ACADEMIC LEANINGS

George Will (reg required) ponders some findings on the political allegiances of America's tenured establishment. One survey sums up the divide:

Cornell: 166 liberals, 6 conservatives.
Stanford: 151 liberals, 17 conservatives.
Colorado: 116 liberals, 5 conservatives.
UCLA: 141 liberals, 9 conservatives.

There's an unintended consequence to all this, Will argues. For all their brave talk of changing the world, universities are losing influence where it matters most:

"Academics such as the next secretary of state still decorate Washington, but academia is less listened to than it was. It has marginalized itself, partly by political shrillness and silliness that have something to do with the parochialism produced by what George Orwell called 'smelly little orthodoxies.'
"Many campuses are intellectual versions of one-party nations -- except such nations usually have the merit, such as it is, of candor about their ideological monopolies. In contrast, American campuses have more insistently proclaimed their commitment to diversity as they have become more intellectually monochrome."

OUCH

The falling-out between Home Secretary David Blunkett and ex-lover Kimberley Quinn is getting more public and acrimonious by the day.

Quinn's first husband apparently takes a dim view of her networking skills:

"Even when she’s lying in the grave she’ll be thinking if there’s anybody more interesting she could be lying next to.”

THE MULLAHS & THE BOMB

Fareed Zakaria reflects on the Iranian conundrum:

"If military strikes are not a good option, engagement isn't great, either. Some say that we aren't offering Iran real rewards. Perhaps that's true. They say that the Bush administration is unwilling to offer a "grand bargain" —normal relations with the United States in return for no nukes. Also true. But there is little evidence that better U.S. policy would produce an Iranian response. As Kenneth Pollack writes in his fine new book, "The Persian Puzzle," "It is the Iranian government that has consistently rejected engagement with the United States, whereas the U.S. has been ready for the Grand Bargain for twenty years." Recall that it was Ronald Reagan who sent the Iranians a cake, a Bible and his national-security adviser, hoping to begin a thaw. But many in Tehran believed—and still believe—that confrontation with the United States benefits them." (via Real Clear Politics):