What universities missed in their fight for diversity | Josh Dunn | TEDxMileHigh

Today, less than 13 percent of professors identify as conservative, while 60 percent identify as liberal or far left. Colleges and universities make every effort to increase the representation of racial, ethnic, and sexual minorities, but there’s another kind of diversity that we often forget: viewpoint diversity. In this persuasive talk, professor Josh Dunn explains why having people on campus with different perspectives is more important than ever.

Josh Dunn is Professor of Political Science and Director of the Center for the Study of Government and the Individual at the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs. His books include Complex Justice: The Case of Missouri v. Jenkins, From Schoolhouse to Courthouse: The Judiciary's Role in American Education, and Passing on the Right: Conservative Professors in the Progressive University. Josh and his wife are a taxi service for their children’s baseball games. He is a lifelong Cubs fan: winning the World Series removed decades of emotional scar tissue.

This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at https://www.ted.com/tedx

As a teacher,

I know the value of having
a classroom filled with students

from different backgrounds.

My classes on American politics are deeply
enriched by the diversity of my students.

For example, when discussing
welfare reform,

there's nothing like having
a brave young student raise their hand

and talk about the challenges
of personally growing up in poverty

to get the rest of the class
to sit up and pay attention.

But while our colleges and universities

make every effort to increase
the representation

of racial, ethnic, and sexual minorities,

there's another kind of diversity
that we often forget:

viewpoint diversity.

In today's increasingly
polarized political climate,

having people on campus with different
perspectives is more important than ever.

If you haven't noticed, Washington DC
has recently been a bit of a spectacle.

(Laughter)

And if you're like me,
you've probably thought

that our leaders could use
some remedial education in civil dialogue.

(Applause and cheers)

Our colleges could be a place

where our future leaders learn to engage
with people they disagree with.

But today, too many people
on campus seem to think

that the appropriate response
to people they disagree with

is shouting, name-calling,
and even violence.

Every year, every semester
brings more and more examples.

In 2017, at Middlebury College,
when the liberal professor Allison Stanger

tried to moderate
a free and fair exchange of ideas

with a controversial
libertarian Charles Murray,

students yelled, screamed,
and pulled fire alarms.

Eventually, campus officials
tried to sneak them out of back door,

but a mob of mass protestors found them

and jerked professor Stanger's head

so violently that she suffered
whiplash and a concussion.

This is what's happening on our campuses,

places the next generation of leaders
is learning to interact with others.

If it's happening there,

can we be surprised
at what's happening in Washington

or corporate boardrooms

or even our own neighborhoods?

My expertise happens
to be in higher education,

and I've seen the lack
of intellectual diversity first-hand.

Today, less than 13 percent of professors
identify as conservative,

while 60 percent identify
as either liberal or far left.

In the Humanities and Social Sciences,

fields where politics is often central
to teaching and research,

only five percent
identify as conservative,

and most of those are in Economics
or Political Science.

In some fields, they're almost
an extinct species.

And of that five percent,

only some are even willing
to admit it to their co-workers.

Seven years ago,
my friend John Shields and I

decided it would be interesting to study
conservative and libertarian professors

in the Social Sciences and Humanities.

Everyone in the university knows

that professors
are overwhelmingly liberal.

But we realized that there
was almost no research

on the experiences
of conservatives on campus.

What are their lives like?

Are they afraid of being punished
or that they'll be denied tenure

because of their politics?

We ended up interviewing
153 conservative professors.

Much of what we found was alarming:

One-third of them hid their politics
from their colleagues.

They described themselves
as "in-the-closet conservatives."

Many expressed profound fear
about being outed.

Some even thought that our project
was a Red Scare in reverse:

we must be trying
to identify conservatives

so they can be run out of the university.

One sociologist was so afraid

that he refused to let us interview him.

But after convincing
him that we came in peace,

he finally agreed to talk to us

but only far away from his office,

where his colleagues
would never see or hear us -

in the middle of a botanical garden.

(Laughter)

John and I left this interview
feeling like spies

rather than the nerdy, socially awkward
professors that we actually are.

(Laughter)

Now, maybe you think
that it's not a problem

that conservatives have to hide
behind bushes in botanical gardens,

(Laughter)

but if you think that diversity
is good for all of us,

then so is viewpoint diversity.

For one reason, it matters for teaching.

(Applause and cheers)

At its best,

the university is a place where students
can learn deliberative virtues,

like civility, toleration,
and mutual respect.

But in a monoculture,
it's difficult to do this.

This is a lost opportunity
for civic education.

The university is also a place

where students should learn
to live in a diverse society.

For many, it's really the first time

they're exposed to people
who are different from themselves.

Ideally, students would learn
the best arguments

of both the left and the right,

not the watered-down
and inflammatory versions

you hear on cable news
or read on social media.

But today, it's quite possible
to receive an education -

and an elite one at that -

and never be exposed
to major conservative ideas,

ideas that have, for better or worse,
profoundly influenced American politics.

But it's not impossible.

Robby George is one of America's
most prominent conservative professors,

and Cornel West is one of our most
prominent African American scholars.

He's a progressive and
a self-declared radical democrat.

Despite their political differences,

the two became close friends
while they were colleagues at Princeton.

Eventually, they decided
to teach a course together.

Doing that allowed them to show students

how you could respectfully
engage people you disagree with

and sharpen your own arguments
at the same time.

Today, they have a traveling roadshow
and visit campuses around the country.

The only sad part of their story
is that it is so rare.

Our campuses would be far healthier places

if their example was the norm
rather than the exception.

(Applause)

Another important goal of the university

is to generate research that improves
our understanding of the world.

But academic echo chambers, where we
only talk to people we agree with,

undermine that mission.

And that's because of confirmation bias.

Confirmation bias is just
the tendency that we all have

to accept evidence that supports
our pre-existing beliefs.

For example, if you're like me
and drink a lot of coffee,

at least one to two pots a day,

(Laughter)

you enthusiastically accept every story
about the health benefits of coffee,

(Laughter)

and you share them widely on social media.

"Look, everyone, science
has confirmed my life choices."

(Laughter)

But if you see research showing
that coffee might be bad for you,

"Don't tell me, I don't want
to hear about it, it can't be true."

That's confirmation bias.

Basically, none of us like
being told that we might be wrong,

and that's particularly true
about our deeply held beliefs

about things like politics,
religion, or coffee.

When intellectually isolated
research communities form,

no one is there to challenge their biases.

And when that happens, groupthink sets in,
and errors go uncorrected.

When we're divided
into groups of like-minded people,

our positions also tend
to become more extreme.

Just compare Boulder to Colorado Springs.

(Laughter)

You may have heard there are some
differences between the two communities?

(Laughter)

In fact, scholars have studied them.

In one experiment, they took
a group of liberals from Boulder

and had them talk about
controversial issues like climate change

and same-sex marriage with each other.

And then they took a group
of conservatives from Colorado Springs

and had them do the same thing.

After each group had deliberated,
their views became more extreme.

The Boulder liberals
moved farther to the left,

and the Colorado Springs conservatives
moved farther to the right.

Viewpoint diversity directly affects
the quality of education we're providing

and the quality of research
that we're producing.

Universities, particularly administrators,
must make it a priority.

They need to remind their campuses

that the university depends
on the free exchange of ideas.

And that affects everything
from hiring to guest speakers.

Now, these changes
aren't going to happen overnight,

but there are things that we can do
that can make a difference.

One option is what my co-author
and I have called

"an ideological Fulbright Program."

The Fulbright Program
is an educational exchange program

where American faculty and students
go abroad to study, teach, and research.

And then non-US citizens
come here and do the same.

America created it after World War II.

The goal was to promote peace

by increasing mutual
understanding across cultures.

Something similar
would be useful here at home,

where conservative
and progressive cultures

rarely interact with each other on campus.

In fact, there's already
a program much like this

at the University of Colorado Boulder,

where each year they bring
a conservative professor to campus.

(Laughter)

More faculty could also be encouraged

to follow the example
of Robby George and Cornel West

and teach classes
across the ideological divide.

Many professors are already on board.

One organization, Heterodox Academy,

was founded in 2015
by a progressive scholar.

It already has several thousand members.

These faculty believe
that viewpoint diversity

is in their own self-interest

because it makes them
better teachers and scholars.

But there's a deeper lesson for all of us
whether we're on campus or not.

We all need to get out
of our comfortable political silos

on Facebook or Twitter.

Think about the close, personal friendship

between the conservative
Justice Antonin Scalia

and the liberal Justice
Ruth Bader Ginsburg,

(Applause and cheers)

the notorious RBG, as she's known.

(Laughter)

Before Justice Scalia died,

there were hardly two people
on the Court who disagreed more

about how to interpret the Constitution.

But there were no closer friends
on the Court either.

In fact, they also had
a traveling roadshow,

where they went around the country

and talked about how they disagreed
just about everything

when it came to politics
or constitutional interpretation.

Their odd-couple relationship
even inspired someone to write an opera

about their peculiar friendship.

(Laughter)

When Justice Scalia died,

Justice Ginsburg wrote a moving tribute
to the man she called her best buddy.

She said, "We disagreed now and then."

(Laughter)

That's a significant understatement
for anyone who studies the Supreme Court,

but she said whenever Scalia
dissented from her opinions,

it always made them better

because Scalia nailed all the weak spots.

We all need friends like that.

We can't really do our jobs
as citizens without them.

In the end,

what happens in the ivory tower
doesn't stay in the ivory tower

because today's student
is tomorrow's leader.

A diversity of ideas will make us
better leaders, neighbors, voters,

but only if we get a chance to hear them.

Thank you.

(Applause)