Conservatives in Academia?
Conservatives in academia? Who knew there were any?
That was my initial reaction to news that a dean at Virginia Wesleyan University was in hot water last week over a pro-Trump Facebook rant.
The VWU student newspaper, The Marlin Chronicle, reported it this way:
On Friday evening, Nov. 6, while presidential election results continued to come in, Dr. Paul Ewell, a professor at Virginia Wesleyan University, made a post to Facebook disparaging supporters of Joe Biden in Ewell’s social media circle. Ewell is a professor of Management, Business, and Economics as well as Dean of the Virginia Wesleyan University Global Campus.
In the post, Ewell addresses those “ignorant, anti-American, and anti-Christian enough to vote for Biden,” asking they leave his social media following. “You have corrupted the election. You have corrupted our youth. You have corrupted our country,” Ewell said. “I have standards and you don’t meet them. Please remove yourself.”
Whoa. That was rough. I’ve seen unfriend-me-if-you’re-a-Trump-supporter posts before. Lots of them. But this was a first.
The post caused a stir even before it was picked up by the local and national media. Then President Donald Trump Tweeted about it - “Progress!” - making matters worse for the educator.
Ewell apologized, saying: “I have friends and family who are Democrat and I love them dearly. I have apologized on both accounts profusely. I set a poor example in that post of what a Christian should be. I know that God has forgiven me and already died for my sins. I hope others will forgive me as well.
“We all need to be a little less quick to anger and a littler more willing to forgive and that certainly applies to me. I am a Christian work-in-progress for sure.”
Too late. There was no forgiveness. The cancel culture sprang into action, demanding his head and on Monday, The Virginian-Pilot reported that Ewell had resigned.
Look, I’m not defending Ewell’s Facebook post. It was ugly and demeaning. It would certainly put off students who might consider enrolling in one of his business classes. Beyond that, VWU is connected with the United Methodist Church, which I assume frowns upon professors condemning people as anti-Christian.
Yet academia can’t afford to lose a professor who doesn’t tow the liberal line. There are precious few of these independent thinkers left.
According to a recent piece in National Affairs, “The Disappearing Conservative Professor,” in 1969 roughly 27% of all college professors were conservative. By 1999 conservatives made up just 12 % of all professors. Today conservatives register in the low single digits.
Conservative representation is even worse today in the social sciences and humanities, where they have practically disappeared from many areas of inquiry. Nearly every recent survey of the university places the percentage of conservative and Republican professors in these fields in the single digits. Conservatives also tend to cluster in economics departments.
...Because conservatives tend to cluster in certain kinds of institutions — especially religious and military colleges, as well as those located outside of New England — many of America's best colleges and universities have become one-party campuses.
If you wondered why your conservative high school student emerged from college spouting liberal slogans and voting Democratic, blame the lack of diversity in higher education. Chances are he or she didn’t have a single professor who was not left of center.
That’s not healthy.
While colleges and universities have worked tirelessly to achieve racial and gender quality in hiring and admissions, they’ve made absolutely no effort to address diversity of opinion in the faculty lounges.
In a 2015 speech to college students in Iowa, former President Barack Obama addressed the lack of diverse opinions on campuses:
I’ve heard some college campuses where they don’t want to have a guest speaker who is too conservative or they don’t want to read a book if it has language that is offensive to African-Americans or somehow sends a demeaning signal towards women. I gotta tell you, I don’t agree with that either. I don’t agree that you, when you become students at colleges, have to be coddled and protected from different points of view.
Here are four words I don’t often utter: I agree with Obama.
It’s time to find more conservative professors. Perhaps those without Facebook accounts.
