There is no doubt that the political views seen in academia do not represent the full spectrum of American politics. Academia leans left. Conservatives respond by complaining that academia is 'ideologically homogenous' (sic) because they have been excluded based on their political views. If conservatives want to assign blame for their low numbers in academia, perhaps they should start by looking in the mirror.

 

For generations, the conservative movement has tended to reject both the pursuit and the conclusions of science. Obvious examples include research and data on gun violence, sex as a spectrum rather than mutually exclusive binary states, the existence and causes of climate change, epidemiology during a pandemic, and public health in general (vaccines, flouride, universal access to health care). This is not a new phenomenon: in the late 19th Century, an Indiana Republican proposed legislation redefining pi as 3.2.  More recently, a Republican state legislator proposed labelling mRNA as a 'weapon of mass destruction' and banning technologies like CRISPR. Republicans have consistently blocked or undermined attempts to collect valid data about gun violence, domestic violence, climate change, infectious disease, and mortality. The current Republican administration is hiding and erasing data that has been collected, as well as rescinding grants into areas of study that do not support their ideology (diversity and vaccine hesitancy). This is also true outside of STEM fields, where historical knowledge about the eradication of the original inhabitants of North America, the achievements of women, and black history are being erased and teaching about them forbidden. Poetry by Maya Angelou has been removed from the military academy library but not Mein Kampf. There should be no surprise that believers in a political philosophy that belittles knowledge, demonizes education, and prefers dogma to evidence produces fewer individuals who excel in the core values of academia: curiosity and the pursuit of truth.

 

Recently published data described academia as very ideologically asymmetric, with ~ 75% left and far left and only 15% conservative and far right. Many on the right are protesting this ideologic imbalance and advocating for incentives and mandates for DEI in political philosophy in academia (while attempting to ban it for gender, race, religion, and ethnicity).

 

One major cause of ideological conformity is fact. Consensus that the earth is round and not the center of the universe is certainly conformity, but I would call it information-based conformity rather than ideologic conformity. Biology departments are dominated by people who believe in cell theory while spontaneous generation advocates are notably absent. For good reason.

 

A reason not to take seriously the demands from the right for ideological diversity is their behavior when they are in control. Do they advocate for diversity and heterogeneity? Do they fearlessly pursue science where ever it takes them. Nope. The top conservative colleges are anything but bastions of tolerance and free speech: Bob Jones University, Biola University, Brigham Young University, Cederball University, Colorado Christian University, Harding University, Hillsdale College (Michigan), Liberty University, Pepperdine University Oral Roberts University, Utah State University. And then there is the University of Austin, founded and funded largely by conservatives and touted as the place “where intellectual dissent is protected and fashionable opinions are scrutinized.” In actual fact, it looks increasingly as if UATX is evolving into a right-wing culture warrior. Look also at what has been happening recently under Trump. The GOP has purged data, fired experts and scientists based on ideology and diversity, and promoted mediocre individuals who are overwhelmingly white, male, and (often aggressively) Christian. Actions speak louder than words. The actions of conservatives and the right don't scream support of intellectual diversity. They scream:  the world must be built on the norms of empowered white, male, Christian, European culture. (Which is ironic given that Christianity itself is a radical movement based on a non-white, non-European, marginalized Jew.)

 

There is good reason to doubt the legitimacy (or, at least, the sincerity) of the conservative demand for academic equity and inclusion: their history of explicit opposition to education as a public good that is fundamental to a democratic society. After World War II the US built a top notch public education system. The public and state colleges and universities, many of which were tuition free, were an important component of this. In 1966, during Reagan's campaign for Governor, he very publicly targeted California's top-ranked public education system. He pushed for budget cuts and tuition. During his re-election campaign in 1970, one of his advisors (Stanford Professor of Economics Roger A. Freeman) said at a campaign press conference: "We are in danger of producing an educated proletariat. That's dynamite! We have to be selective on who we allow to go to college." Prominent conservative intellectuals of the time felt threatened by public education, fearing that a working class with access to higher education, and therefore capable of upward mobility, would undermine the social and economic order. One conservative thinker said: "(Free education) may be producing a positively dangerous class situation" by raising expectations in the working class. College students were referred to by national conservative figures as "parasites feeding on the rest of society". The political and ideologic basis of the opposition to affordable or free education was encapsulated in Spiro Agnew's comment that "unqualified students are being swept into college on the wave of the new socialism." Berkeley was a major center of opposition to the Vietnam war during an era of major social change: civil rights, women's liberation and large numbers of women in the work force in what had been traditionally male occupations, anti-war protests, birth control with evolving sexual mores and changing family structures, climate and environmental activism, and an increasingly diverse population.  Not just class, but also race played a role: the GI bill after World War II resulted in a dramatic increase in the number of people of color attending college, entering the job market, and integrating previously white neighborhoods and schools.

 

Conservatives supported education when it served the old order, but times and society changed. One can't build a political ideology on hostility to education, science, and truth and still expect to thrive in an academic culture that prioritizes education, science, and truth.

 

My message to my conservative friends complaining about the lack of conservative voices in academia: You have met the enemy, and it is YOU.