Need more evidence that US campuses actively silence conservatives? Then take a look at a stunning new report by the higher-ed watchdog Campus Reform.
The report notes that at SUNY-Albany last year, 64 speakers identified as liberal were handed the podium, vs. just two conservatives.
Many of the speakers were officials who’d worked in the Obama administration, including two Environmental Protection Agency regional directors and the head of Customs and Border Protection.
Events included discussions on “marginalized communities,” “barriers to naturalization for low-income immigrants” and “gender and sexuality from a Jewish lens.”
Part of the reason for the skew, the report says, is the school’s “Strategic Plan,” which calls for a more “diverse” and “inclusive” campus. By “inclusive,” SUNY apparently means: Let almost no conservatives speak.
SUNY-Albany is hardly unique: In 2016-17, liberal speakers outnumbered conservatives 44-4 at the University of Indiana, 30-9 at George Washington University, 9-2 at Alabama and 44-2 at Vermont, Campus Reform also found.
And colleges don’t just favor left-wing speakers: A study last April by Brooklyn College’s Mitchell Langbert of 8,688 tenure-track professors at top liberal-arts colleges found that, of those enrolled in a political party, 10 times as many were Democrats as Republicans. Some 39 percent of the colleges had no GOPers at all.
No wonder a 2017 Gallup poll showed 92 percent of students believe liberals can speak freely on campus but only 69 percent say that’s true for conservatives.
Talk about threats to democracy. If students aren’t exposed to diverse viewpoints, public discourse is sure to suffer.