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Neil Louis Gross (born June 1, 1971) is the Charles A. Dana Professor of Sociology and chair of the department of sociology at Colby College. He is also a visiting scholar of New York University’s Institute for Public Knowledge. He has written several books on sociological and political topics, and also blogs for The Chronicle of Higher Education. Gross edited the American Sociological Association's journal Sociological Theory from 2009 to 2015. He previously taught at the University of Southern California, Harvard University, and at the University of British Columbia.

Early life and education

Gross grew up near Berkeley, California, raised by his stay-at-home mother and his father, a legal editor. Both of his parents were avid readers.

Gross earned a B.A. in Legal Studies from the University of California, Berkeley in 1992, and a Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2002. Before going to graduate school, Gross was a patrolman in the Berkeley Police Department in Berkeley, California.

Career

From 2004 to 2008, Gross was an assistant professor of sociology at Harvard University, after which he joined the faculty of the University of British Columbia. He was the editor-in-chief of Sociological Theory for six years (2009-2015). In 2015, he left the University of British Columbia to become Charles A. Dana professor and chair of sociology at Colby College.

Biography of Richard Rorty

Gross garnered considerable attention for his 2008 book Richard Rorty: The Making of an American Philosopher, which focused on philosopher Richard Rorty, and has been described by philosopher Barry Allen as using Rorty's life to "build a theory of the sociology of ideas." Reviewing the book, sociologist Neil Mclaughlin commended Gross for his "careful archival research, innovative theoretical synthesis and substantive contributions."

On liberalism in academia

A major focus of Gross' work has been the political leanings of university professors. He has said: "There's increasing evidence that yes, people who have college degrees do tend to be more liberal than people who don't have college degrees but when you actually unpack what's going on, it turns out that the reason that they're more liberal is because folks with more liberal views are more likely to go to college and finish four year degrees and evidence of a really strong effect of being in higher education on people's political views is beginning to look questionable... but certainly the idea that college indoctrinates students and gives them strong left leaning views, I think the evidence for that is pretty weak." Other scholars have reached the same conclusions. Mark Brow is one of a number of scholars who have criticized Gross' explanations for the greater numbers of liberal than conservative professors, but nonetheless recognized Gross' impact: "Perhaps one of the most prolific apologists of the liberal professoriate has been professor of sociology Neil Gross."

Gross published his most extensive analysis in the 2013 book Why Are Professors Liberal and Why Do Conservatives Care?. Philip E. Tetlock and Gregory Mitchell said of Gross's explanations for the small conservative professoriate that "these hypotheses are difficult to test and Gross's evidence for and against them is often limited and weak", citing an over-reliance on their audit study and "lack of self-critical review" in his heavy reliance on interview questions which are often distrusted by social scientists because "they suffer from social desirability bias and are incapable of detecting subtle and unconscious forms of bias". Fellow researchers Matthew Woessner and April Kelly-Woessner echoed this concern about reliance on self-identification because academia is seen as insular and "a middle-of-the-road academic, is not a moderate in a larger sense" and that "we might expect some faculty to downplay their radicalism or liberalism on an opinion survey". They also pointed to their own research which might contradict the view that conservatives self-select out of academic careers. George Yancey also wrote that self-selection was overstated by Gross, and that "it is both discrimination and self-selection" that are major factors in the population disparity. George Marsden's review expressed surprise that "Gross's book does not reflect more on the religious factor", considering Gross's prior work on the subject, and he agreed with Yancey that "Gross would do better to say that both self-selection and discrimination account for the continuing liberal character of mainstream academic communities". Crystal Bartolovich, writing for Academe, acknowledged the research "confirms the conservative characterization of college and university faculties as disproportionately liberal", but wrote that "question of professorial politics cannot be separated from the larger political ecology of the United States" and that "coming out of a generally conservative climate into the liberal university" can help students "develop their 'critical-thinking' skills". Gross responded to several critics, writing that "lthough the book is not without its flaws, in my view critics have not yet offered a persuasive response to the self-selection account of academic liberalism it lays out."

Gross and Solon Simmons compiled a book of essays focusing on political views of United States university faculty titled Professors and Their Politics in 2006. Sociologist Joseph Hermanowicz described the book as "a welcome addition to sociological literature examining higher education, which, in the case of its intersection with politics, has not received serious attention since Paul Lazarsfeld and Wagner Theilen's classic study of 1958 and Seymour Martin Lipset and Everett Carll Ladd's 1976 work."

Gross and Simmons characterized the state of scholarship on the topic: "In the 1990s, a few sociologists continued to produce high-quality work on the topic. But an unfortunate tendency became evident: increasingly, those social scientists who turned their attention to professors and politics and employed the tools of survey research had as their goal simply to highlight the liberalism of the professoriate in order to provide support for conservatives urging the political reform of American colleges and universities. The past twenty years or so have witnessed a concerted mobilization on the part of conservative activists, think tanks, foundations and professors aimed at challenging so-called liberal hegemony in higher education, and much recent research on faculty political views has been beholden to this program." Other scholars have raised similar concerns.

Books

• "Pragmatism, Phenomenology, and Twentieth-Century American Sociology" - in Sociology in America: A History, Craig Calhoun, ed. 2008. ISBN 9780226090955
• Richard Rorty: The Making of an American Philosopher- 2008. ISBN 9780226309903
• Social Knowledge in the Making - co-edited with Charles Camic and Michèle Lamont. 2011.
• Why Are Professors Liberal and Why Do Conservatives Care? - 2013. ISBN 9780674059092
• Professors and Their Politics - co-edited with Solon Simmons. 2014. ISBN 9781421413341

References

1. "Neil Gross." Contemporary Authors Online, Gale, 2013. Literature Resource Center, Accessed 13 June 2018.
2. ^ "Neil L. Gross". Colby College. Retrieved 2017-07-23.
3. Gross, Neil (March 5, 2013). "The Actual Politics of Professors". The Chronicle of Higher Education. Retrieved January 24, 2014.
4. "Neil Gross – The Conversation - Blogs - The Chronicle of Higher Education". The Chronicle of Higher Education. Retrieved January 25, 2014.
5. ^ Mooney, Chris (April 15, 2013). "Neil Gross - Why Are Professors (and Scientists) So Liberal?". Point of Inquiry. Retrieved January 24, 2014.
6. Hauchecorne, Mathieu; Ollion, Etienne (January 2009). "What is the new sociology of Ideas ? A Discussion with Charles Camic and Neil Gross". Transeo Review. Archived from the original on 24 April 2014. Retrieved 24 April 2014. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)
7. Boyle, Gerry (2015-10-16). "Patrolling the New Sociology". Colby Magazine. Retrieved 2017-07-23.
8. "Neil Gross Plans To Leave Harvard". www.thecrimson.com. Retrieved 2017-07-23.
9. "Neil Gross." Contemporary Authors Online, Gale, 2013. Literature Resource Center, Accessed 13 June 2018.
10. Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews, http://ndpr.nd.edu/ (October 11, 2008), Barry Allen, review of Richard Rorty.
11. "Neil Gross." Contemporary Authors Online, Gale, 2013. Literature Resource Center, Accessed 13 June 2018.
12. Canadian Journal of Sociology, September 22, 2009, Neil McLaughlin, review of Richard Rorty: The Making of an American Philosopher, pp. 1156-1160.
13. Yancey, George. "Recalibrating Academic Bias." Academic Questions 25, no. 2 (2012): 267–78.
14. Stanley Rothman; April Kelly-Woessner; Matthew Woessner (16 December 2010). The Still Divided Academy: How Competing Visions of Power, Politics, and Diversity Complicate the Mission of Higher Education. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. ISBN 978-1-4422-0808-7.
15. Woessner, Matthew; Kelly-Woessner, April (2009). "Left Pipeline: Why Conservatives Don't Get Doctorates". In Marranto, Robert; Redding, Richard E.; Hess, Frederick M. (eds.). The Politically Correct University: Problems, Scope, and Reforms. The AEI Press. ISBN 9780844743172 – via Google Books.
16. Brow, Mark V. (August 16, 2017). "Why There Are No Conservative Professors and Why Do Conservatives Care: Implications for Christian Scholarship". Journal of Research on Christian Education. 26 (2): 211–22. doi:10.1080/10656219.2017.1331776.
17. Gross, Neil (2013). Why Are Professors Liberal and Why Do Conservatives Care?. Harvard University Press. ISBN 9780674059092. LCCN 2012031469.
18. Tetlock, Philip E.; Mitchell, Gregory (February 2015). "Why so Few Conservatives and Should we Care?". Symposium: Liberals and Conservatives in Academia. Society. 52 (1): 28–34. doi:10.1007/s12115-014-9850-6.
19. Woessner, Matthew; Kelly-Woessner, April (February 2015). "Reflections on academic liberalism and conservative criticism". Symposium: Liberals and Conservatives in Academia. Society. 52 (1): 35–41. doi:10.1007/s12115-014-9864-0.
20. Yancey, George (February 2015). "Both/and instead of either/or". Symposium: Liberals and Conservatives in Academia. Society. 52 (1): 23–27. doi:10.1007/s12115-014-9854-2.
21. Marsden, George M. (February 2015). "Religious discrimination in academia". Symposium: Liberals and Conservatives in Academia. Society. 52 (1): 19–22. doi:10.1007/s12115-014-9853-3.
22. Bartolovich, Crystal (November–December 2013). "Small Fish, Big Pond". Academe. American Association of University Professors. Retrieved June 16, 2018.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: date format (link)
23. Gross, Neil (February 2015). "Liberals and Conservatives in Academia: a Reply to My Critics". Society. 52 (1): 47–53. doi:10.1007/s12115-014-9857-z. Symposium: Liberals and Conservatives in Academia
24. ^ Gross, Neil; Simmons, Solon (29 May 2014). "The Social and Political Views of American College and University Professors". In Gross, N.; Simmons, S. (eds.). Professors and Their Politics. Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN 978-1-4214-1334-1. LCCN 2013035780.
25. Hermanowicz, Joseph C. (November 2015). "Professors and Their Politics. Edited by Neil Gross and Solon Simmons". American Journal of Sociology. 121 (3). The University of Chicago Press.
26. Zipp, John F.; Fenwick, Rudy (January 2006). "Is the Academy a Liberal Hegemony?: The Political Orientations and Educational Values of Pr ofessors". Public Opinion Quarterly. 70 (3): 304–326. doi:10.1093/poq/nfj009.
27. "Five myths about liberal academia", Matthew Woessner, April Kelly-Woessner and Stanley Rothman Friday, February 25, 2011 Washington Post
28. Ames, Barry; Barker, David C.; Bonneau, Chris W.; Carman, Chris J. (12 September 2007). "Hide the Republicans, the Christians, and the Women: A Response to "Politics and Professional Advancement Among College Faculty."" – via papers.ssrn.com.

External links

• University of British Columbia - Neil Gross

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