Liberal academia claims to champion the progressive ideals of inclusion and diversity. Unfortunately, there exists a systematic discrimination against certain viewpoints, including conservatives and evangelical Christians in many colleges. As colleges pay lip-service to diversity, but discourage it in reality, it is students that lose out on experiencing genuine diversity of thought. Nicholas Kristof addresses this bias in a New York Times op-ed: The stakes involve not just fairness to conservatives or evangelical Christians, not just whether progressives will be true to their own values, not just the benefits that come from diversity (and diversity of thought is arguably among the most important kinds), but also the quality of education itself. When perspectives are unrepresented in discussions, when some kinds of thinkers aren’t at the table, classrooms become echo chambers rather than sounding boards — and we all lose.
Four studies found that the proportion of professors in the humanities who are Republicans ranges between 6 and 11 percent, and in the social sciences between 7 and 9 percent…
In contrast, some 18 percent of social scientists say they are Marxist. So it’s easier to find a Marxist in some disciplines than a Republican.
The scarcity of conservatives seems driven in part by discrimination. One peer-reviewed study found that one-third of social psychologists admitted that if choosing between two equally qualified job candidates, they would be inclined to discriminate against the more conservative candidate…
The discrimination becomes worse if the applicant is an evangelical Christian. According to Yancey’s study, 59 percent of anthropologists and 53 percent of English professors would be less likely to hire someone they found out was an evangelical.
“Of course there are biases against evangelicals on campuses,” notes Jonathan L. Walton, the Plummer Professor of Christian Morals at Harvard. Walton, a black evangelical, adds that the condescension toward evangelicals echoes the patronizing attitude toward racial minorities: “The same arguments I hear people make about evangelicals sound so familiar to the ways people often describe folk of color, i.e. politically unsophisticated, lacking education, angry, bitter, emotional, poor.”
Many of these colleges and universities purport to expose students to a variety of viewpoints, but today instead they promote homogenous thinking. The discrimination against conservatives and evangelicals represents a grave hypocrisy on the part of liberal academia. Colleges ought to foster the robust expression of truly diverse viewpoints from both the right and the left, from both the religious and the irreligious.
