This mounting sectarianism manifests itself in various aspects of the university, including the scope of debate within and outside the classroom, the growth of campus administration, and the tenor of student life. For a professor like myself, the character of the professoriate is the most salient aspect of the change. And where conservative faculty are concerned, the facts are beyond dispute: Their numbers are low and continue to fall.
Jon A. Shields, a professor at Claremont McKenna College, has summarized the basic trend, finding that outside of economics, the percentages of conservatives in the social-science and humanities disciplines have dropped to the single digits. In my own field of political science, Pippa Norris of Harvard University’s Kennedy School has found that the cohort born in 1990 (the newly minted full professors of today) is considerably further to the left than those born in 1960 (those approaching retirement). This means that a further drift leftward among the professoriate is already baked in. At my own university, Johns Hopkins, I would be hard-pressed to name a single tenured professor in the social sciences and humanities who is openly right of center in any reasonable understanding of the term.
This long article from Professor Steven M. Teles is well worth your time.
