Conservative speakers are becoming increasingly rare on college campuses, particularly during commencement ceremonies.
Most universities across the nation feature an array of educators, entertainers, and politicians drawn from the left, with essentially no one from the right.
Former President George W. Bush spoke at Southern Methodist University in 2015, and Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas spoke at the University of Georgia in 2008. However, they have been relegated to small conservative and private Christian colleges since then.
Former Secretary of Education William Bennett, who holds a Ph.D. in political philosophy, said he received 33 honorary degrees at commencements before serving under President Reagan from 1985 to 1988. Since then, he has spoken at only two small conservative colleges. Two other schools, the University of the Pacific and the University of Wyoming, blocked him from speaking because of faculty pushback.
As soon as I was marked with Reagan, those invitations to speak at commencements and receive honorary degrees dried up, Mr. Bennett told The Washington Times. Its liberal bias. And now President Biden associates all conservatives with MAGA extremists.
None of the nations eight Ivy League universities has invited a conservative speaker to address graduates in upcoming weeks. Some feature Democrats and Democratic Party allies.
Our colleges and universities do many things well. But one thing they do not do is effectively expose students to different points of view, said Jonathan Zimmerman, a professor in the history of education at the University of Pennsylvania. If they took that charge seriously, they would invite graduation speakers who challenged the dominant views on campus instead of echoing them.
This year, conservatives will be limited again to small Christian and conservative-leaning schools. Harvard economist Arthur Brooks, a former head of the conservative American Enterprise Institute, will speak at the Catholic University of America in the nations capital on Monday.
Lawyer Leonard Leo, a co-chairman of the conservative Federalist Society and former judicial adviser to Mr. Trump, will speak on Saturday at Benedictine College, a Catholic liberal arts school in Kansas. Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin, a Republican, will address George Mason University graduates on May 18 in his home state. The bigger stage has ignited student protests and an unsuccessful petition to cancel the invitation.
Higher education watchers say most undergraduate students and faculty are politically liberal, which explains the one-sided pushback against conservatives. They point to years of research suggesting that conservatives are a permanent minority on campuses.
According to an Oct. 27 poll from the Institute of Politics at the Harvard Kennedy School, 57% of 18- to 29-year-olds said they preferred a Democratic Party candidate heading into the midterm elections in November. Just 31% wanted a Republican, and 12% were undecided.
In a Feb. 13 survey of 1,000 college students, Intelligent.com found that 77% said they had heard professors expressing liberal opinions in class, compared with 42% who had heard faculty members share conservative views.
Those numbers help explain why few conservatives are invited to address departing graduates, said Melanie Collette, a Newsmax financial analyst and former adjunct business professor at Rowan University in New Jersey.
Liberal students and an often biased faculty have made conservative voices impossible at many colleges today, said Ms. Collette, a member of the National Center for Public Policy Researchs Project 21, a network of Black conservatives.
The remaining Ivy League schools have scheduled nonpolitical speakers.
Dartmouth will highlight Phil Lord and Chris Miller, two friends from the class of 1997 who have since worked together as a Hollywood writing-directing team on films including The Lego Movie and the 2012 adaptation of televisions 21 Jump Street.
Columbias graduation speaker will be playwright Katori Hall, who graduated in 2003 with a bachelors degree in African American studies and creative writing.
In keeping with their respective traditions, Cornells speaker will be University President Martha E. Pollack and Brown University will feature student speakers.
According to a Young America Foundation study, only three conservative speakers received invitations last year to deliver graduation speeches at any of the top 100 colleges ranked by U.S. News & World Report: Mr. Youngkin, former NFL quarterback Tim Tebow and Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis.
The conservative campus advocacy group said 53 outspoken liberals including Mr. Biden, actor Kal Penn, singer Taylor Swift, and journalist Bob Woodward gave commencement speeches at top colleges in 2022.
According to Robert Weissberg, a retired political science professor at the University of Illinois, conservatives are too risky to invite administrators who hope to become college presidents one day.
The threat of disruption can only bring bad publicity, Mr. Weissberg said. Who would hire a top administrator as president who could not control the students? And the students know this.
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