Don't Hate Me Bro: Four Conservative Williams College Professors Speak Out

WILLIAMSTOWN, MA - The Williams Record interviewed four conservative professors (three with tenure and one without who is leaving soon) who spoke about their political views and the campus climate at Williams College. It was heart-warming to see their bravery in action. After all, their liberal colleagues can still do a lot to make their lives miserable.

Four professors agreed to go on the record for this article: Professor of Mathematics Steven Miller; Professor of Art Michael Lewis; Professor of Political Science Darel Paul; and Visiting Professor of American Foreign Policy Chris Gibson, who will depart the College and begin teaching at Siena College, his alma mater, at the end of the academic year.

While they all fit under the umbrella term of “conservative,” these professors hold a range of beliefs.

Gibson, a former congressman from New York’s 19th congressional district, described himself as a “founding principles conservative” whose beliefs developed during Ronald Reagan’s 1980 candidacy.

Miller called himself a “conservative libertarian” who agrees with portions of Ayn Rand’s objectivism.

Lewis, who spent much of his life as a Democrat, said, “I consider myself a cultural conservative forced by unfortunate circumstances to vote Republican.”

Paul is also a former Democrat, now “a cultural conservative and an economic liberal.”

In general, the four share themes which are common among ideological conservatives who have found a niche for themselves in the leftist educational system namely 1) there are more conservatives on the faculty than you think, 2) they get along with their colleagues, 3) they tend to shield their students from their conservative views, and they perceive themselves to be largely apolitical...that is simply as scholars searching after the truth.

They also provide support for the idea that conservative students on campus do need to have conservative role models and people to speak with who share their ideology.

As Miller indicates, conservative students benefit from like-minded voices. “I think it would be absolutely terrible if conservative students only talked to conservatives, or if liberal students only talked to liberals. But every now and then, it is nice to talk to some people, especially if you’re in a situation where you will be ostracized on this campus if you show happiness that Trump won,” he said.

I can't recall ever reading an article like this in the Williams Record before. When I taught at Williams College in the 1980s, there were maybe four registered Republicans in the faculty including myself. None of them, however, were in the political science department and none of them were vocal opponents of affirmative action. That is, except for me. While I was at Williams College we had a growing, vibrant conservative Republican movement on campus including our own newspaper, Garfield Republican Club, along with television and radio shows. Today, however, conservative students appear to be confined largely to students in the Society for Conservative Thought or Williams Catholic.

Ideally, future articles in the Williams Record will feature interviews with ex-conservative professors, those who found the campus environment exceedingly hateful and biased against them. Comme moi.

John C. Drew, Ph.D. is an award-winning political scientist and a former Williams College professor. He is an occasional contributor at American Thinker, Breitbart, Front Page, PJMedia and WND.