[Captain Kirk]

Getting tenure usually isn’t the problem for white males (or conservatives)....though getting hired often is!. In any case, I’d like to see any evidence (does Newt allege it?) that he was denied tenure at West Georgia College because of his views or race. Please note that he never published his dissertion or an academic book before leaving that position. Did he publish any articles in refereed journals? Curious minds would like to know.

[achilles2000]

My experience is precisely the opposite - notice I was speaking of the humanities. Getting hired is hard, getting tenure if you are a conservative white male is equally hard.

Newt may have seen the handwriting on the wall and have been using the teaching position to transition into politics. I hold no brief for Newt, but Will, who is the holder of a “celebrity Ph.D.” from Princeton, needs to save his ammunition for someone else. If Newt is all we can get instead of Romney, I will reluctantly support him.

[Verginius Rufus]

A lot of it has to do with affirmative action rather than candidate's political views. When the women's movement began to pick up steam (late '60s/early '70s) a lot of university departments suddenly noticed they consisted entirely of white males, and vacancies were rare (especially because there had been so much expansion in the 1960s to accommodate baby boomer students--so many of the faculty were fresh out of graduate school). If a department wanted to change, it meant that women would be heavily favored for any openings over men (or minority candidates, but in some fields there were very few of them on the market).

In some cases a department might be inclined to hire the best qualified candidate but would be overruled by administrators who insisted on a female or minority candidate being selected even if they weren't the best qualified.