“’Passing on the Right’”
“Passing on the Right: Conservative Professors in the Progressive University (Oxford University Press) was written by Jon A. Shields… and Joshua M. Dunn Sr. ... The authors relied on a “snowball,” or peer referral-based method of recruiting subjects for what may be the largest-scale study of conservative professors ever. Their method yielded 153 eventual interviewees on 84 campuses — each of whom researchers met with face-to-face…
as Shields put it in an interview, “Prior research on the university has always focused on liberals. It has asked questions like, ‘How liberal is the university?’ or ‘Why is the university so liberal?’ or ‘Is academia becoming more liberal?’ Yet conservative professors are interesting, and so misunderstood by liberals and conservatives alike. They provide a revealing window into the progressive university and American conservatism.”
Uncloseted or “out” conservative professors, for example, tend to challenge their colleagues’ prejudices (perceived or real) by practicing what the book describes as “conspicuous civility,” temperance and broad-mindedness, though a few tend to be defiant or combative. Others minimize conflict by avoiding liberal colleagues or disciplines they view at particularly politicized, such as sociology or literature. “When conservative professors venture into such spiritualized academic terrain,” the book says, “they often report mistreatment in small and large ways for their intellectual profanity…
Beyond discipline, professors’ specific views — that is, what kind of conservative they were — seemed to influence their experiences. Fiscal conservatives tended to report much more welcoming work environments than cultural conservatives, who reported more isolation and ridicule. Such treatment is most acute in sociology, according to the study, leading the authors to suggest that vocal cultural conservatives (ironically) “may be wise to stay out of the one discipline devoted to the study of culture.” That observation underscores “a more general and troubling truth: conservatives are least welcome in fields where they are most needed.””
This is clearly a problem; there is a very definite bias towards liberalism in the academic, STEM spaces I inhabit — significant enough that even I am able to observe it at times, as a super progressive lefty person.
I also thing this is a better way to frame this issue than the “free speech” thing. It’s aout inclusion all around, not so much a cut-and-dry speech thing.
Related: **there was at least one other post… early March?
