Good question. I thought a lot about this at the time but couldn’t think of a good way to test it. The reality is that profs generate controversy for political speech constantly, so it’s hard to say what the denominator really is.
I really hesitate to say which “side” is being terminated at a greater rate. First, in many cases it’s cons terminating cons: eg admin at a religious institution firing a conservative prof for not be *as conservative* as the school. Same happened with liberals.
About the base rate question, two issues to think about. First, there were special methodological issues with collecting data on religious schools and contingent terminations. It’s possible that this results in an undercount of liberal terminations.
Basically because contingent faculty tend to be more left leaning than the already left leaning academy, and because religious institutions tend to have admins that are more doctrinaire than their profs. But this JUST speculation.
Second, we need a better understanding of how conservative media (eg TPUSA) operates. Depending on how we model them, they might be distorting the number of conservative OR liberal faculty involved.
Finally, while the national base rate is important, remember we’re talking about very low rates for everyone. Last year there were six cons terminated (possibly seven), so this may not be a huge problem for the right OR the left.
