Oh, we talk too much about the politicization of the modern university and how all the professors are nutballs who believe and teach all kinds of hog tripe.  As with anything else in the world, it’s not such a black and white issue.  Some really terrific professors believe some really terrible things.  Some really terrible professors believe some really terrific things.  And so on.  This story in the Times does suggest, though, that the stereotypical radical leftist professor is dying out in higher education.  Or if not dying, at least retiring, just like Boomers everywhere.

“There’s definitely something happening,” said Peter W. Wood, executive director of the National Association of Scholars, which was created in 1987 to counter attacks on Western culture and values. “I hear from quite a few faculty members and graduate students from around the country. They are not really interested in fighting the battles that have been fought over the last 20 years.” Individual colleges and organizations like the American Association of University Professors are already bracing for what has been labeled the graying of the faculty.

This would only be a good thing, ideologically speaking, if the Replacement Professors were more balanced, more moderate on political issues, less willing to toe the leftist line.  And they seem to be that way.

“Self-described liberals are most common within the ranks of those professors aged 50-64, who were teenagers or young adults in the 1960s,” [two researchers] wrote, making up just under 50 percent. At the same time, the youngest group, ages 26 to 35, contains the highest percentage of moderates, some 60 percent, and the lowest percentage of liberals, just under a third.  When it comes to those who consider themselves “liberal activists,” 17.2 percent of the 50-64 age group take up the banner compared with only 1.3 percent of professors 35 and younger.

So, hey.  There’s something good coming from the giant swell of retiring Boomers.