Conservative UW-Madison history professor worried about tenure changes

Conservative academics might be in greater jeopardy than the liberal-leaning colleagues who outnumber them if tenure is removed from Wisconsin state law, says John Sharpless, a longtime UW-Madison history professor and former Republican candidate for Congress.

In his experience, conservative professors have most often come under fire for academic speech at UW-Madison, Sharpless said in an interview on WPR’s Joy Cardin show last Friday.

Meanwhile political actions like giving students credit for protesting Gov. Scott Walker’s policies or trying to withhold tenure from academics who oppose the prevailing anti-Walker sentiment in some departments on campus go unchallenged, said Sharpless, an unsuccessful challenger in 2000 to U.S. Rep. Tammy Baldwin, D-Madison.

Sharpless went so far as to call the dominance of left-leaning faculty on the UW-Madison a “liberal hegemony” that sometimes tries to abuse faculty privilege to conduct classes in a way that recognizes all points of view. Legislators are influenced by these stories of conservative faculty — and students — being attacked by the liberal majority, Sharpless said.

Still, Sharpless said that preserving tenure is vital to the university. ...