A University of Colorado regent suggests that liberal arts departments should recruit more conservative professors to strike a better political balance on the notoriously liberal Boulder campus.

Jim Geddes, R-Sedalia, will likely raise the issue at a Board of Regents meeting next week when campus chancellors for the first time ever give formal reports about intellectual diversity efforts on their campuses.

A few years ago, the board added political, intellectual and philosophical diversity to its guiding principles, which Geddes says is a directive from the regents to campuses to enhance conservative faculty in departments where they’re underrepresented.

Geddes suggests that department leaders in liberal arts disciplines should take an honest assessment of their faculty and ask whether major viewpoints are represented. If there are too few conservatives, he suggests they recruit them when positions open up. They could look to a professor’s published works to glean political leanings.

“If I were sending one of my children off to college, I’d tell them I want you to go to a university where you are going to hear smart intellectuals on both sides of issues so you can learn for yourself and form your own opinions,” Geddes said. “I wouldn’t be in favor of sending my child to a purely conservative university. They’ve already had that course their whole life living with me.”The regents convene for a public meeting Tuesday at the Anschutz Medical Campus in Aurora.

Regent Stephen Ludwig, D-Denver, says he doubts it would even be legal to ask job candidates about their political affiliation.

“While we need to encourage a diversity of opinion, we have to be smart about that,” he said.

Boulder campus Chancellor Phil DiStefano, in his report, will likely tell the board about the selection of Steven Hayward as the board’s first visiting scholar in conservative thought and policy, which is a donor-funded position.

Hayward will begin in the fall and has said he wants to teach a course on free market environmentalism. He’ll also teach political science courses on constitutional law and American political thought. Hayward said he would like to co-teach a lecture with a professor who has liberal leanings.

The visiting scholar in conservative thought and policy is a three-year pilot program supported by private money. More than 20 donors have raised $1 million to support the program.

Campus spokesman Bronson Hilliard said both Chancellor DiStefano and his predecessor Bud Peterson have been committed to intellectual diversity efforts on campus.

“They have both publicly declared their support for political diversity and diversity of thought as a core value for the Boulder campus,” Hilliard said. “I’m hopeful that we’ll have a good story to tell the board that will diagram the actions we’ve taken over the last several years.”CU junior Susan Sparrow, a psychology major from Greeley, said her parents lean conservative. Last fall, she voted for Democrat Barack Obama in the presidential elections and said she thinks she’s becoming more liberal in college.

Sparrow said as a psychology student, she’s trained to evaluate others’ perspectives and try to understand their ways of thinking.

She said she’s never noticed a professor’s political bias in any of her classes.

“But maybe that’s because I lean liberal,” she said.

Contact Camera Staff Writer Brittany Anas at 303-473-1132 or anasb@dailycamera.com.