Thanks for the news on the second visiting scholar at Colorado. Maybe it could serve as a template for programs at other schools unable to resist million-dollar gifts.

I know it’s wrong, but there’s a part of me that would have liked to have seen “Black Lives Matter” protests against Thomas Aquinas.

Just saw a post from a successor to Hayward in the same faculty position, that was quite positive; maybe there is hope for even the Republic of Boulder after all.

https://www.jamesgmartin.center/2017/05/let-light-shine-year-visiting-scholar-conservative-thought-university-colorado/

“A little over four years ago the University of Colorado, Boulder began a three-year pilot program that I believe has no precedent in American higher education. With the help of private donors, and the support of the university’s board, president, and chancellor, the school created the position of Visiting Scholar of Conservative Thought and Policy.

According to its supporters, the chair’s purpose is to advance that type of diversity–political and ideological diversity–that seems a natural fit for a public academic institution that has the motto, “Let Your Light Shine.”

With its fifth year beginning in the fall of 2017, it is safe to say that this is no longer a pilot program, but a permanent fixture of the university. I was honored to have served as the 2016-17 occupant of the chair, which is a full-time faculty appointment with a regular 2-2 course load.

With all my grades now turned in, I’d like to offer some reflections on my time in Boulder.
…
In the fall, I team-taught the course “Thomas Aquinas” with philosophy professor Robert Pasnau, one of the world’s leading Aquinas scholars. As I told Bob when he invited me to team-teach with him, “You know, you’re the Aquinas scholar; I’m just the Thomist.” He responded, “But you have skin in the game.”

The class went marvelously. I lectured on the aspects of Aquinas’ philosophy I knew best and that I’ve taught before–on God and the nature of law–while Bob focused on Aquinas’ views on human nature, free will, and right and wrong action.
…
Three days after the final exam, [in a different class] I was so pleased to receive this message from one of the students in that class: “I have never seen a class in which the students spoke more freely. They (we) truly felt their ideas were welcomed and matter.”

In addition to teaching, the visiting scholar’s position comes with other responsibilities: (1) inviting guest speakers to campus, and (2) accepting as many invitations as possible to speak to local civic, political, and religious groups.

Concerning the first, I decided to invite speakers who touched on cultural themes that are rarely entertained in a serious fashion by the popular conservative television-radio media complex (which, for most people, especially in the academy, represents the essence of conservatism).

So, in the fall I brought George Yancey (University of North Texas) and Patrick Deneen (University of Notre Dame) to campus. Yancey spoke on “Conservatives in Academia: Is There Bias Against Them?,” while Deneen gave a talk on “The End of Liberalism: Why the World is Falling Apart.”

In the spring, the university hosted lectures by Elizabeth Corey (Baylor University), who spoke on “Can Conservatives Support Diversity?,” and author Rod Dreher, who discussed his New York Times bestseller, The Benedict Option.

I am happy to report that the lectures were well-attended and that there were none of the disturbances or protests that we’ve seen on other campuses throughout the U.S. over the past few years. Audience members asked probing questions, but they were clearly offered in a spirit of inquiry and truth-seeking, even when it was obvious that the questioner strongly disagreed with the speaker. That’s the sort of critical dialogue that many of us–regardless of our political views–believe to be integral to university life.

As for local talks, I gave plenty of them, most often about our fundamental freedoms and why everyone should defend them.

What became my standard “stump speech” focused on the growing indifference to the attacks on freedom of speech, association, and religion in the wider culture, but especially on our college campuses. As far as I could tell, my message was well received, even by many listeners who do not identify as conservative or libertarian.

I believe the main reason for this is that I framed this talk as a defense of what I like to call “rock-ribbed liberalism,” about which I have written elsewhere: “I miss liberalism. Real liberalism. Not this namby-pamby, afraid-of-your-own-shadow faint-hearted liberalism. What I miss is the rock-ribbed, truth-seeking, justice-pursuing, rights-defending, I-don’t-agree-with-you-but-I’ll-defend-your-right-to-say-it liberalism. It was the liberalism that defeated Nazism and Communism. It was your daddy’s liberalism….”

This approach resonated with a lot of people.

From what I could gather, and from my numerous conversations on campus, the administration, faculty, and staff are generally supportive of the visiting scholar program. Although there is no doubt that CU, like virtually all public universities, is overwhelmingly liberal in its political composition, I never felt unwelcome or out of place. For me, it was almost as if the campus was whispering in my ear, “Let your light shine.” ”

To make the obvious points: this visiting professorship is not protested because it’s a “tame lion” – it doesn’t threaten the overwhelming Left (not liberal) consensus as do the professors who “go off the reservation” or the one-time speakers who challenge the orthodoxy of the Left over current affairs (not Thomas Aquinas).
Also, his “rock-ribbed v. namby-pamby liberalism” (I read the linked piece) is really directed to conservatives (the only remaining proponents of any classical liberal principles) who aren’t willing to stand up for those principles against the Left (you will note that Prof. Weinstein only objected to the SJWs when his own ox was gored).

That’s why leftists find it so difficult to change. They know what the pack will do to them, because they have done it themselves to others. Basically they are cowards.
* * *
Not a monopoly of the Left, but they are the most obviously hypocritical presenters of the syndrome today.

http://www.snopes.com/college/exam/socialism.asp

“An economics professor at Texas Tech said he had never failed a single student before but had, once, failed an entire class. The class had insisted that socialism worked and that no one would be poor and no one would be rich, a great equalizer. The professor then said ok, we will have an experiment in this class on socialism. All grades would be averaged and everyone would receive the same grade so no one would fail and no one would receive an A.

After the first test the grades were averaged and everyone got a B. The students who studied hard were upset and the students who studied little were happy. But, as the second test rolled around, the students who studied little had studied even less and the ones who studied hard decided they wanted a free ride too; so they studied little …

The second Test average was a D! No one was happy. When the 3rd test rolled around the average was an F. The scores never increased as bickering, blame, name calling all resulted in hard feelings and no one would study for anyone else. All failed to their great surprise and the professor told them that socialism would ultimately fail because the harder to succeed the greater the reward but when a government takes all the reward away; no one will try or succeed.”

Everybody wants everything to be fair for everyone else, so long as they get to keep what’s rightfully theirs.

The real-life example, of course, is Jamestown.
https://www.cato.org/blog/socialism-jamestown

And to show that we’re not in an echo chamber here’s the take from Slate, which mostly proves that they are taking the Thanksgiving part of the story literally but not seriously.
http://www.slate.com/articles/life/holidays/2014/11/thanksgiving_socialism_the_strange_and_persistent_right_wing_myth_that_thanksgiving.html

I’m not convinced the Left has any principles at all, not in the sense that we mean when we use that word.

John Rawls talks a lot about fairness. But fairness is not a principle. It only sounds like a principle. Why? Because. unlike justice, fairness is pretty much only in the eye of the beholder – which makes it way too arbitrary to be a principle of any sort.

…

Fairness is left-wing tyranny’s foot in the door precisely because it’s a blank check. There is literally no end to its demands; fairness can never be achieved, and can never be satisfied. It requires a dedicated fairness policeman to stand over every process, every transaction, every situation, and enforce fairness – as he sees it.

* * *
Socialism’s primary selling point is “fairness” is it not?
And, per Hayek et al., it never ends well.
“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. They may be more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth. This very kindness stings with intolerable insult. To be “cured” against one’s will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level of those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals.”

― C.S. Lewis, God in the Dock: Essays on Theology (Making of Modern Theology)

http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/526469-of-all-tyrannies-a-tyranny-sincerely-exercised-for-the-good

[There is a high probability that everything I know I learned from Lewis, Heinlein, and Dorothy Dunnett.
Or maybe I like them because we all know the same things.]

Whereas, politicians move from the Right to the Left all the time. As they get older, they grow in avarice.
* * *
One wonders, of course, if they were ever anything but masqueraders in the first place, and simply threw off the disguise.
But, Leftism certainly pays better these days (another interesting paradox considering the public ideology of the Left, as opposed to the hidden agendas of its leadership).

I wasn’t actually vouching for Jazz’s scholarship, only noting that he posted frequently on the subject, as an antidote to the MSM’s failure to mention socialism as the cause of the disaster.