The University of Colorado, Boulder, is the kind of campus that conservatives have long criticized as a bastion of liberal groupthink. That perception could start to change this year.

The school on Wednesday named Steven Hayward, a former fellow at the Heritage Foundation think tank, as its first visiting scholar of Conservative Thought and Policy. The position, which was funded with private donations and is among the first of its kind on a U.S. campus, was created to broaden the intellectual diversity among the faculty, said...