In a May 19 Register-Guard column mathematics professor Alexander Kleschev complained about the low numbers of "Republican" or "conservative" professors at the University of Oregon.

First, my last name is misspelled.

Second, why quotation marks? I was talking about real Republicans and real conservatives. I guess I should be grateful that I am not referred to as "mathematics" "professor"...

He mentioned a study (but provided no citation) showing a 15-to-1 ratio of Democrats to Republicans on the faculty.

Here is the study by Prof. Harbaugh. By the way, my opponents cite no references either which in my opinion is just fine for the genre of opinion piece (and word limits we operate under).

He went on to call for the equivalent of an affirmative action program for conservatives.

No, I did not. Reread my the article---I am saying explicitly: "if we don't want this to happen...".

Kleschev's argument has been made elsewhere on the UO campus lately. This specious argument lowers the level of debate about important challenges faced by our community.

Ad hominem attack---not worthy of reply.

The study he cited appears to be incomplete. There are categories of political views other than "Democrat" and "Republican" on the UO faculty - greens, socialists, libertarians, anarchists, feminist separatists, Third World or indigenous nationalists, many apolitical types and maybe even a few fascists. There is also considerable variation among Republicans and Democrats. Kleschev seems to equate "Republican" with "conservative" - another category mistake. "Conservative" has many meanings. There are religious cultural conservatives, nationalist pro-military conservatives, fiscal conservatives, libertarian conservatives. What is conservative to one person may be liberal to another.

The study is complete as far as I can tell, for it does account for the greens and other official political affiliations. The way I cited the study (for the lack of space) was the most unfavorable for the point I was trying to make, and even then it is very convincing (greens, for example are on the left and I skipped the data about them). If we do go into details though, my point gets even stronger. For example, my opponents correctly stress considerable variations among Republicans and Democrats. If we take those variations into account the situation will be even worse than the ratio of 15 to 1 suggests. Indeed, the Democrats on our campus tend to be very liberal, while Republicans tend to be rather moderate. For example, of the four republicans I know, all four are not religious, all four do not own guns and are indifferent to the second amendment, and three do not see any problem with abortions, so by all accounts our Republicans are not very conservative. If you look at the issues, the ratio of liberals to conservatives will be much bigger than 15 to 1.

His suggestion that we create "a professorship in the history of conservative thought" is practically impossible, because there is no consensus on what that term means.

This was just an example, a parenthetical remark, and one of several. However, I think there might be more consensus about it than you think, and perhaps more consensus than about the term women studies. At the moment I am getting an expert advise about it and will get back to the point later. Even if it turns out that there is no consensus, it does not necessarily prove that we should discard the idea. Look, there is no consensus about many things. For example, there is no consensus about the meaning of diversity. Should we then drop the idea because there is no consensus? I don't think so, and you obviously don't think so either.

Membership in racial or ethnic groups is not voluntary and do not change. Party affiliation and political views are voluntary and can change over time. The analogy between racial minority status and party affiliation or political views does not hold.

This popular argument seems to be beyond the point. I claim that the UO discriminates based on people's convictions and faith. You respond that people's convictions and faith are not something they are born with. So? I hope you don't believe it is O.K. to discriminate against people based on their convictions? You need to either argue that no discrimination occurs or agree that it does, and then you will hopefully have to agree that something needs to be done about it. But you have not provided any arguments in that direction so far.

Kleschev's suggested remedy is impractical.

The main remedy I suggested was to admit that the problem exists and start thinking together what to do about it. There is nothing terribly impractical about it.

If political affiliation were treated as a protected class, then people would change their affiliation to receive the benefits of that classification. The categories would eventually be rendered fluid and meaningless.

An interesting argument. This is actually one of the reasons why I find the idea of "affirmative action for conservatives" fishy and believe that something else, of a good will and voluntary nature, would be more appropriate. By the way, to a slightly smaller degree, your argument also plays against the idea of affirmative action based on the race, because the definitions involved are quite fuzzy and verification mechanisms undeveloped---remember Ward Churchill's "Native American roots", but also lots of other less publicized problems. For example, almost everybody can claim a minority status, as long as he says that he "feels" being a minority and had some minority grandgrandgrandfather, which is impossible to verify anyway.

Kleschev asks, "who suffered more?" He rightly concludes that this question is impossible to answer. He wrongly concludes that lacking an answer makes it impossible to distinguish between the educational effects of different demographic exclusions.

This is very unconvincing. Somehow you claim that you can measure effects of different demographic exclusions. This is almost as unbelievable as measuring who suffered more. As far as I know, Jews, for example, were not accepted to the universities in the Russian empire for several hundred years. This is a pretty serious "demographic exclusion". Catholics were excluded from the universities for centuries in England. I will rephrase my question from the article: "are you prepared to state that your measurements show that Chinese were excluded less than women?" If not, I am afraid my argument stands. When faculty members from former communist states speak at the University Senate against diversity Plan, citing their past experiences and mentioning millions of victims of totalitarian regimes, and during their speeches they are subject to hissing, booing, wild shouting and laughter from the audience, I think this is scandalous, too.

Kleschev describes the UO conversation around the Diversity Plan as a "divisive scandal." However, most UO faculty members welcome this conversation while holding diverse views about how such a plan should be formulated and enacted.

I did not "describe the UO conversation around the Diversity Plan as a "divisive scandal"." There is a constructive and quiet conversation around the UO Diversity Plan and there is a divisive scandal. You can find a constructive conversation on this web-site for example. Constructive conversations also happened at the UO diversity forums during the discussion of the second Plan. On the other hand, we also have a scandal. When the Associated Press story characterizes faculty reaction to the first Plan as a firestorm, it begins to look like a scandal. When the first Plan ties all life functions of the university to the never defined notion of cultural competency, it is a scandal. When you guys write letters such as this one, it is already a divisive scandal.

Kleschev seems to believe that the conversation around the Diversity Plan is only about preventing discrimination in admissions and hiring.

I don't believe that, and it doesn't follow from any of my comments.

The plan attends to many more domains than these. Its ultimate goal is to improve the climate for the whole UO community, in which ethnic minorities continue to be the targets of harassment, threats and racism; persons with disabilities continue to struggle for access; and so forth. An improved climate enhances our ability to recruit, retain and serve a diverse student population. A more diverse faculty and student population improves the quality of education for all UO students, and enhances scholarship by broadening the base of experience from which the scholarship emerges.

It is quite clear from my comments that my problem with the plan is not that it attends to too many domains, but that it attends to too few! One of those domains it does not attend to is diversity of thought. It sounds like I want more diversity and my opponents want less.

Kleschev's assertion that the only way to fairly diversify the faculty is to increase the numbers of any under-represented group grossly oversimplifies the issues.

I have never said anything about the only way. I am talking about what I consider as one of our biggest problems, and I feel it is especially important to talk about it now because nobody wants to even recognize that the problem exists. If I chose to speak about one important problem, it doesn't follow that I don't know about other important problems.

His suggestion that conservatives have experienced discrimination on a par with racial and cultural minority groups is empirically unsupportable.

In my article, I have already provided more proof of such discrimination than you have provided for the racial and gender discrimination in yours. I gave numbers and I gave arguments. You have not even tried to refute any of my numbers and any of my arguments yet. So what do you mean by "empirically unsupportable"?

Where the debate around diversity, fairness and education is concerned, we can do better than this.

Rather pointless ad hominem attack.

Seriously addressing the issue of student and faculty diversity will require asking basic questions: How did the campus demographics become so skewed?

This is exactly the kind of question I am asking: how did the campus become so skewed? Have you even read my article?

What counts as knowledge and expertise?

Pardon me my illiteracy in modern deconstructionist theories, but I don't consider this question particularly difficult. I guess I know where you are going with this---you know, he is a great chemist, a popular and effective teacher, and very active in service; but he disagrees with us on diversity issues, so we need to redefine knowledge and expertise, so that he does not count as an expert anymore... Good luck with this argument.

What is the function of a university in a democratic society? How have universities served to legitimize oppression?

This questions are very close to what I am asking.

How have they served as a place to grow social justice movements?

Less important but legitimate question. But it seems to take us quite far from the topic at hand.

Such questions require careful scholarly discussion, not partisan name-calling.

Agreed. So do you want to take back your ad hominem attacks above and below?

Developing constructive plans that preserve what is best about universities while reforming what needs reform will require interdisciplinary collaboration. We believe there are many careful thinkers in the university community, many of whom recoil at the tone of the debate. But now is not the time for silence. In the absence of reasonable voices, the university will be represented by increasingly unreasonable voices. Intelligent community-building will be replaced with spectacle. This has already happened in national politics. It is up to us to prevent it from happening locally.

Could you please be more specific: what exactly are those increasingly unreasonable voices? Can you give examples? If you hint at me, why don't you say so directly? (You know the drill: I will happily announce that I ignore ad hominem attacks). If you meant somebody else, I guess I am not one of the insiders to understand the hint.

I feel very satisfied when my opponents don't even try to refute my arguments, but instead say that I am "lowering the level of the debate" and that my voice is "increasingly unreasonable one". My arguments must be good!