UMich should hire more conservative professors

The “value of a liberal arts education” is one of those phrases that is often repeated without real consideration of its meaning. As the Trump Administration continues its assault on higher education, college administrators have invoked traditional liberal values as a shield to defend against the denial of congressionally-appropriated grant funding and threats to bar enrollment of foreign students. Universities are largely right to do so. But as academic institutions wield liberal values against those who would limit academic freedom, they forget to fully enforce those values on the home front. 

On the matter of ideological diversity on college campuses, the Trump administration actually has a point. The University of Michigan would do well to remember that a truly liberal education requires exposing students to a variety of viewpoints, including and, especially, positions those students disagree with. We can take a first step toward this aspiration by making a genuine effort to hire more conservative faculty for LSA. 

To most U-M students, it likely goes without saying that we live and work in a left-leaning environment. A Michigan Daily analysis of political donations made by University employees found that Democrats received 94% of donations while Republicans received only 6%. In political science alone, this fall’s LSA course guide includes two courses on colonialism and one on imperialism, alongside such topics as Latinx Politics, Histories of Law and Social Justice and Social Justice in Japan. 

To most left-leaning students, those might seem to be typical additions to a course catalog. But imagine reading through those titles as a moderate or conservative. For them, the left-wing shibboleths in the titles make those courses inaccessible, which contributes to a broader alienation that many conservative-leaning students feel. That’s not to say we shouldn’t examine these topics, but their use of left-wing buzzwords and the absence of right-leaning counterparts indicates a bias in the information proffered to students — which only drives moderates and conservatives further away. 

It is that sense of alienation that breeds a staggering amount of conformity on college campuses around the country. 

New research from Northwestern University (which interviewed students from Northwestern and Michigan) indicates that a substantial number of students self-censor their views on politics and family values for the sake of social and academic acceptance. Eighty-eight percent of those interviewed reported adopting more progressive views than they genuinely hold to succeed socially or academically. More than 80% reported misrepresenting their views in submitted coursework to align with professors. 

Think about that for a moment. When you next take your seat in lecture, odds are the person next to you has deliberately distorted their opinion on a course assignment because they thought a more left-leaning view would play better with the professor. If a liberal education means anything, it means that participating students should be able to form and express their views, well, liberally. When that doesn’t happen, we lose the intellectual rigor and belief formation that make college valuable in the first place. 

Many moderate and conservative U-M students undoubtedly accept the monoculture and its effects as the reality of academia. For them, an environment where opinions are freely expressed and freely debated is simply too much to ask. But our monoculture can be broken with the introduction of a little intellectual diversity. If the University hired even a few conservative professors for LSA — particularly in departments like political science and history — students would see a genuine institutional commitment to fighting conformity. They would also find an outlet to express previously withheld views. 

Hiring more conservative professors can thus be more than a vanity project for the Trump administration. It can be the first step toward a truly tolerant intellectual environment on campus.

Left-leaning students, as most U-M students are, may shudder at the thought of such an initiative. But increasing the number of conservative professors wouldn’t simply benefit right-leaning students at the expense of progressives. We are at our intellectual best when we surround ourselves with people who disagree with us. When we silence the dissenter — or conveniently exist within a space without viewpoint diversity — we are deprived of the ability to hear and think through opinions not our own. 

If the dissenter has valuable contributions to make, we lose exposure to those contributions. If not, we lose the clarity produced by the collision between truth and error. Either way, the opportunity to learn from faculty with different views would enhance the spirit of open debate and dialogue necessary to liberal education, thus improving the academic experience for all students. 

Furthermore, successfully arguing for politically liberal causes — a goal of many LSA students — in part depends on a thorough understanding of opposing views. It’s difficult to think of a better way to achieve such understanding than by going straight to the source. 

More broadly, the delegitimization of opposing views lies at the core of our increasing political polarization. Within their echo chambers, liberals and conservatives alike believe that the other side acts out of bad faith rather than legitimate value judgments. That conclusion drives Americans further apart at a time when we should be uniting in defense of shared liberal values. 

When we are forced to share space with those who disagree with us, treating them as real people rather than ideological abstractions, the bad faith assumptions that drive polarization tend to crumble. By hiring more conservative professors, the University can help us to remember that political disagreements are just that — political. Nothing more. 

That said, parity between liberal and conservative professors is likely an unrealistic goal. Academia has an inherently left-leaning tilt, and conservatives often perceive the ivory tower as a hostile entity to avoid. But right-leaning academics are out there. They manage to achieve considerable acclaim in America’s law schools, where organizations like the Federalist Society have made the environment more accepting toward conservative viewpoints. And given the ideological imbalance currently present on the University’s campus, even a few right-leaning faculty members can make a difference. 

The arguments against universities hiring more conservative faculty don’t end there. Jennifer Morton, professor of philosophy at the University of Pennsylvania, argues that hiring more conservative faculty would invert the conformity problem by compelling conservative rather than progressive thought from students. 

But there is a large difference between a liberal student adopting more progressive views to align with a professor (which is what currently happens at the University) and a liberal student adopting plainly conservative views. While a center-left student who believes in liberal immigration reform might submit a paper in support of open borders, she would likely refuse to write in support of the Trump administration’s mass deportation efforts. Conformity comes easier when the distance between opinions is limited. 

Furthermore, being aware of their status as a minority, conservative academics are generally more accepting of countervailing views than their liberal counterparts, indicating that they would place less pressure on their students to conform. 

Liberal values aren’t something we can defend selectively. If universities should man the walls in protection of academic freedom, they must also strive to protect intellectual diversity within their lecture halls and classrooms. The most convenient and beneficial way for the University to accomplish that is to hire professors that break with the campus orthodoxy. 

We shouldn’t do it for Trump, to seem accepting toward conservatives in order to stave off attack; nor should we do it for the press coverage, or to pay lip service to the notion that universities are progressive indoctrination centers in need of correction. We should do it for ourselves. For the students who hold their opinions down when they should be expressing them freely. For those of us who value truth-seeking as a clash of ideas rather than an expression of orthodoxy. We should hire more conservative professors because we can’t afford not to. 

Lucas Feller is an Opinion Columnist who writes about politics, economics and campus culture, sometimes all at once. His column, “Contrarian’s Corner,” runs biweekly on Thursdays. He can be reached at lucasfel@umich.edu.

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