Following up on the intellectual diversity theme, you may find this article by Harvard Professor Ruth R. Wisse in The Wall Street Journal, of interest.

Wisse argues that while students are becoming more intellectually diverse, faculty is not:

… In fact, student opinion at elite schools has lately been growing more varied. Conservatives in particular have become more outspoken. Harvard’s Republican Club includes libertarians, fiscal conservatives, and social conservatives, who sometimes find common cause and sometimes don’t. The Right to Life caucus is a natural ally, though not all Republicans support its views on abortion.

Then there is the True Love Revolution, a Harvard group formed in 2006 “to give students a moral and political option in issues relating to sex and marriage.” Its members believe that liberationist attitudes toward sex, sexuality, and relationships damage students’ health and well-being….

In brief, political independence is alive and well, at least among students.

Nowadays, the pressure for conformism comes more from the faculty, which tips Democratic like the Titanic in its final throes…. Some professors make a habit of insulting Republican candidates and conservative ideas with the smirking assurance of talk-show hosts, unaware that their laugh lines reap from some students the contempt that they sow.

The increased political conformism at universities may be traced in part to the redefinition of diversity that accompanied the introduction of group preferences, aka “affirmative action.” ….

In part the policy has become a joke, with claimants to 1/32nd Cherokee heritage gaining preferential treatment as minority hires. What is not a joke is that the meaning of “diversity” has shifted from the intellectual to the racial-ethnic sphere, foreclosing discussion of certain subjects like affirmative action, gender differences and everything considered politically incorrect….

There’s a reason why it is so hard to change faculty lack of intellectual diversity.  While there’s a 100% undergraduate student turnover in four years, faculty takes a generation to turn over.