I find it really strange that colleges that always talk about diversity, don’t really apply affirmative action to increase diversity of opinions on their campus whether it is college faculty or students.
According to the Heterodox academy in the 15 years between 1995 and 2010 Universities went from leaning left to being almost entirely on the left. Conservative professors mostly live in schools of engineering and other professional schools; the percent conservative for the major humanities and social science departments is closer to 5%. Human nature being what it is, it is hard to impart unbiased and rigorous education with that kind of skew.
Don’t get me wrong. I want there to be a sizable population of left leaning folks in the student population and the faculty. Their opinion and perspective is very valuable. You don’t want to remain in a “right wing bubble”, but you also don’t want to get trapped in a “left wing” bubble and right now most of our elite schools are doing no favors to our kids. This is specially true at the elite liberal arts colleges and Universities.
UChicago is one of the few top tier universities that still manages to strike some balance, but the student population is a very different matter. Unless some affirmative action is taken to fix the skew, conservative students are going to feel very lonely on most college campuses and UChicago is no exception.