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 |  Subject: Help Wanted: Lefty College Seeks Right-Wing Prof  Wed May 14, 2008 7:52 am | |
| BOULDER, Colo. -- How liberal is the University of Colorado at Boulder?
The campus hot-dog stand sells tofu wieners. A recent pro-marijuana rally drew a crowd of 10,000, roughly a third the size of the student body. And according to one professor's analysis of voter registration, the 800-strong faculty includes just 32 Republicans.
Chancellor G.P. "Bud" Peterson surveys this landscape with unease. A college that champions diversity, he believes, must think beyond courses in gay literature, Chicano studies and feminist theory. "We should also talk about intellectual diversity," he says. So over the next year, Mr. Peterson plans to raise $9 million to create an endowed chair for what is thought to be the nation's first Professor of Conservative Thought and Policy.
Mr. Peterson's quest has been greeted with protests from some faculty and students, who say the move is too -- well, radical. "Why set aside money specifically for a conservative?" asks Curtis Bell, a teaching assistant in political science. "I'd rather see a quality academic than someone paid to have a particular perspective."
Even some conservatives who have long pushed for balance in academia voice qualms. Among them is David Horowitz, a conservative agitator whose book "The Professors: The 101 Most Dangerous Academics in America" includes two Boulder faculty members: an associate professor of ethnic studies who writes about the intersection of Chicano and lesbian issues, and a philosophy professor focused on feminist politics and "global gender justice."
While he approves of efforts to bolster a conservative presence on campus, Mr. Horowitz fears that setting up a token right-winger as The Conservative at Boulder will brand the person as a curiosity, like "an animal in the zoo." We "fully expect this person to be integrated into the fabric of life on campus," replies Todd Gleeson, dean of the College of Arts and Sciences.
Boulder is far from the only campus to recognize a leftward tilt to the ivory tower. National surveys have repeatedly shown that liberals dominate faculties at most four-year colleges. And conservative activists have grown more aggressive in demanding balance. A group called the Leadership Institute now sends field workers to scores of campuses each fall to train right-wing students to speak up. College administrators are beginning to respond.
Academics studying the trend cite Georgetown University's recent hiring of former Central Intelligence Agency Director George Tenet. And Stetson University in DeLand, Fla., kicked off a conservative lecture series with a talk by the now-deceased William F. Buckley Jr.
Polarizing Debate
At Boulder, long known for its lefty politics, the notion of a chair in conservative thought had kicked around campus for a decade. Then, in 2005, the college was thrust into a polarizing debate over an essay by ethnic-studies professor Ward Churchill, who argued that the bankers killed in the Twin Towers on Sept. 11 were legitimate military targets because they were "little Eichmanns" who "formed a technocratic corps at the very heart of America's global financial empire."
Fox News television host Bill O'Reilly seized on those comments, and Mr. Churchill swiftly became a national symbol of political extremists running amok on campuses. The university opened an investigation into his scholarship, and Mr. Churchill was fired last summer for what the school described as plagiarism and academic fraud that was unrelated to the Eichmann essay. Mr. Churchill didn't respond to a request seeking comment. Within days, the university launched an effort to woo back donors infuriated by the affair.
Several months later, fund raising began for the chair in conservative thought. Administrators say the move had nothing to do with Mr. Churchill, but was part of an ongoing effort to address weaknesses in the curriculum -- for instance, by adding language classes in Farsi and Indonesian.
"That's what a good university does -- look for an area where they don't have depth or diversity and start investing," Mr. Gleeson says.
Mr. Peterson -- a Republican who took over as chancellor two years ago -- says he would like to bring a new luminary to campus every year or two to fill the chair, for an annual salary of about $200,000. No candidates have been approached, but faculty and administrators have floated big names like Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, columnist George Will and Philip Zelikow, who chaired the 9/11 Commission.
"Like Margaret Mead among the Samoans, they're planning to study conservatives. That's hilarious," says Mr. Will, dryly adding that "I don't think it would be a good fit." Ms. Rice didn't respond to a request seeking comment, and Mr. Zelikow declined to comment.
On campus, the chancellor's fund-raising efforts set off a prickly debate. Faculty members demanded to know whether donors would control the appointment. (They won't.) They asked for a chance to vote on the endowment. (They didn't get it.) "We don't ask the faculty if it's OK if we create a chair in thermodynamics," Mr. Peterson says -- so why give them veto power over conservative thought? After all, he says, "It's an intellectual pursuit."
Ken Bickers, who chairs the political science department, says that while he supports the concept of intellectual diversity, he has reservations about the university's strategy. He worries students will get the impression that the "conservative thought" professor speaks for all conservatives. And he resents the implication that ordinary professors don't air conservative ideas in class. Registered as unaffiliated with any party, Mr. Bickers says he makes a point of discussing all perspectives, but because he doesn't stick a political label on each lecture, students "don't realize, 'Oooh, that was conservative.'"
Mr. Peterson agrees that most professors try to be fair. He adds, "I don't know that it always happens."
Indeed, on the lush campus, lined with flowering trees, professors tack articles slamming the Bush administration outside their offices. A humor piece posted in the philosophy department mocks the Bible. Job boards feature internships with left-wing groups and Democratic candidates.
Lopsided Politics
Jack Roldan, vice chair of the College Republicans, has felt the lopsided politics keenly during his four years studying international affairs. He longed for a conservative mentor, and says he graduated last week with many questions left unanswered: When is military intervention necessary? Why does the GOP focus so much on economic policy? And what's up with the neo-cons?
"There's a lot more about what I'm about that I'd like to know," Mr. Roldan says.
Other students don't have much sympathy. They love Boulder precisely because of its liberal swagger.
Sophomore Marissa Malouff sees the campus as a sort of re-education camp. Sheltered rich kids from out-of-state might come for the snowboarding, but while they're here they get dunked in a simmering pot of left-wing idealism. And that, in her view, is how it should be.
"They need to learn about social problems and poverty and the type of things liberal professors are likely to talk about," says Ms. Malouff, a Democrat.
Chancellor Peterson's response: Not to worry. He's not trying to change the essential nature of CU-Boulder.
In fact, Mr. Peterson said it's not imperative that the new professor of conservative thought be an actual conservative.
"We hire lots of scholars of the French language," he says, "and they aren't necessarily French."
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