David French

A few weeks back Lisa noticed that one of the articles summarized in the current issue of The Week was written by David French. We knew a David French at Lipscomb, so she googled him and he's the same one. The column highlighted in The Week was in the National Review online discussing a recent survey of college faculty and titled "Bias Against Evangelicals on Campus? You Don't Say!." An excerpt:

For some time, the leftist academic establishment has responded to literally hundreds of stories about the violation of the fundamental rights of religious students with the argument that those stories are mere "anecdotes" and are not evidence of a wider problem. In recent years, however, the systematic studies have come pouring in, including studies showing dramatic political disparities in the classroom, dramatic drop-offs of faith practice during the college years, and now we see concrete evidence of sheer bigotry. Our nation's colleges and universities have a religion problem, and faithful students and professors are paying the price.

Turns out that David is a frequent contributer to the "phi beta cons" blog ("THE RIGHT TAKES ON HIGHER ED") on the National Review (an archive of his posts from the last 30 days is here). He appeared on The O'Reilly Factor back in May with a UCLA student who was embroiled in a controversy with Planned Parenthood (French writes about the controversy here). Last year he quit his job with the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, took a new job with Alliance Defense Fund, and joined the army reserve (he writes about it in the National Review here). David's wife is Nancy French of "A Red State of Mind" fame. David and Nancy are involved in the Romney campaign and the Tennesseans for Mitt and Evangelicals for Mitt web sites. It's been interesting to see what one of our college acquaintances has been up to on the national stage. I was curious to see if he's on Wikipedia, but not yet.