Giving It the Old College Try.

• Author: Vatz, Richard E.

I RECENTLY LEARNED on my conservative Listserv that another colleague in the professoriate is expecting to be "advised" to change her lectures to include "social justice" or be pressured to resign, even though she is tenured.

For many years, dating back to before the mid 20th century, those who entered academia enjoyed the naive premise that the American Association of University Professors' god-term of "freedom of speech" and support for the competition of the "marketplace of ideas" dictated academic policy in colleges, universities, and their organizations.

Over the last four-plus decades it has been clear that the major academic organization in communication fields, especially political communication--the National Communication Association--rarely would, if ever, print in its top journals any pieces perceived as conservative. There literally were no articles in major journals that were the least bit favorable to Richard Nixon or Ronald Reagan during their days in the Oval Office and none flattering to Gerald Ford, the Bush presidencies, or, of course, Pres. Donald Trump.

This exclusionary culture has accelerated rapidly since the election of Trump to the point wherein the leadership of the NCA has marshaled its power to defang not only conservatives, but traditional liberals. Despite its promise to examine ways to add to the number of people of color designated as the estimable NCA "Distinguished Scholars," liberal icons last year had their power to award such designations removed, without consultation. In addition, during the latest putsch, a conservative editor of a major journal was forced to resign for writing a defense of conservatism. Further, a major nonpolitical $40,000 academic grant was rejected after two years of the NCA's trying to pocket veto it because it had a perceived conservative sponsor.

My personal political history at my Towson University--the possessive justified by my having spent more than four decades on its major legislative body--is far less egregious than that of my fellow conservatives throughout the country in social sciences and humanities, the pinnacle of progressive control in higher education. Yet, even Towson is stunning in its anti-conservatism. For over a decade, one of the two worst anti-conservative university bigots--a woman assigned to work in publicity--on campus refused to help publicize any faculty members' work whatsoever that she felt smacked of conservatism. There was, of course, a majority...