CARROLL: A $9 million token?

By Vincent Carroll, Rocky Mountain News (Contact)

Originally published 12:05 a.m., May 14, 2008
Updated 09:47 a.m., May 14, 2008

You hate to jump on a university official who truly prizes intellectual diversity, since most would rather deny that a problem exists. So give CU-Boulder Chancellor Bud Peterson credit not only for his willingness to talk about the value of exposing students to a broad spectrum of views, but for actively promoting that goal as well.

Even so, Peterson's plan to raise $9 million to endow a "visiting chair in conservative thought and policy" takes some getting used to.

Will it really help to mainstream intellectual diversity at Boulder, where conservative faculty are nearly as rare as the jackalope?

Or will it reinforce the idea that academia is the natural monopoly of the political left and that anyone who doesn't share the dominant point of view must be an outsider who wears an ID tag etched with the word "conservative"?

And "visiting," for that matter.

To be fair, CU officials hope to lure a high-profile bigwig such as William Kristol - yes, the Fox News analyst has a Ph.D., from Harvard - or even Condoleezza Rice to sign on for a one- or two-year stint. Hence the $9 million endowment; you don't pay such people with table scraps.

"The idea is not only to add to the debate and intellectual discourse," CU spokesman Bronson Hilliard told me, but to create the opportunity for "special lectures, public events and team teaching." The big-name professor would presumably wield the clout to attract visits and lectures from other luminaries, thus enriching the overall university experience.

On one level it sounds very promising. On another level, though, an endowed chair in "conservative thought and policy" threatens to further marginalize the very subjects it ostensibly highlights. True scholars respectfully entertain and discuss conflicting views as a matter of course. And such behavior is by no means foreign among the faculty even on very liberal campuses.

"It's a mistake on the part of conservatives to think that every single thing that comes out of the mouths of professors at Boulder is liberal," Hilliard observed. "Conservative ideas are encountered all of the time by students."

What he means is that many conscientious professors, although overwhelmingly on the left, still strive to acquaint students with the full spectrum of scholarship in history, economics, politics and so forth. Yet it is also true that some professors, and perhaps a growing number, make little effort to do so. Flip through any college course guide, as I did recently with my daughter's chosen school, and you will find at least a few class descriptions in which professors wave their politics like a crimson flag.

Needless to say, they are almost never fans of "conservative thought and policy."

So is an endowed chair in conservatism the antidote to these shallow ideologues and their would-be indoctrination centers?

At Boulder, that's suddenly the $9 million question.

Vincent Carroll is editor of the editorial pages. Reach him at carrollv@RockyMountainNews.com.

• May 14, 2008

  6:41 a.m.

  Suggest removal

  Froward69 writes:

  If a conservative should be retained, then that conservative should curb his/her inherrent greed. "giving back to the community" sadly is only a liberal value.

  9 million??? far to expensive for teaching a thought process that is obtuse, porcine and knavely. a thought process that only produces penury in the majority of us citizens.

• May 14, 2008

  7:13 a.m.

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  Gene writes:

  Why not a "visiting chair in liberal thought and policy?"

  I demand equal time for obtuse, porcine and knavely, . . penury, what the hell?

• May 14, 2008

  7:27 a.m.

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  Spencer writes:

  Affirmative Action for Conservatives is really expensive

• May 14, 2008

  8:32 a.m.

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  Oh_Wise_One writes:

  Froward- "giving back to the community" sadly is only a liberal value." <<<<<<<<<<< that is the most idiotic, asinine, moronic bigoted statement that I have seen this morning from a loony liberal though it is early.

• May 14, 2008

  8:40 a.m.

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  Cwillyrun1 writes:

  froward, "giving back to the community" means taking hard earned money through taxes to give to those who sit on their duff and don't earn it or are here illegally. Most U.S. citizens are against that, unless they have socialist tendencies.

  You want to give your money away, donate it to charity. That's the freedom of choice this country was founded on, not tax, tax, tax like England did, which in part caused the revolution.

• May 14, 2008

  9:05 a.m.

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  olsonmt writes:

  There are many studies that show conservatives and registered republicans give more time and money to qualified charities than liberals and democrats. Once again, verifiable facts dispute the anti-conservative blither that Froward69 posts to virtually every article in the News.

• May 14, 2008

  10:49 a.m.

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  jay writes:

  i think it's a great idea....kristol and rice would have a lot of questions to answer.

• May 14, 2008

  11:22 a.m.

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  denverinfidel writes:

  Olsonmt is correct. There are any number of studies showing republicans (and conservatives in general) are more charitable with their money. Another fake "liberal value" exposed. Talk is cheap - give your own money away.

  Seeking out an ideologue to counteract the bias at CU is not very bright. It doesn't accomplish much for that kind of money. Give out scholarships to kids who deserve it.

  These looney-bins full of Ward Churchills and his ilk are the single best guarantor of conservative survival in this country. Not every young person decides to hate themselves and their country, no matter how hard the CU's of the world try.

  Besides, where else can you watch large groups of rich white people patting themselves on the back for being so diverse, all while living/working/learning in Boulder with nothing but other rich white people?

  Hilarious.

• May 14, 2008

  4:40 p.m.

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  PajamaPulitzer writes:

  Froward: A liberal is defined as a person who will give you the shirt off of someone else's back.

• May 14, 2008

  7:38 p.m.

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  Mikey writes:

  The studies showing conservatives give more money to charities also state that the majority of the money goes to their church. Just because you can write it off on your taxes doesn't mean it's going to a charitable organization. Donations to churches pay for the cost of buildings (capital, maintenance, and upkeep) and the salaries of the staff. I'd like for denverinfidel or Olsonmt to come up with the stats showing how much really goes to charitable organizations.

  By the way, I'm a fiscal conservative who believes that welfare and assisting the poor and elderly, etc., should be done through organizations like churches, not the government.

• May 15, 2008

  11:16 a.m.

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  haskell writes:

  Coservative Studies?? With tongue in cheek, we might consider Confederate Studies. Have you read Abe Lincoln on the Emancipation Proclamation? I thought not. And H.L. Mencken has some trenchant observations on the Gettysburg address:
  "The Gettysburg speech was at once the shortest and the most famous oration in American history... the highest emotion reduced to a few poetical phrases. Lincoln himself never even remotely approached it. It is genuinely stupendous. But let us not forget that it is poetry, no logic; beauty, not sense. Think of the argument in it. Put it into the cold words of everyday. The doctrine is simply this: that the Union soldiers who died at Gettysburg sacrificed their lives to the cause of self-determination -- that government of the people, by the people, for the people, should not perish from the earth. It is difficult to imagine anything more untrue. The Union soldiers in the battle actually fought against self-determination; it was the Confederates who fought for the right of their people to govern themselves." -- H.L. Mencken
  What did Karl Marx say about the Civil War and the Confederacy? You may want to look it up. Feel free. Open discourse? I certainly do not defend the institution of slavery in the United States, in our view, slavery is wrong, and cannot be defended. But there is enormous misunderstanding and misapprehension about who the Confederates were and what they stood for. You may wish to take a look at the movie, Gettysburg. A true national hero, Joshua Chamberlain, speaks for the Union, and Lewis Armistead for the South. Take a look. You want diversity? I think we have something to say and to contribute to the conversation. And, by the way, who was that group of hysterics who just went screaming out the the door?

• May 15, 2008

  11:25 a.m.

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  Douglas_McDaniel writes:

  That it would take $9 million to hire a noteworthy "conservative" scholar pretty much says it all. Gated communities are expensive, just as frigid minds are costly to society at large. Liberalism is the extension of a flexible mind. Likely one with more access to information and media than, say, a ranching buddy from the hinterlands of Wyoming, or an over-60 couch-rat glued to Fox News to keep in faith with the suicide cult that the Republican party has become. Which is why urban media centers are blue and rural go red. Sure, a college campus in Boulder is a hotbed of impractical idealism. Maybe the $9 million might be better spent paying CU-Boulder professors to hitchhike the country to simply break down their insulated viewpoints in order to keep it real when teaching their students. I'll be that could be done for $500,000, tops.

• May 15, 2008

  4:48 p.m.

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  jevik writes:

  An eloquent conservative able to counter liberal goons right in their own turf is much needed, and would be very entertaining.

  There is nothing better than when NPR "accidentally" brings on such a guest, who knocks down liberal callers' inane platitudes with one swipe.