I am all for universities hiring more conservative professors and Steven Hayward, author of a two-volume history of the “Age of Reagan,” should be considered a worthy candidate by any hiring committee. Yet I am dubious about the job he has just taken as a one-year visiting professor in “conservative thought and policy” at the University of Colorado, Boulder.
The appointment is the result of well-intentioned work by conservative UC alumni who are understandably upset that conservative perspectives are under-represented on campus. But is the solution really to create a new academic ghetto–akin to African-American, Latino studies or, more recently, “white” studies–and place conservatives in it? And what the heck is “conservative thought and policy” anyway and who exactly is qualified to teach this subject?
There are undeniably fine conservative scholars in many fields ranging from history to politics to law to economics, but “conservative thought and policy” is hardly a recognized academic specialty. It is hard to even know what it should consist of since there is no officially defined conservative canon. The “conservative” label in modern America covers a wide range of viewpoints ranging from libertarian to social conservative, from isolationist to internationalist. In fact most, but not all, American conservatives would be labeled “liberals” in the European context.
Once upon a time, William F. Buckley and National Review tried to create a common understanding based on reverence for the likes of Edmund Burke, Friedrich von Hayek, Russell Kirk, and other notable thinkers. Some neoconservatives prefer instead to refer to Leo Strauss and Allan Bloom. Whatever one thinks of these seminal thinkers, their work is far removed from the kind of nuts-and-bolts scholarship produced by conservative scholars in many fields–all of these political thinkers are for the most part irrelevant to someone studying military history, Russian literature, archaeology, Middle East studies, or numerous other disciplines far removed from political theory.
Universities should be seeking ideological as well as racial and ethnic diversity in their hiring, and they should make a point of hiring conservatives with impressive scholarly credentials. Perhaps conservatives, like other under-represented minorities, should even become the beneficiaries of affirmative action in hiring. But conservatives should not be herded into separate professorships of “conservative thought” any more than there should be (at least not formally) professorships of “socialist thought” or “liberal thought.”
The best academic inquiry should break through rigid ideological classifications, not conform to it. Simply because so many professors do in fact teach only from politically correct texts does not mean that conservatives should replicate this mistake on the right.
This post is, as Joe Biden would say, "literally" dripping with irony. n nThe notion of a professorship of "conservative thought and policy" is a quintessentially liberal conceit and antithetical to conservative thought. It is certain liberals who see all activity, including academic inquiry, as reducible to politics and other categories like race, class, gender. Conservatives, on the other hand, seek to conserve the tenet of classical liberalism that holds that the individual mind and conscience can, does, and should range free of such constraints. That was why at one time they called them the "liberal" arts. n nBut this is more than just another instance of cap-and-gown comedy. As Hume said of the Torys, they had spoken the language of republicanism for so long that they had lost the sense and sensibilities of the monarchy. So too conservatives might, by agreeing to or acquiescing in the thought and modes of liberals, lose sight of what they're trying to conserve. n nIndeed, when Mr. Boot offers up diversity as an alternative to this sort of tokenism, one wonders if the game is up. He resorts to the language of liberalism to defend conservative thought; the move from tokenism to diversity is right out of the playbook of the defenders of affirmative action in the universities. What happened to hiring the leading scholars in the field? What happened to education as exposure to the best that has been thought and said, not some Baskin-Robbins 30 flavors buffet in which all ideologies, race, and ethnicities are represented?
Actually Max, I had exactly your thoughts about the idea, and insisted I'd only consider it if I was housed in the political science department and taught regular catalogue courses, rather than having a separate "conservative studies" program out in the ether like gender studies. The faculty was actually quite agreeable to this idea, and so this is exactly what I'll be doing, along with a course on market-oriented environmentalism in the environmental studies department. I regard this as something like Churchill's definition of democracy–the worst idea, except for all the others that have been tried. Stay tuned, it may get interesting. n –Steve Hayward
Conservatives, liberals, libertarians, neo-conservatives, ext are all part of political landscape of USA. Based on the market of ideas, all those points needs to be presented, discussed, and taught in schools and universities. So, the students can pick what mostly relates to their points of view. It doesn’t really matter how we call different points of view as long as they fairly presented, we all should acknowledge and celebrate their presence.