Is There a Liberal Bias in Higher Education?

I used to be a fairly big fan of Penn & Teller’s Showtime show Bullshit! Early in the show’s lifespan, it covered provocative and topical subjects like psychics, near death experiences, the War on Drugs, and PETA, examined through a skeptical lens that often emphasized empirical evidence and critical thinking. Of course, the show was also meant to be entertainment, but some of its better episodes still serve as useful introductions to skepticism and alternative, critical approaches to some controversial issues. Bullshit! began a steady downward slide, in my opinion, sometime around the third season.

One of the first signs of this was an episode simply titled “College,” where the duo’s strongly libertarian leanings really start to bleed through. The episode purports to be about political correctness, diversity standards, and free speech on college campuses, but delivers a vague and almost anti-intellectual message amidst cherry-picked clips of lectures, cherry-picked interviews with professors and students, and a lot of talking heads such as Daniel J. Flynn, a columnist who authored the very objective and unbiased sounding book, Why the Left Hates America.

Partway through the episode, the Bullshit! crew gets an opportunity to talk with renowned philosopher Noam Chomsky about the state of higher education. The first and practically only…