There's been some discussion in weblogs recently ( summarized by Professor Drezner) on conservatives in academia. The two questions are their numbers and whether they get fair treatment. In economics, they get fair treatment, at least at the departmental level-- we economists tend not to mind whether someone is a conservative, a nihilist, or a rapist in his spare time, so long as he writes good papers. I'm skeptical elsewhere. The question is not whether law schools refrain from trying to fire tenured libertarians. Tenured faculty are safe enough, and libertarians are on the left, not the right, on most of the social issues that the left of 2003 cares about.

Here is the question I'll ask my colleagues in humanities departments. Suppose we had an external job candidate who was very good in all of his scholarship and had a pleasant personality, etc., but whose vita listed (besides the huge quantity of good scholarly research) newspaper op-eds advocating prayer in schools, a constitutional amendment to outlaw abortion, a ban on sex-change operations, and an end to affirmative action. Would those op-eds lead anybody in the department to oppose hiring him? And, just to add a new wrinkle, if that person were black, would it reduce the opposition, increase it, or be considered irrelevant?

I wonder if a typical 1950 American Communist would be in tenure trouble in a typical 2003 English department. His support for violent revolution, the liquidation of our current ruling class, and the seizure of private property wouldn't hurt him one bit. But our 1950 Communist would, I imagine, oppose abortion, pornography, homosexuality, and racial discrimination. (I know Bayard Rustin wouldn't have, in his heart-- but what was the public stance of the Party?)

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