Replication Data for: Does Diversity-Driven Hiring Decrease Ideological Diversity?

Abstract This study presents a meta-analysis of research into academics’ ideological self-identification from 1955-2018, focusing on political scientists, social scientists, historians, and social/political psychologists. It suggests that from 1955 to about 1989, fewer than 50% of these academics self-identified as liberal, Left, or Democratic, but thereafter that percentage increased rapidly to as high as 89.3%. The study further explores whether diversity-driven hiring helps explain this decrease in ideological diversity. First, it examines whether more political scientists from demographics that lean left may in part account for the change. Second, it presents evidence the political science profession may signal a preferred ideology by explicitly favoring candidates who embrace racial, ethnic and sex diversity in particular, rather than e.g. ideological, partisan, methodological, socio-economic, class, religious, age, or geographic diversity. Third, the paper asks whether those hiring political scientists on average set diversity above other values, presenting new data drawn from the American Political Science Association (APSA) eJobs database. These data suggest hiring of political science educators now focuses more on a particular conception of diversity and the ideology underlying it than on liberal values or institutional expertise. Specifically, as of February 2019, an APSA job listing was about 100 times as likely to mention Race or Gender than Speech or the Judiciary, and about 200 times as likely to mention Diversity as Liberty. Together these results suggest that the political predilections of those emphasizing one conception of diversity over others may be driving political science education left, thereby decreasing ideological diversity. Dataset Contents Appendix A: Fig. 1. % of All Faculty (A), Social Scientists (S), Political Scientists (P), Psychologists and Social Psychologists (Y), or Historians (H) self-identifying as liberal, left (including far left), or Democratic, 1955-2018 Appendix B: Fig. 2. % of APSA eJobs listings with term, February 16, 2019