[vehemenz]

This is a popular criticism that is partially true, but it rings a bit hollow because conservatives (rather, Republicans) don't seem to want intellectual career paths. They're nowhere to be found in academia.

And, to pre-empt the usual objection, they aren't being crowded out by ideology. They aren't there in the first place. They're not in the STEM majors outside of engineering, and they're not in the humanities except for law. Otherwise you'll find them in sales, marketing, business, and management.

These people complain about academia but have little invested in it in the first place.

[zdragnar]

They are chased out of academia. I knew professors who were proudly, vocally socialist but the professors who had any conservative leanings were very subtle about it.

You don't get tenure if your fellow professors don't like you, and they've created their own echo chamber long ago.

In contradiction to your point, the conservative professors and teachers that I knew were not in arts humanities at all (with one exception in law) but in crunchier fields like economics. The STEM and maths professors didn't talk social topics at all, so it is impossible to know what their feelings were.

[vehemenz]

If the students aren't there, there won't be professors.