I'm with Paul and Josh in that I doubt that liberals in academia actively discriminate against conservatives in hiring. But it's worth pointing out that most liberals (and not only liberals, in fact) consider that a "hostile environment" can be a form of discrimination. So if--as someone said when discussing Larry Summers--the men in the physics department are creating a hostile environment by telling chauvinist jokes, are the faculty in the sociology department creating a hostile environment toward conservatives by telling "Bush is stupid" jokes?

No more than bosses who mass email liberal jokes on a daily basis do. Why conservatives are trying to undermine so many of their good ideas by claiming the ill-fitting mantle of victimhood is beyond me.

If they Students for Academic Freedom really cared, and were not just attention whoring, they would be quietly pursuing teaching positions. If you are denied that because of your political views, come talk to us. If you are in school for a terminal degree and are complaining because of a minor or imagined slight, STFU.

Let us face the facts. If these kids did not identify themselves as conservative, we would probably write them off as being bitter whiners over poor grades.

I noticed a couple of things from your discussion -without having read your references.

Number one is that being a rightist makes one see academia as leftist, i.e., the identification is the product of a point of view and not objective.

Secondly, I'm of the firm belief that secularism is the foundation of knowledge in the present age; in which the hard sciences are the most solid, but other disciplines such as psychology, sociology and political science have benefited from the scientific model that includes lots of people in the field doing lots of investigations and having lots of discussions and publications and even some good and valid research in the social sciences. To me that's all secular. A process. Something that is not authoritarian.
It's a bottom up process.

I see conservatives coming at things from a top down, authoritarian perspective. I understand that Horowitz has led the Florida legislature to pass a law that creationism must be taught alongside evolution or it is de facto evidence of leftward bias.

The problem is that evolution is a bottom up theory and creationism is an authoritarian theory.
Creationism is wrong.

So, rather than academia being mysteriously and unpredictably left wing, academia is better described as being a place where secular process is the method of choice and where the pursuit of truth is the goal.

My hope, actually, is that creationism and evolution will be investigated and discussed in science classes at every level in our educational system, using scientific method. Children will be taught critical thinking skills and evolution will win. If that's leftist OK, but I think that the identification of truth with leftism is emotional rather than rational.

Is it also possible that out of the population of conservatives, many fewer of them want to enter academia? Is it possible that elements of their philosophy incline them more to other professions - high school teacher, preacher, social service, businessman?

We must be careful in assuming cause and effect.

Having been an academic for many years, I have hired many. All but one are pretty liberal. Didn't ask during the hiring process, so I have concluded, simply, that conservatives are just too stupid to cut it in academia.

Not politically correct, I know. But it's the truth

him, lot's of rightists are straussians these day. Using his terms, can't you just accept that people who are desperately wrong about things, ie creationism, hating black people, reptialian conspiracies (lunacies of both right and left), shouldn't be accorded positions of academic power. Obviously, in economics departments we need to teach economics, and need qualified people, a diversity of policy view points and a solid epistemological framework is needed here, you aren't hired because of your belief in Zorbo the astro-man, be that a right or left view.

Obviously people who are concerned about poverty may flock to sociology, or the humanities, people concerned about health to the sciences, and so on. Call this concern left or right if you want, how about honest or sincere. Should these people be forced to stop what they are doing because they care. obviously economics needs to cater to human needs, if it isn't than it's a failure, right or leftist failure, if you are saying however, that the economy shouldn't benefit general human needs and should starve all but a few to death (both sides have done this) then I don't think your view should be in academia.

ahhh, i'm not american, i find the terms used on this site disturbingly bipolar, you don't find this kind of manicheanism elsewhere. Why now, what happened to the old america, it's starting to look weird over there.

The answer is obvious.

Academics are more educated and left-wing positions (this day and age) are more informed by knowledge and science. Right wing positions are more informed by faith than reason, so how else do you expect it to be?

Good luck admitting that to yourself.

I believe Dr. Raymond Stantz said it best:

"I liked the University; they gave us money and facilities, we didn't have to produce anything. You've never been out of college. You don't know what it's like out there. I've worked in the private sector--they expect results."

You want Truth? you don't need 5 degrees and a 9X8 office in a 19th century academic building, all you need is Ghostbusters.

The decline of the public intellectuals has been arrested and even reversed with the blogging ability. I note on Volokh, an old Hoosier Review topic, blacks in law schools. Note well how IU wastes taxpayer monies in the service of failed ideology held by their self serving administrators. Plainly speaking, they know these blacks are not going to be lawyers.