First, the Times reporter wrote "intentional discrimination, one of the most frequent and volatile charges made by conservatives, turned out not to play a significant role." While the actual paper mentioned this as a potential cause, and cited conservative commentators like D'Souza and Horowitz, it wasn't one of the six hypotheses actually tested by the sociologists - I assume because it's hard to test this in a quantitative manner. In other words, the Times reporter is editorializing.
Second, the ending quote from Neil Gross: "The irony is that the more conservatives complain about academia’s liberalism, the more likely it’s going to remain a bastion of liberalism." If political typecasting is an issue for academia, then gender-based typecasting is almost certainly an issue for certain male-dominated professions. Yet a sociologist who said "The irony is that the more women complain about [profession's] preponderance of males, the more likely it's going to remain a bastion of males" would be widely criticized. There's a double-standard at work here.
Academia is a parasite on the State, but it's not just any parasite; it's a brain parasite. Academics tell policy-makers what to think, and policy-makers send academics a river of cash. Conservative and libertarian academics, whose political principles oppose the government cash-river, are swimming upstream.
Edit: Okay, blanket statement. How about this: MOST conservatives don't value intellectualism.
http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html <-- for your reference.
