It depends on the country, but there’s a self-preservation aspect to academics leaning left. In the USA especially but not exclusively a major right-wing policy point has been defunding academia and publicly-funded research in general. Unless you’re in a field that can reliably pull private funding, such as some branches of the oft-mentioned economics, voting and sharing right-wing talking points carries a major risk of getting your funding cut and leaving you without a job.
The causality could also be that those who see the value of studying something to gain a good understanding are simply more willing to spend money on furthering our understanding, and of course if you think science is valuable, you’re happy to take such a job and feel like you’re doing meaningful work. Those people would vote for parties that align with their existing worldview before they ever considered working for governmental grant money, and probably keep that belief regardless of it
It depends on the country, but there’s a self-preservation aspect to academics leaning left. In the USA especially but not exclusively a major right-wing policy point has been defunding academia and publicly-funded research in general. Unless you’re in a field that can reliably pull private funding, such as some branches of the oft-mentioned economics, voting and sharing right-wing talking points carries a major risk of getting your funding cut and leaving you without a job.
The causality could also be that those who see the value of studying something to gain a good understanding are simply more willing to spend money on furthering our understanding, and of course if you think science is valuable, you’re happy to take such a job and feel like you’re doing meaningful work. Those people would vote for parties that align with their existing worldview before they ever considered working for governmental grant money, and probably keep that belief regardless of it
In my country, there is barely any left wing.