I can't believe the naivety of the CLS Federalist member who believes that ideological considerations play little to no part in hiring decisions.

Wake up man, they not only play a part but they are crucial. It is the reason that Yale does not have a single conservative member on their faculty and why NYU and CLS have maybe a couple.

If Mr. Waxman had worked in the Clinton administration with the same credentials i.e. Supreme Court Clerk, this would not be an issue. Waxman, does not appear to be even particularly ideologically.

Lat, please devote some postings to the often overlooked but incredibly important lack of ideological diversity amongst professors and students at the elite law schools.

Please take a look at page 7 of NYU Commentator http://www.law.nyu.edu/studentorgs/commentator/current_issue/current.pdf to recognize the absurdity of political correctness from a bunch of law students who ironically do their best to suppress ideological diversity at NYU and go out of their way to make people with opposing political views and judicial philosophies to be unwelcome. This applies to fellow students and visiting justices such as Scalia.

What's funny is that you are willing to accept the allegation that there is controversy surrounding Mr. Waxman's hiring, even though the author of this article, despite his best efforts, couldn't produce ANY evidence of liberal resistance, except for "a recent letter to the editor in a Maine newspaper."

Mr. Lat, how long have you been beating your wife?

Waxman was offered a job at Columbia. A member of the CLS Federalist Society, offered the opportunity to rage against liberal bias in a major newspaper, instead says he doesn't think there's a significant liberal bias in hiring at Columbia. Waxman is also being considered for jobs at Yale and NYU. John Yoo says it "would not surprise him" if academics were to discriminate against Bush administration lawyers, although he offers no examples of it actually happening. His loony positions on Presidential powers and the Geneva Conventions didn't keep him off the faculty at Boalt Hall.

So the story seems to be: there is no indication of discrimination against Waxman and no sign of discrimination against Bush administration lawyers. But such a thing is imaginable, so let's publish that implication. In fact, let's put it under a headline that implies there's a big fight going on at Columbia so that we can all skip the actual article and just cluck about "political correctness" and how the deck is clearly stacked against the people who've been running the entire federal government for the last six years.

Someday, some Bush administration lawyer with a degree from Regent Law School who spent two years advocating torture will actually get denied a faculty position somewhere. Clearly, the only explanation for such an event would be a raging case of "political correctness."

Enough, already. Quit raging against a "culture of victimization" while aiding and abetting it. And quit advocating torture, while you're at it.

You are an idiot if you think that legal academia does not discriminate against political conservatives. Waxman if you read the article is not necessarily assured of a job.

John Yoo, whatever you think of his positions on torture, was a Supreme Court Clerk and a brilliant thinker. He was on the faculty at Boalt prior to his service in the Bush administration. It would have generated tremendous controversy if he was not allowed back.

The deck is clearly stacked against conservatives in academia, which is why even Supreme Court clerks who happen to be conservative are in many cases not at first tier schools. The faculty at George Mason is full of well credentialed conservatives who if they were liberal probably would be teaching at top 10 schools.

"Running the Federal Government" as you put it, has little to do with being discriminated against in academic circles where conservatives are vastly underrepresented.

BTW, I find it odd that a liberal, would write, "Quit raging against a "culture of victimization"" as that tends to be what liberals do most.

I don't care about equality of results, I do care about equality of opportunity and right now that does not exist for conservative academics.

Apologies, Waxman is assured a job at CLS, however, that in no way assures him that this controversy will not play a role in denying him tenure down the road.

Waxman is not a conservative; at most, he is a moderate or a centrist leaning to the right. Waxman clerked for Souter and, like Goldsmith at Harvard, he was opposed to some of the conservative policies of the Bush administration. Waxman is more or less the equivalent on the right as Joe Lieberman or Zell Miller is liberal.

The fact is that the faculty at most top law schools is so far left that there is not a single professor who is a mainstream conservative on most issues. Any professor who is labelled a "conservative" is typically a professor who has conservative sympathies either on economics, foreign policy, or (less often) social issues. At Harvard, for example, Mary Ann Glendon is considered conservative because she is religious and socially conservative, even though she is economically liberal. Similarly, Charles Fried is considered conservative even though he is very socially liberal. In a truly balanced school, Fried and Glendon would be in the middle, and the rest of the faculty would be either to the right or to the left of them.

Also, even at Regent or Liberty University, where most professors are conservatives, you would not find any professor who is as far to the right as the likes of Duncan Kennedy, Brian Leiter and other crazies are to the left.