The Washington Post's Bias Against Academic Freedom

Today, David Horowitz's frontpagemag.com features an article proclaiming that “The Washington Post's bias thunders on.” It does, but in the opposite direction. Tuesday's Washington Post featured an editorial lecturing the new president of Harvard about how she must embrace Larry Summers' alleged reforms of a university "fossilized by tradition" (in reality, Summers and his conservative allies want to return Harvard to a fossilized past). In particular, the editorial warns Drew Gilpin Faust that one of her key duties is "bringing diversity to the political outlook of the faculty." Not to assure equal opportunity for women and minorities, nor even to prevent political discrimination, but an affirmative duty to bring political diversity to the faculty. Exactly why should the president of a university have any power to impose political ideology on the faculty? One could argue that Harvard needs more diversity to bring in critics of its dominant pro-corporate, pro-establishment ideology, but that's not what the Post is talking about. The Post is embracing Horowitz's movement to try to force more unqualified conservatives down the throats of academia. If conservatives want a greater voice in academia (and they should), they need to do it the old fashioned way: by earning it, and by sacrificing more lucrative careers to do it. Having affirmative action for conservatives imposed by presidents and conservative politicians isn't "shaking up" Harvard; it's an effort to silence dissent.