Intellectual diversity

This is Joseph

I was reading this piece in Talking Points Memo. It seems like a very bad idea that would get into serious first amendment issues. That said, the real problem with it is that it is not being done consistently. The article states:

DeSantis, a bombastic Trump supporter up for re-election next year, made the remarks after signing a law that will force state-funded universities and colleges to poll their faculty, students, and staff for “intellectual diversity,” the Tampa Bay Times reported. That survey, the paper reported, will focus on “the extent to which competing ideas and perspectives are presented.”

There is another obvious issue here -- people select into professions based partially on their world view. It is true that professors influence students (much less then we'd often like to) but other professions (like say, law enforcement or the military) also have less viewpoint diversity than the general population and are fully funded by government funds. 

That the bill is targeting one and not the other gives the game away.  

It might be a better world with more left-wing police and right-wing college professors, but this is not a serious attempt to create that world. And it seems certain that there will be some concern about how all of this fits in with the first amendment, given that political speech seems to be core to the amendment and political affiliation seems hard to define well as a protected class.