Colleges ‘robbing’ liberal students by having their views go unchallenged, says Princeton prof

Prestigious universities are overwhelmingly liberal by virtually every measure, but they are failing to produce many students who can think critically and articulate opposing viewpoints.

In fact, conservative students fare much better in this regard than their liberal peers.

Those are the preliminary findings of Dr. Lauren Wright, who is nearly a quarter of the way through the 200 student interviews she hopes to complete for her planned book Tested: Why Conservative Students Get the Most Out of Liberal Education.

“Conservative students experience what higher education has long claimed to offer: exposure to different perspectives, regular practice building and defending coherent arguments, intellectual challenges that spur creativity and growth,” the author writes in a preview of her research for The Atlantic. 

“Liberal academia has largely robbed liberal students of these rewards.” 

Wright should know. She teaches political science at Princeton University, where she says conservatives represent just 12% of the undergraduate student body. Her research includes interviews with students from her university and “other competitive schools.” 

“Throughout college, [conservative students] hear alternative perspectives and hone their own arguments, anticipating opposition,” says Wright. “Of the 28 conservatives I’ve spoken with so far, more than 90% report attending events featuring speakers with whom they disagree, compared with less than half of the 15 liberals I’ve interviewed. 

“Nearly all of the conservatives said they’ve been challenged by professors or other students in classroom discussions, but just two of the liberals said the same.” 

That’s in line with national surveys, she says.  

Wright says conservative students tend to understand weak points in their own arguments, in addition to their opponents’ views. Liberal students, on the other hand, often were ignorant or refused to engage with the arguments of their opponents when asked about them. 

For example, when prompted by Wright, pro-Israel conservative students were able to articulate pro-Palestinian arguments, even though they disagreed with them. But liberal Palestine supporters “often didn’t even want to engage.” 

She also asked students about abortion and found a similar pattern. A pro-life student from the University of Chicago, for example, was able to identify the strength of the “personhood” argument made by abortion advocates. 

“But the pro-choice students I interviewed hadn’t thought much about the other side,” Wright says, before quoting a rather dim reply from a pro-abortion student at Wake Forest:  

“I think pro-life people are just pro-life because that’s what their family believes.” 

But some of Wright’s examples indicate conservative students may experience something much more intense than what might be imagined by “intellectual challenges that spur creativity and growth.” 

In one shocking example she shares, two “Jewish student journalists covering pro-Palestine protests received ‘no-communication orders’ – university directives that bar students from communicating with one another – [initiated by] pro-Palestine Princeton students…” 

One of those students, Danielle Shapiro, responded with a fiery op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, headlined “I Committed Journalism, and Princeton Told Me Not to Communicate.” 

Shapiro understandably tells Wright her freshman year was “like boot camp.” 

These examples and others from her 43 interviews (and counting) lead the professor to the conclusion that conservative students are “better prepared for life after college.”  

“Liberal academia has largely robbed liberal students of these rewards,” Wright posted to X about her research. “They emerge from college much the same way as they came in, having experienced few of the challenging but ultimately beneficial scenarios conservatives have.”