AT THE ASSOCIATION OF AMERICAN LAW SCHOOLS, IT’S “CONSERVATIVES NOT WELCOME.”

As appropriate to its quasi-governmental status, the AALS nods toward non-partisanship. Its by-laws state that it “expects its member schools to value . . . diversity of viewpoints.”[2] Unfortunately, this commitment has been pure window-dressing. In its law school inspections the AALS often criticizes schools for lack of racial or gender diversity, and it makes a big issue of sexual-orientation diversity, but it never criticizes schools for lack of political diversity.

This is not because law faculties reflect the political diversity of the nation. Empirical evidence confirms the obvious; law faculties tilt overwhelmingly to the left.[3] And in its own programs the AALS displays the same bias. An announcement about the 2016 annual meeting included a list of thirteen scheduled “Speakers of Note.” One or two of them might be considered moderate or non-political, but all others were liberals or radicals; not one was a conservative or libertarian.

Because of the dearth of conservatives and libertarians on law faculties and AALS programs, I have been involved for over four years with several other law professors in trying to get the AALS to take its commitment to viewpoint diversity seriously. The recent Presidents (a new president is chosen every year) and the Executive Director have met with some of us, and they have been models of cordiality and have discussed our issues seriously.

Until recently, however, the Executive Committee, which effectively controls the AALS, rejected every one of our requests, including one for the creation of a task force to look into viewpoint diversity and make recommendations. It refused even to meet with us.

Perhaps state legislators and the federal Department of Education should communicate concern on this issue. But maybe not:

One might think that conservative state lawmakers would oppose state law schools’ paying hefty fees to a partisan left-wing organization. But as a member of the NAS for thirty years, I have finally realized that conservative lawmakers either don’t care about academia or consider it a lost cause.

This is disastrously short-sighted. Most state colleges and universities now serve as political action committees for the left, and their political spending dwarfs that of all other PACs, but lawmakers remain passive.

Hmm. We’ll see if that passivity continues.