Conservative, liberal debate civilly about professors, politics

A conservative judge and a liberal former congresswoman faced off — politely — this week on whether universities should hire professors on the basis of political ideology.

It was a civil dialogue, in keeping with the subtext of the panel discussion titled "Free Speech and Democracy on Campus," part of a two-day symposium on "Democracy and Diversity: The Role of the University in the 21st Century," presented by the University of Utah.

America has become a shouting match — red vs. blue, your blog vs. mine, Michael Moore vs. Sean Hannity — and universities are sometimes guilty, too, the panelists agreed.

Universities should provide forums for civil discourse, they said. But that means more than just inviting Howard Dean and Karl Rove to campus to speak their minds, said Karen Shepherd , former Utah congresswoman from the 2nd District. The problem with Dean and Rove, Moore and Hannity, she said, is that "they don't speak complexity, they speak message." What universities could do, she suggested, "is insist on complexity from their speakers."

Civil discourse also means providing differing points of view in the classroom — something that doesn't always happen on university campuses, argued Judge Michael McConnell, who sits on the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and is a professor at the University of Utah Quinney College of Law.

The "law of group polarization," he said, posits that people who are homogenous and only discuss issues among themselves tend to move toward extreme positions. Universities may say they offer forums for the open discussion of ideas, but McConnell isn't convinced.

He cited studies showing that 80 percent of college professors in the United States vote mostly Democratic and fewer than 8 percent vote mostly Republican. "Obviously, Democratic and Republican is a crude measure" of ideology but it does indicate that "faculties are quite lopsided," he said.

If diversity matters in other arenas, from race to gender, "is it not clear that intellectual diversity matters as well?" he said. Universities "must think long and hard about the lack of intellectual diversity" on their campuses, he said. But this examination should be done from the inside, not by "government meddling," and it must be led by liberals, not conservatives, he said. That means that the "Academic Bill of Rights" proposed by conservative activist David Horowitz (that would forbid university faculty from hiring, firing or deciding promotions based on political beliefs) is not the answer, he said.