Letters to the Editor
A liberal political bias in the Ivy League?Your excellent report on the allegations about liberal political bias in the Ivy League overlooked an important matter: the heavy conservative bias of the person who constructed the poll in question, Frank Luntz.Far from an objective polling researcher, Luntz is a well-known, long-time special interest Republican Party operative who, among other things, helped to cobble together Newt Gingrich's notorious "Contract With America" in 1994.It should also be noted that Luntz has worked for the Enron Corporation and the Christian Coalition as part of their respective political operations.In separate reports in 2000, two widely-respected, independent professional organizations, the American Association of Public Opinion Research and the National Council on Public Polls specifically criticized Luntz for "giving the public unreliable reports" and for designing surveys "more akin to a parlor game than to a public opinion poll."Even a brief study of the "Ivy League" poll results, as published on David Horowitz's web site, shows that this poll, too, is bogus, particularly in its use of loaded questions and false data on the question of reparations for slavery.It comes as no surprise that David Horowitz would uncritically rely on figures from a poll designed by Frank Luntz.The rest of us, including students and faculty, should be a good deal more skeptical, given Luntz's documented background of partisan calculation and manipulation and the glaring infirmities of the current poll. Sean Wilentz Dayton-Stockton Professor of History A liberal political bias in the Ivy League?Sean Wilentz is entitled to practice pop psychology on anyone he pleases, including me ("Is a liberal academia biased against conservative faculty?" article in the Feb.