I agree. In some sense you (almost by definition) already have a set of good arguments supporting your own viewpoint - otherwise you wouldn't hold it. Hence your best chance for intellectual growth is to learn about the best arguments your ideological "opponents" use to support their views. Their arguments are much more likely to be news to you than additional arguments supporting your own ideology, and while you may not change your views much, at least you will have learned something. And that’s what college is for, after all.

Ok, it’s also for some other stuff.

Liberty University.

I go to the Univerisity of St. Thomas. I'm a staunch agnostic but I chose to go to a Catholic university because I knew almost nothing about Catholicism. There have been points where I bemoaned the fact that I chose a small Catholic university but over all it's been a very good educational experience. I now know more about Catholicism than a lot of Catholics and I think I've gained a better understanding of faith in general. It hasn't changed my views on the world, and I'm all too willing to speak up in my theology and philosophy classes. Occasionally, I've walked the line and written an essay from the Catholic viewpoint but I feel like even then it was a positive experience. Writing from a viewpoint that you disagree with can be incredibly enriching, and I feel that any attempt to divide schools into liberal and conservative schools would ultimately be devisive. What we need is more communication between the political philosophies. How can you expect anything but bitter stagnation when you isolate yourself from anyone who disagrees with you. Dissent is the foundation of our nation and I have nothing but contempt for anyone who would stiffle that in a university or any other setting.

I'd just add to Orin's comment the suggestion that in today's environment, I suspect you would be hard pressed to find more than a few campuses in the nation where conservatives are subject to harrassment or threats on anything more than a one-off basis (that is, where there is an actual trend of such threats, not just the occasional nut, who is a fixture of every political stripe).

I'm a recent grad with any number of politically active conservative friends across the country and the most trouble they ever received was puerile criticism. This does not preclude the existence of criticism of course, but it was hardly unsafe for any of them

But beyond that, I think there are real educational benefits to being outside your ideological comfort zone. In my experience, at least, we tend to learn most when we are challenged; being forced to explain why you think how you think is the best way to improve your thinking.

This seems relevant if you're studying something like political philosophy or IR or economics, where political differences have some correspondence with different theoretical structures (or something of that sort), or some field where ideology intrudes all the time, like literary theory or sociology or linguistics.

On the other hand, I think that for a lot of learning, ideology is pretty much irrelevant -- mathematics and the sciences in general, for example. Oh, there's the whole ID debate and the debate about whether humans might have evolved more than just epicanthial folds and different skin colours in the past 10,000 years, but as a practical proposition, these too are generally marginal concerns -- whether God devised Man and all the species has few implications for organic chemistry.

In these cases, the additional friction of living in a little proto-society where most of your undergraduate peers think your ideas are potty is probably more of a distraction than you need. There will be plenty of time to debate ideology over the watercooler at work after you graduate. But there's real learning -- getting a solid, broad foundation in your area of study, especially if it's sophisticated and technical -- that's much more difficult to do once you're outside of the academic setting. I think it's reasonable to sacrifice the dubious pleasure of late night bull sessions defending your ideas against your fellow undergraduates in favour of a smoother, more undisturbed opportunity to concentrate on the learning you can best achieve while at university. Not to say that's the only valid approach. But I think it's a perfectly respectable one.

When John Roberts was first nominated, the NY Times interviewed some of his Harvard Law School classmates to find out what it was like to be a conservative in a mostly liberal environment back then. They all said that being in the minority forced them to develop stronger arguments than their liberal classmates, who were rarely challeneged. It seems to me that this line of reasoning would also hold true for college students.

Of course, the danger of being exposed to opposing viewpoints is that your own views may change in the process. It does seem like the question, where should [ideologue] go to school presumes somehow that the underlying ideology held is correct even before confronting challenge. This is the very definition of prejudice, judgment in advance of argument.

"If everyone is thinking the same thing, no one's thinking much."

The problem is that the professors aren't thinking much as they all think the same way and don't brook any student disagreements. My son (a college student) just got a paper back with this comment: "Excellent writing, very poor premise." Grade C-. It was a political paper where he took a pro-Iraq, pro-military stance.

I think some of the top schools in this country, the ones that get all those really big bucks from their alumni ... the Ivy League, Berkeley, Stanford, U. of Michigan, etc. might get a good wake up if suddenly some of the best and brightest in this country boycotted them and started selecting some of the other great schools with a more well-rounded educational offering.

When I went to school in the early '90's, there was no room for viewpoints other than liberal. The Student newpaper was a prime example. All articles were just written with the assumption that everyone was a liberal and that was the correct way to view things (offerring other viewpoints was just treated as if the person was backward). So just attending a school that recognized other views points would be a huge step.

FWIW, I've attended three universities where I did not share the prevailing wisdom. I found those all to be quite educational experiences, and I've yet to demonize those who disagree with me.

As an aside, I think what matters even more is the choices you make while in school. For example, at many schools, even people in the political minority will be able to find like-minded students and organizations. So, the real issue will be finding ways to meaningfully engage with people of other beliefs.

Critical mass of your own kind is always good, I think. But it need not be the majority, or even a substantial minority. When I went to law school, I was happy knowing 4 or 5 overtly conservative/libertarian types and having the rest of my friends be either liberal or apolitical. Being one of two or three voices is infinitely better, imho, than being the only one... but I didn't need to be one of a hundred voices.

People less comfortable with having their notions about the world put on the microscope fairly often might have a higher threshold for critical mass. People more comfortable in their own skin might be fine going to school with a group of people who disagree with them 100%.

There's a distinction I think between undergrad and grad programs here.

True, as an undergrad and a grad student it is important to be exposed to other and diverse ideas.

But in PhD, JD and I'd argue some Master programs, knowing what you are getting yourself in for and having at least a someone neutral template is required.

I have an MPA. THE main reason I will never seek a PhD is because I know as a conservative I'd have three choices in terms of PhD in poli-sci or PhD or DPA in public administration.

1: I find a political science or public administration PhD program that is not utterly run by liberals. These simply do no exist in the US today. At least with two conservatives on a faculty I could get a dissertation committee that would not be automatically pre-disposed to slit my throat, metaphorically speaking. This is not to say ALL liberals are pre-disposed to trashing conservatives, but the sheer number of liberals in academia means there is that many more of them who are likely to toss whatever my disseration is in the scrap heap if they find I am a conservative. Which leads to...

2: Get into a PhD program and lie and lie and lie and hope like heck no one finds out I am a conservative. Trouble here is of course you become intimately involved with discussion and discourse with your professors and fellow program people. Am I a good enough liar to hide my conservatism for 4-6 years? Probably not, no. And then what? I will have spend half a decade and a ton of money to maybe get a PhD (assuming the liberals on the disseration defense committee don't toss me, see point 1) and thereafter has NO chance at a professorship?

3: Get into a PhD program, admit but don't advertise that I am a conservative and let the chips fall where they may. If I were not married and planning on raising a family, sure I might. But as I said, this is not really an option because I cannot afford (financially and in terms of time) to gamble that the liberals on the faculty will not simply dismiss me and take it out on my grades.

With so many liberals in the academy, even if a small % are out to get conservatives, that small % becomes a large number of people. I cannot afford to spend time and money only to find that some of that small % but large number of liberals who will simply not tolerate conservative views are sitting on my dissertation committee.

Russ:

Three of my cadets were thrown out of a history class for having the temerity to suggest that we should focus on today's problems...

That was funny. Thanks.

[L]et me put in a plug for attending an institution that does not share your basic ideological outlook....I think there are real educational benefits to being outside your ideological comfort zone.

Ever think about putting this principle into actual practise yourself? For example, inviting a scientist, engineer, historian, artist, soldier, businessman--in short, neither a law professor nor lawyer--to add his voice to the VC? Especially if part of your purpose here is to educate, reach a wider audience than your immediate academic peers, sharpen your understanding of your own philosophy through challenging intramural debates, et cetera.

There is a significant difference in the information environment today from when I attended college (picture dinosaurs striding past volcanos to capture the era...). Today, anybody can access nearly unlimited amounts of like-minded opinion on the Internet, some of it even coherent and powerful. No conservative or libertarian need feel isolated. Today, it's pretty easy to take refuge in an echo-chamber if you want to, even when you attend a school where most people disagree with you.

Back in the late Seventies and early Eighties, the hegemony of conventional center-liberalism was much stronger in all media and in academia than it is now. For example, Milton Friedman was the only well-known voice arguing for free-market policy in the major media (and was virtually the only writer with that point of view assigned in poli sci classes). Any mention of Thomas Sowell or Ayn Rand in the major media gave a small jolt of excitement, even if the treatment was superficial or dismissive. Besides the Wall Street Journal editorial page, conservative and libertarian think tanks and small-circulation magazines were where it was at for any kind of discussion about contemporary issues that didn't simply assume statist, dovish, green, etc., premises. Still, we managed. Lots of extracurricular reading was involved.

Given that it's so much easier to tap sympathetic views today, I don't see, therefore, why a student's immediate intellectual environment should be determinative one way or the other of how his views are shaped or affected. Nor do I think that taking a little heat for being a contrarian is all bad--I was amused when someone commented that "I was too nice to be a fascist" and so on.

I am with Orin on the intellectual (or at least forensic) sharpening that comes with being in the minority. It was hard back then to be an unthinking conservative or libertarian because you were surrounded by people who disagreed with you--it was think or change your views. And it definitely showed up in discussions--those on the right were much more aware of counterarguments to their positions and tried to anticipate them. Whether that would work under today's conditions, where being "on the right" is less lonely, I don't know.

The problem of institutionalized harassment of anyone contradicting strong campus norms about race and sex should not be underestimated, however. Read Alan Kors and Harvey Silverglade's the Shadow University for a hair-raising picture of how administrators systematically screw people who trip over these norms (often liberals, by the way) in the name of tranquility and PC legitimacy. FIRE (founded by the two authors) has resources on their website for assessing the restrictiveness of various campus speech codes and the like.

No One of Import:

I have been in academia for about two decades, and I honestly have no idea how you came up with your perception of what it takes to successfully complete a Ph.D. program and become a professor. You write:

"Then, after 10-15 years of constant worry and in effect lying about myself to make it clear I am NOT a conservative, then if I managed to somehow get tenure, then and only then can I safely register Republican or give money to certain candidates or answer questions with my honest opinion."

Because obviously there are no outspoken conservative professors in academia, since they all need to hide in fear and wait to have tenure before ever mentioning their political views. Not.

Do you really believe that Reynolds, Volokh, Drezner, Bainbridge, Cowen, Zywicki, Barnett, Lindgren, Bernstein, Feldstein, Barro, Mankiw, Lazear, Becker, Posner, Mansfield, Wolfowitz and on and on and on had to hide their political views before they got tenure? They obviously did not, and they got tenure anyway, or probably because they didn't.

I go to Eugene Lang College, which is the undergraduate portion of New School University. For over 80 years it has been well known as one of the most liberal institutions in the country. Many of my teachers are socialist and the closest any of them come to politics recently was working with the Kucinich campaign. Politically I lean to the left, however my libertarian and foreign policy views make me stand out in my classes. Overall my teachers love it. They tend to get bored with a bunch of students who agree with them. When I do not do well in a class it is always because of something I did wrong and not because the professor dislikes my views. My arguments have become much sharper and I know it is because I debate with some of the brightest minds on the far left every day.

ISI publishes a guide called "Choosing the RIGHT College"

No, I disagree. I think you should only attend classes where the professors and other classmates have been pre-screened by your aides to make sure they never ask uncomfortable questions, and are your friends, in order to avoid making you look bad, or having to question your deeply held beliefs. If it works for presidential adminstrations, why not for "higher" education.

One place Libertarians shouldn't be, either as students or instructors, is at public universities. If you believe in minimal government and privatization of everything except core functions of everything, then you shouldn't be part of a state-supported institution--especially teaching at one. That is the ultimate in hypocracy.

I'm not even sure you should be on the internet, since it wouldn't exist without the government.

I'd like to agree with Orin that going to a college where people don't agree with you is a good thing. I was a fairly hardcore libertarian when I arrived at the notoriously liberal Swarthmore, and being forced to argue with people about all my core beliefs was absolutely beneficial for my intellectual and moral development. I did have one episode where a hostile professor essentially forced me to drop a class, but otherwise professors were willing to listen to me - I was the sole defender of economics and free markets in Barry Schwartz's psychology seminar on why economics is bullshit and free markets are evil (Schwartz's views are more nuanced than that, but this is not such an unfair view of the seminar), and he gave me one of my best grades.

This did all result in a change in my views: as anyone who's read my comments here before knows, I've become very liberal and a fairly partisan Democrat to boot. But nobody who's thinking about going to college should be tremendously sure of their views: if they can't stand up to four years of intense questioning, your reasons for holding them probably aren't very sound.

Perseus, not only has that report been torn apart on this very blog by commenters, it proves my point. If conservatives are underrepresented in linguistics and chemistry, its just because the subset of conservatives that are willing to undergo tenure track professions are not as intelligent and not as large numerically as that subset of "liberals". (I say "liberals" because there is an equal paucity of actually nonstatist liberal voices in academia as there is conservative, but I suspect that has little to do with bias either.)

Perhaps this is better for some students. I can say that it wasn't good for me, personally, to attend a generally liberal (though not thought-oppressive) school. Sitting through lectures about the fascist-socialist idelogical spectrum, socialism bringing "freedom from want," and natural monopoly, in poli-sci, sociology, and econ classes, respectively, was downright painful. It's not that the teachers weren't willing to present opposing views -- they hadn't even heard them! There wasn't even a notion that maybe some of their models had, you know, no support at all.

Now I attend George Mason. Yeah, it's more ideologically in line with me. But I'm confident that these professors are well-read and aren't hiding info from me, at the least.

DRJ,

I don't know if anyone's still reading this thread, but a nice start would be some anecdotes that have some corroboration--i.e. something more than the student's claim that he or she was maligned. Being able to personally read such a paper and seeing the professor's comments would be a nice start--I would probably know a ideological hack job when I see it.

Another problem, in my view, is that 1) some of these allegations (ala Horowitz) have been made up; when pressed to give details about some of his stories, Horowitz has just mumbled that the details "aren't important," and 2) we see allegations of liberal bias ala the "UCLA Bruin," (or whatever the story Eugene was linked to a few weeks ago) where being a liberal activist outside of your class time was uncontravertible evidence of liberal bias in the classroom. Call it selection bias, if you like, but I feel like I've seen more specious examples of "liberal grading bias" than real ones.

Moreover, we're not just talking about whether or not there are liberal professors who can't be professional. There are: I several such individuals at Wisconsin while at grad school (I believe sociology was the primary culprit). We're talking about whether the problem rises to the level where something should be "done" that wouldn't be worse than the problem itself. For that, probably, I would need some sort of study or broader type of evidence to be convinced. You don't bring in the fire department to put out smoke.

Because obviously there are no outspoken conservative professors in academia, since they all need to hide in fear and wait to have tenure before ever mentioning their political views. Not.

Do you really believe that Reynolds, Volokh, Drezner, Bainbridge, Cowen, Zywicki, Barnett, Lindgren, Bernstein, Feldstein, Barro, Mankiw, Lazear, Becker, Posner, Mansfield, Wolfowitz and on and on and on had to hide their political views before they got tenure? They obviously did not, and they got tenure anyway, or probably because they didn't.

Reynolds is not a conservative, as he is quite prepared to admit. He tends towards libertarian on economic issues, and liberal on social issues (and yes, there is a difference).

Volokh also is more libertarian and liberal (supports gay marriage, repeal of laws against sex with animals)--he is only a conservative by the standards of law professors.

Lindgren described himself to me over lunch as a liberal.

Barnett and Bernstein both describe themselves as libertarians, and Barnett would almost certainly be offended at being called a conservative. (And nearly all conservatives would strongly dispute Barnett being a conservative.)

I go to FSU Law, which is probably 60% conservative (it seems like more). It has been an interesting experience. Many of my friends are conservatives and I'm trying to understand their viewpoints. There are even people who could be described as Christian fundamentalists here. Shockingly to me, these are not dumb people. I disagree strongly with their ideas, but I cannot dismiss them out of hand. So, yes, for me, it is a good experience to be exposed to the ideas of the other political camp.

Barnett and Bernstein both describe themselves as libertarians, and Barnett would almost certainly be offended at being called a conservative. (And nearly all conservatives would strongly dispute Barnett being a conservative.)

And, IIRC, Barnett wrote in Contracts until he got tenure, then started advancing more libertarian Constitutional arguments.

Not that I'm complaining, his Contracts casebook was awesome.

Yours truly,
Mr. X

...just saying...