Attacking Professors: Cheap Rhetoric Rather than Facts

The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of ASPA as an organization.

By Jos C.N. Raadschelders
August 29, 2025

In a recent piece, a professor wrote that he “personally […] never met a scholar of public administration who is anything short of an American Jacobin.” Seriously? Ask yourself, have professors or modern-day career civil servants for that matter ever turned to the terror and violence used by the Jacobins during the French Revolution? In this case, the professor referred to the American Jacobins of the post-Revolutionary and Civil War eras. Does he not know these were radical republicans? (for more, see Eber-Schmid, 2022, in American Political Thought: A Journal of Ideas, Institutions, and Culture). Whatever the answer, this cheap rhetoric about public administration professors and about the study of public administration itself does not hold water. Empirical evidence shows unequivocally that professors’ political leanings do not influence what they teach. For serious professors, their aim is not teaching what one should think but how one can think.

Serious academics tap into the widest possible range of knowledge sources, as both Herbert Simon and Dwight Waldo urged. They also present the widest possible range of ideas. That is what public administration curricula have done and will continue to do. Put another way, an MPP or MPA is not a degree that miseducates bureaucrats because the faculty are so left leaning.

Yet it is not just public administration faculty that find itself confronting hostile and vicious attacks. It is higher education at large. Take the actions of some political officeholders seeking to beat higher education into submission by withdrawing research funds and threatening to abolish some universities’ tax-exempt status. How surprising it has been to see some universities initially succumb to the pressure and bullying, yet how invigorating to see many faculty and some institutions resisting this onslaught upon academic freedom.

Since Senator Joseph McCarthy claimed that universities were breeding grounds for communism in the 1950s (or even earlier), there has been distrust of professors’ political leanings. What is the case? Professors are perceived as intolerant of conservatives and bent on advancing liberal ideology. It is alleged that they look down on people. They are seen as elitist by those with “only” a high school education and by quite a few local, state, and federal legislators. To be sure, the facts show that the professoriate is not representative of the population at large; it is predominantly made up of left-leaning white males, certainly at the full professor level and higher-ups in the university administration.

But does this actually influence their research and teaching? Anecdotes do not make a case. Evidence does. And evidence shows that students are more influenced by their peers than their professors (read Musa al-Gharbi on this in his 2024 book). There is no evidence for the systematic indoctrination that some politicians claim takes place. Have professors turned their classroom into a platform for political advocacy? A professor recently argued this in a piece in The Chronicle of Higher Education. I agree fully with the argument that professors should stay in their lane and focus their teaching on their areas of expertise. But again, what is the evidence of political indoctrination? How widespread is it in higher education? There is a whole lot of noise and rhetoric about the wokeness of higher education. But what has not been demonstrated is that this wokeness influences teaching. If anything, teachers in higher education help students develop interpretive and critical thinking. They invite students to think about different perspectives and suspend disbelief. There are disciplines and studies where one cannot avoid touching upon societally and politically “hot” topics. Public administration is certainly one where political perspectives surface. How can it not? However, class discussions happen in an atmosphere of mutual respect and seldom, very seldom, erupt into full-blown shouting matches between camps. I, for one, have never seen that in my 42 years of teaching.

If anything, political interference poses the greater danger to higher education. In some states and at the federal level, colleges and universities are pressured to eliminate DEI education and assure that extreme and uncomfortable sentiments cannot be expressed. We have seen this play out on campuses and with protests following the Hamas attacks on Israel and the Gaza occupation. Raising thorny issues does not itself imply condoning specific behaviors. And when it comes to paying attention to the needs and perspectives of marginalized, lower income and indigenous people, how many political officeholders stand up for them? Or for issues of race and critical race theory, LGBTQ, gender and sexuality studies and Islamophobia, just to name a few?

Those entrusted with political office should not prey on people’s primal emotions and fears. Instead, they should confront the bigger cultural battle of the divide between the highly educated and the broader public. They should not attempt to push out certain topics and approaches nor require misinformation be taught in school curricula. After all, that is tantamount to indoctrination as well. As for professors, most are not snobs, but they should focus their energy on what can be done to reach a broader public. It would make their job a lot easier if there were a standard curriculum on K-12 civic education where every child learns about the position and role of citizens and their governments in a democracy. In fact, civic education should go well beyond teaching about the structure of government and politics, something on which scholars and commentators on the left and the right agree. The consequences of the decline of civic education have been palpable.

As al-Gharbi argued in a 2023 column, professors should make more of an effort to include conservative perspectives in their courses. The creation of conservative centers at higher education institutions in the state of Ohio could be a start, but there are three things to consider. First, these centers should not only teach and research the historical ideas, traditions and texts that molded American society. After all, these texts were written in and for a different time. Rather, they should address these ideas, traditions and texts in the context of contemporary political, demographic, societal and cultural trends. Are they set in stone or should they be interpreted in the context of our times? Second, conservative centers might help connect professors from both sides of the aisle and encourage talking and listening to one another, not talking in stereotypes about the “other.” Third, they should teach not only conservative views—that would be indoctrination—but the entire range of views on normative and value-laden issues.

Professors are not Jacobins. Yet politicians who exclaim about the “wokeness” of professors might look in the mirror because they fling undocumented accusations in the hope of gaining support from the public. As haughty and arrogant as that can be, they count on the lack of information among the public. Finally, a message for professors, especially those who teach studies that have value-laden issues at their core: Teach and research based on evidence. Be open to address conservative and progressive interpretations of facts. And do not cower in a tsunami of accusations. We will keep doing our job because we not only serve academic freedom but first and foremost freedom of speech as enshrined in the First Amendment.

The views expressed in this piece reflect those of the author. They are not intended to represent the views of the John Glenn College of Public Affairs, the American Society for Public Administration or the editorial team of Public Administration Review.

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Author: Jos C. N. Raadschelders is professor and faculty director of professional development at the John Glenn College of Public Affairs in the Ohio State University. He is a fellow of the National Academy of Public Administration. He is co-editor in chief of Public Administration Review. His research interests include the position and role of government and democracy in society, comparative civil service systems and the history of government. He can be reached at [email protected].

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