That is a very good question asked by Daniel B. Klein at Minding the Campus.

Two researchers offer a new twist on an old question—why do college professors overwhelmingly lean to the left? Bias against conservatives is not the main reason, nor are the allegedly higher IQs of liberals, say Neil Gross of the University of British Columbia and Ethan Fosse of Harvard. Instead they suggest a theory of “path dependence” –few conservatives are attracted to work in scholarly fields dominated by the left, just as few males want to be nurses in a traditionally female field. People tend to giggle when a man wants to become a nurse, they say, and conservatives tend to feel similar embarrassment in entering leftist academe.

This giggle theory underrates what leftist domination does to faculties. In the recent book The Politically Correct University: Problems, Scope and Reforms, Charlotta Stern and I discuss groupthink mechanisms. The majoritarian procedure of each department means that once a majority leans left, the department will tend toward leftist uniformity. The pyramidal structure of each discipline means that publication, awards, grants, recommendations will follow the pyramid’s apex, and if the apex goes left it tends to sweep leftists/neuters into job posts throughout the pyramid.

If leftists have a lock on many fields, it means that non-left applicants will tend to be screened out. Awareness of that feeds back to the non-left student’s thoughts about the future. Self-selection is a function of the screening.

Funny how these most likely left-liberal professors think conservatives would be embarrassed to go into academia. This is more likely projection on their part than having any connection to reality. I don’t know any conservative academics that are afraid to be known as such, among other conservatives at least. They are less forthright obviously among their academic peers.

This tendency toward left-wing uniformity Mr. Klein mentions is indeed a fact, and makes it very difficult for right-wingers of various stripes to break into the teaching profession in higher education. Yet I would argue that there are other contributing reasons that can be blamed squarely on the right.

One is that the right on the whole has a defeatist mindset toward the hegemony of the left in higher education, and not just that, but toward all of what I would call Professions of Cultural Influence, i.e. arts and entertainment, K-12 education, and media and journalism. The response of the right toward the utter imbalance of the left in these professions has been to complain. And oh, what great complainers right-wingers are.

But what exactly has this accomplished other than absolutely nothing? Oh sure, we have talk radio, Fox News and the blogosphere to bring a little balance to the airwaves, which is no small thing; but what about the 50 million plus students that are being indoctrinated in the liberal-left worldview every day in American public schools?

Add to this defeatist mindset the complete abdication of these professions to the left and you have a perfect recipe for continued cultural deterioration. These Cultural Influence Professions, as I have termed them, have a profound, permeating impact every second of every day on the beliefs, worldviews and attitudes of the American people. Yet the right has basically abandoned them to the left and focused obsessively on politics. As important as politics is, it is only a “lagging” indicator of cultural health of a nation.

The bottom line is that without more right of center individuals who embrace America’s Founding values of liberty and personal responsibility (which assumes a government of limited reach and power) in the Cultural Influence Professions, our society will continue down the path of statist decline. By not making it a priority to participate in, and not just comment on, the culture for the last fifty years, the right has surrendered to an organized assault on liberty that is continuing to be made through these professions. Just quit complaining and do something about it. I’m tired of hearing the whining of self-imposed victims.