KC Johnson at Minding the Campus writes in “The Skewing of American History” something that will surprise no one (and this from a registered Democrat who supported, even donated, to Barack Obama’s campaign):

A few years ago, the University of Iowa’s History Department conducted a search for a new hire in U.S. foreign relations. After the department denied a preliminary, or screening, interview to Mark Moyar—a seemingly qualified, but also clearly conservative, historian—it came to light that the department’s faculty had a Democrat-to-Republican ratio of 22:0.

The department’s explanations for this discrepancy were almost comical. First, department chairman Colin Gordon attributed the department’s not having hired any Republicans to the fact that “about two thirds of Johnson County are Democrats”—as if 67 percent equals 100 percent, and as if all of the applicants for jobs in Iowa’s History Department came from the University’s home county. Then he pled ignorance: “We do not know if an applicant belongs to the Republican Party, the American Civil Liberties Union, the Black Panthers or the Loyal Order of Water Buffalo.” It was, the chairman implied, just a coincidence that the department hired for the position to which Moyar applied a professor whose first academic publication came in Radical History Review, and who committed to teaching courses in “Race, Gender and U. S. International History” and “Comparing Racial Formations.”

As Mark Bauerlein observed at the time, “Think of what would happen if other diversities suffered the same disparate outcome. A department of all men would spark an outcry, and rightly so. But nobody seems to worry about the political skew.” Gordon’s response, on the other hand, made it perfectly clear that he and his colleagues found nothing undesirable about their one-sided partisan makeup, and wouldn’t engage in any critical self-reflection about why their department’s hiring process had skewed so overwhelmingly in one direction.

And how funny is this: I just went to the University of Iowa’s website and lo and behold they are looking for a “Chief Diversity Officer.” My guess is Mr. Diversity won’t be very interested in diversity of thought.