Some points worth making here:
(1) The "journal" that this study was published in is not a legitimate peer-reviewed academic journal. You won't find it in Current Contents, Web of Science or any other listing of academic journals.
(2) The two authors are politically active neoconservatives. The lead auther Lichtman has had a prestigious chair with the American Enterprise Institute.
(3) The methodology used is laughable. They simply tallied up numbers in a survey that a different group performed in 1999. And the numbers were self-labels, with no attempt at objectivity.
(4) The results are entirely consistent with any political trend in any direction in U.S. universities over time. It is entirely possible that faculty have become more conservative over the last 30 years, while the meanings of the labels used have moved to the right.
(5) The results are an average, which glosses over the tremendous diversity among college campuses in the U.S. There are certainly many very conservative campuses. Take for instance Jerry Falwell's Liberty University, where Tim LaHaye is a tenured professor.
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