Are there any big-name universities or colleges that are welcoming of conservative students and faculty members or that are seen as places where conservative students and faculty can remain in comfort?
WRS
What sort of criteria would you have in mind for “welcome” and “comfort?” The existence of robust conservative student groups on campus? A number of conservative faculty members? This is an interesting question, and I think defining these could help sort through universities with differing levels of conservatism.
Well, a lot depends on what you consider “big name,” and what you mean by “conservative-friendly.”
Some universities have individual departments that are havens for conservatives, but are generally regarded as liberal. I think of the University of Chicago’s economics department.
In other cases, universities that are generally regarded as liberal have close ties to conservative think tanks (look at Stanford’s ties to the Hoover Institute).
In still other cases, you might find that pro-business conservatives are quite welcome, but religious conservatives are not.
Speaking in broad general terms, Washington University in St. Louis and Texas A & M University in Bryan/College Station, Texas are generally regarded as quite conservative. And while neither is quite an elite university, both are well respected academically.
Brigham Young University.
Cornell University has the largest College Republicans chapter in the country (over 600 members), has a very conservative student publication - the Cornell Review - that was founded by Ann Coulter and still seems to take her style as a mandate. While there are quite a lot of liberals there, conservative faculty exist (Jeremy Rabkin in Government and Barry Strauss in History, as well as several members of the Classics department, for examples well-known to me), and conservative students would not feel isolated or unwelcome in most departments.
Darthmouth University-or at least it was seen Conservative back when I was applying to undergrad.
I recently graduated from the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign and I would not characterise it as “anti-conservative.” A good portion of the student body seemed moderately conservative and my graduate school definitely had a Libertarian bent and seemed to be getting increasingly conservative as the years went by. Maybe just more polarized than conservative but there were some big-name issues that divided the school-affirmative action, the Chief, the War, with the Conservative voices being significantly louder than the leftists. I never got involved in any of the vitriol, though.
I would imagine you’d find wide acceptance of social conservatism at Christian schools.
I went to the University of Arizona, where the vast majority of students are socially liberal but you’ll find a lot of conservatives if you know where to look. I think it’s a factor of localism. ASU is supposed to be a lot more conservative-friendly, but that may be because Phoenix is a more conservative region. Tucson, the location of the UA, is a big blue spot in a red state. My friends from Phoenix who went there seemed to go to the UA because they were liberals, and would’ve gone to ASU if they were more conservative.
Any big enough school–probably most public schools–will have enough conservatives that you can find people like you if you want to.
I think you’ll find more acceptance as a fiscal conservative than a social conservative on most college campuses, because an integral part of the college mindset is having the freedom to do what one wants to for the first time, and modern social conservatism runs pretty contrary to that at times.
I guess it depends on your definition of comfort…
I went the the University of California Berkeley, widely regarded as extremely liberal, and while I was there I was considerably more conservative than I am now (e.g. voting for Bush in the 1992 election). I certainly was never made to feel unwelcome.
On an interesting side note, at Berkeley the Republican student group was the largest student group on campus at the time.
I’ve never been in a place where politics is so important that one’s political orientation makes one unwelcome there.
Try being a black Republican at a typical HBCU.
I agree. WRS, I gotta ask–why is it so important to be among like people? Are you afraid that other ideas might shake your own? Are you afraid of physical or verbal attacks from other students? Are you worried you’ll do poorly academically because of professor bias (which I don’t think you should worry about; any “evidence” trotted out by conservatives that their grades suffer because of liberal professors is purely anecdotal)? You can find like-minded people just about anywhere if you try; every college campus has a Republican organization, just like they all have Democrat or gay or feminist or Christian organizations. Some may be larger than others, but there is no place in the country where you’ll be tarred and feathered for being a conservative.
And I thought liberals/pacifists were the ones who are “scared of confrontation”…
In American colleges that do not have a religious background, both the University of Virginia and it’s sister state university, The Coillege of William & Mary are considered “more conservative than most.” This is fueled by a highly conservative population of white, middle income suburban students whose parents are closely tied to the military and federal government. The professors themselves are not especially conservative though.
That said, they are more liberal than the state they are in (for example, both universities extend benefits to same-sex partners, even though the State of Virginia does not, using money that comes from a non-state-funded source.) Charlottesville is a little island of blue in a red, red state. Williamsburg, not so much. 
When I went to The University of New Hampshire my friend Steve (who is black and republican) seemed fairly comfortable there, and I was too though I’m a white conservative. None of our conversations touched on feeling unwelcome because of our politics.
Make no mistake, there are a lot of liberal professors there, but they’re not the indoctrinating harpies that some other conservatives pull out as liberal boogymen - well, with the exception of the ecology professor, but it stands to reason she would be. Not to mention that there are enough conservative students on campus to add balance to the perpetual series of debating “letters to the editor” in The New Hampshire about political views such as abortion and the death penalty - come to think of it, Steve was often behind starting the debates in the paper. The school is a lot more welcoming to a conservative view than most places I’ve worked…
I don’t know if this would be considered big-name enough, but Valparaiso University, where I went to college, was pretty conservative. The nice thing, though, was that, although the majority of students were conservative, there were still liberal students. You could get some pretty good debate going :-).
I’d recommend the University of Southern California, a campus where the conservative students wear their bigotry proudly. (I get to mock them, since I’m an alumni 
).
Also, I think Bob Jones University would be very friendly to the righties. 
You’re an alumni? How many personalities do you have, rjung?
I went to UC Santa Cruz. I got nothin’.
As stated above, Dartmouth College, where I attended grad school, has a very strong and loud conservative movement. That’s not to say that that there aren’t plenty of liberals but it has a repuation of being the most conservative among the Ivy League schools.
I was the token liberal.