In the wake of an election which turned on cultural issues, extra attention has been focused on the values questions which divide Americans—including those who either teach or study at universities.

Liberal writers once pretended that opinion on college campuses was not particularly skewed to the Left. That façade has fallen away. Too many people have heard too many horror stories about in-class indoctrination, speech-trampling speech codes, and censorship of dissenting opinion in ostensibly non-partisan campus newspapers, for that story to hold up. It might still work with parents who haven’t been to a mainstream college themselves. But the new generation of parents is young enough to have experienced the many fronts on which leftist opinion advances across the campus—from official “diversity” policies that virtually target whites for discrimination, to freshman orientation programs featuring explicit sex education, from entire departments devoted to single-issue politics such as women’s studies, to course offerings and syllabi which read like politically correct catechisms. It’s increasingly hard to peddle the notion that universities function as insulated havens for disinterested seekers after truth. (Indeed, if you made that claim on campus, chances are that your statement would run afoul of deconstructionists, feminist critics of science, and Marxist “new historicists.”) Such language is still used in promotional literature aimed at parents and pleas to legislators for funding, but few even pretend any more to believe it.

Which is tragic, of course, because that is what liberal arts universities ought to be—not indoctrination centers devoted to the tenets of any particular ideology, even a conservative one. But as our college guide demonstrates in sometimes depressing detail, that is what too many colleges have become.

And ever more media commentators are noticing this fact, and applying sophisticated analyses to understand why this has happened to American universities—so many of which were either begun by orthodox religious denominations or the governments of solidly conservative states. I mean, how much sense does it make that some Catholic universities, and state universities in the American South, have English departments dominated by anti-religious Marxists, feminists, and “queer theorists”? I know of one such department where a graduate student was given a zero—not an “F”, a zero—for using Thomas Aquinas and Dante as sources in a paper on critical theory. (I read the paper—it met the terms of the assignment, was brilliantly written, and subsequently was accepted at a national conference.) When she appealed the grade, faculty stuck together as they usually do, and administrators backed them up. Had she let this pass, she would have failed the (required) class, been expelled from the program, and lost her teaching job at another college—all because one professor had a grudge against his parents’ religion. She actually had to hire a lawyer and threaten a multi-million dollar lawsuit against the state university, compiling all his many verbal snipes against Christianity and Christians, and argue that these created a “hostile learning environment”—and therefore, sexual harassment! This admittedly cynical strategy worked—I wrote the brief, and recommend this strategy to others in similar plights—and the university backed down. But I wonder how many others have suffered their fates in silence….

Of course, one wouldn’t expect any university to blindly mirror the opinions of the average voter. But one might think that the respectable views of ordinary taxpayers could at least receive a tolerant hearing in the academic halls whose light bills they pay. Yet in too many schools a self-selecting elite, insulated from any outside accountability, employs the vast resources and prestige of the university to replicate a narrow set of political prejudices, and make disreputable (if not actually punishable) any intellectual dissent.

This week, in The New York Sun, commentator John Fund cited an upcoming study by Prof. Stanley Rothman of Smith College which examined the politics of more than 1,600 college teachers at almost 200 schools. Rothman found that in “all faculty departments, including business and engineering, academics were over five times as likely to be liberals as conservatives.” In fact, he determined that a leftist political viewpoint was almost as important a factor in hiring as tangible academic achievements, such as publications and awards. Rothman “used the same research tools long used in courts by liberal faculty members to prove race and sex bias at universities,” Fund reports.

How do liberals explain this imbalance? One candidly crass academic Fund cites is Robert Brandon, who teaches philosophy at Duke. Brandon said: “We try to hire the best, smartest people available. If, as John Stuart Mill said, stupid people are generally conservative, then there are lots of conservatives we will never hire. Mill’s analysis may go some way towards explaining the power of the Republican Party in our society and the relative scarcity of Republicans in academia.”

Thanks, Professor Brandon. That really does help. Such narrow-minded smugness as you exhibit must pervade many hiring and tenure committees—and helps explain why so many promising conservative thinkers decide to pursue other professions.

How did things get this bad? We don’t have space here for a full-on history of the “tenured radicals” (I recommend Roger Kimball’s excellent book of that title), but Prof. Mark Bauerlein of Emory University recently offered some insights in The Chronicle of Higher Education which should provoke further thought. He notes that most leftist academics are probably not even conscious that they do dominate the university, or that they use their power to limit discourse, exclude unbelievers from the fold, and bias classroom discussion. Operating in an environment where their prejudices have so long been equated with simple decency, and dissent has been so thoroughly demonized, these teachers really do not understand the nature of the conservative complaint.

Bauerlein points to three interpersonal factors which explain how this works:

1)The Common Assumption. “The assumption is that all the strangers in the room at professional gatherings are liberals. Liberalism at humanities meetings serves the same purpose that scientific method does at science assemblies. It provides a base of accord…A fellowship is intimated, and members may speak their minds without worrying about justifying basic beliefs or curbing emotions.”

2)The False Consensus Effect. “That effect occurs when people think that the collective opinion of their own group matches that of the larger population. If the members of a group reach a consensus and rarely encounter those who dispute it, they tend to believe that everybody thinks the same way.” Bauerlein gives as an example Pauline Kael’s infamous statement, “I don’t know how Richard Nixon could have won…I don’t know anybody who voted for him.” You can be sure much the same thing was said in departmental lounges across the “red states” last month. Impressionable, ambitious students are liable to absorb this attitude and replicate it.

3)The Law of Group Polarization. Bauerlein cites U. of Chicago political scientist Cass Sunstein who observed this phenomenon. Bauerlein summarizes it so: “When like-minded people deliberate as an organized group, the general opinion shifts toward extreme versions of their common beliefs.” In Old Left circles, this meant racing to embrace Stalin. Nowadays, it goads liberal-minded faculty to endorse not just tolerance for homosexuals, but gay “marriage” and Queer Theory. Conversely, “those involved lose all sense of the range of legitimate opinion.” So dissent begins to seem not just mistaken but obscene.

As a survivor of several left-dominated departments, I can testify that Bauerlein is on to something. I never sensed that conscious conspiracy, or a centrally-directed agenda lurked behind the monolithic wall of hostile opinion conservatives encountered. (Sometimes, such measures are necessary on the part of embattled conservatives!) It was enough that people pledged to free discourse and the untrammeled search for truth rarely encountered intelligent dissent, and were never forced by their institutions to take it seriously. That convinced these academics that their views were simple “decency,” much as similar factors once supported the consensus favoring segregation, Prohibition, and the internment of Japanese-Americans. To shatter such a consensus requires nerves of steel and some institutional support from foundations such as ISI and others.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: sully,

Excellent analysis. There is an article in The Economist that would be worth reading on Liberalism in academia. It is entitled "America's one-party state". It talks somewhat about a novel by Tom Wolfe titled "I am Charlotte Simmons" which deals with what college has become in some cases.

While of course some of these points are legitimate, you're missing the forest for the trees.

Liberalism is an idealogy and an idea that predicates itself on the exchange and competition of ideas.

Additionally, I've in my own personal experiences at the college level observed that it seems to go hand in hand with critical thinking skills -- exactly what the university experience is supposed to create, foster and refine.

Out from the propaganda factories march millions of Marxist and Libertarian drones.

Like you, I do not object specifically to individuals making such decisions but to the absence of counter arguments and alternative histories that would have opened some minds to different conclusions.

I've been shocked by quite a few of my classes. History, English, Politics, Economics, practically every subject that could be corrupted has been corrupted. I blame government funding of universities.

Stumbling upon Old Right articles and books is what transformed me from a Bush Republican into a conservative. Thank God for the internet.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Trip,

If liberalism (and it depends on if you are using the classical definition) is about the competition of ideas, then why are conservative ideas not tolerated at most colleges? Liberals claim that they are for the free exchange of ideas, but only if they are liberal ideas. Afterall, conservatives are stupid, just ask Andy Rooney. If, as Mr. Rooney thinks, conservatives suffer from a lack of education, how is it that we can usually engage in a calm rational debate, while liberals tend to fly off the handle with emotion, and, why did John Kerry lose the election if liberals are so smart? While I know that not all liberals are like this, it seems that the majority who are in the media fit this description as well as those in the ivory tower of academia.