The report is hardly surprising. In my book, “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage,” I discuss these arguments to justify the current levels of intolerance and orthodoxy in higher education.
As we have discussed for years, universities have been effectively cleansing their ranks of Republicans and conservatives.
Many departments no longer have a single Republican faculty member in this academic echochamber.
A Georgetown study found that only nine percent of law school professors identify as conservative at the top 50 law schools — almost identical to the percentage of Trump voters found in the new poll.
There is little evidence that faculty members are interested in changing this culture or creating greater diversity at schools. In places like North Carolina State University, a study found that Democrats outnumbered Republicans 20 to 1.
Not long ago, I had a debate at Harvard Law School with Professor Randall Kennedy on whether Harvard protects free speech and intellectual diversity.
Kennedy rejected the notion that the elite school should strive to “look more like America.”
It is not just that schools like Harvard “do not look like America,” it does not even look like liberal Massachusetts, which is almost 30 percent Republican.
The Harvard Crimson has documented how the school’s departments have virtually eliminated Republicans. In one study of multiple departments last year, they found that more than 75 percent of the faculty self-identified as “liberal” or “very liberal.”
Only 5 percent identified as “conservative,” and only 0.4% as “very conservative.”
Consider that, according to Gallup, the U.S. population is roughly equally divided among conservatives (36%), moderates (35%), and liberals (26%).
So Harvard has three times the number of liberals as the nation at large, and less than 3% identify as “conservative” rather than 35% nationally.
Among law school faculty who have donated more than $200 to a political party, a breathtaking 91 percent of the Harvard faculty gave to democrats.
The student body exhibits the same biased selection. Harvard Crimson previously found that only 7 percent of incoming students identified as conservative. For the vast majority of liberal faculty and students, Harvard amplifies rather than stifles their viewpoints.
This does not happen randomly. Indeed, if a business reduced the number of women or minorities to less than 5 percent, a court would likely find de facto discrimination.
Again, universities have shown no serious commitment to ideological diversity. Faculty members have little incentive to add dissenting voices to their ranks. Moreover, faculty are now arguing against such ideological diversity.
Likewise, some sites, such as Above the Law, have supported the exclusion of conservative faculty. Senior Editor Joe Patrice defended “predominantly liberal faculties” by arguing that hiring a conservative law professor is akin to allowing a believer in geocentrism to teach at a university.
Nothing is likely to change so long as donors continue to blindly fund these programs and ignore the obvious intolerance for opposing views.
For now, most Yale departments have succeeded in creating a safe space for the ideologically intolerant.
