Every time I write about bias against conservatives in academia, I can count on a few professors writing me to politely suggest that I have no idea what I’m talking about. Sometimes they aren’t so polite, either. How would I know what goes on in their hiring meetings, their faculty gatherings, their tenure reviews? They’re right there, and they can attest firsthand that there ain’t no bias, no sir!
But none of them can explain why, if that bias doesn’t exist, so many of their conservative and libertarian colleagues feel compelled to hide in the closet. Deep in the closet, behind that plastic zip bag of old winter coats in mothballs, and sealed, with many layers of packing tape, in a box marked “Betamax Tapes: Jerry Lewis Labor Day Telethon 1981-1987.”
“The modern academy pays lip service to diversity,” notes my colleague Virginia Postrel in a column about “Passing on the Right,” a new book about the conservatives in academia. “Yet as a ‘stigmatized minority,’ the authors note, right-of-center professors feel pressure to hide their identities, in many cases consciously emulating gays in similarly hostile environments.” If conservatives aren’t being discriminated against, then why are so many of them, sitting in those same meetings and tenure reviews, afraid to show their ideological colors?