria was the only member of the “old” media not listed as liberal.) There are also four current or former Bush administration appointees, though they admittedly don’t fall under the YAF’s criteria for determining conservatives; but then, neither does Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who is counted as a conservative. And then, amazingly, there’s former President George H.W. Bush — though he appears to have not been included as conservative because he was speaking with former President Clinton, who was counted as a liberal elsewhere. So we’ll add one to each of the conservative and liberal tallies there. YAF also counted novelist John Grisham as neutral; we’ll lend it a hand and count him as liberal — he’s a former Democratic politician.

So what’s our tally? Well, sticking strictly to the YAF’s own criteria, counting anyone from the “old” media except Zakaria as liberal, and leaving out the Bush administration appointees — including Gates — we count 36 liberals and nine conservatives. Where the YAF presents a ratio of roughly six liberals for every conservative, when we follow its criteria our ratio is roughly four liberals to every conservative. When we add back in the conservatives who clearly should have been counted as such based on whom the YAF actually counted, we get 36 liberals to 14 conservatives, for a ratio of roughly 2.5-to-1.

The republic is probably safe. For now.

Alex Koppelman is a staff writer for Salon. More Alex Koppelman.

Next Article

Related Stories

More Related Stories

Featured Slide Shows

The week in 10 pics

close X
  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11
  • Lisa Montgomery embraces her nephew Thursday after a tornado tore apart her home in Cleburne, Texas. The twister killed six people and destroyed entire swaths of the North Texas town.
    Credit: AP/LM Otero

  • Jack McMahon, the defense attorney for abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell, speaks outside the Criminal Justice Center in Philadelphia Tuesday. His client was convicted of killing three babies in his clinic, and will serve multiple life sentences.
    Credit: AP/Matt Rourke

  • A photo taken Monday captures Vice President Joe Biden's response to a Milwaukee second-grader's innovative proposal to end America's epidemic of gun violence. This guy!
    Credit: AP/Jenny Aicher

  • Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., flanked by a grouper-eyed Michele Bachmann, addresses the IRS' admission that it targeted Tea Party groups in advance of the 2012 election. In an op-ed for CNN Thursday, the Kentucky senator slammed the president for his faux outrage.
    Credit: AP/Molly Riley

  • Ousted IRS chief Steven Miller is sworn in on Capitol Hill Friday. Miller testified before the House Ways and Means Committee on the extra scrutiny the agency gave conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status.
    Credit: AP/J. Scott Applewhite

  • Attorney General Eric Holder pauses as he testifies on Capitol Hill before the House Judiciary Committee Wednesday. Holder is under fire, among other things, for the Justice Department's gathering of phone records at the Associated Press.
    Credit: AP/Carolyn Kaster

  • O.J. Simpson sits during an evidentiary hearing at Clark County District Court in Las Vegas, Nev., Thursday. Simpson, who is currently serving a nine-to-33-year sentence in state prison for armed robbery and kidnapping, is using a writ of habeas corpus to seek a new trial.
    Credit: AP/Las Vegas Review-Journal/Jeff Scheid

  • Major Tom to ground control: On Sunday astronaut Chris Hadfield recorded the first music video from space, a cover of David Bowie's "Space Oddity."
    Credit: AP/NASA/Chris Hadfield

  • When it rains it pours. President Barack Obama speaks during a news conference Thursday with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, inexplicably inspiring an #umbrellagate Twitter meme.
    Credit: AP/Jacquelyn Martin

  • A smoke plume rises high above a road block at the intersection of County A and Ross Road east of Solon Springs, Wis., Tuesday. No injuries were reported, but the the wildfire caused evacuations across northwestern Wisconsin.
    Credit: AP/The Duluth News-Tribune/Clint Austin

  • Recent Slide Shows

  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11

Related Videos

Comments

 28 Comments

Comment Preview

Your name will appear as username

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href=""> <b> <em> <strong> <i> <blockquote>

War Room is our political news and commentary blog, with coverage and commentary throughout the day.

follow salon

Most Read

Popular on Reddit

links from salon.com

vote
FBI reportedly joins Bachmann campaign finance probe
193 points194 points | 7 comments
vote
Jon Karl makes things worse: He regrets “inaccurate” Benghazi email but says his story based on it “still entirely stands.” Really. ABC News?
160 points161 points | 25 comments
vote
“Jodorowsky’s Dune”: The sci-fi classic that never was.
68 points69 points | 15 comments
vote
Paul Krugman’s right: Austerity kills. "In an economy where we’re all in the same boat, one person’s spending is another person’s income. So when the government cuts spending, it reduces people’s income, leading to less business, more unemployment, and a vicious spiral of slowing down the economy."
111 points112 points | 48 comments
vote
Doug Henwood: Capitalism Thrives on Class Exploitation
45 points46 points | 4 comments

From Around the Web

Presented by Scribol
listener_new_rect The Listener: So long, Sookie Stackhouse

Recommendations