Do Conservatives Have Ourselves To Blame?

I’ve often thought what a shame it is that conservatives — fiscal and social — have abandoned K-12, higher education, and government, instead opting for business, nonprofits and self employment. It is understandable, but the liberal bias we see in K-12, higher education, and government, are the result of that. Because of my view, I was interested to read the beginning of this piece by Matthew C. Woessner, associate professor of political science and public policy at Penn State Harrisburg.

Academia’s leftist tilt creates unique challenges for conservative students. While liberal students are taught by faculty who largely share their political and ideological worldview, conservatives students are often forced to take courses from faculty who fundamentally reject their core beliefs.

That problem is especially difficult for social conservatives, whose opposition to abortion, affirmative action or same sex marriage opens them to criticism from faculty who sometimes equate traditional values with sexism, racism or homophobia. Whereas findings outlined in my book The Still Divided Academy suggest that serious mistreatment based on a student’s politics is uncommon, even the perception that conservative views are unwelcome is a problem.

In our 2012 article “Diversifying the Academy: How Conservatives Can Thrive in Liberal Academia” published in the journal PS: Political Science and Politics, Robert Maranto and I argue that part of the solution to higher education’s ideological imbalance rests with conservatives themselves. Rather than flee from higher education or retreat into conservative colleges like Hillsdale, the right should make a concerted effort to join the ranks of the faculty, particularly in minimally ideological disciplines like political science.

If conservative students had more right-leaning mentors on the faculty, it would go a long way to mitigating the problems posed by higher education’s slant toward liberalism.

Education should be a marketplace of ideas, not a venue for the Right or the Left to shut down critical thinking and analysis. Today, the Left has managed to marginalize thinking that does not fall in line with Leftist thought. What a shame.