Conservatives on campus? A case for courts

What was Tom Emmer thinking when he applied for a faculty position at Hamline University? Surely he knows that our campus intelligentsia generally view conservatives like him as knuckle-dragging Neanderthals.

At many campuses, Emmer might have made it to the second round of interviews if he had been a disabled "person of color" or confused about his sexuality. But even then he probably couldn't have overcome the cardinal rule of campus "diversity"—diversity of political views will not be tolerated.

Given his rejection by Hamline (after he thought he had a job), Emmer might be pleased to know that some aspiring conservative faculty members who are victims of political discrimination are gaining new traction through the courts.

Take Teresa Wagner, whose case was recently considered by the U.S. Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals, which has jurisdiction over Iowa, Minnesota and other Midwestern states.

Some might question Wagner's sanity, since she applied—and was turned down for—a position at a law school whose 50-member faculty includes only one registered Republican.

Was this hotbed of liberalism Berkeley, or an Ivy League university where (one suspects) conservatives risk being burned at the stake?

No. The school in question was in the heart of Corn Country: the University of Iowa.

As a conservative, Wagner was guilty of several "venial" sins that the high priests of faculty diversity might have forgiven had she confessed and begged for absolution.

But Wagner had committed one unforgivable sin: She is prolife, and actually once worked for the National Right to Life Committee in Washington, D.C.

A law school dean advised her to disguise her past—in particular, her offer of a tenure-track position at one of the few American law schools that don't immediately run conservatives off campus.

Two deans actually recommended her for the Iowa position, and student evaluators gave her the highest possible ratings.

But Wagner's reputation preceded her, and the faculty rejected her application. According to the Eighth Circuit's opinion, issued in December 2011, the law school chose to hire a candidate whose credentials were inferior to hers, but who had made clear to the faculty that he was a political liberal.

The law school could have hired Wagner as well, since it had two open positions of the same kind. But the faculty chose to hire just one person, rather than give a job to Wagner.

When Wagner applied for a lower-level summer position, she didn't even get an interview. Instead, the faculty chose a candidate who had just graduated from law school, but who had worked for the prochoice faculty member who had led the opposition to Wagner.

But the story doesn't end there, as it so often does in these matters. Wagner took on the high priests of diversity, and brought a federal court action on First Amendment grounds.

(Sorry, Tom Emmer, the First Amendment carries no weight in hiring cases at private universities like Hamline.) In December, the court ruled that her case had sufficient merit to go to trial.

The court's reasoning was revealing. First, the court drew a discriminatory inference from the law school's grossly skewed 49-to-1 ideological composition. If this is a suspect ratio that may justify hiring lawsuits on First Amendment grounds, then most public education institutions in America may be vulnerable.

Second, the court noted the incestuous nature of the hiring process at the University of Iowa Law School.

While deans and the hiring committee technically have some authority in this respect, in reality, an ideologically homogenous faculty wields authority and creates cookie-cutter replicas of its ideological biases in its new hires. The court found this constitutionally problematic.

The Wagner case raises important questions of several kinds. Among them:

Why do many faculty members view the presence of conservatives at our institutions of higher learning as such a threat? Why was the 50-member University of Iowa Law School faculty willing to fight so hard to avoid exposing students to two conservative teachers, instead of just one?

And why don't law professors—of all people—understand the mandate at the core of our nation's founding document?

The judges who ruled for Wagner found this disregard for the Constitution deeply troubling. In deciding that her case may proceed to trial, they quoted William O. Douglas, one of the most liberal U.S. Supreme Court Justices of the last half century: "No more direct assault on academic freedom can be imagined than for the school authorities to [refuse to hire] a teacher because of his or her philosophical, political, or ideological beliefs."

Unfortunately, though today's universities purport to worship at the altar of diversity, the first rule in their creed is that diversity of ideas will not be tolerated.

Katherine Kersten is a senior fellow at Center of the American Experiment.