In face of criticism from the right and left regarding his effort to endow a Visiting Chair in Conservative Thought and Policy, G.P. “Bud” Peterson, chancellor of the University of Colorado, states — reasonably, I think — that he is not trying to hire a “conservative scholar” but rather “a scholar of conservative thought.” In a letter to the Wall Street Journal, he specifies:

We aren’t hiring one person to teach the “conservative line” but rather an individual whose field of scholarship is based in conservative thought, beginning with the writings of Locke, Hobbes, Adam Smith, Alexander Hamilton, James Madison and extending to the present.This idea isn’t a substitute for our continuing efforts to encourage intellectual diversity in all quarters of the university … this endowed chair … will serve as a catalyst and focal point for open intellectual discourse regarding the role conservatism has and continues to play in our society.