Jon A. Shields and Joshua M. Dunn Jr. are the authors of Passing on the Right: Conservative Professors in The Progressive University, a new book from Oxford University Press on what life is like for conservatives in the academy. They draw a striking analogy between being conservative in a progressive institution and what it used to be like to be gay in the US and sometimes still is – often being afraid to reveal your true identity; pretending to assimilate through jokes and other cultural ways of fitting in that are at odds with your true beliefs; looking for others who provide sparse clues that they share your identity and building what almost amounts to a hidden subculture. I asked them a series of questions about their book via email.
HF — While not wanting to minimize the difficulties that conservative professors face in the academy, you also suggest that the right-wing critique of the academy is “overdrawn.” So what explains the low numbers of conservatives in many fields of the social sciences?
JAS & JMD — There is little evidence to support the widespread assumption that conservatives are underrepresented in academia because they prefer to make more money than liberals or that they’re especially close-minded. And, in fact, conservatives are well represented in many areas of the natural sciences and in economics.
Thus, the better question is this: Why are conservatives so poorly represented in much of the social sciences and humanities? There is no simple answer to this question. But we do know that conservatives have a much higher propensity to major in the hard sciences as undergraduates. In fact, politics is among the best predictors of undergraduate major choice. Conservatives steer clear of humanistic fields as undergraduates partly because they feel uncomfortable in those classes. A climate survey at the University of Colorado found that conservatives were far more likely to feel intimidated in the classroom because of their political views. And even a study of conservative activists on campus found that they tended to avoid these same fields, despite their strong interest in political and social issues. Liberals, meanwhile, feel more drawn to the social sciences and humanities because they speak to their deeper moral and political sensibilities.
HF — You argue that conservative professors often don’t feel fully at home in an academy where they have to “pass” as liberals to get on well with their colleagues. What does “passing” involve?
JAS & JMD — Some closeted conservatives feel the need to practice rank dishonesty. But most just stay quiet, which is often easy to do since most professors assume their fellow colleagues are progressives. So, unless they do something to signal their conservatism — like publish or say something that reflects a conservative perspective or wear a bow tie or cross — it’s not that hard to “pass” as a liberal in academia. Sometimes passing gets more complicated. In some cases, for example, spouses with strong conservative views are kept out of sight, lest they raise suspicions. But, as a rule, most closeted conservatives are simply hiding in plain sight.
Read the full piece at The Washington Post.