CAN DIVERSITY INCLUDE CONSERVATIVE THOUGHT, TOO? University of Toledo: Of course not!

As at most law schools, the faculty at University of Toledo leans strongly to the left. Nevertheless, in an admirable display of ideological ecumenicism, the law school faculty overwhelmingly nominated their conservative colleague, Lee Strang for the university’s second annual Inclusive Excellence Award, and the university announced that he would receive the award this year. . . .

Unfortunately, you can guess what happened next. Giving the award to Strang created an uproar among students, who started an online petition to revoke the award. . . .

So the university was faced with a choice: (1) live up to the literal, plain meaning of inclusive excellence, and defend the award to Strang because diversity of opinion is crucial to the academic enterprise, and a professor who facilitates difficult, ideologically laden discussions is a boon to the university; or (2) backtrack, and suggest the award was a mistake.

Again, you can guess the rest. The university’s diversity officer in essence promised reforms to ensure that such a mistake won’t recur.

Stop listening to students. Their job is to assuage their ignorance and immaturity through learning, not to demonstrate it through personnel actions. But frankly, President Gregory Postel isn’t looking so good here either, because he listened to them.

UPDATE: Lee Strong emails:

I just had one point of context that I wanted to raise, which is that you state that “the law school faculty overwhelmingly nominated their conservative colleague, Lee Strang.” I don’t know who nominated me. It could have been some colleagues, or it could have been current students, or even former students. I know some of the media outlets are saying law school faculty did so, but I’m not sure where they got that from, I don’t think it was from UT because they’ve been silent, and I’ve been trying to provide this additional information. The edit I’d suggest is “the University community overwhelmingly nominated conservative professor, Lee Strang.” I’m confident that’s true because the University has stated that and they told me that orally.

Noted. That statement is in a quote, so I can’t edit it, but this should clear things up.