A few years ago, I was contacted by George Ehrhardt, who teaches political science at Appalachian State University in western NC. He asked if I’d be willing to do a guest lecture via Skype for one of his classes. My task was to give them an overview of libertarian theory. I was happy to do so and the effort was, I think, quite successful.

Recently, Prof. Ehrhardt wrote an article for a leftist political science journal New Political Science (it describes itself as committed to progressive social change, which hardly seems a fitting objective for an academic journal, but never mind), in which he endeavored to explain the conservative and libertarian arguments against the trends in higher education. In today’s Pope Center Clarion Call, Jane Shaw takes a look at his work and finds it fairly good, although not entirely convincing to her. (If you want to read the article, a link to it is included.)

Ehrhardt seems to grasp that many leftists have a cartoonish view of “right” critics of higher ed. They maintain that our criticism of the drift in the curriculum, for example, means that we are opposed to teaching about class, sex, race and other hot-button leftist manias. Ehrhardt replies that we are not opposed to such teaching, but don’t think it should crowd out most of the rest of the curriculum. That’s true as far as it goes, but a stronger riposte would have been to show that scholars on the “right” often do talk about class, sex, and race, but in a completely different way, to show that it is state power that hinders the people around whom the progressives love to build their “studies” courses.

Jane also offers a rejoinder to Prof. Ehrhardt’s argument that the conservative and libertarian critiques are incompatible. She doesn’t agree and neither do I.

It will be interesting to see what kind of reaction Ehrhardt’s article brings forth from its intended audience. I’m betting we get much more heat than light.