In "A Golf Story," which appeared recently in the Claremont Review of Books, I questioned whether President Barry Mills is serious about wanting more intellectual diversity at Bowdoin. The essay generated mostly smoke, but amid the smoke there lie important questions.
How intellectually diverse is Bowdoin today? Not very, if political party affiliation is any indication. Only Professor of Social Sciences Jean Yarbrough in her April 22 op-ed "Bowdoin should examine its lack of diversity" challenged my claim that no more than 4 percent of the Bowdoin faculty is Republican. She thinks my figure is probably too high.
But perhaps there is no need to count Republican noses, for, as a number of my critics pointed out, party affiliation may not be the best measure of what I am calling "intellectual diversity." OK. So what then do we mean by the term and how might it be measured?
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