The number one book on this week’s New York Times Best-Seller List is Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them, written by comedian Al Franken. It’s actually not a funny book -- unless you happen to be an exceptionally mean-spirited and ill-informed liberal who thinks all Republicans are racists and that President Clinton was a pro-military foreign policy hawk who devoted more time to tracking down Osama bin Laden than he did to the Monica Lewinsky mess.

Franken’s book is so gratuitous in dispensing its partisan venom that one of its hapless targets is the civilized and articulate Alan Colmes, who is unfairly damned for failing to mount a Franken-style attack on Fox’s Hannity & Colmes. Franken prints Colmes’s name in small type throughout the book to imply that Colmes is a verbal pipsqueak or, in Franken’s words, a “zeta male” to Hannity’s alpha. Such is the humor of this meretricious tract.

Yet there’s no denying that the book is a huge success. A prime reason for this is the publicity boost provided by a misguided (and aborted) lawsuit that Fox News filed against Franken in an attempt to stop his use of their logo “Fair and Balanced” for his subtitle. (What could Fox have been thinking?). But there is another reason as well.

While it pretends to be a funny book, the real purpose of this nearly 400-page tome is quite serious. It intends to be a kind of a campaign manual for the next presidential election, touching in its chapters every base of partisan dispute – Who tanked the economy? Who created the mean-spirited political tone? Who stole the 2000 election? Who is stronger on defense? Who has the support of a biased media? Who is more anti-terrorist? Surprise, surprise its answers line up relentlessly (and tendentiously) in the Democratic column. And they come backed by facts and figures and citations from so many sources it would take a team to produce them.

Which raises an interesting question. Where did a comedian like Al Franken get the time, research power and expertise to cover such a wide range of subject matters, almost all of which are out of his normal depth? The answer (which Franken provides himself) is Harvard.

It seems that the Kennedy School of Government called him up and offered him a “fellowship.” Harvard told him, “you can run a study group on a topic of your choosing,” and yes, the study group can be about how Republicans are racists and liars and you can use fourteen of our Harvard graduate students to provide you with your research and write as much of your book as you care to let them. And at our expense.

By disclosing these facts with the breathless candor of a kid who has stumbled into a toy store where the merchandise is free, Franken has exposed for all who care to look a national educational disgrace. While liberals like Franken regularly complain about the unfair advantage “big right-wing thanks” provide to the Republican cause, Harvard and – in fact – the entire Ivy League constitute infinitely larger left-wing think tanks that serve the Democratic cause. (For comparison, Harvard’s endowment exceeds that of the Heritage Foundation by a factor of about 238 to 1.)

Ann Coulter has written a parallel bestseller (under her own steam, however) which attacks liberals and Democrats like Al Franken. Can anyone imagine Harvard soliciting Coulter to write her book, Treason, and providing her with fourteen graduate students to research it? I once looked at the faculty roster of Harvard’s Kennedy school and was able to identify only 5 Republicans out of 155 faculty members – and one them was the political switcher David Gergen.

A just-released study conducted by my Center for the Study of Popular Culture, and based on primary voter registration lists, shows that among 32 elite colleges and universities including the entire Ivy League, registered faculty Democrats outnumbered Republicans 10-1. At schools like Brown, Wellesley and Wesleyan the figure exceeded 25-1.

A parallel study conducted by the Center showed that over a ten-year period, the commencement speakers at the same 32 schools were biased in favor of Democrats and liberals by a factor of 15-1. At twenty-two of those schools not a single Republican or conservative had been invited to speak at a commencement in 10 years.

Two years ago I placed a full page ad in the Harvard Crimson headlined: “Harvard U: No Republicans or Conservatives, and Few White Christians Need Apply.” (Harvard’s student body is 18 percent white Christian, whereas in the nation at large the figure is 73 percent. I don’t believe in Affirmative Action quotas but posted the data to make a point about the biased way that Harvard does).

The administration and faculty of Harvard – and of American universities generally – don’t seem to care about this kind of academic bias. “Diversity” is the big buzz word in the world of higher education these days. But “intellectual diversity” – the diversity that really matters to a good education and a healthy democracy – is not on the radar screens of the academic establishment at all.