RE: Groupthink vis-a-vis Academia

At Tech, I never once encountered any sort of political preaching from any professors. I suspect that half of my professors were liberals but they were committed to filling young skulls with fluid mechanics, thermodynamics, and reactor engineering rather than mush and propaganda. The only time I felt like you can encounter any sort of bias when teaching science is when presented with spurious "proof" of something - like the famous arguments for evolution or global warming.

Princeton, on the other hand, is a bit more liberal and the profs more outspoken, but that again doesn't change what they're teaching. For example my reactors prof. practically spat Edward Teller's name when mentioning him. I also had a math prof. who mentioned his email from georgesoros.com, and made a couple snide remarks towards President Bush. But these were minor asides in otherwise solid engineering lectures. I agree with Engicon that engineers should be biased to the right, because of a reality-based thinking. But my explanation for the vast majority of academics (even in engineering) who are liberal has to do with the fact that they rely on the government as the primary source of their employment; also, a real job forces you to suffer the consequences of your bad decisions, whereas tenure precludes this condition for an academic.