The "Scalia affair" is, as we say, "history." But my colleague, Professor of Political Science Hadley Arkes, has put a gloss on this particular piece of history that begs a response, not least because, in the last paragraph of his opinion piece in the Feb. 25 issue of The Student, he addresses me, though not by name.

Readers of The Amherst Student would have no way of knowing that Professor Arkes and I had agreed to an exchange of views on abortion in a forum organized by the College Democrats in collaboration with the College Republicans some time this semester. He writes that "some time ... [will] have to pass before I participated (sic) with any of them (the signers of the letter) in a public meeting." Since I was the signatory who was intending to engage Professor Arkes in a public meeting, he was obviously addressing me. I will return to this in a moment, but first it is important to reflect on Professor Arkes' gloss on the affair.

Professor Arkes characterizes the matter thus: "What was on display, in the reaction to Justice Scalia, was the ferocity and the state of mind that has made Amherst a seminary of intolerance that will brook no trace of arguments on the other side ..." There are any number of puzzling things going on here, not least of which is why Professor Arkes should take criticism of the Justice personally. Surely Professor Arkes, who knows me well, was not surprised by my opposition to Scalia's views. The fact is, I fear, that Professor Arkes' response has less to do with defending tolerance for other viewpoints than signalling the exact opposite.

Let's start with his characterization of Amherst as a "seminary of intolerance." What has Amherst done to earn this? How does criticism of someone's views become intolerance? How does a policy declaring that it is wrong to demean or otherwise disparage individuals because of their race, religion, sexual orientation, etc. become a sign of intolerance? Professor Arkes laments that this renders people who object to homosexuality mute. It does not, any more than it precludes any of us from questioning affirmative action, Roe v. Wade or same-sex marriage. It simply means that we ought not use an individual's race, sexual orientation or religion invidiously. Professor Arkes is free to disapprove of homosexuality. He ought not be free to demean or devalue someone who is a homosexual. It seems rather odd for someone so devoted to ethical obligations to claim tolerance for intolerance.

Clearly, Professor Arkes feels beleaguered, but why? The answer is straightforward, but not immediately apparent to students and faculty who have not paid close attention to Professor Arkes' activities over the past several years. Professor Arkes has been doing everything he can to insure that professors who share his intellectual perspective and political agenda get hired here. Several years ago, in concert with some alumni of the College who share his views, a foundation was created, with Professor Arkes in charge, whose mission is to insure that Professor Arkes' ideological perspective gets institutionalized at the College. Lest there be any confusion on this, Professor Arkes' effort is, so far as I am aware, unlike any in the College's history. Faculty jockey to get a new position in sociology or biology or fine arts, but faculty do not jockey to hire someone to teach a subject from a specific and unvarying ideological point of view. But that is what Professor Arkes is trying to do. I'm sure that Professor Arkes deplores human cloning, in the biological sense, but he is clearly intent on cloning himself in terms of the College's curriculum.

To accomplish this goal, he has taken it upon himself to disseminate to Amherst alumni and, more broadly, to his friends and colleagues on the extreme right, a self-serving caricature of Amherst College, its students, faculty and the curriculum. For example, Professor Arkes posted a variant of the "op-ed" piece that appeared in The Student on the website of the conservative Claremont Institute . The title is revealing: "Mau-Mauing Scalia: A Report from Darkest Amherst." The message is clear: The College is drowning in a tide of intolerant relativism and intellectual decay. In letters to alumni, Professor Arkes plays the same tune and urges alumni to pressure the administration to hire faculty who share Professor Arkes' politically conservative views.

There are many reasons why places like Amherst are distinguished and places like Bob Jones University are not: One of these reasons, and it is a very important reason, is that we hire professors because of their intellect and their commitment to unfettered inquiry, not because of their political ideology.

Regrettably, Professor Arkes is not waging this battle singlehandedly and the target is not just Amherst. In an article in the Feb. 13 Chronicle of Higher Education, leftist-turned-conservative David Horowitz presents a case for what he calls the "Academic Bill of Rights," a thinly veiled proposal to insure that conservatives will be hired on our nation's campuses. Affirmative action is fine for right-wing academics, though they oppose affirmative action for anyone else. (The Chronicle, exemplifying a balance of which I hope Professor Arkes would approve, includes a critique of Horowitz by Stanley Fish and an essay by Sara Hebel who reports on efforts to get legislation promoting Horowitz's "Academic Bill of Rights" on the legislative agendas of several states as well as in Congress.)

I must confess to sadness that my colleague, Hadley Arkes, would fail to see that a decorous protest of a public figure, who has no problem gaining access to the media to propound his views, is different, by orders of magnitude, from declining to engage in a discussion with a colleague over an issue that has bedeviled our nation for 30 years. But now I think I understand Professor Arkes' high dudgeon: If he and I were to respectfully debate abortion, it would be harder for him to continue to portray Amherst as a hotbed of intolerance. We would all be better served were Professor Arkes less worried about "little engines of malice" and ventriloquists (and their student "dummies") and more interested in engaging his colleagues over important issues with which we all wrestle.

Jan Dizard is a professor of sociology at Amherst College.