Why “Token Conservative” ?

Each year, as part of its procession of identity group-focused activities, my law school celebrates “diversity.” Toward that end, the student newspaper recently devoted a number of articles to the state of diversity at the school and in sundry realms of life. Predictably, the goal of diversity was lauded, and the efforts to promote it were trumpeted. All-in-all, there was much self-congratulation about the school’s commitment to diversity in matters of race, “genders,” age, ethnicity, sexual orientations, and socio-economic backgrounds. Whatever deficiencies in such matters might exist in the “real world,” we were assured that our school had come a long way on the road to balkanization along such lines.

Conspicuously missing was any attempt to address the lack of political and ideological diversity on campus. The ideological conformity of the student body was reflected in an election preference poll published. That poll showed that, of those students who voted in the recent primary, they voted for Democrats over Republicans by 4 to 1.

One might expect to find a predominance of liberals among young people at an urban law school. After all, many have yet to experience the wonder of progressive income tax rates. But, if anything, the student body is remarkably diverse ideologically when compared to the faculty. My own poll, based on talking with my colleagues, reading their articles, and generally hanging around for more than two decades, lets me identify with substantial certainty 40 Democrats, 2 Republicans, and 1 sort-of-Libertarian.

Let me hasten to add here that my colleagues are intelligent and dedicated teachers, and, for the most part, decent and personable human beings. But a 20 to 1 Democrat to Republican edge is clearly out of line with the demographic of Southern California, if not of the Southern California professoriate. Consider me naive, but I think that at an institution of higher learning, diversity of mind, rather than of melanin concentrations, sex chromosomes, and skin wrinkles, is the higher good. Of course, for many reasons (bias, peer group approval, laziness), school bureaucracies find it much easier to measure their own success by an “aesthetic” of diversity, as Justice Thomas put it, rather than a substance of diversity.

The diversity of voices at most American institutions of higher learning such as my own ranges from the center-left to the far-left, from those who are critical of classical Western thought and American institutions to those who are very critical to those who are extremely critical. Of course, in this echo chamber there is little room for those who are critical of the critics. None of this is news. No wonder that private think tanks, which run across the ideological spectrum, are increasingly the centers of intellectual debate and innovative ideas.

One might imagine a debate on handgun ownership, abortion on demand, capital punishment, same-sex marriage, rights in property, or Presidential war powers. How many professors can be recruited to take the “conservative” position? Clearly it does not do students a service to have law school be an intellectually monochromatic landscape.