James Joyner has stirred up a bit of a hornet’s nest over his complaints about Patrick Henry College and, by extension, the homeschool movement it is associated with. James argues that PHC and homeschooling, by and large, foster closed-mindedness and a lack of exposure to diverse points of view. Since PHC, for example, only hires Christians—and, from a reading of their “statement of faith,” only Christians who believe in scriptural inerrency—a PHC student is not going to be exposed to people with varying religious viewpoints within the academy. And to the extent home-schooled students (generally Caucasian, Christian, and middle-to-upper class) are exposed to diversity by interaction with other homeschooled students, one suspects the ethnic, religious, and economic diversity of the children interacted with will be minimal.

On the other hand, we have the recent discussion of Duke University’s lack of political diversity in its faculty—not to mention the reaction of the American Association of University Professors to proposals for academic bills of rights, which is basically to say, “yes, we think there should be political diversity—but, unlike racial and gender diversity, we’ll have none of that government oversight stuff to ensure it actually happens.” Such attitudes suggest that the AAUP doesn’t take these legitimate concerns of many students and faculty seriously.

I don’t disagree with the AAUP’s Committee A when it says that being confronted with controversy in the classroom is an essential part of a postsecondary education. However, when only conservative students are being confronted with that controversy, as is often the case, it seems that universities are failing in their missions to challenge and educate their students.

But—that said—the antidote to the Dukes of the world is not to establish more Patrick Henrys and Oral Roberts. Rather it is for mainstream academe to take seriously its commitment to ensure a broad and challenging education for all of its students without marginalizing some for their political or religious beliefs.