Here is the way to reverse the leftward drift of academia

Submitted by Stuart Fagin (United States), Sep 11, 2016 at 22:02

The good work of the MEF and its spin-off Campus Watch act to curtail academic malfeasance, by exposing examples such as that of Professor Bail. However, the effect of this is necessarily limited. Exposure can be ignored in the absence of external accountability.

Sadly, there is little discussion in conservative circles of how to reverse the leftward movement of academia. I infer from the absence of such discussion that conservatives are resigned to regard this trend as immutable. I believe, to the contrary, that the way to reverse the trend is straightforward, at least with regard to public universities.

Begin by recognizing that public universities are public institutions. As such, it is improper that they be captive of academic cliques determined to perpetuate only their point of view. The way out is to simply take away their prerogative to hire and promote staff. Instead, these decisions should be made on the basis of scholastic merit by external boards of discipline experts. The key word here is "external". Appointments to these discipline boards would be made by appropriate state government officials acting through like-minded trustees.

As an added bonus, such boards could put an end to the metastasizing of grievance academic departments, such as women's studies, gay studies, and anything else that precedes the suffix phobia. Think of the cost savings as well as the cultural improvement. Clearly, this process could only germinate in conservative states. But lets get the ball rolling Oklahoma.

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