Closing a Conservative Chapter in Higher Education.

• Author: Vatz, Richard E.
• Position: POLITICAL LANDSCAPE

"Most complaints about the academy's left-wing biases do not even mention the umbrella organizations under which they function

and from which the prejudices emanate."

I HAVE TAUGHT full time in higher education for more than a half-century--several years as a teaching assistant at the University of Pittsburgh, a year at North Carolina State University, and 48 years at Towson University--and I shall retire Jan. 1,2023.

Practically my entire career has been affected by my being a Howard Baker-, George F. Will-type conservative. I was a strong supporter of Ronald Reagan; I liked the Bushes, but I wrote in my vote for president in 2016 and 2020: Donald Trump to me was good on policy but had insufficient integrity and civility to warrant my vote.

I have written about some of my political joys and travails as a conservative at Towson, promoting freedom of speech and the marketplace of ideas, including serving the most years (41) of any university-wide elected faculty member on our University Senate, never having lost an election, and, in my final year in our major legislative body, having the newly progressive and newly named Academic Senate refuse to even put on the agenda my motion to discuss discrimination against Towson faculty and student conservatives. That was 2020 and, before that year, the body was consistently liberal but not in the business of censoring all dissent. Interesting that our provost, Melanie Perreault, a liberal who often is open to my complaints about the campus' treatment of conservatives, told me she was appalled that the Senate would not even address my motion.

1 have had full classes (over 60 students per class) throughout my career in a course titled Persuasion, which is an elective and in which we consistently have some of the best liberal-conservative clashes, with the former students' knowing always that their points of view were open for debate, as were the conservatives' (inevitably represented by a small minority at Towson).

Eight years ago, due to the ad hoc power of frankly one of our most progressive and unaccomplished faculty (so consensually perceived now by my old department) who, as a conservative-despiser, tried to pilfer a very successful course from me (Media Criticism), a course I had founded at Towson, and give it to a nice but literally unpublished liberal faculty member. I asked our great president, Maravene Loeschke, another liberal (who believes in academic freedom) if I could change departments, from Communication Studies to Instructional Leadership and Professional Development. It was unprecedented, but she did so and the ensuing eight years have been largely nirvana...