March 19, 2012 08:45 PM UTC

Conservative Affirmative Action, Bruce Ben$on Style

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• by: Colorado Pols

A long-time dream of GOP kingpin-turned-University of Colorado President Bruce Benson has finally been realized, as the Associated Press reports via the Fort Collins Coloradoan:

Officials at the University of Colorado at Boulder–long considered a stronghold of liberal thought — say $1 million in donations will fund a series of conservative guest scholars.

The Daily Camera reports CU first unveiled plans in 2007 to establish a “Visiting Chair in Conservative Thought and Policy,” an endowment that would require $7 million to $9 million to establish. But the economy forced the university to scale back those plans and run a pilot program to bring visiting scholars to the campus for at least three years.

We noted the original push for a “conservative studies” professor from newly-appointed CU President Benson back in 2008. If you’ve followed the long debate–not really so much a debate as a talking point for Republicans–over “academic freedom” on college campuses, you might find it curious that conservatives who have been arguing against “bias in the classroom” have decided that the solution to their problem is…institutionalizing bias in the classroom!

One might argue they were on more defensible ground as conservatives before they embarked on a program of “affirmative action” for conservative college professors. We’ve heard, though, that their eloquent case tends to devolve into a rant about Ward Churchill pretty quickly.

Bottom line: once a Republican becomes school president, points of view tend to change.