Robert Brandon is a Jerk

From Andrew Sullivan and the Chronicle Online:

"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."

So said Robert Brandon, Chairman of the Philosophy Department at Duke University in response to an advertisement by the Duke Conservative Union regarding the schools lack of ideological diversity.

Let me see if I understand this, the conservatism of St. Aquinas, St. Augustine, Friedrich Hayek, David Hume, Thomas Jefferson, Milton Friedman, William Buckley, George Will, Thomas Sowell, Abraham Lincoln, John Paul II, James Baker, Condi Rice, Robert George, Irving Kristol, John Locke and Adam Smith, results from their stupidity. Whereas, the liberal intellectualism of Ted Kennedy, Ted Danson, The Dixie Chicks, Woody Harrelson, Cold Play, Madonna, Run DMC, Billy Bragg, Barbara Striesand, Johnny Depp, Walter Duranty, Sean Penn, and Janet Jackson is a result of their being smart?

With apologies to Douglas Adams, you're a jerk Brandon, a real kneebiter.

Posted by publius at February 16, 2004 04:15 PM