Universities ought to be places where students encounter a variety of ideas and philosophies — some they agree with, some perhaps they don’t.
It would follow, then, that we would support the goal of the University of Colorado’s conservative scholar program, set to begin in 2013.
And we do.
We think the program, which would bring visiting conservative scholars to the Boulder campus, has the potential to expose students to other ways of looking at issues.
However, we are concerned the pilot program doesn’t fully get at a larger problem that exists at Boulder and other universities — that is, a lack of intellectual diversity in many corners of higher education.
The Boulder campus is far from alone in having the reputation of being a campus of strong liberal voices.
A by large margins.
A quoted one of the authors as saying the realm of college professors is a very homogeneous one.
“What’s most striking is how few conservatives there are in any field,” said Robert Lichter, a professor at George Mason University and a co-author of the study.
We support CU for trying to broaden the range of voices on its campus. The conservative thought and policy idea was one with roots in 2007, when . That would have required an endowment of $7 million to $9 million to get it off the ground.
In the interim, the economic downturn intervened, causing a recalibration. Todd Gleeson, dean of CU’s College of Arts and Sciences, to run a pilot program for three years.
We would like to see colleges take a broader approach to diversifying the voices of those who teach college courses. To be clear, we aren’t going the way of Rick Santorum. . He called President Obama a “snob” for advocating college opportunities for all Americans. That’s a bridge too far — and absurd — for us.
But we don’t think it’s too much to ask that colleges and universities make a concerted effort to hire people with a wide range of viewpoints.
Elena Kagan, now a U.S. Supreme Court justice, earned praise as dean at Harvard Law School at least in part because of her . It can be done.
Having the appropriate knowledge and experience ought to be the first hurdle to clear. Then, colleges should take diversity into account — not just in race, sex and ethnic background, but in philosophy as well.
Diverse points of view make the argument — and the mind — stronger.
