Invaders seek Boulder beachhead

Slated on Backbone Radio, May 18 Listen every Sunday, 5-8pm on 710 KNUS, Denver... 1460 KZNT, Colorado Springs... and streaming live at 710knus.com.

"The right is coming, the right is coming." That's the cry at CU-Boulder after this week's announcement of plans to endow a chair in conservative thought and policy. The liberal faculty are scandalized. Heaven forbid there should be "a political test for any kind of hiring," said marketing professor Margaret Campbell to a reporter. As if the university isn't already in the grip of such a test. You can picture Campbell pedaling through the halls of ivy on her low-emission (or zero-emission if she doesn't breathe) bicycle, Paul Revere style, warning the local Marxists, Obamaniacs, and Ward-Churchillites that invasion is imminent. The armada consists of one -- count'em, one -- visiting professor of conservative studies, someone rabid like George Will or Condi Rice, saints preserve us.

Great fun, and I give the idea two cheers. Labeling the position "conservative" sends all the wrong messages, even though the talk of a political test is baseless paranoia; this is an academic post like any other, not a campaign school. But credit the CU administration for at least confronting the leftist brainlock that now dominates Boulder and most other campuses. It's a good debate to be having, even if the initial concept needs work.

Since 2004, Backbone Radio has pushed for true academic freedom and intellectual diversity in higher education, exactly as I did in the Colorado Senate. We're on top of this story for Sunday, May 18, and we'll stay on it when the dreaded invasion force hits the beaches -- or if it doesn't; you never know.

** Joining me on the show will be Regent Tom Lucero and the eminent Prof. Edward Rozek, who recently took a paid ad to alert Coloradans that CU's faculty is only 3% Republican. Plus the latest from Joseph C. Phillips, another scourge of the campus left.

** In the authors' corner, I'll talk with Joseph Smith about his new book on George Washington and the question of church and state, and with defense expert Kenneth Timmerman about his book "Untold Story of the Party of Surrender."

** And we'll take a close look at the suburban shootout over home rule in Centennial, an issue with implications for all Coloradans. Spokesmen for both sides in the 6/10 election will weigh in. For more on this, check our blog.

See you this weekend at the most principled, most patriotic, most faith-based, most Colorado-proud spot on your radio dial.

Yours for fewer polar bears, JOHN ANDREWS