While researching what would become their 2009 book, “Becoming Right: How Campuses Shape Young Conservatives,” sociologists Amy Binder and Kate Wood conducted extensive student interviews at two schools: Harvard and the University of Colorado at Boulder. Although the faculty members they encountered were overwhelmingly liberal, Ms. Binder and Ms. Wood found that students at Boulder “were far likelier [than Harvard students] to contend that their professors bring those personal politics into the classroom.” This stifling ideological conformity, they concluded, caused conservative students to adopt “the provocative style”...