(AgapePress) - A conservative activist says despite all the "diversity" hype on public university campuses today, there is little tolerance for those who dare to question left-wing ideology.

A recent poll showed that 90% of Ivy League professors voted for a liberal presidential candidate in 2000, and only 9% voted for George W. Bush. Rick Parsons is a program officer with the Young America's Foundation, a group that has been instrumental in helping college students bring conservative speakers to their campus.

Parsons says conservative voices are often silenced because most faculty and administrators control who is invited on campus, and do not want their liberal worldview challenged.

"How they control this is through student fees and lecture committees," Parsons explains. "They overload [committees] with liberal students that control student fees. Or if there's a faculty committee that brings in speakers, it's loaded with faculty that are liberal and don't want to hear other ideas on campus -- and it's very difficult to get through that."

Parsons says it is vitally important for taxpayers to hold universities accountable for their lack of ideological diversity. The conservative activist is urging parents and alumni to do exactly that -- with their pocketbook. He says taxpayers need to take a more active role in what colleges are teaching, who they are hiring, and the academic course work they are providing.

"That's what it's going to take," he says, "proactive parents and taxpayers to get out there and make our campuses [and ideas] more diverse ... rather than the diversity that the campus administrators and faculty like to preach about on skin color and nationality and ethnicity."

Parsons says concerned taxpayers need to use the power of the pocketbook, because universities are most likely to change their policies when their money pipeline is threatened.

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