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Results signify a ‘HUGE problem,’ conservative UW-River Falls professor says
A “significant minority” of faculty at the University of Wisconsin-Madison would be less likely to hire a job candidate who expressed conservative political views on issues like immigration and abortion, a recent survey by the Tommy G. Thompson Center on Public Leadership found.
The survey also found seven in 10 faculty identify as liberal, while fewer than one in 10 identify as conservative at the public institution.
Political discrimination “is a HUGE problem” in academia, Professor Trevor Tomesh at the University of Wisconsin-River Falls told The College Fix in a recent interview.
“Discrimination in hiring on political grounds is a violation of UW System Policy … and the United States Constitution (Rutan v. Republican Party of Illinois (1990)). The same faculty represented in this poll make these hiring decisions on search committees,” the computer science professor said via email.
Tomesh, who is openly conservative, emphasized that he was speaking in his personal capacity and not as a representative of the university.
The survey examined the ideological composition of faculty at UW-Madison by comparing their political beliefs on a scale from “extremely liberal” to “extremely conservative” to that of the general population, as well as those with a doctoral degree.
It found that 70% of faculty identified as “extremely liberal,” “liberal,” or “slightly liberal.” Of the 21% of faculty that identified as politically moderate, over 75% said they lean toward the Democratic Party.
Meanwhile, only 9% identified as some form of conservative. By contrast, the survey found 12% of those with a doctoral degree nationwide — those qualified to become professors — identify as conservative.
Alex Tahk, director of the Thompson Center and a professor of political methodology at UW–Madison, conducted the survey.
UW-Madison
He told The College Fix via email that the findings suggest “a significant minority of faculty would weigh a candidate’s political views in hiring decisions, and that this weighing is asymmetric—it disadvantages conservative views more than liberal ones.”
The survey presented faculty with a hypothetical job applicant who expressed a randomly assigned conservative or liberal opinion.
For example, faculty were asked to evaluate an applicant who believed that “the U.S. should strictly limit immigration and deport those who are here illegally.” Some also were shown a candidate who expressed that “the U.S. should allow immigrants without legal status to remain in the U.S. and offer a path to citizenship.”
The survey found that 45% of faculty said they would be less likely to hire someone who supported deportation of illegal immigrants, while only 7% said the same about a candidate who supported a path to citizenship.
Similarly, approximately one in three (29%) “would be less likely to hire a candidate who expressed the view that ‘abortion is the taking of a human life and should be illegal in most cases,’ compared to only 3% who said the same” about a candidate who supported abortion on “demand,” the survey found.
When asked about their level of comfort expressing controversial views with other faculty, 55% of liberal faculty reported being either “very” or “extremely” comfortable, compared to only 23% of conservative faculty.
The survey also found that conservative faculty felt especially uncomfortable expressing views about particular topics, with 69% feeling “not at all” or only “a little” comfortable expressing views on transgenderism.
Tahk said self-selection may be a contributing factor to the results because the academic climate is such that some conservatives may opt out of university careers altogether.
He told The Fix that political biases in hiring and self-selection are not mutually exclusive explanations of the political demographics of faculty.
“I’d be cautious about assigning relative weight to them based on this survey alone—nor are they the only possible contributing factors,” he said.
The Fix reached out to UW-Madison’s media relations office via email, asking about the results of the survey; however, it did not respond to two requests for comment in recent weeks.
MORE: UW-Madison hasn’t hired ‘conservative political thought’ professor as promised in 2023
Author John K. Wilson wrote a critique of the survey’s methodology in March for Inside Higher Ed, arguing that far-left faculty who are concerned about academic freedom might boycott a survey by the Thompson Center, which is named after a former Republican governor.
“I think a survey from a Center created by Republican politicians and named for a Republican governor might be viewed by left-wing faculty with suspicion, even if those faculty are concerned about academic freedom and have felt silenced on campus, whereas conservatives wouldn’t have any similar objections,” Wilson told The Fix via email.
When asked about the critique, Tahk told The Fix that he takes methodological criticism seriously, but Wilson’s “central claims don’t hold up on close examination.”
“He provides no evidence for his nonresponse theories, which are inconsistent with the results and, if true, would imply that the survey’s findings are understated, not overstated,” Tahk said.
He went on to say that “if far-left faculty boycotted the survey, then the faculty most willing to discriminate against candidates who express conservative views are missing from the sample—meaning the asymmetries the survey found would likely be understated, not overstated.”
Wilson’s critique also took issue with the phrasing of several survey questions.
One asked faculty whether they would hire a candidate who expressed discomfort working with “evangelical Christians” or “practicing Muslims,” finding that 85% would be less likely to hire someone who expressed discomfort with practicing Muslims, compared to 75% for a candidate who said the same about evangelical Christians.
Wilson wrote in his Inside Higher Ed article that “evangelical” is a politicized term associated with a “radical minority” of Christians, and the term “radical Islamists” would have made for a more apt comparison.
However, Tahk responded that “evangelical Christian” is standard terminology, and the “comparison to ‘radical Islamists’ is inapt: evangelical Christianity and Islam are religions, while Islamism, radical or otherwise, is a political ideology.”
When asked what measures might be taken to close the gap between conservative and liberal representation in university faculty, Tahk said the survey did show a few positive signs.
“One of the more encouraging findings in the survey is that large majorities of faculty—including liberal faculty—consider it very or extremely important that students and faculty with conservative views feel included on campus,” he said. “That suggests there may be some will to address this exists within the faculty itself.”
Tahk told The Fix: “The survey suggests a gap between the inclusion faculty say they value and the climate some of their colleagues actually experience. Closing that gap doesn’t require any sacrifice of academic standards—it requires the same commitment to open inquiry that academia already espouses.”
Wilson also believes it’s important to oppose “political bias of any kind on campus, and ensure that academic merit is the basis of decisions,” he told The Fix.
“But it is difficult for any survey to measure political bias in an objective way,” he said. “I think the limits of survey research should make people careful about drawing conclusions or trying to impose reforms on colleges.”
MORE: UW-Madison has no updates on promised ‘conservative political thought’ professor role
