However, contrary to common belief, the number of oppositional professionals has remained relatively small. Consider, for example, college professors, who are among the most left-leaning of all profesionals. Today, only about 5% of the 550,000 full-time college faculty members in the United States consider themselves to be to the left of the conservative-to-liberal mainstream. This 1-in-20 proportion of leftists hasn’t fluctuated much in at least 30 years. If the proportion seems higher than this, that may be because people who break away from the mainstream establish a presence way beyond their numbers and because radicals are speaking out more openly inside and outside of the classroom. Also, in a few disciplines in the humanities, leftists really have increased their proportion significantly – a fact that conservatives have misrepresented to make widely publicized claims that leftists have taken over higher education in the United States. The bottom line is that while the vast majority of professionals continue to share the views of corporate business executives on most basic issues, the important minority that dares to disturb the status quo has grown in influence, if not in size.
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