Conservatives are a small minority within the American professoriate, according to a major study whose results were released this month. The study, arguably the best-designed survey of American faculty beliefs since the early 1970s, found that only 9.2 percent of college instructors are conservatives, and that only 20.4 percent voted for George W. Bush in 2004. At a symposium this month at Harvard University, the report's authors cast doubt on certain claims made by conservative critics of academe. The researchers emphasized that American faculty members are not uniformly left wing. On most issues, they said, college instructors' views are better characterized as "centrist" or "center left." There is evidence of a convergence toward moderation: Faculty members who are 35 or younger are less likely than their elders to be left wing, as well as less likely to be conservative. "The claim of extreme leftism is not well supported," said Solon J. Simmons, an assistant professor of sociology at George Mason University's Institute for Conflict Analysis and Resolution. "The number of conservatives, 9.2 percent, is lower than what one might have found in the past. If there is any change in the data over time, conservatives seem to be falling away from the academy and being replaced by, perhaps, moderates." (Contains 1 table.)