After approvingly quoting a Wall Street Journal op-ed (sub. req.) suggesting that political extremists impose externalities on the rest of us, Harvard economist Greg Mankiw makes the misguided suggestion that universities should have ideological affirmative action:

To foster tolerance, what we need is more interaction among people with opposite viewpoints. How about a student exchange program between Harvard and Liberty University? Or an affirmative action program to hire more Republicans for the Harvard faculty? Now that would be real diversity.

As I wrote last year, hiring based on politics is a mistake that will make the problem of classroom politicization worse. Here’s what Mike Munger, a Duke poli sci professor who serves on my dissertation committee (and is also running for governor as a Libertarian), said on the subject (Quicktime video):

You asking me “what are my political views” belongs outside the classroom. Now there are plenty of people on the left who don’t do that. They’re bad teachers. That’s not an issue of political repression. They’re bad teachers, and I would say the same thing about someone on the right who did that. The last thing that I want is a university or department of equal numbers of people on the left and right who impose their views on students.

So the solution is not to hire more people on the right. The solution is to take politics out of the classroom, to develop a norm of pedagogy that says “I challenge students to try to get them to think.”

That’s exactly right.