Pete Peterson writes for the Martin Center about the need to assess support for free expression on college campuses.

In yet another window into the country’s polarized political environment, in 2017 the Pew Research Center surveyed Americans regarding their views of major civic institutions. While there were divisions in how Republicans and Democrats viewed churches, banks, and labor unions, the largest gap was reserved for “colleges and universities,” with 72 percent of Democrats viewing them positively versus 58 percent of Republicans having the opposite opinion.

Many on the left took the results as an illustration of a supposed broader anti-intellectualism on the right. Looking at the survey outcomes, Salon’s Sophia Tesfaye wondered, “Has America hit peak anti-intellectualism?” Citing the Pew study, the New Republic’s Graham Vyse wrote an op-ed with the blaring headline, “Liberals Can’t Ignore the Right’s Hatred for Academia.”

As a conservative, and dean of one of America’s few center-right graduate schools, I share the concern many on the left have regarding those and other survey results. …

… But faculty are only one part of the academic environment. Increasingly, college and university administrators implement policies with political biases. In a recent survey of student-facing college staff, Samuel Abrams of Sarah Lawrence College found that 71 percent said they were “liberal/very liberal” while only 6 percent were “conservative.” “It appears that a fairly liberal student body is being taught by a very liberal professoriate—and socialized by an incredibly liberal group of administrators,” Abrams concluded.

Of course, none of those data points necessarily has to mean that such overwhelmingly progressive institutions cannot teach conservative students in ways that welcome free inquiry. However, further survey research on students, and my own experience in speaking with hundreds of conservative undergrads, confirm that our classrooms and quads have become more inhospitable to conservative viewpoints, creating what I’ve called “eggshell cultures” for conservative students who fear reprisals from their professors and alienation by their classmates.