At Minding the Campus, Robert Maranto of the University of Arkansas takes on ideological homogeneity and hypocrisy in universities.

He astutely illustrates the harm caused by a lack of intellectual diversity:

Sociology and criminal justice professors have steadfastly avoided studying New York City’s success in fighting crime, much less encouraging other cities to adopt like reforms. By the 1970s the mass public had realized that AFDC was not working; yet some academics even now liken welfare reform to the Holocaust. Ed. schools have refused to study and replicate successful urban schools like the KIPP academies, instead advocating ever more for programs which fail to educate disadvantaged children, but fit PC theories. Many comparative government specialists find it impossible to admit that Marxist regimes murdered more than 80 million people, while market based reforms took Asia from starvation to prosperity. .

To expose university pharisaism, Maranto urges conservative reformers to ply liberal academics with questions such as the following:

If academics really believe in freedom of speech, why will they never host an anti-affirmative action or pro-war speaker? If universities are open-minded, why do they never sponsor debates? If universities believe in public service, then why do they bar military recruiters? If Middle Eastern studies departments really believe in women’s rights, why do they praise Hamas and boycott Israel? Why is it greedy for businesspeople to want higher profits, but idealistic for university professors to want higher salaries? If “social justice” theorists like Jonathan Kozol are really in it for the children, why don’t they donate their $20,000 speaking fees to scholarships? What exactly is a non-researcher like William Ayers doing on the governing board of the American Educational Research Association? If diversity makes for better decision-making, when will an Ivy League sociology or political science department hire, much less tenure an open Republican? To take an ongoing U.S. Supreme Court case, if gay and lesbian students have a right of free association (as I believe they do), should not those with orthodox religious views have that same right?

I am more skeptical than Maranto that reasoned argumentation can win the day against hardened and self-satisfied ideologues. However, he deserves credit for deftly identifying some of the important debates in which liberals ought to be engaging.