In the USA, Canada and Great Britain, a significant proportion of academics discriminate against conservatives in terms of promotions, grants and publications. This is the result of a study published on Monday by the Center for the Study of Partisanship and Ideology (CSPI), which is affiliated with Nottingham University.
Accordingly, more than four in ten US and Canadian academics would not hire a Trump supporter and one in three British academics would never help a Brexit supporter in obtaining a job.
At the same time, right-wing academics experienced “a high level of institutional authoritarianism and peer pressure”. In the United States, more than a third of conservative academics and PhD students have been threatened with disciplinary action because of their views. Some 70 percent of conservative academics complained that there was a “hostile climate” for their views at their university institute.
More than half of conservative researchers in North America and the UK admitted to self-censorship in research and teaching. The lack of diversity of opinion among teachers underpins the authoritarianism at universities, noted the study authors associated with the Canadian political scientist Eric Kaufmann. The highest approval rate for a dismissal campaign against allegedly controversial research colleagues can be found mainly among extreme-left academics.
The CSPI was founded in 2020 to aid the study of under-explored ideas in political psychology and the social sciences. “With the rise of populism, increasing polarization and identity-based movements around the world, there has rarely been a better time to examine these issues,” according to the website.