College and university faculty, together with their students, have established a reputation as being among the most liberal-left political groups in the United States. The extent to which that reputation is deserved and reasons why political liberality is so dominant on the nation's campuses are the subjects of this document. The empirical evidence comes from a national survey in which 60,000 faculty members in more than 300 institutions responded. Variations of political orientation associated with different academic disciplines, age, and religion are also described and analyzed, but the factor found to be most significant in explaining the left-liberal politics of professors is their commitment to the intellectual community. Chapters cover; (1) the politics of the intellectuals; (2) the ideology of academics: intersections of national and campus affairs; (3) academic disciplines and politics; (4) discipline and politics: the case of the social sciences; (5) class, intellectuality, and academic politics; (6) intellectuality and social background: the liberalism of Jewish academics; (7) the demography of academic politics: age and social background; (8) issues of the 1960's: the ear of campus protests; (9) persisting effects of the 1960's: the 1972 presidential election; (10) issues of the 1970's: unionism and the professoriate; and (11) conclusions. (Author/KE)