In response to yesterday's post about the responses of Duke faculty and administrators to the news that a strikingly disproportionate number of Duke's humanities professors are registered Democrats, a reader writes that similar events have been unfolding at Bowdoin:

First, I want to thank you for writing your weblog Critical Mass. My daughter is a junior in high school beginning her college search, and what I learn from Critical Mass and other sources on the web helps me better to counsel her. (Whether she appreciates this counsel is another story.)

One of the things I have been doing is read college newspapers, many of which appear online. Your posting about "Playing Dumb about Intellectual Diversity" reminded me of an issue of the Bowdoin Orient.

That issue has, in consecutive headlines, "Faculty voices add to campus diversity debate" and "Republican professors are scant at Bowdoin."Ý

I found the juxtapositionÝhilarious. No one is quoted as saying anything as, well, stupid as Robert Brandon did at Duke, but one history professor is just as clueless:Ý

"I think it'd be unethical to consider a person's political point of view when recruiting faculty. If someone's talking about history it doesn't matter. The changing perspectives in European history are not going to change based on a teacher's political affiliation."

So is the dean of academic affairs:

"We do not ask job candidates about their political affiliations or views, so they play no role in our selection of candidates. It would be inappropriate to have them play a role in my view. Our focus is on the capabilities of potential faculty as teachers and as scholars [or] artists. In the hiring process, we make every effort to insure that we have a wide pool of candidates drawn from all over the world."

Lacking a Ph.D., the president of the student Democrats has better sense:

"If the numbers are accurate, I certainly think it is a problem that there is such a bias within the faculty. School should be about letting students know all sides of issues and informing them on how to make their own choice. A Democrat to Republican ratio of 23 to one really interferes with such a process...if the numbers are true, there would need to be changes made."

One of my professors in law school warned us not to let our legal education separate us from our common sense. Apparently that is a hazard in the humanities, as well.Ý

UPDATE: Another parent writes:

My daughter is a junior in high school so, like the posted letter writer, I really appreciate the insight your blog effort provides.

As for Bowdoin, imagine if the same things were said by the faculty but with the word "race" replacing "political affiliations or views"! Oh the howls would be racing down the coast like a Nor'easter!