There's a pretty strong correlation between educational attainment and left-leaning politics in this country.

Progressives see that as evidence that learned people gravitate toward liberal views.

Conservatives have a different explanation, which is that liberals are overrepresented in university faculties,

and impressionable students are likely to take on the views of their professors.

From KERA in Dallas, this is Think. I'm Chris Boyd.

Many conservatives believe U.S. colleges are long overdue for an

ideological rebalance, and some red state legislatures have passed laws designed to influence

course content in some state university systems. The goal is to challenge what many see as

progressive group think that has taken hold over every corner of academia.

As my guests will tell us, though, would-be reformers will need to tread carefully to enable a climate of true intellectual freedom.

Len Gutkin is editor of the Chronicle Review.

You can find his article, The Rights Academic Civil War in the Chronicle of Higher Education.

Len, welcome back to think.

Thanks so much for having me.

How would you characterize the higher education movement that is animating a lot of conservative

academics right now? Like, what are the things reformers say need to change?

So I think there are a handful of things and they are all

sort of related. One is that there's long been concerned that various disciplines

especially history, literary studies, American studies, ethnic studies, and so on

are overwhelmingly dominated by left-wing voices, left-wing theories, left-wing frames of mind.

So that's the first thing. There's a concern that this kind of dominance is distorting the sorts of truths that these fields are able to tell,

and also, of course, potentially indoctrinating students in ways that are unappealing to some of these conservative

...