Diversity Doesn't Apply to Conservative Views

There's an interesting article in the Christian Science Monitor by Dan Lawton, a journalism student at the University of Oregon. Anyone who has ever had much contact with academia knows that diversity is preached like a religion at most colleges. But of course diversity of thought, when it comes to expressing conservative views, is frowned upon. Lawton, who isn't even a conservative, noted that conservatives professors were in short supply at his university. He had the temerity to  suggest the following:

In my column, published in the campus newspaper The Oregon Daily Emerald June 1, I suggested that such a disparity hurt UO. I argued that the lifeblood of higher education was subjecting students to diverse viewpoints and the university needed to work on attracting more conservative professors.

His account of reactions by leftist professors will surprise no one on the right. For example,

I was shocked by such a comment, which seemed an attempt to link Republicans with racist orthodoxy. When I wrote back expressing my offense, he neither apologized nor clarified his remarks.  Instead, he reiterated them on the record.

When aren't leftists accusing Republicans of racism? That's just standard practice, as he found out. He writes of another professor,

From the disgust with which she attacked me, you would have thought I had advocated Nazism. She quickly grew so emotional that she had to leave the room. But before she departed, she stood over me and screamed.

Again, nothing surprising. Many on the left are shocked and horrified that anyone would dare disagree with their deeply-held assumptions and world-view. Those who do are treated as evil, labelled as fascists, Nazis, or whatever other term they feel like using. The old saying, conservatives think liberals are stupid, and liberals think conservatives are evil actually applies in many cases. As Lawton points out, he wasn't even advocating conservative or Republican ideas, but merely argued that diversity wasn't being well-served by the absence of conservative thought in the faculty. Imagine the hostility he would have faced if he were an actual conservative trying to advocate right-wing positions on campus.