First Amendment Showdown: Intellectual Diversity Mandates and the Academic Marketplace

Once described as a quintessential marketplace of ideas by the Supreme Court of the United States, the academic marketplace has been criticized recently for institutionalizing a left-leaning ideology within its curriculum and academic discourse. As a result, national activists and organizations have been calling on state legislatures and university administrators to adopt policies and report on steps taken to encourage intellectual diversity and protect political and cultural minorities from faculty bias and academic retribution in the classroom and other university settings. But who would win a constitutional showdown between the academy and those seeking to infuse academic discourse with alternative viewpoints? Based on an analysis of the First Amendment concerns at stake in this ongoing controversy, this article concludes that university administrators should have the upper hand in such a constitutional challenge given the specific characteristics and selective nature of the academic marketplace.