You're being discriminatory in a sense, but then being discriminatory is normal. It's just what people do, and the large-scale consequences can be trivial or important depending on any number of things. Whether or not it's worth intervening through policy (or simply through culture or collective intent) varies case by case, but I think there's a case to be made here.

But why? What tangible impact has it had on conservatives?

The issue is that theories start with liberal values and assumptions and conservative ideas aren't fairly evaluated.

This creates blind spots in the field. There are examples in the draft paper.

Moreover it taints policy recommendations and causes Republicans to distrust calls for "evidence based policy".

Read the draft paper linked in the article. [http://journals.cambridge.org/images/fileUpload/documents/Du...]

I think considering the massive policy advantages - if not the total lockdown - given to conservative ideas in government, especially in economics and banking, that's not quite the problem it might seem to be.

The real problem with left-wing academia is that it has been persuaded to believe that ritualised criticisms of conservative public policy are a substitute for political influence. The academic left has almost exactly no political influence at this time.

As for evidence-based policy - when conservatives stop promoting frankly kooky positions like climate change denial or an insistence that raising the minimum wage kills jobs it's going to be easier to accept that conservatives have an interest in evidence-based rational policy.

You can't get a senior job at the DOE without a PhD in Education, and you can't get an PhD Education without publishing a thesis the academic left supports...

At least in education the academic left has had a complete stranglehold on policy for 50+ years.

Saying that conservatives have a total lockdown on policy is just silly.

The deeper problem that Haidt is found is that people on the left can't actually answer a survey as a conservative would. Libertarians and conservatives can answer surveys as a liberal would when asked to, but liberals are too insular and only have a caricature of conservatives in their mind.

Your statement about economics and banking illustrates that. Wall St has power and influence in DC because it has a lot of money, not because it has ideological support from conservatives.

Below is an excerpt from an interview on James Miller's fight for tenure at Smith College and an excerpt from the paper discussed. Note that Dr. Miller is an economist and as such is much closer to the mainstream of his discipline than a hypothetical conservative social psychologist.

If you want another unambiguous case of politically motivated violation of academic freedom look at this case study of Linda S. Gottfredson's experience at the University of Delaware. She had to fight for six years. She's a psychologist in a field that's less homogeneous than social psychology.

Lessons in academic freedom as lived experience Linda S. Gottfredson * School of Education, University of Delaware, Newark, DE 19716, USA http://www.udel.edu/educ/gottfredson/reprints/2009academicfr...

Conservative Professor Fights Smith's Tenure Decision · 31 May 2003

O'REILLY: In the "Personal Story" segment tonight, James Miller, who teaches economics at Smith College in Massachusetts, was up for tenure this year, but he didn't get it.

Miller says the reason is he's a conservative Republican. And the college grievance committee agrees he wasn't treated fairly, saying "the rationale for their votes included consideration of matters that infringed on the candidate's right to academic freedom."

Joining us now from Boston is Professor Miller, who is the author of the book, "Game Theory at Work." All right, so you succeeded in convincing the hierarchy at Smith College that you were, indeed, denied tenure because of your political beliefs, which is supposed to be against every academic tenet in this country. But I find it hard to believe that a college as prestigious as Smith, they would punish you because you were a conservative. Am I naive?

JAMES MILLER, SMITH COLLEGE ASST. PROF.: Well, I think the problem is that there are so few conservatives and Republicans at most American colleges, including Smith, that when, you know, they read something written by a conservative, it just seems crazy to them. So I don't think the people who are punishing me for being a conservative thought they were violating my academic freedom. They thought they were keeping out someone who has this utterly crazy beliefs from teaching and corrupting their students.

In the social sciences and humanities, however, there is a stronger imbalance. For instance, recent surveys find that 58 - 66 percent of social science professors in the United States identify as liberals, while only 5 - 8 percent identify as conservatives, and that self-identified Democrats outnumber Republicans by ratios of at least 8 to 1 (Gross & Simmons, 2007; Klein & Stern, 2009; Rothman & Lichter, 2008). A similar situation is found in the humanities where surveys find that 52 - 77 percent of humanities professors identify as liberals, while only 4 - 8 percent identify as conservatives, and that self-identified Democrats outnumber Republicans by ratios of at least 5:1 (Gross & Simmons, 2007; Rothman & Lichter, 2008). In psychology the imbalance is slightly stronger: 84 percent identify as liberal while only 8 percent identify as conservative (Gross & Simmons, 2007; Rothman & Lichter, 2008). That is a ratio of 10.5 to 1. In the United States as a whole, the ratio of liberals to conservatives is roughly 1 to 2 (Gallup, 2010).

Personally, I wouldn't call this an unambiguous case since the dean reached an out-of-court settlement. Have I misunderstood this article? In the opening paragraphs there is unambiguous personal support for the professor in question. Could it be that the content of the research here was more the cause of concern than the political inclination of the researchers?

Most of the numbers you quote are fairly consistent with how postgraduate degree holders vote. In 2012 postgrads were democrat by 13 points and in 2008 by 18. Can we identify what the cause or effect is here?

My question really is what tangible problems do these numbers create for republicans? Are their incomes lower? Are they less socially mobile? Are they murdered more? By what quantifiable metric are they disadvantaged?

An out of court settlement very strongly suggests they thought they'd lose if it went to court. Separating the political inclinations of researchers and the political implications of their research is a fool's errand in any case. If the departments would have been happy with getting them to research more ideologically congenial things instead that would have just as bad. Suppressing research because you don't like its results is not truth seeking.

There is a very large difference between 68-32 and 98-2. The first is the vote among postgrad holders in 2008, the second the liberal-conservative gap among social psychology postgrads.

I do not care about Republicans. I care about the truth. If social psychology and other academic disciplines are overwhelmingly liberal they will be less likely to approach the truth because of a lack of viewpoint diversity.

Sure, an out of court settlement suggests a losing judgement, but the article suggests this was probably due to some poor comments the dean made to the press. What I'm proposing is that this didn't exactly come out as a clear judgement that says there was political discrimination going on.

I also believe that diversity is important, but I feel like diversity in this case isn't that important. Take for instance my earlier preference for AoE over Candy Crush. Is there a reason why I should look to create a diverse distribution of Candy Crush/AoE players in my workplace?

Similarly, what is it about this distribution in academia that gives it a particularly quantifiable effect on Republicans? Is there evidence of an effect? Why aren't we talking about third-party candidates or non-voters?

What evidence is there that a lack of diversity in political views in social psychology leads to a lack of truth in that discipline?

So if the dean had been more circumspect they'd have gotten away with it? This would not make me feel better about applying for grad school if I was a conservative.

As to your last three paragraphs I suggest reading the journal article. If you want to continue the discussion after doing that feel free.

There was no evidence-driven judgement in favor of there being political discrimination in this case.

Perhaps I was being confusing, so I'll try again: What quantifiable evidence (not anecdotal, not hearsay, "may be" or implication) is there that this ratio of liberals to conservatives is an indicator of negative outcomes for conservatives?

Are you discussing the Miller or Gottfredson case? I think the fact that I know of two cases of people dealing with really severe difficulties in getting tenure by osmosis, without seeking them out speaks to their commonness.

I think we may be speaking at cross purposes. I care about this because ideological diversity leads to a greater diversity of viewpoints, which makes it more likely that the hypothesis will be examined from a number of viewpoints, so any flaws are more likely to be discovered. This is a social psychology result that has held up to replication.

What do you mean by negative outcomes for conservatives? I would have thought that denying one tenure for one's political opinions would be a pretty negative outcome for any academic.