I once belonged to a cult. I am no longer in it. It was an organization that preferred its version of reality in spite of evidence. It doesn't perform well among educated folks. Would you argue that a cult that loses members as they gain knowledge and alternative mental models should be protected from the savagery of educated minds due to its loss of adherents?
I'll answer my rhetorical because it's important you understand: no.
John's (and I'd probably be on firm footing to assume your) presumption here is that political affiliation automatically means discriminatory bias and inherent exercises in partisanship. I wouldn't call it a universally bad assumption, but it's also likely not a terribly consistent one across the universe of universities and colleges.
I'm glad you recognize that Economics has a more even partisan distribution than some other fields in social science. Many fields are.
Props to the University of Austin, which John lauds. May they prove to be a bastion of freedom of thought that stands as vanguard against the cravenness that represents itself as the modern marriage of business conservatives, theocrats, and the eat-the-rich contingent, as well as freedom of thought from all other attacks, whether perceived or real.
Note too: the academy has been attacked before, many times. No matter. Ultimately it converges back to the form of a tenured faculty supported be benefactors in the pursuit of knowledge, even and especially when that goes against their benefactors' preferred version of reality. Fields occasionally ossify and lose value, to be replaced one death at a time, but like writing, speech, and real analysis, the academic model is akin to toothpaste and its relationship to the toothpaste tube.
Good luck out there.