It’s that time of the semester again- your first papers are likely coming due. Holding conservative viewpoints poses two distinct challenges that you otherwise may not encounter, one that is obvious, and one that is much more subtle but perhaps harder to surmount.
The most clear hurdle, and one I think is highly overestimated, is having to balance writing what you believe with what your professor believes, and wants you to say. A vast majority of professors, especially in the paper-heavy humanities and social sciences, lean well to the left and hold very few values in common with conservative-minded students. There is a massive difference in how tolerant they are to opposing viewpoints- most welcome, and even encourage their views to be challenged, but others are seeking conformity, and still others operate under the implicit assumption that conservative ideas are wrong and will thus grade harshly. From my experience, for the vast majority of professors, if you make a good enough case and justify it well, they will not penalize me for expressing dissenting beliefs. If anything, I feel they respect a willingness to speak your mind and approach the subject matter from a different perspective than they do. However, there are some professors (in my experience just 1) that clearly favor students and written work that comports with the beliefs they think are right. My key point is that expressing conservative viewpoints in papers can actually work to your benefit as long as you do it well, but if you do it poorly or use poor judgment, your grade does face the risk of being penalized.
The greater, and grossly unestimated challenge in my mind, of writing an academic paper as a conservative is that most academic sources- both the ones provided in class and in the greater discourse- have a significant left-wing bias. Therefore, it is markedly harder to draw “academic” evidence to support conservative positions since there is just a limited quantity of sources you can pull from. For example, I had a remarkably hard time finding sources that support the importance of defending the police, the conservative position on policing, whereas there was no shortage of papers and studies supporting defunding the police, the left-wing position on the issue. Therefore, it is simply more time-consuming and mentally straining to write a solid paper that draws on any right-learning position. I will say that this barrier becomes much less inhibiting once you gain sufficient writing experience and hopefully a level of comfort. Additionally, having to work artfully to find and interpret evidence can and will make you a stronger writer and more critical thinker.
I therefore emphatically conclude that it is worth it to speak your beliefs. Not only will it make you a better writer, but it will often garner real respect from your professor for taking a risk and standing up for what you believe in. There are certainly exceptions, so you have to use smart judgment. But as a general rule of thumb, if you can defend your positions, it is worth the extra work to do so.
There is also a normative benefit to sticking to your guts and standing up for what you believe as you write your papers- that you are helping to contribute to an open and diverse marketplace of ideas. If every conservative is too scared to stand up for their positions, then those positions will simply not be considered, and be pushed even further out of the academic discourse.