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I've been tenure track faculty and university departments are the last place I would go to look for a "diversity of thought", I've seen people excellent faculty

I've been tenure track faculty and university departments are the last place I would go to look for a "diversity of thought", I've seen people excellent faculty attempted to be driven out of universities precisely because there thought was too "diverse" for the rest of the faculty. There's also too many counter examples of this I know to believe there is any truth to that statement. The few times I've seen it it's because of how perfectly aligned the candidates thought is with the department (for both good and bad).

tensor 4y ago
Every department has it's own politics and issues, but individual experiences don't mean the whole is wrong and certainly doesn't mean the idea itself is wrong. For example, there was a case at the school I got my PhD at where they hired someone who did their PhD at the school. This person was employed at another school for many years between, and thus it was deemed "ok", but I can tell you that not all professors agreed with it. Unfortunately every system, no matter how well constructed or how ideal the ideas behind it are, is subject to gaming and politics. It would be wonderful to have more techniques to mitigate this sort of corruption, and certainly talking about it and bringing it to light when it happens is one of those techniques.