Academics In Opposition

The chairman of Tulane University's political science department is no academic bomb thrower. But when Paul Lewis looked closely at the "initiatives for the race and gender enrichment" of the university proposed by a faculty committee -- well, he says, "I raised a stink." The plan implied a quota system for hiring more black and female teachers and the appointment within all departments of "race and gender liaison persons," whom Lewis likens to political commissars. Thanks largely to the challenge he organized, Lewis is a controversial figure at Tulane, but the initiatives are now being revised. "I never even heard the...