It seems that is what is being called for by this student at the University of Oregon. Dan Lawton wrote a column in the Daily Emerald in which he reported on the political affiliations of many members of the faculty (he also wrote a column for the Christian Science Monitor). They were members of the departments of journalism, law, political science, sociology and economics. (Unsure why the guy picked on the liberal arts, but if he’s surprised that the vast majority of professors in those departments in Eugene, OR are Democrats, then Dan Lawton needs a new education.

Oddly, Lawton claims to have arrived in Eugene as a socially liberal guy, and then developed himself into a sort of conservative as contrarian move. Or maybe it was a careerist change:

In part, I believe this transformation aided my intellectual and professional development. Liberal journalism is so normative that it’s difficult to stake a claim. But if your politics are independent enough that you can occasionally gravitate across the aisle, there’s an expanse of fertile ground waiting. From this realization I have profited, but, in general, the dearth of conservative viewpoints damages the experiences of University students, regardless if they acknowledge it.

The lifeblood of learning is exposure to a diverse and combative set of viewpoints. This sort of framework allows students to sift through ideologies and compose their own independent belief systems. The concept of “diversity” and the “marketplace of ideas” shouldn’t just act as convenient adages for progressive grandstanding, but as a philosophy that operates at the core of higher education.

So he needed to become a conservative or a Republican to hone his journalistic skills? What? Has he read anything that passes for conservative journalism lately? They were the ones defending Bush for inviting a male prostitute into the pressers, right? And weren’t they the ones who failed at reporting the inadequacies of Sarah Palin? Heck, Republican journalists have been caught flattering Mark Sanford when he disappeared to Argentina for time with his mistress, all in order to get a scoop on a story. For Republicans, at least, journalism means partisanship. Surely Dan Lawton doesn’t intend a career of blind partisanship.

But Lawton’s writing is far more flawed in his foundational defining of what it means to be conservative or liberal, Democrat or Republican. For him that entails a one-to-one correspondence, while those of us in the real world understand that a foundational conservatism has no relation to today’s Republican Party, and that more Democrats than not are about as conservative as the few true conservatives left among the Republicans. Does Lawton really mean to say that our voter registration is what’s important? That’s an absurd reduction for a man claiming the high moral ground of impartial journalism in his writing. But the assumptions of Lawton’s article are far worse, and it is no wonder he’s been treated a bit badly by faculty there in Eugene, or so he claims. He simply doesn’t understand that the liberal values of faculty members also coincides with academic rigor and fairness. Would he get that from merely adding Republicans to faculties? Not if those faculty members acted like Republican journalists.

But the biggest flaw here is that Dan Lawton seems to be calling for an affirmative action program that would place Republicans in positions on faculties over their equally or better qualified peers. That just isn’t a conservative or liberal value held by any academic. And isn’t he discussing academics, after all, and the quality of education?