Intellectual Diversity on Campus--What Went Wrong?

Universities were never meant to be the indoctrination centers for political correctness they have become. In "The Elusive Goal of Intellectual Diversity," award winning science fiction author Orson Scott Card discusses the current pathetic state of intellectual restrictiveness that is almost universally present on North American university campuses.

....As a friend of mine on the faculty of a western university wrote not long ago, "higher education may have other litmus tests for ideological conformity, but the you-better-believe-in-diversity test is the only one that isn't hidden."

Ironically, the result of this absolute insistence on a commitment to diversity is ... a lack of diversity.

When the administration and faculty have all had to make the same affirmation in order to get their jobs, how likely is it that anyone will use their "academic freedom" to question a doctrine that they have already declared they believe in?

....Here and there, however, students are beginning to rebel against the pious cant that they hear from their relentlessly establishment teachers.

For instance, at Utah State University, student officers voted for an "Academic Bill of Rights." The goal was to "support intellectual diversity" on campus, and it called for such things as:

"Faculty will not use their courses for the purpose of political, ideological, religious, or non-religious indoctrination."

"Selection of speakers, allocation of funds for speakers programs and other student activities will observe the principles of academic freedom and promote intellectual pluralism."

More at Source.

Or take this Chronicle.com oped discussing the Academic Bill of Rights, promoting Intellectual Diversity.

By adopting the Academic Bill of Rights, an institution would recognize scholarship rather than ideology as an appropriate academic enterprise. It would strengthen educational values that have been eroded by the unwarranted intrusion of faculty members' political views into the classroom. That corrosive trend has caused some academics to focus merely on their own partisan agendas and to abandon their responsibilities as professional educators with obligations to students of all political persuasions. Such professors have lost sight of the vital distinction between education and indoctrination, which -- as the AAUP recognized in its first report on academic freedom, in 1915 -- is not a legitimate educational function

Source.

When "search committees" look for new faculty members, they are actually looking for more faculty members who think the same way as the search committe thinks. This leads to monolithic intellectual conformism in a faculty, which harms students' ability to function in the real world.

Former leftist radical turned conservative rabble-rouser David Horowitz has made a cause of intellectual diversity on campus. Recently Horowitz visited Duke University to give a talk on intellectual diversity among faculties. But a professor of women's studies had a surprise waiting for him--a bevy of women students prepared to laugh, heckle, and take off their shirts to distract attendees from Horowitz topic. I wish young women students would do that for me when I give a lecture or talk. That type of distraction I could deal with.

This CFIF commentary gives even more insight into the sad lack of range of intellectual challenge provided for students on the modern PC campus.

College students love to complain about how campuses are removed from "reality," which is generally defined as living in subsidized housing, sleeping on a park bench, or working in a makeshift medical clinic in Africa. But these same students seem completely oblivious to how far removed their campuses are from the rest of the nation’s political discourse. In the country as a whole, Democrats and Republicans are almost evenly split, but studies indicate that academic faculties are often skewed at least 10 to 1 in Democrats’ favor. My law school’s faculty of more than 100 includes only one registered Republican. On many campuses, students are more likely to find a Marxist professor than a conservative professor. It’s not unusual to hear a professor assert that Ronald Reagan systematically and deliberately spread AIDS to homosexuals, or that George W. Bush is not legitimately our president; many professors at my law school quite convincingly contend there is no such thing as a free-market economy and that law itself is completely indeterminate.

The most disturbing aspect of this phenomenon is how students on both sides of the political spectrum — most paying astronomical tuition — are being shortchanged. Schools often structure their curricula around professors’ specialties; thus when liberal thought is so drastically overrepresented, it is bound to overshadow necessary curricula. During most of my terms as an undergraduate, the journalism school I attended offered at least three advanced courses on race, poverty, gender or the evils of the death penalty, but not a single class on editorial writing.

Although many classes attempt to examine issues from both sides, conservative arguments are bound to be less convincing when rarely advanced by anyone who believes them. This is regrettable for both conservative and liberal students — for conservatives because they are not taught the most defensible form of their arguments and for liberals because their own views are not adequately challenged. Sure, students can make an effort to push the envelope themselves, but shouldn’t the bulk of that burden belong on the faculty? After all, they are the ones paid to foster diversity of thought.

Professors with a point of view are not incapable of teaching two sides of an issue — in my experience, many do a remarkable job. But not all professors are so open-minded; some blatantly intend to inculcate students with their political views. For example, last year a Citrus College professor required students to write anti-war letters to President Bush, and a Colorado professor asked students to write an essay explaining why the President was a war criminal. Students who refused or expressed different opinions received no credit. Sometimes professors offer such assignments for extra credit, but is that really a proper option — those who think like me get extra credit, and those who don’t, please keep it to yourself?

Maybe one Berkeley professor had it right in adding to a course description: "conservative thinkers are encouraged to seek other sections." Although the professor later apologized, one can almost appreciate the initial honesty in admitting up front that a course is designed in furtherance of a professor’s point of view.

Source.

This is a fascinating topic that is playing itself out on campuses across america. It is obvious to me that the leftist end of the spectrum has overwhelming control of most university campuses--and intends to consolidate and increase that control. It is up to more level headed minds who are actually concerned about the quality of education modern North American students receive, to attempt to provide more balanced offerings on more and more campuses.

Visit Students for Academic Freedom for more information. Another good resource is FIRE--Foundation for Individual Rights in Education.