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hoover.not[f83,jmc]	Notes on the Hoover controversy

1. Who is guilty of repetitiousness.
The niggling over underlining the if.

2. Put your criteria in writing.

3. Gerrymandering the criteria.

4. What if Moses's proposal were turned down, because his politics
are too left?

5. I don't think Marty Lipset is doing Hoover any favor.
I hope that Campbell is correct in his bragging.  It is important
that conservative ideas be thought out intellectually.

6. One of the major criticisms of conservativism was that it didn't
have an intellectual basis.  This situation has been greatly improved
by the activity of the Hoover Institute and similar "conservative
think tanks".  Liberals as well as conservatives in the academic
world should be pleased by this.

However, the effect of putting Hoover hiring under regular University
procedures might destroy the ability of Hoover to obtain conservative
scholars.  These scholars would then have to run a political gauntlet
in order to be hired.  Suppose, for example, that Hoover wanted to
hire James Watt to write about his governmental experience in trying
to implement conservative ideas on how the Interior Department
should be run.  Can anyone believe that the occasion would be missed
to continue the attacks that drove him from office in the form of an
attack on his appointment?  Several of the present Hoover appointments,
whose scholarly activity and legitimacy no-one dares attack, would
never make it through the politicization.

Apparently the Stanford Political Science Department hasn't a single
Republican.  There was one, but he retired.  So be it.  I presume this
represents a consensus among academically active political science,
coupled perhaps with a statistical fluctuation.  I haven't heard of
any refusals to hire or denials of tenure made on liberal political
grounds.  However, this creates an intellectual environment in which
ideas that often get a majority of American voters are regarded as
beyond the pale and disqualifying per se.