This NYT article by Patricia Cohen claims that there is a generational change in academia. (Hat tip: Orin Kerr at VC.) "Baby boomers, hired in large numbers during a huge expansion in higher education that continued into the ’70s, are being replaced by younger professors who many of the nearly 50 academics interviewed by The New York Times believe are different from their predecessors — less ideologically polarized and more politically moderate."

That would be good news, if true. I have my doubts, though. An informal survey of CJLF's current and recent students (admittedly, a small sample size) had mixed results.

Cohen also maintains that the newer generation of academics leans more toward number-driven research as opposed to more subjective inquiries. That is also a good thing. While it is quite possible to lie with statistics, it is much easier to expose agenda-driven research for what it is when the methods are quantitative. More importantly, with quantitative methods, honest researchers are more often dragged to conclusions they personally don't like, something that occurs more rarely with qualitative methods. When have seen this in death-penalty deterrence research, where researchers who are personally opposed to the death penalty for other reasons nonetheless conclude that it does indeed deter.