Fair and Balanced Do Not Apply to Academia

One of the unfortunates of living with someone who watches The O'Reilly Factor is the sometimes you catch a whif of the bile yourself.  Tonight, Bill had as his guest two students from Columbia University - one a charming, well-polished President of the young Republicans, the other a bumbling Allen Colmes clone who is the Editor-in-Chief of the school newspaper.  Around his third comment or question, Bill just threw the matter at hand (the near-riot at a speaking event last night) straight to four winds and went straight to his Agenda (yes, I meant to capitalize that).

Looking right at the left-leaning editor-in-chief, he said, "recently we found that every single Professor at the Columbia School of Journalism was a Democrat.  Don't you think the environment would be a little more friendly if it was more like 50-50?  Shouldn't conservatives have a fair shot at education?"  He then went on to use irresponsible and offensive terms like "liberal jihad" to describe our campuses in a manaical tirade.

The answer to your question, Bill, is no.  Conservatives do not deserve a fair shot at education.  Neitherdo liberals, libertarians, socialists, fascists, anarchists, environmentalists, nor any other political creed.  Want to know why no political sect is entitled to a voice in academia?  Read this, Bill, if you can:

A good college education has nothing to do with the political beliefs of the teachers.  The best colleges in the country do not screen out potential candidates due to political affiliation.  If they did, it would be discrimination.  What gets published in the journals has nothing to do with political affiliation.  The arguments currently going on in most intellectual fields have nothing to do with modern politics.  Papers are not graded with political slants.  College classrooms are not the place to bring up the platforms of political parties and discuss who is better.   They are the place to discuss the issues pertaining to the student's education or training in that specific field or topic.