Professor: Academia Increasing Efforts to ‘Eliminate Conservatives’

Professor Richard Vatz of Towson University in Towson, Maryland, says that despite academic world priding itself on “supporting the marketplace of ideas and academic freedom,” there has been “an increasing and unremitting effort to eliminate conservatives” in areas of higher education. The professor added that when he brought up his concerns with the National Communication Association, “they couldn’t care less.”

“There has been an increasing and unremitting effort to eliminate conservatives and conservative thought in the humanities and social sciences in the American academy,” wrote professor Vatz in his recent Baltimore Sun op-ed, entitled, “Towson professor: Higher ed discriminates against conservatives.”

“Higher education prides itself on two overarching values: supporting the marketplace of ideas and academic freedom,” said Vatz. “Channeling the late civil rights advocate President John F. Kennedy, who said ‘Are we to say to the world — and much more importantly, to each other — that this is the land of the free, except for the Negro?'”

“Today, he would have said of colleges and universities, ‘Are we to say to the world — and much more importantly, to each other — higher education today is for diversity and equity except for conservatives?'” he added.

Professor Vatz, who has taught at Towson University for the past 45 years, said that he is also familiar with universities around the country, as he has been invited to speak at many of them, and has been on the Legislative Assembly at the National Communication Association (NCA), as well as involved with the Eastern Communication Association.

“The anti-conservatism is increasing at most national education venues,” said Vatz.

“To be fair,” he added, “there is an undercurrent of guilt or self-awareness among some, if not many, relating to the hypocrisy of ostensible support for supporting the free flow of differing ideas while perpetrating overt discrimination in hiring, promotion, tenure, college campus and convention participation and publishing of those on the right.”

The professor noted that “despite the continuing and increasing bigotry” in the NCA against conservatives, he has “long been a conspicuous advocate of fairness” to those who are not on the left.

“I have had lengthy exchanges with the current president, the immediately former president and the executive director of the NCA concerning their need to rectify the current situation which led to more than a score of their limited number of open conservatives leaving the organization,” said Vatz.

“The NCA couldn’t care less,” he added.

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