. . . surprise, surprise.

The Chronicle of Higher Education, reporting today on a study by researchers at the College of William and Mary, finds it “remarkable” that international-relations professors “agree far more on current policy and future threats than they disagree.”

According to the study, available on the college’s Web site, eighty-nine percent of scholars say the war will ultimately damage security in the United States. Eighty-seven percent consider the conflict unjust, and 85 percent are pessimistic that a stable democracy will be possible in Iraq in the next 10 to 15 years. Only 1 percent of the respondents ranked George W. Bush among the past century’s most effective foreign-policy presidents.

In fact there is nothing remarkable at all about this consensus, given also that 70 percent of respondents identified themselves as liberal, whereas just 13 percent were conservative.