<p>^ Sorry, I just misunderstood what you were saying. I don’t think your import was all that clear from the context, but I take you at your word that you meant to refer only to non-tenured faculty, and admit it was my mistake in misreading you—an honest mistake, not a deliberate misrepresentation. </p>
<p>But that said, I just don’t see any evidence that outspokenly conservative political views are any more dangerous to a young faculty member’s prospects for tenure than outspokenly liberal or left-wing views. I’ve never run across a case of someone being denied tenure for holding or expressing conservative political views. As I said before, when there is a tenure denial, the denied candidate may want to attribute it to politics, but if there is politics involved it’s more typically in the nature of the usual petty personal politics of academia, not ideological disagreement. And to the extent there is any kind of ideological tinge to it, I think it happens at least as often on the left as on the right. Conservatives are underrepresented in academia because they come into academia in small numbers, not because they’re disproportionately denied tenure or disproportionately vulnerable to tenure denial for speaking out.</p>