Here’s a piece on the Duke bias contretemps from the magazine of Duke Conservative Union. It’s well worth reading in full, but the author’s entertaining summary of the arguments on both sides runs as follows:
“The DCU [Duke Conservative Union] claims the overwhelming imbalance in political party affiliation among faculty members and deans is evidence of a lack of intellectual diversity that needs to be addressed. The other side claims this is not true because:
A. Professors never bring their politics into the classroom, even though they admit that they do.
B. Political party affiliation is not a meaningful indicator of a person’s politics.
C. The American political spectrum is more narrow than Canada’s.
D. In its survey of 163 registered voters, the DCU failed to include three or four foreign citizens who are not registered voters.
E. Conservatives are too stupid and uncreative to be widely successful in academia.”
Ha!