As College Insurrection reported back in February, UC Boulder broke with tradition and sought to hire a conservative professor.

Things must have gone well because Valerie Richardson of The Washington Times is now reporting that the school wants more.

Conservatives wanted: Colorado University seeks intellectual diversity at liberal bastion

DENVER — The University of Colorado hired a visiting conservative professor this year, but conservatives don’t want to stop there.

Republicans on the University of Colorado Board of Regents pushed Tuesday for greater intellectual diversity on campus, starting with the hiring of professors and instructors in the humanities who hold right-of-center views.

James Geddes, the Republican regent leading the charge, said the university could raise its national reputation by taking “an active approach” in diversifying its academic departments.

“If we don’t do that, that’s a dead department. It’s dead,” said Mr. Geddes. “Nobody’s going to challenge anyone else, nobody’s going to debate, because they all think the same.”

The hourlong discussion marked something of a milestone in the decades-old national debate over intellectual diversity on campus. While conservatives have long griped about the suppression of right-of-center thought on campuses, major universities have been largely unwilling to wrestle publicly with the issue at the highest levels of leadership.

“To take the discussion that far is something of an anomaly,” said William Casement, author of “Making College Right” (National Association of Scholars, 2013). “There are lots of people pushing for this, but to see a serious discussion like this is unusual. It’s the recognition of a problem that a lot of people wouldn’t recognize or admit to.”

Despite its reputation as a bastion of liberalism, the university has proved more open than most other colleges to the concerns of conservatives. In March, the university hired Steven Hayward to serve as its first visiting professor of conservative thought and policy, a position funded with $1 million in private donations.