Conservatives need to use the political power already in their hands to begin a grassroots transformation of academia.  The totalitarian exclusion of Ann Coulter from a state university in California is one reminder of the need for reform.  The grotesque of politically correct "science" recently paraded around Earth Day is another. 

In fact, the Orwellian control of academia by the left virtually guarantees that tens of millions of young Americans will not only lack knowledge – that can be remedied by study and reflection – but have instead noxious stews of pseudo-knowledge percolating out of their ears and guiding (or rather misguiding) their whole lives.

There is precious little conservatives can do in places like the People's Republic of California.  The so-called "Berkeley Free Speech Movement" of the early 1960s was a fraud from beginning to end.  Nearly all the faculty and university administration comprised people who were radically leftist, and it was only the method of protest (screaming obscenities) that bothered anyone.

Ann Coulter would have been as unwelcome then at Berkeley as she is today – something conservative commentators were noting all through the 1960s, when almost never was a commencement speaker at any university a prominent conservative, and nearly all the commencement speakers were leftists. 

Here is the opening for conservatives both to dramatically improve academic thought in America and to ameliorate the horrific treatment given conservatives in public universities.  Gallup shows that conservatives outnumber liberals in 44 of the 50 states and are outnumbered in only 4 of the fifty states.

What is even more interesting is that out of the 25 states in which the conservative advantage over liberals is at least 15 percentage points, Republicans control the legislature in every single state, typically by lopsided margins.  Moreover, Trump and his "deplorable" supporters carried every one of these 25 states except Virginia.

In fact, conservatives ought to be able to move on this issue in other states that have clear conservative advantages over liberals, have strong Republican legislative majorities, and went for Trump: Arizona, Florida, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Alaska, and Michigan. 

How ought Republican state governments backed by strong conservative state voter pluralities to act?  Hold state legislative committee hearings and similar investigative tools to determine the composition of the faculty in state universities both in that state and nationally.  Explore examples of persecution of conservative students, student groups, and faculty in the state and nationally. 

If half the states of the nation reported finding persistent intolerance toward conservatives and their ideals and presented some dramatic examples, that would put the left on the defensive.  State governments could then create specific seats in state universities intended to balance – or try to balance – the grotesque imbalance in the state and nationally. 

State legislatures could provide funding for specific research purposes like exploring alternative explanations for global warming and exploring whether global warming is real and exposing problems in the current leftist global warming theory.  Science departments in state universities that fell dully in line with the left's cant need not receive funding (after all, these departments would have found nothing new), but those that did legitimate and valuable work in these areas could receive more funding.    

States that found that conservative students nationally had almost no real options could even create new colleges for conservatives nationally who wished to learn in a friendly environment.   Four or five such colleges could even become global magnets for sincere students of conservative opinions who wished to learn, study, and research in a non-punitive academic environment. 

This would also create something these oppressed conservatives in academia desperately need:  the chance for bright students to become professors and begin to create a conservative body roughly comparable to the number of conservatives in America – a sort of affirmative action for this hated minority in colleges.

State governments in conservative states have the power to do this and, by doing this, to really begin to transform America and to undo the long decades of totalitarian leftism on campuses – which is, perhaps, the single greatest obstacle to the revival of our nation.

Are there are state legislators or governors in Flyover Country with the guts and honor to pick up this banner and carry it into battle?  If not – if all those in state government we think are our friends are simply smiling frauds – then we need to find new friends.