10/29/2012: The University of Iowa Law School was sued in 2009 for failing to hire a conservative instructor. The ruling just came out, and is described by Peter Schmidt in the Chronicle:
In a case in which the University of Iowa College of Law stood accused of political bias for refusing to hire an instructor known for her conservative views, a jury found that the plaintiff, Teresa R. Wagner, did not suffer infringement of her First Amendment rights. The jury deadlocked, however, over a second claim, that Ms. Wagner was denied her equal-protection rights under the 14th Amendment. …
Back in 2006 I matched the Lane County voter registration file to a list of UO professors. Out of 506 matches, there were 25 registered Republicans. Comparing the matched results to the county and state:
By UO college, it looked like this:
I wonder how many of the “none”‘s are republican-leaning independents who fear that revealing their political leanings might create backlash within their departments or schools.
At another university, I know a professor who almost wasn’t hired because of some editorials he wrote as an undergrad. Someone in the dean’s office found them, and thought he shouldn’t be hired because of it, after the department had universally supported him. He really put the diversity folks at the university in bind though, because he although he is strong republican, he also checked off some other very important diversity boxes.
Maybe we can hire some young republicans or Andrew Breitbart’s crew to ferret out all the librul bias in the university…
Dog says
I would suggest a re-match to see if evolution is occurring at the UO -although I realized the evolution would be against our Mission Statement since that hasn’t evolved for 15 years …