Conservatives and liberals (in the extremely illiberal and peculiarly American sense of the word) are monsters locked in combat with one another and oblivious to the world as a whole.

The conservative students at Eastern elite were under no illusions that they were anything but an extreme minority -- and the institution's reputation is such that some were discouraged by friends back home from even enrolling. But almost uniformly, they were happy. They identified their professors as being liberal, but admired them nonetheless.

In fact, as Wood noted here, "they viewed the experience of being in the minority as a positive one" in teaching them to examine and defend their beliefs, and "almost every single one said that they received a better education" by being in the extreme minority, a finding "in contrast to the conservative critique."

Liberal dogma and conservative criticism of that dogma aren't the only - or even most coherent - analyses. The problem isn't just that conservatives might be uncomfortable at those ideologically narrow institutions, it is that the quality of education for all students is diminished by the lack of heuristic diversity. The experience of some of those conservatives - teaching them to examine and defend their beliefs - is an example of the dynamics of a heuristically diverse institution, though in this case it is only the conservatives who have these positive learning experiences, and even their experience would be improved by greater diversity.

Those who find both the illiberal and the conservative views to be lacking may be the most uncomfortable, but also the best educated if they have the resources to endure such a stultifying environment.