So today’s claim: Christina Hoff Sommers is a right-winger.

Reality check: After the following video:

The following sites reacted by calling Professor Sommers a conservative:

None of these articles cite a source for claiming The American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research as a conservative think tank. The AEI itself has this to say about itself:

AEI is a private, nonpartisan, not-for-profit institution dedicated to research and education on issues of government, politics, economics and social welfare.

There doesn’t seem to be an explicitly-stated agenda on a organizational level, unlike a certain group I know that explicitly made their political agenda clear as day:

We are a feminist company. We’ve said it before, but we believe that all people deserve to be represented in art, games, and media, and that too little out there does so. We will make stories about women and LGBT people and people of colour because it’s important. Period.

No comment on whether said agenda is good or bad, just that they do make it clear.

The AEI is only as right or left as its contributing scholars are. Here is the list of AEI scholars. No filter for their political leaning, once again indicating AEI’s indiscrimination toward its scholars’ political alignment.

So what about Sommers herself? Stephen Totilo corrected the title of his article after Prof. Sommers posted this tweet:

So it could be argued that the editors of these sites could not be aware of Prof. Sommers’ political alignment before they wrote their pieces, couldn’t it? Well, if they have spent a little effort researching the subject of their article, they would have found this video, where Prof. Sommers addressed both issue — her and her colleagues’ political alignment as well as addressing the message instead of the person’s political alignment:

The video was uploaded on July 14th 2014, roughly 2 months before the “Are video game sexist?” video and its reaction pieces were made. So even without Prof. Sommers’ reaction tweet clarifying her political alignment, these editors could have done some research on their subject of coverage.

But wait, the fact that Christina Hoff Sommers is a registered Democrat is something you didn’t even have to wait until July 14th 2014 to confirm. You could have verified that long ago, 2 decades ago, in fact. Let me introduce you to this book:

Who Stole Feminism?: How Women Have Betrayed Women By Christina Hoff Sommers (Simon and Schuster, 1994)

You won’t be able to read the full book, but the preview pages already contained the information we are trying to confirm. On page 128, Sommers wrote:

My husband, Fred Sommers, and I — both registered Democrats — are members of the Boston chapter, which has no distinctive political coloration.

The fact that Christina Hoff Sommers being a Democrat has been written down on page 128 of her book, and yet, 20 years later, the above editors still let that fact flew completely under their radar, is absurd. It’s not cool to rewrite history to suit your purposes.

On top of that, I implore you to read not just that segment, but to read page 128 in its entirety. This page was Sommers’ experience with the National Association of Scholars when it came under the attack of “politically correct” forces with labels like sexist, racist and (you guess it) right-wing. NAS members are also diverse in terms of political leaning, and NAS itself rejects any political leaning:

NAS deals with issues of both the left and the right:

Hollowing out of liberal education (R)

Declining study of Western civilization (R)

Excessively high tuitions (L, Leftist outlet The Young Turks in particular has big issue with this, and I should know, because I follow these guys, because I’m on the left)

Ethnic preferences in admissions and hiring (L)

Sex discrimination in academic hiring (L)

Exclusion of conservative and traditional viewpoints (R)

Cultivation of ethnic and group grievances (R)

Anti-capitalist, anti-democratic, and anti-freedom orientations (L)

“Multiculturalism,” “diversity,” “sustainability” (R)

Doesn’t matter, still got labelled as right-wing. It was NAS 20 years ago, it is AEI now, 20 years later. History has a way to repeat itself.

Now for the verdict, I will give Stephen Totilo a break because he corrected the title of his article after publication to show that he does care about fact-checking so there’s a tiny bit of integrity there. It’s tiny, it’s fragile, but it is there.

For the rest of the editors, Makuch, Campbell, Williams and Winkle: for neglecting to do your research alone, I would have given their claim a False rating. But on top of that, these people have pushed it to the level of absurdity by somehow re-enacting what happened 2 decades ago and trying to rewrite history at the same time. For their lack of professionalism and disregard of the truth, I give these editors a lovely rating I lifted from Politifact: