The following comments from Duke Political Science Dept. chairman Mike Munger at last night’s JLF Faculty Affiliate Network debate (viewable here) are worth highlighting:

You asking me what are my political views belongs outside of the classroom. Now there are plenty of people on the Left who don’t do that. They’re bad teachers. That’s not an issue of political repression; they’re bad teachers. And I would say the same thing about someone on the right who did that.

The last thing that I want is a university or department of equal numbers of people on the left and right who impose their views on students. So the solution is not to hire more people on the right. The solution is to take politics out of the classroom, to develop a norm of pedagogy that says “I challenge students to try to get them to think.”

So to me the problem is, I think students on the Left ought to sue for breach of contract. Because they’re getting patted on the head and told, “Good liberal; here’s a biscuit.” (Laughter) Because they’re not playing against the first team. The universities have an obligation to make sure students are challenged by people who are really good at challenging any argument. And a good professor on the left or the right should be able to do that.

So I think that it’s a red herring to say we need balance by checking people’s papers to see that we have equal numbers of bigots on the two sides.