WIN THE BATTLE OF IDEAS.

No affirmative action for conservatives, urges Jay Schalin.

Legislating a problem away is an extremely tempting option, when available. Why not try to fix the most intractable problem in public higher education—its intensifying politicization—with a single stroke of a pen, if you hold the ultimate authority through legislative majorities?

And so, the cry arises to institute affirmative action for conservative scholars in academia. At first glance, it seems to satisfy the need to rebalance the Ivory Tower from its leftward lurch, but such legislative overreach is actually a desperate act that should be employed only if less extreme measures prove ineffective.

That universities are politically one-sided is beyond question today. Whether one looks at voter registrations or faculty publications, or merely scans online headlines to see how academia keeps pushing further to the left, the radicalization is all too obvious. The problem is most pervasive in those disciplines that are concerned with culture, politics, and society; academia at times seems intent on driving a polarizing wedge into the American people with little concern for what may happen when the nation is ripped apart.

Give no legislative majority a power you would fear in the hands of a different legislative majority.

The academic ideal is to promote the spirit of open inquiry and the free market of ideas, a sentiment that has the support of right-thinking intellectuals on both sides of the political aisle. Legislating the inclusion of specific views in public universities will undermine that openness; it may seem reasonable when addressing the lack of conservatives on campus but could set a disastrous precedent should a shift to the left in state electoral politics occur.

The challenge, as I have noted, repeatedly and at length, is for the proper stewards of higher education -- the faculty, not the conscience-cowboys in Human Resources or the Vice Presidents of Morale Conditioning -- to assert their role as stewards and teach the controversies.  Does it really have to take an entire generation of unprepared clueless graduates and ever more intrusive legislative oversight before that stewardship emerges?  (And if it takes that long, it will be mostly ignored.)

The nation is going through a period of heightened political awareness, with an increasing realization that traditional Western thought and free market economics must be defended in academia if our way of life is to continue. If conservatives—politicians, trustees, alumni, students, and parents—work together, they may be able to restore political balance without throwing away the spirit of free inquiry through intrusive legislation such as affirmative action.

So mote it be.