Cyril Davydenko: How to tackle the anti-conservative bias in universities

Cyril Davydenko is a research assistant at the think tank Bright Blue.

In recent weeks, Donald Trump’s war on woke reached new extremes with his crackdown on international students – a move provoked, at least in part, by the Harvard University’s refusal to comply with his anti-DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) agenda. However, while it is easy to be distracted by Trump’s blunt – and likely ineffective – tactics, we should not lose sight of a very real problem: entrenched anti-conservative bias in universities on both sides of the Atlantic.

Multiple studies and surveys show that conservatives are grossly underrepresented in academia. In the UK the ratio of left to right leaning academics stands at a striking nine to one. The current imbalance is the result of a decade-long trend; we know that in 1964 roughly 35 per cent of academics supported the Conservative Party and by 2015 this number went down to 11 per cent. The situation in the States is almost identical.

With this in mind, it is hardly surprising that Trump and many other conservatives are increasingly vexed by the state of Western academia. Indeed, nowadays it is almost cliché for the right to bemoan the fact that universities have become hostile territory for conservatives. Yet despite the justified concern around this issue, discourse on the problem often remains superficial, failing to offer a substantive account of either the scale or the underlying causes of this intellectual imbalance.

Leading conservative thinker and president of Heritage Foundation Kevin Roberts called for a “Conservatism of fire” to reclaim higher education from what he and many in Trump’s orbit see as an irredeemably left-leaning establishment. To them, America’s cultural institutions aren’t just biased – they’re broken beyond repair and only the forceful hand of a confident conservative state can raise and remake them.

In truth, the roots of this problem lie beyond the intolerance of radical left-wing faculty members, with deeper structural factors at play.

The first of these is the obvious challenge of individual students’ career preferences, namely the reality that right-leaning students are less likely to opt for humanities degrees and are less interested in pursuing doctoral degrees.

This observation is not novel: economist Friedrich Hayek pointed out 70 years ago that left-wing intellectuals are particularly attracted to academia. He believed that those who are dissatisfied with the structure of society are far more likely to opt for a career that allows them to theorise radical solutions, rather than pursue other lines of work. After all, if one’s professional calling is to deconstruct, criticise, and decolonise, what better field is there than modern academia?

Conservatives on the other hand are far more likely to pursue careers outside of academia as well as to select ‘practical’ courses. Having only just finished my degree, I can confirm these observations. Most conservative students that I encountered saw their degrees as a necessary step for the pursuit of a different career. When it came to politics, they kept their views quiet – better to pass unnoticed than start a seminar war over Thatcher.

Conservative students might lean toward careers outside academia regardless. But this is likely also impacted by other factors such as the ‘complicated’ nature of the peer review process in non-STEM disciplines, which stacks the ideological climate against conservatives.

When it comes to some humanities and social sciences, it is an open secret that academic publications’ peer review is conducted by groups of like-minded academics often belonging to the same ideological sub-group. As UCL academic Alan Sokal pointed out, such peer review “does nothing to ensure that the work is capable of withstanding criticisms…that might be raised by outsiders”. After all, if one’s work is reviewed by the Critical Sociology journal, one can hardly expect them to include conservative perspectives in that process.

This issue is especially noticeable in the humanities and social sciences. Unlike the sciences, non-STEM fields are often split by deep philosophical disagreements. That makes it easier to side-line opposing views whilst still claiming to speak with ‘expert authority.’ But it’s not just about political bias, the real challenge is that there’s no shared foundation on how to approach questions about human society. This allowed for the development of numerous explicitly political theories (such as the Critical Race Theory or Post-Colonial Theory) that further polarise academia.

Unfortunately, there are no easy solutions to these problems. No heavy-handed government policy can alter the fact that left-leaning academics are likely to subject conservative article submissions to a greater degree of scrutiny. At the same time little, can be done to encourage conservative students to pursue doctoral studies in disciplines where they are likely to be forced to self-censor their output in order to advance in their career.

It seems that the only solutions that we can realistically implement would be incremental; for example, we could set up academic scholarships for conservative further study applicants. The Ramsey Scholarship is an example of such an approach. However, such strategies run the risk of further politicising academia and marginalising the idea of unbiased pursuit of knowledge. Our efforts in this direction must emphasise the fact that cross-ideological research and debate can lead to mutually beneficial outcomes.

Additionally, we could work to create more conservative intellectual hubs outside of academia. After all, there are plenty of brilliant conservative thinkers and policymakers who already operate far beyond the lecture halls. Think tanks are a prime example – they produce rigorous research, shape public policy, and offer a platform for ideas often unwelcome in the modern university.

However, this is not to say that we should abandon academia altogether. Even though much academic research lacks immediate practical applications, it can shape long-term cultural trends.

With no simple answers at hand, the allure of a Trump-style response may prove irresistible. Yet, such conservatism is blind to the structural issues at play. If conservatives want to regain influence in cultural institutions, they must be willing to engage seriously with the left on their home turf.