Most academics dismiss conservative critiques of higher education as exaggerated and politically motivated. But to better understand the state of contemporary academia, those within it should consider the status quo from another perspective: that of the conservative minority.

Imagine, as John Lennon might have sung, that every aspect of academia was controlled by conservatives. Imagine that almost every university president, provost, dean, department chair, and center director was a conservative. Imagine that almost every scholarly journal editor, anonymous manuscript reviewer, and grant proposal evaluator was a conservative. Imagine that faculty senates, scholarly award committees, and promotion and tenure committees were largely populated by conservatives. Imagine that the leadership of almost every scholarly association, national academy, and foundation was dominated by conservatives.

In this counterfactual world, faculty in the progressive minority would doubtless identify myriad ways politics and ideology were shaping academic work. In addition to suspecting that the majority were self-serving, they would likely argue that conservative biases need not be visible and obvious, or even deliberate, to skew results. After all, progressive scholars have long argued that discrimination can exist even when unintended due to psychological mechanisms like implicit bias and by becoming embedding in institutional structures.

Progressives would argue that a conservative majority might bias outcomes even if those wielding power had good intentions, believed they were following professional norms, and tried to be fair. Conservatives might see their decisions about faculty hiring, tenure, book and article manuscripts, grant applications, and all other matters requiring discernment as having been genuinely reached based on the merits. Nevertheless, the progressive minority would likely be skeptical of such claims, especially if their lived experience was that academia increasingly reflected conservative priorities.

Contemplating this hypothetical should lead the real-world progressive majority to take seriously the concerns of contemporary conservatives, who are outnumbered across every dimension of academia, from faculty to administration.

Minorities and Majorities in Academia

Although few would dispute the progressive predominance in higher education, some data are illustrative. For example, the 2022–23 UCLA Higher Education Research Institute faculty survey found that 56 percent identified as liberal or far left, 32 as “middle of the road,” and 13 percent as conservative or far right. In 1990–91, by contrast, 45 identified as liberal or far left, 40 as moderate, and 18 percent as conservative or far right. Gallup surveys during this general time period reveal very different levels and trends among the American population, and General Social Survey data also indicate a growing ideological divide between the public and the professoriate. A recent study of faculty political contributions to federal candidates and committees found a 94–1 ratio of Democratic to Republican donations; the dollar value ratio was 21–1 in favor of Democrats, and the party registration ratio of faculty donors was 8.4–1 in favor of Democrats.

Scholars have devoted much thought to what majority and minority status entails in American politics and policy. The précis is that minority group members are at a disadvantage, and this can be the case even if the majority is not deliberately acting in ways that harm minority interests. Academics have developed concepts such as unconscious or implicit bias to argue that discrimination can occur without intention. According to the American Psychological Association, “Implicit bias, also known as implicit prejudice or implicit attitude, is a negative attitude, of which one is not consciously aware, against a specific social group.” A key tenet of critical race theory is that racism can become embedded in institutional practices, leading to “racism without racists.” While such concepts are debated, they have undeniably found a wide audience in the academic world.

Progressive scholars and activists also tend to embrace arguments based on disparate impact, whereby group differences in outcomes are interpreted as strong, if not conclusive, evidence of discrimination, which can then justify government intervention. During the Obama administration, for example, racial disparities in suspension rates led the U.S. Department of Education to issue a Dear Colleague Letter pushing school districts to revise their discipline policies.

In other words, progressive faculty members in an overwhelmingly conservative academia would have a range of conceptual tools that could be used to question whether the status quo was biased against progressives. However, today’s progressive faculty and administrators have no incentive to bring these concepts to bear on a status quo in which they, by all measures, dominate. My guess is that this argument has never occurred to most—a progressive academic world feels as natural to faculty as water does to fish.

But if individuals naturally favor people like themselves, the ideas they value, and the research methods they find useful, then we might not be surprised if groupthink were to influence which scholarship is valued and consequently funded, published, and rewarded.

To like-minded individual decision makers, it might seem perfectly natural that a faculty hiring committee of progressives ends up hiring a progressive. Or that a set of progressive peer referees recommends that a university press publish a book on a topic of interest to progressives. Or that a panel of grant proposal reviewers finds value in a research topic that addresses progressive priorities. They may well believe that rejected candidates, manuscripts, and grant applications all deserved their fate because they did not meet objective criteria. But these decisionmakers would do well to heed the late physicist Richard Feynman, who reportedly said, “The first principle is that you must not fool yourself—and you are the easiest person to fool.”

The more subtle problem with the contemporary university’s promotion of progressive ideas and individuals is that it is likely to exhibit a growing number of deficits and absences in teaching and research. An absence is more difficult to detect than a presence. While it is easy to see that higher education is filled with centers and programs that focus on progressive priorities, a greater problem may be knowledge disappearing from the academy because it is out of fashion, is politically incorrect, or does not advance a Critical Something Perspective. This is more applicable to the humanities and social sciences than to STEM fields, but it is a challenge for everyone in higher education to ponder.

Academic Freedom, But for Whom?

While many progressive faculty may see such questions as politically motivated and designed to intrude upon their academic freedom, they should remember what is often forgotten: that students have a right to learn. The American Association of University Professors’ “1940 Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure” argued that “Academic freedom in its teaching aspect is fundamental for the protection of the rights of the teacher in teaching and of the student to freedom in learning. It carries with it duties correlative with rights.”

Students’ freedom to learn, properly understood, entails a right to encounter the full range of ideas in a scholarly discipline. A university that takes seriously only one set of ideological ideas is therefore deficient it its educational mission. This is not to claim that all ideas and concepts are political or ideological, but who would deny that conservative thought is more likely than progressive to be ignored, misunderstood, or even caricatured in the contemporary academy?

Turning Around the Ocean Liner

Academia is unlikely to voluntarily increase its intellectual diversity. Majorities rarely give up power without pressure or incentives, and there is no reason to think the current progressive majority is any different. The task is also enormous—no realistic plan can immediately address the challenges posed by progressive dominance in all parts of the higher education ecosystem, from peer review to teaching to grant funding.

The place to begin is the faculty, who are academia’s foundation. The federated nature of most universities, especially on large campuses, means hiring decisions are mostly made by lower-level units such as academic departments. Presidents, provosts, and deans cannot easily monitor personnel decisions without devoting attention (and therefore resources) to each and every hire. Doing so is time intensive, requires overcoming informational asymmetries, and inevitably creates tensions. Nevertheless, faculty hiring is the place where higher education reformers must start.

A direct—but problematic and self-defeating—plan would be a system of quotas or affirmative action for conservatives. Progressives would strongly oppose this, although many have long argued that such policies are appropriate and necessary to promote racial and gender diversity in college admissions and faculty hiring. And conservatives have a long history of opposing affirmative action along racial and gender lines, so it would seem opportunistic and unprincipled to suddenly advocate it.

Is there an option between the Scylla of self-replicating faculty hiring by progressives and the Charybdis of affirmative action for conservatives? A better approach would be for trustees, elected officials, and stakeholders to recalibrate the work of the university to ensure its teaching and research encompass the universe of ideas and human experiences. This is more difficult than quotas because it requires that leaders understand what is being studied and taught on campus, department by department and center by center. It could nonetheless be done in a scholarly, deliberative, and non-political way through regular presidential and provost-led assessments of faculty teaching, publications, service activities, and engagement with the “real world.”

This approach, which is grounded in what universities actually do, would avoid a reliance on indirect measures such as faculty ideology and partisanship. Instead, it would focus on the direct outputs that matter—teaching, research, and service—and enable each university to identify specific deficits and imbalances.

Implementing the approach would also provide valuable information about what is actually happening on campuses. Pundits often paint with broad strokes about the state of the academy, but biases surely must vary from university to university and from discipline to discipline. They may prove larger or smaller than we think, but given the overall share of faculty who are progressive, it is unlikely that they often tilt in a conservative direction.

Any identified problems could be remedied by future hiring in a process directed by the central leadership. This would result in more conservative and libertarian scholars on campus, as they tend to be most interested in the many topics that have been marginalized, especially in the humanities and social sciences. But it would only be a byproduct of the effort to promote authentic intellectual vitality.

This strategy need not be implemented on its own. In some cases, it could be augmented by center and department reorganizations and even closures. Universities that mandate implicit bias training for those involved in faculty hiring should ensure that the curriculum encompasses bias based on ideological viewpoints. And all should consider creating a civics institute of the type pioneered by states such as Arizona, Texas, and Florida. While these are largely “red state” initiatives, university leaders in Democratic states and private institutions are starting to perceive their educational and civic potential (not to mention their utility as a defense against critical politicians).

Building an Intellectual Diverse Faculty

Renewed attention to the work of higher education would help to address the daunting challenges facing aspiring conservative scholars, as noted by Princeton’s Robert George:

Here’s what I’m thinking when an outstanding kid comes in. If the kid applies to one of the top graduate schools, he’s likely to be not admitted. Say he gets past that first screen. He’s going to face pressure to conform, or he’ll be the victim of discrimination. It’s a lot harder to hide then than it was as an undergrad. But say he gets through. He’s going to run into intense discrimination trying to find a job. But say he lands a tenure-track job. He’ll run into even more intense discrimination because the establishment gets more concerned the closer you get to the golden ring. By the time you come up for tenure, you’re in your mid-30’s with a spouse and a couple of kids. It’s the worst time to be uncertain about your career. Can I really take the responsibility of advising a kid to take these kinds of risks?

While no profession will perfectly represent the ideological and partisan identities of all Americans, it is possible for conservatives and libertarians to expand their presence on campus and become less of a minority over time. As these scholars build to a critical mass, they will become more active and influential participants in other aspects of the scholarly ecosystem.

This approach will take time, attention, and resources, but it has the potential to create real, sustainable change. While some might claim it amounts to letting politics intrude on the academy, it would instead allow higher education to become truer to its own values. Faculty research would better investigate the full range of scholarly topics and questions, and faculty teaching would better prepare students for the diverse marketplace of ideas in the real world.

David L. Leal is professor of government at the University of Texas at Austin and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University.