I have an article titled "Viewpoint Diversity" Requirements as a New Fairness Doctrine forthcoming in several months in the George Mason Law Review, and I wanted to serialize a draft of it here. There is still time to edit it, so I'd love to hear people's feedback. The material below omits the footnotes (except a few that I've moved into text, marked with {}s, as I normally do when I move text within quotes); if you want to see the footnotes—or read the whole draft at once—you can read this PDF. You can see my argument about why viewpoint diversity requirements are likely to chill controversial faculty speech here. Here is a follow-up section on why such requirements are likely to also be a dangerous tool for government control, and a section discussing the argument that they are nonetheless necessary because of the magnitude of bias within the academy.
[VII.] Tool for Government Control
So far, we have discussed the likely viewpoint-based chilling effect of viewpoint diversity rules and their likely viewpoint-based implementation by government officials—much as with the Fairness Doctrine—even when the officials are acting in perfect good faith. Even officials who are trying hard to be fair-minded and open-minded will have to choose between viewpoints that need to be represented and those that need to be omitted.
