Passing on the Right
Conservative Professors in the Progressive University
-
- $59.99
-
- $59.99
Publisher Description
Few seem to think conservatives should become professors. While the left fears an invasion of their citadel by conservatives marching to orders from the Koch brothers, the right steers young conservatives away from a professorial vocation by lampooning its leftism. Shields and Dunn quiet these fears by shedding light on the hidden world of conservative professors through 153 interviews. Most conservative professors told them that the university is a far more tolerant place than its right-wing critics imagine. Many, in fact, first turned right in the university itself, while others say they feel more at home in academia than in the Republican Party. Even so, being a conservative in the progressive university can be challenging. Many professors admit to closeting themselves prior to tenure by passing as liberals. Some openly conservative professors even say they were badly mistreated on account of their politics, especially those who ventured into politicized disciplines or expressed culturally conservative views. Despite real challenges, the many successful professors interviewed by Shields and Dunn show that conservatives can survive and sometimes thrive in one of America's most progressive professions. And this means that liberals and conservatives need to rethink the place of conservatives in academia. Liberals should take the high road by becoming more principled advocates of diversity, especially since conservative professors are rarely close-minded or combatants in a right-wing war against the university. Movement conservatives, meanwhile, should de-escalate its polemical war against the university, especially since it inadvertently helps cement progressives' troubled rule over academia.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Shields and Dunn, professors of government at Claremont McKenna College and the University of Colorado Colorado Springs, respectively, team up to survey the plight of academic conservatives and the stigma they face on overwhelmingly liberal campuses. Based on extensive interviews, their evenhanded study throws light on a "hidden world" that exists within the ostensible leftist monoculture of the social sciences and humanities. Sociology is a particularly one-sided field, in which outspoken conservatives are likely to face strong opposition from their peers. On the other hand, economics abides multiple viewpoints. The authors provocatively compare the state of many right-wing professors to gay people living in "the closet." To avoid suspicion, "closet conservatives" conceal their politics, self-protectively designing research agendas to cover their tracks and engaging in self-censorship on r sum s, publications, donations, and grants, especially prior to tenure. By remaining silent, they pass as liberals among other-minded colleagues. Shields and Dunn try to show that conservative professors are not closed-minded or combative by nature. Instead, the academics profiled here consistently remain faithful to academic ideals. Correcting the ideological imbalance will be difficult, the authors conclude. They quixotically propose affirmative-action hiring for academic conservatives but admit the idea has a near absence of support among the professoriat, even on the right.