Are politics in U.S. higher education becoming problematic?

So, I will go ahead and paint the target on my back for you: I am a U.S. Republican. There is a childish tendency in our country (from both sides) to attribute motive to someone's political stance (e.g. that someone believes in certain tax policies because they hate other groups to which they don't belong, rather than because of a differing stance of the role of the government in our lives), but let's try not to do that here. Inevitably some people will, but let's give it a try.

Here's the other part of my background that is relevant: I am a college professor. I've been at several different universities (public and private) at different stages of my career, but it's pretty consistent that there are far more professors on the political left than on the political right. Now, we are all free and welcome to hold our own political opinions, but there are some problems that I have run into with this recently. Generally, for a given issue in any group of people, there is debate or discussion as to whether we can come to a common ground in our standpoint, then decide on what policies to enact based on a common understanding. However, there has recently been an assumption that we are all on the same page in what we believe, and things skip straight to how we achieve goals that serve these purposes. For example, we recently had a faculty meeting at my institution to discuss how we can enact social justice on campus, without really discussing first what we mean by that and whether we can all agree that the goals of doing so are in line with our role as an institution and as professors. In my interactions with my colleagues (and don't get me wrong here-- I love my colleagues dearly as fellow people), I have only run across one other Republican who is currently at my institution. I personally feel that being a professor does mean freedom to express ideas, but that it is an abuse of power for me to make students feel like I am pushing my agenda and that their grade depends on agreeing with me, regardless of what side of the fence I lean.

However, it seems to me that higher education is celebrating increasing diversity of demographics, but decreasing diversity of thought. I no longer feel like I am able to freely express my dissenting opinion. Even if they are just outliers, there are professors who are losing their jobs in response to voicing unpopular opinions. There are protests going on all over the place, and it can be scary to make your opinions public when there are groups of people assembling and shouting that you are a Nazi for having a different opinion and that violence against you is justified. I apologize if I am just s***posting or starting fires, but I thought I might see how this community views higher education. Do you think it has gotten out of hand, or am I fighting windmills and chasing shadows? I'd like to hear what people outside of the institution think.