I have been a professor in higher education for over 45 years, and never have I seen a single concept dominate the academy, as well as general society, as much as “diversity.”
“Diversity,” or as it’s usually discussed in academe, “diversity and inclusion,” ostensibly means the extension of fairness to professors and others who inhabit our field in hiring, promotion and tenure, teaching, and publishing opportunities.
It is officially defined by my national organization, the National Communication Association, in an innocuous way: “The National Communication Association defines diversity as a fair and just commitment to equity, access, and inclusion for all persons.” Then, the association argues disingenuously, “The NCA opposes efforts to eliminate or restrict policies or actions that are designed to foster the goal of diversity.”
In higher education practice, “diversity” means fairness for specific identity groups only: racial, gender, sexual orientation, country of origin. With rare exceptions, those are the only characteristics discussed in writing referencing “diversity.”
Most institutions of higher education define diversity without any reference to political diversity. The American Political Science Association talks about celebrating “differences:” “demographic, substantive, intellectual, pedagogical, methodological, and institutional,” but not ideological differences. Nor would it matter if it did: There is virtually no place for conservatives in much of academia, especially in public institutions.
The statistics demonstrating anti-conservatism in the academy are never refuted and usually are ignored. In 2016 in the New York Times, Samuel J. Abrams of Sarah Lawrence College summarized research on faculty political preferences and found that the leftward tilt in social sciences and the humanities was getting stronger. Citing studies by the Higher Education Research Institute, he noted that the ratio of liberal professors to conservative professors nationally by 2014 “was 6 to 1; for those teaching in New England, the figure was 28 to 1.” When restricted to the humanities and social sciences, it is difficult to find self-defined conservatives, period, as they fear losing their jobs, or if tenured, their promotions, or if adjuncts, their connection to universities whatsoever. In one small study, history departments were found to have a ratio of 33.5 to 1 of liberals to conservatives.
In the NCA, conservatives are dropping out in significant percentages, if my conservative listserv is any indicator, and their absence is not regretted in the slightest by diversity-conscious colleges and universities.
Recently, the NCA’s listserv, called CRTNET (The Communication, Research, and Theory Network), has been printing extensive angry (liberal professors are usually outraged) exchanges regarding claims that the NCA’s “Distinguished Scholars” program has historically had too few African Americans accepted into their group. This has led to a lengthy colloquy about “diversity,” but again, only as it pertains to race, gender, and sexual orientation.
In none of the 30 or so interest groups’ posts on diversity is there even a mention of dedication to political or ideological diversity. In only one incongruous post, there is a statement from the Political Communication Division that doesn’t specify diversity as applying to liberal concerns.
What happens when one of the few conservatives in the NCA — say, the author of this piece — chimes in with a contrary reference, such as “…, the conspicuous lack of political diversity in our field has never troubled many [in the NCA]?”
This is not a shy bunch, yet there is no answer to the elephant (no pun intended) in the organization’s front room. As indicated above, just like statistics on anti-conservative participation in higher education, conservatives’ complaints about lack of political diversity are rarely rebutted and usually ignored.
The next time you hear an academic carping about the lack of diversity and inclusion in the academy, ask him or her what the state of treatment of conservatives and conservative thought is in much of his or her field.
The liberal warriors in the academy do not object to a lack of diversity or the methods of exclusion practiced in higher education; they object exclusively to a lack of diversity and methods of exclusion regarding identity groups, wherein they do not typically occur.
As La Rochefoucauld observed, “Hypocrisy is a tribute vice pays to virtue.”
Richard E. Vatz is a professor at Towson University, the longest-serving member of Towson’s University Senate. He is author of The Only Authentic Book of Persuasion (2019) and co-editor of Thomas S. Szasz: the Man and His Ideas (2017).
