The University of Colorado has announced three finalists to be the university’s first visiting scholar in conservative thought. The candidates will all be visiting campus soon to participate in public forums, meet with university leaders, and to serve as guest teachers in the classroom
The new post was created with donor money to increase the diversity of ideas on the Boulder campus. University Chancellor Phil DiStefano stated that the scholar selected for this two-semester position “will contribute to the diversity of thought on campus by encouraging debate and discussion, by sharing their scholarship and career experience, and by hosting public events in the campus community.”
One of the three finalists is Linda Chavez. A graduate of the University of Colorado, she was nominated by President Bush in 2001 as secretary of labor but withdrew her nomination. Since that time she has been the leader of the Center for Equal Opportunity, an organization that is a strong opponent of affirmative action in higher education admissions.
Chavez is the author of Out of the Barrio: Toward a New Politics of Hispanic Assimilation (Basic Books 1991), An Unlikely Conservative: The Transformation of an Ex-Liberal (Basic Books 2002), and Betrayal: How Union Bosses Shake Down Their Members and Corrupt American Politics (Crown Books, 2004).
The other two finalists for the position are men: Steven Hayward of Ashland University in Ohio and Ron Haskins, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.
Update: On March 13, Steven Hayward was selected for the post.