The power of liberal academic dogma

Anyone who thinks that universities in America are places of free and open inquiry either: (1) has not recently stepped foot on an American campus or (2) is liberal and deluded. The latest demonstration of narrow-mindedness in the left-leaning academy comes from North Dakota, where the NoDak Law Review had the audacity to publish articles by pro-marriage scholars. For this bit of heresy, the Law School is being flogged in the local press and legal community.

Protests from North Dakota lawyers have been so passionate and widespread that North Dakota Law School Dean Paul LeBel posted a disclaimer on the school’s Web site assuring the legal community that “the university and the School of Law are welcoming and inclusive educational communities.”

Just last week I shared dinner with a fellow member of the legal academy who unwittingly slandered me to my face. She complained of "anti-gay bigots" who "oppose gay marriage." Of course, it never occurred to her that I, a rational person, might support conjugal marriage, much less that the word "bigot" might be an insulting calumny. Mercifully, another colleague arrived at that very moment to save me from having to respond. But the point was (once again) driven home: scholarship in the American academy is for the exchange of ideas and the pursuit of truth, unless those ideas are conservative and the truth is inconvenient for the liberal worldview.