Update: Jonathan Adler (William & Mary), Would "Affirmative Action" for Conservatives in Academia "Backfire"?

New York Times Op-Ed:  Why Hiring Professors With Conservative Views Could Backfire on Conservatives, by Jennifer M. Morton (Penn):

Is hiring more conservative professors and admitting more conservative students a solution to liberal bias in American higher education?

Many people think so. The Trump administration, in threatening to cut Harvard’s federal funding, demanded that the university foster greater “viewpoint diversity,” including by recruiting faculty members and students who would restore ideological balance to campus. Other political actors have embraced the idea, too. At least eight states have passed or introduced laws to require viewpoint diversity at public educational institutions.

Certainly, there is not enough engagement with conservative ideas on college campuses. Schools can and should do more to ensure that students encounter a greater range of political perspectives in syllabuses and among speakers invited to give talks.

But a policy of hiring professors and admitting students because they have conservative views would actually endanger the open-minded intellectual environment that proponents of viewpoint diversity say they want. By creating incentives for professors and students to have and maintain certain political positions, such a policy would discourage curiosity and reward narrowness of thought. …

Conservatives have criticized identity-based affirmative action because, they suggest, it imposes an expectation on students of color that they will represent what is presumed to be, say, the Black or Latino view on any given issue, which discourages freethinking. Admitting students for viewpoint diversity would turn the holding of conservative ideas into a quasi-identity, subject to some of the same concerns. Students admitted to help restore ideological balance would likely feel a responsibility to defend certain views, regardless of the force of opposing arguments they might encounter.

For professors hired for their political beliefs, the pressure to maintain those views would be even greater. If you had a tenure-track position, your salary, health insurance and career prospects would all depend on the inflexibility of your ideology. The smart thing to do in that situation would be to interact with other scholars who share your point of view and to read publications that reinforce what you already believe. Or you might simply engage with opposing ideas in bad faith, refusing even to consider their merits. This would create the sort of ideological echo chamber that proponents of viewpoint diversity have suggested, often with some justification, leads to closed-mindedness among left-leaning professors.

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