I admire Robert Kerrey, president of the New School in Manhattan, for publicly taking unpopular stands on political issues, such as the war in Iraq. As Kerrey rightly says, “In higher education, it’s hard to find a president willing to speak out on the issues of the day. It’s a healthy symptom that the president is taking a position on issues and willing to confront opposition in the community” — which he has done valiantly.

However, the kudos he receives (as reported in the New York Sun) for “transforming” and “improving” the campus’s undergraduate liberal arts college, Eugene Lang, appear to be only inputs-based. That is, under Kerrey’s leadership, enrollment at the college has increased, piles of money have been raised, faculty has been hired “at a breakneck pace,” and so forth.

But has there been an infusion of intellectual pluralism during his tenure at this notorious bastion of one-sided leftist thought and activism? No one opines on this question in the Sun’s coverage on the topic, although it includes hints that the left’s monopoly is still intact. Thus:

In the 2008 edition of the Princeton Review’s “Best 366 Colleges,” Eugene Lang was ranked second to Warren Wilson College in Swannanoa, N.C., for having “students most nostalgic for Bill Clinton.” The school ranked sixth in the category of students who “Ignore God on a regular basis.”

Kerrey claims the campus is academically stronger than when he took over. If this is true, he should offer a fulsome report on the state of the liberal arts on campus and the scholarly quality of the many new faculty members. Moreover, the media should start demanding answers to these, the matters that really count.