When the Duke Conservative Union cross-checked the faculties of several humanities departments against voter registration records, discovering that in the softer fields Democrats outnumber Republicans by about 17 to one, the Duke faculty and administration roundly denied that the numbers were in any way meaningful. The disingenuousness of that response earned Duke a great deal of criticism and even ridicule in the blogosphere, as everyone from Andrew Sullivan to yours truly felt called to comment. What no one, to my knowledge, did, though, was to cross-check the Duke response against Duke's policies on diversity to see just what the school's refusal even to discuss what the massive onesidedness of its faculty's political affiliations might mean in terms of Duke's responsibility to uphold its own commitments. Now that gap has been filled.

In a long, thorough, and thoughtful post, John Rosenberg reads the uproar at Duke through the lens of Duke's various policies on non-discrimination and diversity. What he finds is that Duke, in refusing to address the issue of faculty political homogeneity, is quite arguably in patent violation of its own policies. How can that be? Because Duke's diversity policies, like those of most schools, don't really say what they mean or mean what they say. The policies exist to increase the presence of under-represented minorities on campus. But they say they are about increasing the variety of "perspectives" on campus. The racism of assuming that skin color or ethnicity equals a personal outlook on the world is obvious; so is the vulgar social engineering of recruiting minority students and faculty because increasing the numbers of minority students and faculty makes the school look more progressive and welcoming. So, like many other schools, Duke couches policies designed to increase demographic diversity in the language of intellectual diversity: the reason the school needs more minorities, the argument goes, is that minorities offer a special perspective and possess special knowledge that enriches the campus culture.

Of course this is transparently racist and illogical hogwash. But, as Rosenberg points out, what is both ironic and fascinating about that language is that it speaks, accidentally and quite against its will, to the particular claims of the Duke Conservative Union. And in so doing, that language proves the hypocrisy of faculty and admins who won't consider what it means for teachers and scholars to be overwhelmingly liberal, and who cannot imagine that vastly outnumbered conservative students might very reasonably feel intellectually marginalized and devalued at their school. The logic of diversity tells us we should expect this to be so. Duke's refusal to recognize this, and to address it respectfully and promptly, speaks volumes.

By this I mean just what I say: Duke should address the issue. It should acknowledge it, and it should invite and encourage open discussion and debate about what, if anything, the broad political homogeneity of its faculty means. That's quite different from instituting affirmative action hiring policies for conservatives, which would be ridiculous and, I think, hypocritical, considering that an opposition to affirmative action is a lynchpin of contemporary conservative thought. The form of address I am envisioning would be much less policy-oriented, and much more focussed on inquiry. It would ask whether there is any meaningful correlation between faculty political affiliation and the kinds of scholarship and teaching being done at Duke (Duke's flat denial of a correlation is a cheap attempt to short circuit a true consideration of that question). It would ask what faculty political homogeneity might mean for the quality of education and variety of intellectual opportunity on campus. It would seek to discover where conservatives drop out (or are weeded out) of the academic system (I think it is technically true that in the academic humanities there is not much, if any, discrimination at the hiring level, simply because at that point there are precious few left who don't conform to the left-leaning methodologies that prevail there). Such a debate would, in other words, seek to get the issues out in the open and to create an atmosphere of collaborative analysis and problem-solving that would involve people from all political persuasions in the project of determining how Duke can improve on its mission to be as inclusive an institution as possible. Why is that a discussion Duke does not want to have?

UPDATE: Though the obfuscation is still coming fast and furious from some quarters, debate at Duke has begun. Thanks to Maurice Black for the link.

AND MORE: Duke philosophy professor Robert Brandon has responded to those who criticized him for his glib invocation of J.S. Mill's comment about stupid people being conservative. It's still self-discrediting, especially the part about how, if conservatives want to see more conservative academics, they should study hard, get Ph.D.'s, and get jobs as professors (that's not just insulting to the people whose politics weed them out of academic careers in or before grad school, but,in its failure to acknowledge that there are no academic jobs, not even for those who tow the ideological line, it's also insulting to all aspiring and contingent academics). Anyhow, John Rosenberg takes Brandon's response apart in an update to this post. Michael Friedman has some comments, too.