To say that the campus of the University of California-Los Angeles leans left is putting it mildly. In reality, leftist uprisings over the last few years have changed the entire landscape of the university. Conservative professors are not safe and being open about it amounts to career suicide.

The College Fix has highlighted four scholars who have found themselves unemployed after becoming targets of the Left and warns that if the trend continues, there will be no opposing viewpoints left.

James Enstrom was a professor at the school since 1976. He was fired in 2010 via a letter that stated his research was “not aligned with the academic mission” of the school of public health. That’s because his peer-reviewed study did away with the notion that “fine particulate air pollution kills Californians.” The discovery could’ve been used to argue that state environmental regulations were unnecessary, “some of which were pioneered by fellow faculty,” The Fix’s report states. After a lawsuit in which Enstrom sued UCLA for unconstitutional retaliation, a settlement was reached and he remained on staff as a “retired researcher.”

In 2013, leftist students surrounded Professor Val Rust to express their outrage that he had corrected a student for erroneously capitalizing “indigenous” and the other unpardonable sin of disagreeing with feminist theory. The angry mob proceeded to read down a list of alleged grievances aimed at the professor from “graduate students of color.” As a precaution, UCLA placed three other professors in his classroom to surveil his activities and ensure students weren’t in any kind of peril. That wasn’t a big enough punishment so, a petition was started to lobby for more, which resulted in a confrontation that ended with a criminal battery charge aimed at Rust, because “at one point [he reached] out and touch[ed] the student’s arm.” Rust was 79 at the time and was subsequently banned from campus for the remaining school year.

When UCLA lecturer Keith Fink was up for a job review this year, he was “railroaded” by his bitter peers who disagreed with his lectures on free speech and how the university staff bent toward suppressing that constitutional right. As of June, he won't be back on campus to speak. The Fix says Fink hopes to set up “a nonprofit to provide free legal services for UCLA students and professors whose rights have been violated.”

Political science Professor Time Groseclose learned the hard way that “conservatives [are] no longer welcome at UCLA." Even though he had support of a few leftist colleagues, Groseclose was denied a promotion due to a decision “by an anonymous committee” and told that “his salary would not keep pace with inflation” if he stayed at UCLA: 

“So when the committee voted against my promotion, things were clear to me: Even if your research productivity is the highest in your department, even double that of second place, if you have conservative political views, then you’re not welcome at UCLA."

Luckily, the professor found gainful employment at George Mason University in 2013.

The Fix spoke with one of the few remaining conservative professors at the university and he explained that holding political views on the right is akin to playing Russian roulette and puts one’s career in jeopardy.

“They are taking their lives into their hands,” the unnamed professor said.

Unfortunately, these aren’t isolated incidents and it’s naive to think this kind of thing only happens in California. It’s a widespread problem and it’s only going to get worse if nothing is done. The real losers in this scenario are the students who desire a variety of viewpoints in their education. That appears less and less possible at UCLA.