Can there be a conservative blog about higher education by people who are invested in and knowledgeable about higher education? That is the question tossed around by Phoebe Maltz, a graduate student at New York University.

Keying off some comments by Jacob Levy, a professor of political theory at McGill University, Maltz writes that National Review's Phi Beta Cons blog provides "not so much commentary on research as a repetitive preach to the converted, pointing out again and again that political correctness, you know, exists."

The core of the problem, according to Maltz, is that "insulting academia is a fundamental part of the discourse (to use an academic word) of the right, so it's only natural that an account of academia on a blog of a not-especially-subtle right-wing magazine would be filled with little of any use to those actually in academia."

I suspect Mark Bauerlein has a few thoughts on Maltz's analysis.