The ideological capture of academia is a bigger problem than many of my like-minded political brethren want to admit. I have long argued that politics is downstream of culture, and that letting leftists run our schools, our libraries, our movie studios, our newsrooms, and our publishing houses is a mistake.
I was often met with derision; conservatives I knew would brag about not watching television, not reading books, not listening to music. They wrote off our public schools and colleges as lost causes.
It only took about 20 years of me warning others about this for them to realize that we've got a problem on our hands. Those institutions have been able to churn out millions of indoctrinated people who think that yes, some women can have penises, that eating bugs will magically control the weather, and that Israel is committing a genocide in Gaza even though the population has increased since 2023.
It's also why a leftist can post something like this and believe it.
Conservatives are not well represented in academia because conservatism is, for the most part, the ideology of the incurious. Abortion is bad because the Bible said so. Immigrants are bad because Fox News said so. Capitalism is good because Reagan said so https://t.co/EUsk4l6qWG
— Jade 🏳️⚧️🇵🇸 (@shimmerjade) July 21, 2026
Really? I'd like to see what Jade would say if I told him there are only two genders or that Hamas is to blame for the destruction in Gaza. Something tells me Jade wouldn't be curious to explore those conversations any further than screaming "Bigot" and "zionist" at me.
That's because Jade, of course, is the incurious one here. He has never actually met a conservative outside of the caricatures fed to him online and in the media. If he had, he would know that I oppose abortion not because the Bible says so, but because it's an abhorrent human rights abuse against unborn children and women—most of whom are coerced into having abortions in the first place. Immigration is bad when it's unfettered, unvetted, and illegal. When those crossing our borders are gang members from Venezuela, Chinese spies, or other terrorists. Breaking the immigration laws of any nation is bad. Capitalism is good because no other economic system has lifted more people out of poverty, created more wealth, or allowed more freedom.
The ones who are incurious, to the point of being dictatorial, are the people on his side of the aisle. X user Jeffrey Sachs composed a list of professors who were punished for having, or being perceived to have, views that critics associated with conservatism. Sachs said this list is incomplete, focusing only on the U.S. and only in the last decade or so. He also only lists those who lost their jobs—either because they were fired outright or what he calls "effective dismissal" (e.g. a contract wasn't renewed).
I was recently challenged to produce examples of profs who faced significant punishment for having views (or were perceived to have views) critics associated with conservatism. The implication was that these examples don't exist.
— Jeffrey Sachs (@JeffreyASachs) July 22, 2026
I'll give you an incomplete list in a sec, but...
Nathaniel Hiers was an adjunct professor at the University of North Texas (UNT). In 2019, his contract wasn't renewed because he criticized the concept of microaggressions, and the Chair of Hiers' department admitted it.
Psychology professor Charles Negy was fired from the University of Central Florida (UCF) in 2021 for tweets that were critical of the Black Lives Matter movement. The university claimed his firing was for other reasons, but those claims were debunked in court. According to the Washington Post, UCF said Negy created a "hostile learning environment." Despite that, an arbitrator reversed Negy's dismissal, and the school was forced to reinstate him in August 2022.
Western Michigan University (WMU) refused to renew the long-time contract of Professor Daniel Mattson in 2023 after students learned Mattson had written a book expressing his Catholic views on sexuality. Mattson sued for religious discrimination and demanded his job back.
Mohamed Aboul-Seoud was a tenured professor at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) and was fired over his social media posts, which included pro-Trump content, as well as what critics claimed was "sexist, racist, Islamophobic and transphobic" content. Aboul-Seoud had been at RPI for 20 years.
Two judges and an arbitrator said Eric Thompson was wrongly fired by Moreno Valley Community College in 2017 for classroom discussions on sexuality some students found offensive. The school appealed the rulings and continued blocking Thompson from the classroom.
Daniel Grossenbach founded a conservative parents group in his Arizona school district in 2023. As a result, the University of Arizona refused to renew Grossenbach's contract after receiving complaints about his activism. Litigation is still ongoing.
St. Philip's College fired Johnson Varkey after the veteran biology professor discussed sex and chromosomes as outlined in the state-approved curriculum. Four students were so offended by this lecture that they walked out of class. Varkey was reinstated when investigators realized he'd been following state guidelines.
In each of these instances, someone with a different viewpoint was fired from his job because students, faculty, or the public were offended by that viewpoint. The leftists in charge of these institutions seemed wholly incurious to explore different points of view or to be tolerant of the fact that most of us have different political and religious beliefs than they do.
It's the classic "heads we win, tails you lose" scenario. If you express even a mildly conservative point of view, you are fired from your professor gig, but then we'll say conservatives aren't professors because they're bigoted, ignorant, and narrow-minded.
There is no room for diversity of thought, opinion, or belief. There is a demand, at the barrel of an ideological gun, for conformity to the approved leftist ideology, however.
The ideological monoculture, and it is a monoculture, in academia isn't just an annoyance—it's a self-reinforcing, soul-crushing machine that punishes dissent and then mocks the resulting lack of "diversity." Conservatives aren't absent from faculty lounges because their ideas are inherently incurious or Bible-thumping, or lifted from Fox News; they're largely excluded because expressing them risks professional ruin in environments where "diversity" covers everything except points of view.
Sachs provided numerous examples that show a clear pattern: challenge progressive orthodoxies on gender, race, sexuality, or politics, and you risk facing investigations, non-renewals, firings, or hostile environments. All those things are justified by vague claims of creating discomfort or a "hostile environment." Meanwhile, the same people who enforce this conformity in institutions turn around and mock the lack of conservative voices, sneering that it's due to some inherent flaw in conservatism rather than their own incurious gatekeeping.
True intellectual curiosity demands discomfort and disagreement. It's clear academia cannot tolerate that, and even though it long gave up its right to claim itself the guardian of learning and truth-seeking, it should at least be honest about the reasons why. Conservatives shouldn't abandon these institutions; they should fight to reclaim them—or build robust alternatives—because ceding culture to one side ensures politics will always drift leftward. The time for writing off higher learning as "lost" is over. It's time to bring true diversity back to higher education.