In a word, yes.
All of these Ivy League University Presidents regard the African-American experience as understudied. All would like to see a lot more *white* students taking Afro-Am courses. Yet there aren't that many people who got Ph.D.'s a few decades ago in and have done research in fields that make them highly qualified to teach in A-A Studies Departments.
High demand and low supply mean high wages--and hence the prospect of a more comfortable life inducing young would-be-scholars to shift their fields of interest toward A-A, and increase the supply.
The problem is that the neoconservative response is not to say, "Aha! See how the market works!" Instead, it is to say, "Ivy League Presidents afflicted with liberal guilt are promoting and giving cushy jobs to unqualified Negroes, and making American higher education a mockery without intellectual standards."
And every time Cornel West says that it is "insulting" to demand that he produce intellectually important books, another 500 neoconservative followers of Dinesh D'Souza and Charles Murray get their wings...
Brad DeLong