If you are not “of” an endeavor, it’s easy to import a way of thinking about it, including making calls for change. Many Conservatives criticize higher education, saying that it suffers from liberal bias, and argue that the solution is to achieve balance by including/accentuating Conservative views. The problem is that many who advance the argument and make the contention are not schooled in academia, and they do not appreciate or understand how academic viewpoints arise. Academic viewpoints emerge through academic discourse. Of course, academic discourse has its own form of politics — and with it, issues that have yet to be satisfactorily addressed internally (e.g., greater cross-disciplinary dialogue). But imposing a political solution on higher education is not the answer, because it is a misguided transplant, a means of achieving outcomes preferred by political adherents (upper-case P). “The current ham-handed approaches of federal and state governments and foundations to fund increased viewpoint diversity will do nothing for this problem because they fail to understand it in the first place,” writes Terrence J. McDonald, Arthur F. Thurnau Professor of History at the University of Michigan. He continues by asserting that contemporary efforts by politicians to establish viewpoint diversity programs, institutes, and centers “misunderstands completely.” Read his commentary here.