'Humiliating in practice': Op-ed advocates eliminating conservative scholar program

In his recently published op-ed, Colorado Newsline editor Quentin Young has one demand for the University of Colorado Boulder: eliminate the school’s dedicated conservative teaching position.

Every year since 2013, the Conservative Thought and Policy Program at CU Boulder brings one scholar to campus to discuss conservative thought in the fields of “policy, military, and media communities, among others.”

 The position is open to any “individual who is deeply engaged in either the analytical scholarship or practice of conservative thought and policymaking, or both.” 

In his op-ed, Young  says the conservative scholar position was “never a good idea in conception, and it has proved humiliating in practice.”

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He also claims that the purpose of the position is to introduce “right-wing teaching into course offerings.”

 Indeed, the program is vital to maintaining a culture of viewpoint diversity at CU Boulder. According to the program description, this position keeps alive the “tradition of fostering intellectual diversity on the Boulder campus.” 

John Eastman, a former professor at Chapman University, was last year’s visiting conservative scholar.  He has a reputation for being controversial, mainly due to his reaction to the 2020 presidential election. 

Eastman spoke at the January 6th “Stop the Steal” rally, and has since been a strong voice against election fraud in the United States.

“We know there was fraud,” Eastman said at the rally. “We know dead people voted.”

After his participation in the rally, Eastman was fired from Chapman University and had his Spring classes cancelled at CU Boulder.

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In his op-ed, Young reflects on the cancellation of John Eastman’s classes, claiming “administrators should have canceled the conservative teaching position entirely.”

Young himself concedes that “defenders of the visiting conservative scholar program argue that it ensures some measure of intellectual diversity on campus, where progressive views are perceived as dominant.”

A University of Colorado Boulder spokesperson told Campus Reform that the program “plays a valuable role in fostering a wider consideration of various perspectives, and CU Boulder expects that it will continue to do so.”

Quentin Young did not respond to Campus Reform’s requests for further clarification on his points.