Diversity in Academia

The University of Chicago's John Cochrane, noting a Daily Princetonian report that of donors in the presidential campaign who listed Princeton University as their employer, 157 gave to the Obama campaign, while 2 gave to the Romney campaign, observes, "The point is diversity. If you never hear from the other side, if nobody where you live and work has anything remotely like their views, you become insular, and your own opinions, never challenged, can harden on serious mistakes. Academia especially profits when lots of widely different views contest, not when it becomes a claque of uniformity."