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06/25/2003 Archived Entry: "Not So Diverse"

FORGET RACIAL DIVERSITY, HOW ABOUT INTELLECTUAL DIVERSITY: I've long believed that universities were the place where originality goes to die a lonely death. Although post-secondary institutions proclaim their love of diversity, that doesn't count when it comes to intellectual diversity.

Gabe Neville says, half-jokingly, that perhaps there should be affirmative action for conservatives given how few of them actually make up the faculties of universities today.

Harvard University's Harvey Mansfield, one of America's best conservative scholars of politics, was interviewed not long ago on C-SPAN's Booknotes about translation of Democracy in America. More than once, the host, Brian Lamb, allowed him to speak about his life among the cream of modern academics.

"How many other conservative professors have you met at Harvard?" Mansfield was asked.

"About a half-dozen out of 750, say, that I know of," was his reply.

Mansfield quickly added, "And there may be some others who are — who vote Republican in the privacy of the voting booth, when nobody's watching you, except God. But for the most part, it's a very liberal institution. It's quite changed from when I first got there. It's much more diverse in the sense of many more blacks and Hispanics and a lot more foreigners. And, of course, women are now half-and-half with men at Harvard. But as to diversity of opinion, that has gone way, way down."

Amazing that you diversify the type of people who teach and yet fall into the trap of groupthink. At Laurentian University, my alma mater, I know of one conservative professor. That explains why as a conservative activist I was threatened not only by leftist students but leftist faculty as well.