The University of Colorado (CU) is considering hiring more conservative scholars to its faculty. The regents of the university have been discussing whether or not more conservative professors will make for a more diverse teaching environment. Well, of course it will. But they still shouldn’t hire conservative scholars just because they are conservative.

CU is not a unique university when it comes to having a majority of liberal professors. A study conducted by Inside Higher Ed, an online publication focused on college and university issues, found that over 72 percent of college professors in the U.S. identified as leaning liberal while only 11 percent said they were conservative. Most colleges have more liberal professors than they do conservative professors. But is that a problem?

Not necessarily. While it is good to get a wide variety of opinions and viewpoints from professors, it shouldn’t be done at the expense of qualified liberal professors. I fear that CU looking to hire more conservative professors will cause it to overlook more qualified liberal professors. If two candidates apply for the same position with virtually the same qualifications, then by all means hire on the basis of political beliefs. But if a liberal applicant has more experience and overall better qualifications, then don’t hire a conservative applicant just because that person is conservative.

I believe in the saying that the best person for the job should be the one hired. To hire on the basis of political beliefs is a form of discrimination. Liberal professors would be blatantly discriminated against just because of their political views. It seems ironic that the goal of being more diverse would be achieved by discrimination.

Furthermore, the greatest professors try to not let their biases show in the classroom. These professors will attempt to show both sides of an argument and then push their students to decide for themselves what they believe. Hiring the best qualified candidates will better ensure that professors like these are the ones that get to teach the classes. Just hiring conservative scholars for the sake of trying to even out the ratio of liberal professors to conservative ones will ensure that professors that teach directly from their own biases will be the only ones teaching.

Now, if the reason that the gap between the percentage of liberal professors and conservative ones is so large is because there is a preference for liberal professors, then yes, more conservative professors should be hired. There should not be a preference for hiring on a political basis for either side.

However, this isn’t the case because those with postgraduate degrees such as a Ph.D. tend to be liberal anyway. In the 2012 presidential election, Fox News had exit polls showing that 55 percent of people with postgraduate degrees voted for Obama compared to 42 percent of those that voted for Romney. The reason there are more liberal professors is precisely because there are more liberals with Ph.D.s than there are conservatives.

Even though I consider myself conservative, I wouldn’t recommend hiring more conservative professors based on that fact alone. I would rather the hiring committee look at a candidate holistically and decide on whether to hire based on past experience, recommendations and interviews. Don’t give the job to a conservative just for being a conservative.