Finding out wasn’t easy, in part because so many conservative professors are—as they put it—closeted. Some of the people they interviewed explicitly said they identify with the experience of gays and lesbians in having to hide who they are. One tenure-track sociology professor even asked to meet Shields and Dunn in a park a mile away from his university. “When the sound of footsteps intruded on our sanctuary, he stopped talking altogether, his eyes darting about,” they write. “Given the drama of this encounter, one might think that he is concealing something scandalous. In truth, this professor is hiding the fact that he is a Republican.”

I spoke with Dunn and Shields about life as a conservative professor on an American college campus. The conservation below has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Emma Green: What do you actually mean by conservative?

Joshua Dunn: Whoever thinks they’re conservative.

Jon Shields: American conservatism is kind of a coalition against liberalism that includes different camps. One of our colleagues put it well: American conservatives are united by two self-evident truths—Nancy Pelosi and Barbara Boxer.

Conservatives are held together by a common enemy, so they don’t always share common philosophical foundations or similar policy ambitions. We thought about conservatism in a big-tent way that would include libertarians and cultural conservatives and fusionists and foreign-policy hawks—a broad range.

Green: If anything was a common theme among all the different camps you describe, it’s distaste for mass culture—a populist conservatism. Even those conservative professors who are warm toward the Tea Party are warm with a condescending edge. Was there anybody you encountered who really does have empathy for the sort of mass movement you see with, for example, Trump?

Dunn: I can’t think of anyone who we interviewed who would be a Trump supporter. I do know of conservative academics who are Trump supporters—I think just two.

Shields: A lot of the people we interviewed at least liked the fact that the Tea Party seemed to be conservative. They seem to want conservative ends: They’re concerned about budgets and deficits and taxes and the Constitution. I suspect they would dislike Trump much more because not only is he a populist—it’s not even clear that he’s a conservative. He’s a narcissist.

Dunn: Certainly the libertarians are really alarmed by Trump—his hostility to free trade, closing borders, limiting immigration. Those things would make libertarians want to light themselves on fire.

Green: You isolate a lot of area studies and identity studies: Women & Gender Studies, Africana studies, fields that focus on race and intersectionality issues. You say in your book that even moderates wouldn’t be welcome there, let alone dyed-in-the-wool conservatives. Why do you think it is that conservatives aren’t welcome in those fields—or, perhaps, why aren’t conservative academics interested in those fields?