The majority of academics are liberals, or so the common wisdom goes. Does this matter? And how does it fit into the role I see for private higher education?

One commentator in the Chronicle of Higher Education asked earlier this week, so what if most academics are liberal? 

I guess that for me it matters, if our mission is to be truth seekers and truth tellers at a time when the news media, by and large, have abrogated their investigative-reporting role in favor of infotainment, and politicians, by and large, have abandoned whatever integrity they ever had in favor of spin.  With public higher education under attack from the conservatives --- witness what has happened to teachers and public-employee collective bargaining in Wisconsin, as well as the limits placed on public employees' First Amendment rights by the Supreme Court's Garcetti decision --- private higher education should be more sensitive to this role than ever before. 

But, despite conservatives being on the wrong side of the Wisconsin and Garcetti examples, conservatives must be active scholars who are heard in higher education, if the "truth seeking and truth telling" mission is to be fulfilled.  That's what the Heterodox Academy contends:

"We are a politically diverse group of social scientists and other scholars who want to improve our academic disciplines. We have all written about a particular problem: the loss or lack of 'viewpoint diversity.' It’s what happens when everyone in a field shares the same political orientation and certain ideas become orthodoxy. We have come together to advocate for a more intellectually diverse and heterodox academy."

I must agree.  

Thankfully, at least one small study seems to suggest that the academy is more politically diverse than the common wisdom believes. I hope these researchers got it right.