I was startled to read a recent opinion article in the Washington Post by Jon A. Shields and Joshua M. Dunn, Sr., called "Forget what the right says: Academia isn't so bad for conservative professors."

Shields is associate professor of government at Claremont McKenna College and coauthor, with Dunn, of "Passing on the Right: Conservative Professors in the Progressive University." Dunn is associate professor of political science at the University of Colorado—Colorado Spring.

The part of their article that ticked me off the most was the idea that we should be encouraged that conservatives can survive in the academic world if they learn to keep their conservatism as secret until they obtain tenure:

First, conservative professors are not helpless victims -- they have become quite skilled at navigating the progressive university. About a third of the professors we interviewed said they concealed their politics prior to earning tenure. Of course, being in the closet is not easy. (One particularly distressed professor told us: "It is dangerous to even think [a conservative thought] when I'm on campus, because it might come out of my mouth.") But it's also a temporary hardship, since nearly all the conservatives whom we interviewed planned to emerge from the ivory tower's shadows after gaining tenure. Once tenured, conservatives are free to express their politics and publish research that reflects right-wing interests and perspectives. As one put it to us: "I don't mind causing trouble now."

As far as I'm concerned, this is an unacceptable reaction to a vicious, profound discrimination against conservative scholars.

I served for three years at an assistant professor in the political science department at Williams College. At the time, I was one of only three registered Republicans on the staff. I keep an eye on the college and contribute to two of the websites associated with the college that are okay with freedom of speech and freedom of expression. Here are links to two articles regarding my story.

http://www.thecollegefix.com/post/24821/

http://www.campusreform.org/?ID=6956

I have never gotten over the way my career as a scholar was gravely wounded due to affirmative action. I am especially bitter about how my doctoral dissertation was belittled by the political science department at Williams College. I developed my thesis while living in poverty, working as a gardener, and surviving without health insurance.

I'm still immensely proud of it.

It hurts me to think of all the young conservative professors who are being harmed by our college and university system. There has to be a better way to confront the dominance of the hard left in our college and university system than simply telling young conservatives to be nice and shut up. It is hard to do both when you are confronting a profound level of injustice.

For some great commentary on this story from another source, I recommend this article by David Henderson called "Academic Conservatives and Survivor Bias." My experience rings true with Henderson's comments that conservatives need to outperform their liberal colleagues in terms of publishing, but the ability to publish is limited by the liberal bias of the journals controlled by the liberals.

I found this to be a no-win situation and I quickly left to find higher paying work in environments with less outright discrimination. Here's an article from the Williams Record back in January 1989 which captured my mood at the time. See, https://ia802705.us.archive.org/zipview.php?zip=/14/items/thewilliamsrecord_vol101b_103a/thewilliamsrecord_vol101b_103a_pdf.zip&file=thewilliamsrecord_vol101b_103a_pdf/thewilliamsrecord_vol101b_103a_0284.pdf

This article, of course, reflects my thoughts prior to knowing that my dissertation would win national recognition from the American Political Science Association that summer or that it would be easily published as part of an edited book - almost exactly as I wrote it -- about seven years later. The publisher, Praeger, also published One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch by Alexander Solzhenitsyn.

Nevertheless, I have received some very friendly e-mails from both Dunn and Shields since I drafted this article. My gut feeling is that they needed to play up the cooperation with liberals angle to help get their research published and then the Washington Post distorted their true views to provoke a reaction from their audience. (I guess that worked on me.) I'm looking forward to visiting with Shields sometime soon and sharing my story with him.




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walks

Welcome back Drew, long time no see.
Granted it's been decades since my college...ahemmm....experience, it's sad to see Marxism thriving in the nations learning centers and how our own govt, including both party's allowed and nurtured it's growth.
McCarthy was Right, too bad his colleagues didn't have a spine.

Don't take me wrong here, but this subject matter disgusts me.

I've seen the writing on the wall for a few decades now, and was just about the only parent in my neighborhood who yanked their kids from public school.  By the time my youngest was a senior, half the neighborhood had done the same thing.

The Marxist creep into our institutions is nothing new.  Why are colleges allowed to be so liberal and literally black-ball conservative teachers?  I've read articles where many don't even make it a secret of their goals to prevent them from tenure.

How do schools get started and staffed?  Is the system so rigged that it can't be fought on a constitutional basis, or what about all these so-called rich Republican businesses and organizations.  Start your own damned schools and run them the way you want.  Isn't that the American way? 

Quote from: Dori on April 03, 2016, 09:09:32 AM
Don't take me wrong here, but this subject matter disgusts me.

I've seen the writing on the wall for a few decades now, and was just about the only parent in my neighborhood who yanked their kids from public school.  By the time my youngest was a senior, half the neighborhood had done the same thing.

The Marxist creep into our institutions is nothing new.  Why are colleges allowed to be so liberal and literally black-ball conservative teachers?  I've read articles where many don't even make it a secret of their goals to prevent them from tenure.

How do schools get started and staffed?  Is the system so rigged that it can't be fought on a constitutional basis, or what about all these so-called rich Republican businesses and organizations.  Start your own damned schools and run them the way you want.  Isn't that the American way?

It happened because the GOP refused to do what they were elected to do, represent the people.
Instead, they made deals with the Marxist left, furthering our slide left, to the point they infiltrated the party, and now we have a political system that represents the interests of the left, from the left, by the leftists.
TEA

Quote from: Solar on April 03, 2016, 09:18:43 AM
It happened because the GOP refused to do what they were elected to do, represent the people.

How much involvement does the government have with colleges?  How could they intervene to stop this from happening?

Quote from: Dori on April 03, 2016, 09:35:06 AM
How much involvement does the government have with colleges?  How could they intervene to stop this from happening?

Government supports this nonsense. The last thing we need is more help from the government with education. It is up to the voters to elect people who will not bow down to the leftists in the education industry. There is no hope for private institutions that have gone full lib. They have enough loon supporters who will keep funding the insanity.

Quote from: Dori on April 03, 2016, 09:35:06 AM
How much involvement does the government have with colleges?  How could they intervene to stop this from happening?

Wayyyy too much financially. Which is why leftists are pushing for free college, meaning it would be Nationalized Marxist recruitment camps.

Quote from: Solar on April 03, 2016, 11:59:11 AM
Wayyyy too much financially. Which is why leftists are pushing for free college, meaning it would be Nationalized Marxist recruitment camps.

Basically re education camps....would be pretty close to Bill Ayers vision.

Quote from: Sauce on April 03, 2016, 12:03:43 PM
Basically re education camps....would be pretty close to Bill Ayers vision.

I think he may have succeeded, considering just how many come out thinking Capitalism is the root cause of the worlds problems.

Quote from: Solar on April 03, 2016, 12:08:50 PM
I think he may have succeeded, considering just how many come out thinking Capitalism is the root cause of the worlds problems.

Just look at Bernie's supporters.  They appear to be old Marxists, anti-American lay-abouts and a lot of young college age kids.