Q:  Are opponents of political correctness justified in their criticisms? 

A:  Sometimes, sure. It would be hard to make a criticism of academia that wouldn't be justified at least some of the time somewhere. I think most of the attacks on PC, going back to those in the '90s by writers like Dinesh D'Sousa in Illiberal Education and Lynne Cheney, head of NEH, were on the political correctness of the left-multiculturalists, feminists, Marxists, gays, and so forth. Yes, some of those attacks from the right were justified by the self-righteousness and closedmindedness of some factions on the academic left. 

What the conservatives rarely bothered to mention, though, was the PC of the right. As somebody pointed out, many economic departments-the U of Chicago would be a good example-have long been dominated by a dogma of the infallibility of the free market that is simply taken for granted. Though PC of the right is as pervasive and closed-minded as PC of the left, it fails to get noticed because it's like the air we breathe. It's not shocking. 

The PC of the left, by contrast, which has been with us only since the mid-'60s, is still something of a novelty. It so deviates from the conservatism that has been considered normal and proper in academia that it tends to get noticed. So it was easy for conservatives like D'Sousa and Cheney to get away with ignoring the existence of their own PC of the right. 

Q:  In this regard, are politically correct professors arrogant or dogmatic?

A:  By definition. But again, the academic left has no monopoly on dogmatism and qualities that are spread about evenly, I would say, across the political spectrum. I would also say that the right has a lot more money than the left for ensuring that its form of PC has influence in the culture. 

Q:  Is political correctness of the right funded by wealthy interests? Is it sometimes motivated by excessive respect for such interests?

A:  Yes, I think so. Look at David Brock's new book, Blinded By The Right, a fascinating account by a former right-wing cultural warrior who wrote best-selling attack books on Anita Hill and Troopergate. Brock writes of the millions spent by people like Richard Mellon Scaife, the heir to the Mellon fortune, who bankroll organizations such as the Olin and Heritage Foundations, the American Spectator, etc. There is simply nothing on this scale on the left. Conservatives sometimes cite the Ford and the Rockefeller Foundations as if they evened the score, but they don't. As Brock's account and others have shown, there's nothing comparable on the left to the money spent by Scaife, Olin, and others on the right to take over the culture.