On February 9, the Duke Conservative Union (DCU) published an advertisement in the campus newspaper, The Chronicle, that included two quotations from Duke President Nan Keohane:

"My message is straightforward: Diversity is an important value that must be nurtured and used in higher education."
—Nan Keohane, November 1997

"...people learn better when they are challenged by things that they don't expect, when they do not have all their prejudices and assumptions confirmed, but instead have some of their ideas shaken up as part of an education."
—Nan Keohane, February 2003

The DCU then proceeded to list the party affiliation statistics of Duke's deans and eight University departments, which revealed an approximate Democrat-Republican ratio of 17-1. Then they asked a simple question: "Is this diversity?"

In a stunning response to the DCU advertisement, Professor Robert Brandon, Chair of the Philosophy Department, is quoted in The Chronicle on February 10 as saying,

"We try to hire the best, smartest people available. If, as John Stuart Mill said, stupid people are generally conservative, then there are lots of conservatives we will never hire. Mill's analysis may go some way towards explaining the power of the Republican party in our society and the relative scarcity of Republicans in academia. Players in the NBA tend to be taller than average. There is a good reason for this. Members of academia tend to be a bit smarter than average. There is a good reason for this too."

The sentiment itself is shocking coming from the chair of any academic department, but also shocking is the fact that the chairman of the philosophy department at Duke is misquoting John Stuart Mill. What Mill wrote, in a footnote discussing Disraeli in Considerations on Representative Government, was that the Conservative Party in England was "the stupidest party."

Additional Information:

Durham, We Have a Problem: http://www.newsensemagazine.org/article.php?aid=32

Original ad: http://www.dukeconservativeunion.org/

Article quoting Brandon: http://www.chronicle.duke.edu/vnews/display.v/ART/2004/02/10/4028d1724320b?in_archive=1
http://www.biology.duke.edu/research_by_area/eeob/brandon.html

Follow-up column: http://www.chronicle.duke.edu/vnews/display.v/ART/2004/02/23/4039f98d957f5?in_archive=1

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