…Some scholars at CU's Rothgerber Conference, [like] University of San Diego law professor Lawrence Alan Alexander, [argued] …that “crude propagandizing increasingly passes as teaching,” and that the “degree of political homogeneity in academia is mind boggling.”

He said that while academic disciplines like math and philosophy had remained free of a “herd mentality” of viewpoints, others, like history and ethnic studies, have become political battlegrounds. Several state legislatures have recently introduced bills seeking to ensure a diversity of viewpoints at colleges and universities.

…[Robert Nagel, CU's Rothgerber Professor of Constitutional Law] argued that a little outside intervention isn't necessarily bad, as when Gov. Bill Owens' condemned [Ward] Churchill and called for an investigation.

“The unwillingness of university faculties to take seriously the educational value of intellectual diversity on faculties, the well-documented, deeply entrenched commitment to left-wing orthodoxy in many departments, ...is a real threat to intellectual values, and outside intervention may reinvigorate those values,” Nagel said in a prepared speech.

“More generally, reflexive resistance to outside influence as a threat to academic freedom may itself be a threat to academic values,” Nagel added.

Fred Schauer, First Amendment professor at the Harvard University Kennedy School of Government, chimed in, and said the word of a bunch of professors should be taken with a “grain of salt.”

“Academics talking about academic freedom isn't unlike reporters talking about reporter's privilege, priests talking about the Trinity or Texans talking about oil,” he said.