Oh look, a Republican whining about diversity

In the Washington Post, Robert Maranto laments the lack of conservatives in academia. This is a common lament among Republicans, who suddenly appear to care about diversity when they see themselves as the excluded group. Maranto recites an anecdote about how he was passed over for a university job because he was a Republican, and then cites some numbers to back up the claim of discrimination.

Not surprisingly, most professors are liberal. But this effect, as we say in economics, is likely endogenous. In other words, maybe smart people - the kind who become professors - are just likely to be liberal (heh). Or maybe professors tend to support bigger government because they depend on government grants for their research and their salaries. Or maybe cautious, risk-averse people tend to seek both tenure-track jobs and a society that takes care of the economically unsuccessful. In other words, there are plenty of potential reasons for academia's liberalism that don't involve hiring discrimination. Maranto has conflated cause and effect, a classic fallacy (maybe his views weren't the reason he couldn't get a good job after all).

But let's suppose for a moment that he's right. Maybe there are a whole lot of talented conservative scholars out there, hiding in think tanks, kept out of their academic dream jobs by ideological discrimination. That untapped pool of quality researchers would be a HUGE asset to any university that decided to chuck its discriminatory policies and hire the conservatives. That university would instantly rise to prominence, and other universities would belatedly be forced to follow suit or fall behind (This, incidentally, is the model of employment discrimination developed by very conservative and very well-employed economist Gary Becker). The fact that we haven't seen any university rushing to take advantage of the conservative talent pool probably means that there just isn't one out there. Conservative exclusion, if it exists, isn't hurting universities.

But even if conservative exclusion were a problem, how would we go about forcing a solution? To his credit, Maranto admits that quotas for conservative faculty are a ridiculous idea, and asserts somewhat lamely that "universities will have to clean their own houses." But if universities should act to guarantee conservatives representation in the faculty ranks, why stop there? In the name of "reasoned inquiry and debate," why not guarantee more representation for militant Islamists? Or academic racists? Or fascists? Or Lyndon LaRouche supporters? Surely our bright young college students deserve to hear and debate those viewpoints, right?

The answer is no. Forcing ideological "diversity" destroys the marketplace of ideas by guaranteeing a place for bad ideas at the table. Economics departments should be no more required to provide jobs to right-wingers who think that cutting taxes increases revenue (which most conservative think-tankers really do claim!) than to Marxists who think that central economic planners have no incentive to raid the public coffers. Intervention in the marketplace of ideas by the heavy hand of government or university administrators would be far more damaging to the free competition of ideas than any naturally occurring liberal academic culture.

The upshot: Ideas that cannot compete on their own merits in the academic world must not be forced on universities by the government or by administrators. Period. Time for conservative academics to stop whining about exclusion and prove the worth of their ideas. Good luck.