Dunn told me he thinks conservative students do face social pressure from their liberal peers. “For your average conservative student going about their daily life,” he said, “my guess is that politics isn’t going to come up that often for them, if only because they often choose majors in the hard sciences or in business.” He argued the issue is much more salient for sociology or political science majors. At the same time, he cautioned, “One thing I think happens is that conservative students go into college expecting the worst. It’s just not a healthy attitude in general.”

“People smashing windows makes for better television than an egghead in a frumpy suit giving a talk.”

Dunn hopes that schools will take this opportunity to promote intellectual diversity and civil discourse, and that campus conservatives, instead of inviting right-wing provocateurs like Milo Yiannopoulos, will bring in more speakers like Princetown professor Robert George, who has joined with Cornel West in promoting healthy debate. “I do think that conservative media could help. Of course, it’s not terribly newsworthy if a speaker comes to campus, gives a talk, people ask pointed but polite questions, and then everyone goes home without a YouTube-worthy video being captured,” he told me. “People smashing windows makes for better television than an egghead in a frumpy suit giving a talk. But they could do things that highlight how individuals that strongly disagree with one another can nevertheless work to promote civil discourse and even friendship across ideological lines.”

Woessner worries about a lack of ideological diversity among faculty, and he is troubled by what he sees as attempts to suppress speakers with alternative points of view. “It borders on fascism when we try to use physical threats or attempt to disrupt people from having a conservation that may be unpopular,” he said. And yet, he stresses that “part of succeeding in higher education is not having a victim mentality,” and the right shouldn’t create a “self-fulfilling prophecy” about being discriminated against on campus. “The more conservatives overplay the narrative that they’re being persecuted and oppressed, the more they will check out of higher education, and that makes the imbalance worse,” he said. “I think conservatives have more to gain from higher education than liberals do. Liberals don’t have their ideas challenged as often, and that makes it harder for them to grow intellectually.”

Kelly-Woessner says liberals need to make changes, too. She said her research shows this generation of young people is more politically intolerant than previous cohorts. “At the same time,” she said, “it’s a few instances that get blown up and then represent what colleges and universities look like.” She notes that campuses don’t get media coverage when host conservative speakers without controversy. “We don’t have the same visceral reaction to conservatives on campus,” she said of Elizabethtown. “In fact, we’ve had quite a few on campus, and nothing ever happened.... Of course we’re going to have slanted perspective on the magnitude of the problem, because nobody reports on the dog that doesn’t bark.”