Gus Van Horn blog Posted March 1, 2017 Report Share Posted March 1, 2017 A ridiculous proposal in Iowa for ideological hiring quotas shows just how far the Republican party is from grasping the nature of the problem with government schools, and, therefore, its solution: A bill in the Iowa Senate seeks to achieve greater political diversity among professors at the state's Board of Regents universities. Senate File 288 would institute a hiring freeze until the number of registered Republicans and Democrats on the university faculty fall within 10 percent of each other."I'm under the understanding that right now they can hire people because of diversity," said the bill's author, Sen. Mark Chelgren, R-Ottumwa. "They want to have people of different thinking, different processes, different expertise. So this would fall right into category with what existing hiring practices are." [link omitted, bold added]This proposal is, paradoxically, as dangerous as it is ineffective. The danger lies in the precedent of aggravating a problem indirectly created by government control of education -- by explicitly setting up the government in the role of ideological monitor. (I suspect that even today, a court might strike that down, but to test that assumption is to play with fire.) The ineffectiveness should be obvious even to its sponsors: Current and prospective faculty could just change party affiliations -- not that there is any substantive difference between the two, if this measure is any indication.Is the GOP cynical or oblivious regarding education and freedom of speech? Regardless of the answer, we now know they don't have any serious ideas about freeing the former or protecting the latter.-- CAV Link to Original Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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