SHERMAN FREDERICK: Discrimination fells conservatives

The National Gay and Lesbian Task Force could not have been more right when it issued this statement after last week’s U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Fisher v. University of Texas: “Learning with people from different backgrounds and perspectives benefits all students, our workforce and our nation.”

Now, I can’t verify from my own experience just how much discrimination against gay people of color there is in higher education, but I can tell you that whatever it is, it ain’t nothin’ compared to the discrimination of gay people of color who also happen to be political conservatives. In fact, a conservative of any color or sexual orientation is the most endangered species in the zoo of higher education.

Barring a few private universities, perhaps, virtually every institution of higher learning in America quietly, actively and effectively discriminates against conservatives. Black or white, gay or straight, conservative students and professors trying to survive in the ivory towers of higher education quickly find themselves faced with this uncomfortable choice: Either declare your conservatism and subject yourself to the brutal liberal bias of universities, or stay in the closet until you get tenure.

I’d like to think the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force and all of the other affirmative action advocates really mean it when they say things like “learning with people from different backgrounds and perspectives benefits all students.” But I fear they only mean it within the context of their own small group.

Real diversity that truly benefits all students can never be achieved without diversity of thought. And, brothers and sisters, we’re a long way from that.

Conservatives in higher education are considered deviants. Their worldview is like a virus for intolerant liberals who think that view must be eradicated at best, or at least contained and isolated.

The Washington Times chronicled this phenomenon, noting the peer-reviewed study conducted by psychologists Yoel Inbar and Joris Lammers at Tilburg University in the Netherlands.

They surveyed academics and scholars in social psychology, the newspaper reported, and found that “in decisions ranging from paper reviews to hiring, many social and personality psychologists admit that they would discriminate against openly conservative colleagues.”

Because the questions “were so blatant,” Mr. Inbar said, “I thought we’d get a much lower rate of agreement.”

But about one-third of the respondents said they would discriminate against conservative candidates. One person wrote in the survey that if his department “could figure out who was a conservative, they would be sure not to hire them.”

If you won’t accept the Dutch study, consider Harvey Mansfield, a professor of government at Harvard. He’s a conservative, and he maintains that it is his experience that the liberal establishment considers conservative thought “not a respectable position to hold.” Or take a look at the 2007 report by sociologists Neil Gross and Solon Simmons that found 80 percent of psychology professors at American universities are Democrats. Only about 5 to 7 percent of faculty openly identify themselves as Republicans.

Jonathan Haidt, a political moderate based at New York University, says being a conservative graduate student in an American university is like being a closeted gay student in the 1980s.

I agree with the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force when it argues that diversity in background and perspective benefits all students. It’s too bad, however, that American universities do all in their power to stifle intellectual diversity. It’s compounded by the fact that groups such as the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, or the American Civil Liberties Union or the NAACP, don’t extend their fight for diversity to all areas of academic life.

At least 40 percent of Americans identify themselves as conservatives. Yet institutions of higher learning carry only a tiny percentage of conservative faculty. Obviously, this is a kind of systematic discrimination to which the liberal establishment turns a blind eye.

As long as that continues, students of all colors won’t get the kind of education they deserve.

So how about it, affirmative action advocates? A little help here?

Sherman Frederick, former publisher of the Las Vegas Review-Journal and a member of the Nevada Newspaper Hall of Fame, writes a column for Stephens Media. Read his blog at www.reviewjournal.com/columns-blogs/sherman-frederick.