It should go without saying, but I'll say it anyway -- ideologically biased hiring and promotion practices are wrong no matter what the nature of the bias is. I was appalled, but not terribly surprised, to read about the Justice Department's report on its own skewed, anti-left vetting practices:

Justice Department officials illegally used 'political or ideological' factors in elite recruiting programs in recent years, tapping law school graduates with Federalist Society membership or other conservative credentials over more qualified candidates with liberal-sounding resumes, an internal report found Tuesday.

The report, prepared by the Justice Department's own inspector general and its ethics office, portrays a clumsy effort by senior Justice Department screeners to weed out candidates for career positions whom they considered 'leftists,' using Internet search engines to look for incriminating information or evidence of possible liberal bias.

One rejected candidate from Harvard Law School worked for Planned Parenthood. Another wrote opinion pieces critical of the USA Patriot Act and the nomination of Samuel A. Alito Jr. to the Supreme Court. A third applicant worked for Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton and posted an unflattering cartoon of President Bush on his MySpace page.

Another applicant, a student at the top of his class at Harvard who was fluent in Arabic, was relegated to the 'questionable' pile because he was a member of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a group that advocates civil liberties. And another rejected candidate said in his essay that he was 'personally conflicted' about the National Security Agency's program of wiretapping without warrants.

The report, prepared jointly by the office of the inspector general, Glenn A. Fine, and the Office of Professional Responsibility, is the first in a series of internal reviews growing out of last year's controversy over the dismissals of nine United States attorneys. The report is the first from an official investigation to support accusations that the Bush Justice Department has been overly politicized.

'When it comes to the hiring of nonpartisan career attorneys, our system of justice should not be corrupted by partisan politics,' said Representative John Conyers Jr., the Michigan Democrat who is chairman of the Judiciary Committee. 'It appears the politicization at Justice was so pervasive that even interns had to pass a partisan litmus test.'

The good news is that this report constitutes an important admission that systematic ideological bias in personnel matters can and does exist within certain institutions and professions. Academe--which has been steadfastly denying that it has engaged in a dedicated, decades-long campaign to homogenize its ranks--should take note.

The bad faith move for the left-leaning academy to make right now is to point fingers and jeer at conservatives for having their inherent corruption exposed. The good faith move is to recognize that this kind of behavior is viewpoint neutral--and terribly, terribly human--and to acknowledge that left-leaning institutions are just as liable to it as those that lean right. The Justice Department is setting a strong, if lamentably belated, standard for for internal accountability and transparency. The academy--which has been exhorted for years by ACTA, FIRE, and others to be accountable and transparent about these issues--should follow its example.