Political correctness and the academy

Stanley Fish wrote a good blog post at the NYT recently reviewing a new book on political correctness and the academy. I was going to quibble a bit with his comments about intellectual diversity. But then David Bernstein said almost exactly what I would have said, so you should just go read that instead.

He ends his post with an anecdote. I'll end mine with a similar one. When I was a senior at Dartmouth, one of my friends ("A.") started dating a boy ("J.") whose parents were both professors at a large California university. The three of us met for lunch at some point, and my friend disclosed to her boy that "[Isabel] is a Republican."J. expressed shock because he'd apparently never met one who was so "calm" and "reasonable" before. Apparently I'd accomplished something unique by being able to eat a tuna sandwich and make polite small talk about my thesis without literally frothing at the mouth. Okay, I can manage that on a good day -- not so much on bad ones.

After we'd gotten to know each other slightly better, J. expressed interest in sitting down with me for a series of conversations talk about conservatism and libertarianism, as he'd never met anyone who held my strange and exotic combination of views. The relationship between J. and A. ended before we could ever put this plan into effect, alas. As in David's case, I was pleased by J.'s open-mindedness and flattered that he thought I'd attained some remarkable height of thoughtfulness. At the same time, it's absurd that he made it through three years of college without encountering another "calm" right of center student or professor.