UC Boulder enacts affirmative action for conservatives

One of the country's most liberal universities has instituted an affirmative action program for conservative professors.

The University of Colorado is a little slice of Berkeley nestled in the Rocky Mountains. Like most prominent colleges, UC Boulder's faculty, according to a recent survey, lean decidedly leftward - only 32 on the more than 800 faculty members are filled by Republicans. That's not uncommon for campuses.

The answer? UC Boulder is looking to raise money for an endowed Chair of Conservative Thought and Policy.

Of course, it is nice to see a school recognize its own biases - and especially one like Boulder. I have personally known students who were harassed, berated, spit on, threatened with expulsion, and Photoshopped into porn for being outspoken campus conservatives, so this is refreshing.

But this is far, far away from a solution, because it is a truly empty gesture.

The outcry from the campus left has been predictable - and ironic. Colorado teaching assistant Curtis Bell asked the Wall Street Journal (rhetorically), "Why set aside money specifically for a conservative?" Bell would "rather see [the school hire] a quality academic than someone paid to have a particular perspective."

If it sounds familiar, it should. Those arguments are the ones you'll hear when you ask a conservative about affirmative action.

And make no mistake - affirmative action is exactly what Chancellor G.P. "Bud" Peterson is proposing.

When a student or workforce population does not fit the demographic guidelines others have set out, affirmative action balances those statistics through quotas, whether those quotas are stated or unstated.

When I was at UMass, there were student groups built to protest th fact that our student body was only 17% minority. These organizations thought the number should be 20%, so they marched on the administration, held "teach-ins" and rallies, and ran student government candidates.

No one seemed to care to ask why our minority enrollment was low. Was it the fact that there are plenty of private schools in Massachusetts also trying to attract minority students? Was it the fact that Massachusetts couldn't be whiter if it was the Commonwealth of Wonder Bread?

Maybe it was something more serious, though. Maybe our schools in predominantly minorty communities were failing and not preparing kids for college. Maybe we had closet racists working in admissions. Would a quota solve any of those things? Of course not. But it would gloss over the problem and make the advocacy groups feel like they made a difference.

The University of Colorado is faced with a similar problem and is, similarly, taking the path of least resistance. And Chancellor Peterson isn't asking why his faculty skews 800-32 blue - he's just patching up the problem by hiring more from the red column.

That means that if the 800-32 is the result of a tenure review board driven by a political agenda, that problem may never be fixed. And forcing conservatives onto campus through a special position will not help.

It is not easy to find the root cause of these problems. But then, who said the search for knowledge would - or should - be easy?