The College Fix

On Dec. 5, Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly argued, perhaps somewhat tongue-in-cheek, that the solution to the extremely high number of leftist and socialist professors at universities across America is affirmative action for conservative professors.

But then, on Dec. 13, self-proclaimed “devout Democrat and a frequent O’Reilly critic” New York University history Professor Jonathan Zimmerman agreed with the newsman in a Christian Science Monitor piece:

Race-based affirmative action has made our universities much more interesting and truly educational places, adding a range of voices and experiences that hadn’t been heard before. Hiring more conservative faculty would do the same thing. … I am not suggesting schools should have any kind of numerical quota for conservative professors. … We should simply take political leanings into consideration, just as we do with racial background, when reviewing candidates for academic positions.

Now Ronald Radosh, prolific author and adjunct fellow at the Hudson Institute, joined the discussion in a Minding the Campus column published Dec. 20. He takes the stance likely backed by most conservatives – that using such a policy flies in the face of everything they believe in.

(Zimmerman’s) idea is well meaning, but is itself deeply flawed. For one, a scholar should be hired on his credentials and his work, and not on his politics. … Prof. Zimmerman is to be congratulated for saying “we need more right-leaning professors,” but as an opponent of affirmative action, the reasons for opposing its use that have continued unabated for decades are the same reasons it should be opposed when the goal is to bring conservatives to the campus. That goal will only be met when the would-be liberals and leftists who now dominate the academy rethink their own assumptions, and come to believe that higher education and the stimulation of making students learn how to think will not occur if universities are thought of as centers of left-wing indoctrination.

Besides, it’ll never happen anyway, because it would mean the Left would have to give up the high ground on college campuses that they control in the battle for the hearts and minds of young people.

As Radosh notes:

How anyone in a liberal arts, history or humanities department with such a point of view would even agree to affirmative action for conservatives makes it clear that it will never happen. Most of those who control leftist departments seek consciously only to hire more of their own, in order to use these departments as vehicles to create what some of them openly call a socialist university. I recall that a chairman of a sociology department at such an institution, who I personally knew when I was on the Left, told me that this was precisely his goal upon taking over the department.

Radosh says here’s the real solution:

Conservatives will unfortunately have to develop their own schools of thought at conservative institutions like Hillsdale College and Claremont, hoping that the work they carry out will reach independent minded students who think for themselves. But it’s a long, long road through the existing institutions until liberal academia holds out a welcome mat for conservatives.

Click here to read Radosh’s entire article.

Click here to read Zimmerman’s entire article.

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IMAGE: Peyri Herrera/Flickr