As a professor who is known to dissent from progressive ideologies that are dominant at universities such as Princeton, where I’ve taught for nearly 40 years, I’m frequently asked by students for advice about how to navigate a campus they worry will be hostile to them. Some are pro-Israel, or politically and socially conservative, or religiously observant.

They fear being treated unfairly by faculty members who are hostile to their beliefs. Many are afraid of being regarded as outcasts by their more liberal or progressive peers. They worry about being excluded from academic opportunities or not treated equitably in social or other extracurricular activities.

To these students I say, with regret: You’re right to worry. I’ve seen these things happen.

In the past decade, for example, a student was removed from a leadership position on a sports team because some of her more liberal teammates accused her of expressing an opinion about policing that they disagreed with. A Black conservative student was expelled from an African American students’ group chat after she participated in a pro-life event on campus. Several Jewish student journalists were subjected grossly unfairly to “no communication” or “no contact” orders that banned them from speaking with certain students after they reported on pro-Palestine protests.

My advice to students who fear that they will be subjected to discrimination and double standards is this: Don’t hide and don’t be silent. Exercise and, if necessary, defend your right to think for yourself and to dissent from campus orthodoxies.

But even as you push back against ideological bias and discrimination, remember that as a university student you are one of the luckiest — most privileged — people on the planet. So do not think of yourself as a victim. You can assert and defend your rights without building an identity around grievances, however justified those grievances may be.

Grievance identitarianism — be it of the left or the right — impedes the very thing a student is attending university to do: namely, think and learn. It turns a person into a tribalist, someone who, rather than thinking for oneself, outsources one’s thinking to the group.