For example, we’ve already been through several iterations of the “diversity statement” controversy. In the University of California system and elsewhere, these required statements for applicants to faculty positions have obviously served as political litmus tests. This was a practice that was only recently discontinued, and it almost definitionally shut out a lot of conservatives — or honest ones, at least — from even being considered for UC faculty positions!
In other areas the bias works a little bit differently. To take a subject I’ve written and reported on a lot, for a while social psychology was obsessed with implicit (unconscious) bias and the IAT, a test that can supposedly detect it. Many careers were made and many research dollars won by folks who bought into the basic premises underpinning this area of research: Implicit bias is an important driver of policy outcomes, and it can be measured.
I’d consider both of these claims to still be unproven, but either way: They are obviously left-coded. If you have conservative or even moderate/nuanced views on racial discrepancies, you’re unlikely to buy into a theory requiring you to have liberal views on racial discrepancies. And if you won’t buy into that theory, that’ll make it harder to get hired into a social psychology faculty position, because at any given moment there are only a finite number of dominant ideas and only a small number of available job slots. Candidate A, who does graduate work on implicit bias and catches the eyes of one of the doyennes of the field, is going to have a much easier time than Candidate B, who works in a more obscure and/or less politically favored area.