She said that while political bias in class is a big issue, Harvard has less of a problem than many other institutions.

The larger problem at Harvard, she said, is that the great majority of professors are liberal. Harvard needs to take action to address the political imbalance of the faculty, she said.

“It doesn’t do us any good to have a debate between the left and the far left,” Zepeda said. “You learn so much more by disagreeing with someone than by being in an echo chamber.”

Truesdell repeated this sentiment, saying that the HRC is in favor of “much greater intellectual diversity at Harvard.”

Both Truesdell and Zepeda said that conservative intellectuals are often drawn to high-powered think tanks instead of careers in education.

“Someone who is not interested in defending themselves all the time might shy away” from universities, Zepeda said.

But J. Russell Muirhead, an associate professor in the government department, had a different perspective.

“All I know is that in all the job searches I have been a part of, ideology and partisanship have never been a factor,” he said. “Harvard looks for the most brilliant and promising, and none of us have been willing—or even tempted—to compromise these for the sake of ideology, partisanship or anything else.”