Diversity?

Harvard Law got front page coverage in the Globe today for a controversy over hiring a (gasp!) conservative. The Law School deans pursued Jack Goldsmith, a "highly respected scholar" in international law, and hired him last spring. Now, however, some of his colleagues are complaining that new evidence shows he was involved in the White House's infamous "torture memos" and that he should not, therefore, have been hired. But the record gainsays their position: they opposed Goldsmith from the start; the new revelations are just ammunition for their ongoing smear campaign.

Fortunately, there is at least one person in the department who gets it right:

[Boston Globe] William P. Alford, a vice dean who heads Harvard's program in international legal studies and led the subcommittee that identified Goldsmith for the job, said many top scholars in the field recommended him. "I so much like the idea of somebody who thinks differently than I do, who is smart and open-minded," Alford said of Goldsmith. "You can have debates about ideas, and that's what this place is supposed to be about."

Supposed to be. In an ideal world, you might say, we'd have intellectuals of differing worldviews interfacing and debating in the various fields. But all the evidence shows that Republicans are essentially stonewalled from participating in academics, and this fits right into that pattern.

Hopefully I'll be able to beat the odds with my Ph.D. applications this winter.