Paul Harvey: U. of Colorado Appoints “Scholar of Conservative Thought”

Paul Harvey runs the blog Religion in American History and teaches history at the University of Colorado.

Thursday, the flagship campus of the university where I teach, the University of Colorado, announced its first Visiting Scholar of Conservative Thought, part of a three-year, privately-funded pilot effort to “broaden intellectual diversity” at the school.

Similar efforts are underway elsewhere, including proposals to establish Centers for Western Civilization, new Great Books programs, and the like. Funders typically want to expand beyond their cadre of scholars at smaller universities and private colleges (such as Hillsdale) and push their ideas in the highest reaches of the academic world, at the research universities and in the Ivy League. But of course, even a cursory look at George W. Bush’s cabinet and policy advisors—from Donald Kagan, professor of classics and history at Yale, to economist Glenn Hubbard at Columbia—would suggest that there’s a deeper bench of conservative academics at the most elite institutions than commonly alleged.

Steven Hayward, currently a fellow at Ashland University in Ohio and previously a fellow with the American Enterprise Institute and Heritage Foundation, will be the first Conservative Thought Chair. He will teach four courses in political science and environmental studies....