by Annmarie Fitzsimmons

From Joel Friederich's DE ENGL 391 class:

At UC-Berkeley, the course description for "Politics and Poetics" (Fall Course 2002) stated that "conservative thinkers are encouraged to seek other sections." (SAF 1). Though the instructor later apologized for the description, this is the sort of encouragement conservative-minded students are greeted with many times during their college experience. It is said that in class, students are taught that their country -- and Western culture in general -- is tainted by racism, sexism, and oppression (Stearn 2).

Outside class, students are forced into consciousness-raising exercises that heighten tensions and bolster radical pressure groups (Stearn 2). For example, at Brown University, an organized coalition of fifteen ethnic and political student groups stole 4,000 copies of the Brown Daily Herald in March 2002 (SAF 2). The theft was conducted as retribution for the paper's decision to print an anti-reparations [for slavery] ad penned by David Horowitz, a well-known liberal turned conservative political activist (2). The director of Brown's Afro-American studies program defended the coalition's action, claiming, "If something is free, you can take as many copies as you like. This is not a free speech issue. It is a hate speech issue." (SAF 2).

Horowitz's anti-reparation comments are entitled: "10 Reasons Why Reparations For Blacks Are A Bad Idea For Blacks And Racist, Too." (Horowitz, 10 Reasons). While Horowitz's title may cause some anxiety for reparation supporters, it is, simply, an individual opinion. However, Horowitz knew very well that the opinion published with this essay would induce some serious backlash, and all odds should be placed on his counting on the scathing rebuttals to open a wide debate on the subject.

Opening up the academic floor to debate is the very mission of our universities and colleges. The hope for cultural improvement in problem areas, even on a global scale, lies primarily in the critical forums of our nation's classrooms, where young, motivated minds are preparing to jump into the world with both feet. Because academic success is measured not only by what is learned, but also by what is taught, it is imperative that all perspectives be provided (Fish 3). 'Intellectual diversity' is used to describe those differing perspectives. Once used to portray an educational tradition that celebrates and nurtures human freedom, it is now used to name exactly what is lacking in Liberal Arts programs today.

Further immersed in this controversy, the word liberal in liberal arts has been embraced by both ends of the political spectrum, and can scarcely be uttered without turning the conversation into a verbal duel between conservative reformists on one side, and liberal traditionalist on the other. However clear we present the term, the thrust and parry continues as the nation's leading academia and political activists attempt to separate liberal education from an education that indoctrinates students in the values of political liberalism (Horowitz, In Defense, 3).

For the sake of clarity, two distinct 'sides' prevail within our higher education system today. Although the terms “Republican” and “Democrat” (referred to herein in as liberal and conservative) may seem inappropriate in the context of academic pursuits, they serve an advantage here of reflecting the self-identifications of the individuals under scrutiny and they are clearly identifiable (Horowitz, Lehrer 1). In other words, these terms can be said to reasonably reflect a predictable spectrum of assumptions, views and values that affect the outlooks of Americans who attend, administer and teach at these educational institutions (Horowitz, Lehrer 1). Even outside the arena of higher education the two parties seldom agree, so it is with no great surprise we find them battling over their parties' representation within the fertile breeding grounds of college campuses.

For forty years, our universities have been dominated by the practices and theories that resulted from the American Cultural Revolution. The key aspects of daily living since then have best been understood through exploration of the fundamental beliefs and assumptions of a culture derived from the assimilation of many cultures (multiculturalism) (Stearns 1). The culture wars began in the 1960s, with that period's new sympathy for the styles and values of various groups, and then firmed up with a growing interest in the findings of cultural anthropology and in various theoretical formulations (1). The giant leap away from the monocultural studies of the European 'Great Whites' -- Plato, Shakespeare and the like -- enabled the emerging theorists to embrace the widening acceptance of multiculturalist theory. The politically liberal tendency to pick apart the status quo was then wholly condoned by those teaching Liberal Arts programs.

Hence, the traditional presentations of our liberal arts programs -- and all the humanities -- were changed forever. The conservative backlash to these changes began almost immediately, and continues today with storm-like fervor. Conservative members of college campuses slowly dwindled, no doubt as the growing multicultural movement more and more ostracized right wing beliefs. However, the true aim of conservative-based reform today is not to stem a critical approach to learning the world, but to reclaim the right to have a say at all in the academic discourses where both sides required presence in order for the issue to be fully understood.

The debate takes place over the imbalance of delivered perspectives. Students are likely learning about broad issues for the first time and if they are not given more than one side of the story, they have no reason to question or attempt to improve upon the issue (SAF 2). There are so few conservative professors that a student is likely to complete a degree program without ever having a class taught by a professor with a conservative viewpoint (Horowitz, Lehrer 1).

In all fairness, politics are and should continue to be part of rich and diverse education. As long as there are unsolved, controversial issues surrounding modern culture, the politics of problem resolution should be discussed in the classrooms (Stearn 3). It becomes unfair, and wholly unbalanced, when both sides of the issue are not presented to the students so that each perspective can be discussed with the most accurate information available.

Many scholars are asking for proof of the bias and imbalance. Horowitz's Center for Pop Culture conducted a study to discover whether there is a grossly unbalanced, politically shaped selection process in the hiring of college faculty. In their examinations of over 150 departments and upper-level administrations at 32 elite colleges and universities across the nation, the Center found that the overall ratio of identifiable Democrats to Republicans at the 32 schools were more than 10 to 1 -- 1397 Democrats compared to 134 Republicans (Horowitz, Lehrer 1). No statistics have been compiled from a liberal perspective to rebut the imbalance in faculty political persuasion. However, with the Pop Culture statistics in tow, it is hard to believe our nation's political parties are not indoctrinating our students.

The statistics also strongly suggest that the governance of American universities has fallen into the hands of a self-perpetuating political and cultural subset of the general population, which seems intent on perpetuating its control (Horowitz, Lehrer 1). Not only is this an unhealthy development for both educational enterprise and democracy itself, but it is also allowing a great disservice to be done to our student population (Horowitz, Lehrer 1).

Without further investigation, it is not possible to establish any definite explanation for why our higher education system has come to this state of imbalance. However, many obvious factors may be said to have contributed to it. Among them is the exclusion of conservatives from faculty and administrative positions (Horowitz, In Defense 2). This, in turn, is said to create a hostile environment for conservative students contemplating an academic career (SAF 2). The resulting core hostility is amplified by practices that have been incorporated into academic life in the last several decades, including campus speech codes and politicized classrooms – both which represent radical departures from the pre-Sixties academic environment (SAF 2). Reed Browning, a conservative professor of history at Kenyon College, explains: "There simply are not lots of young conservative Ph.D.'s on the job market to change the composition of faculties quickly." (SAF 1). While academic talent is found among students across the ideological spectrum, students on the left are far likelier than those on the right to pursue a Ph.D. with the goal of college teaching (Browning 2). Conservative students who are initially drawn to the humanities often decide after four years of classroom sparring with liberal faculty members that the integrity of such studies is suspect (Browning 2). Additionally, conservative students are likelier to have the Hobbesian view of human nature that encourages individuals in a free society to deal with their own problems rather than to rely on government (Browning 1). Hence, they are more prone than their liberal peers to seek fields like law, business, or medicine as career options that offer the possibility of making the world a better place without the additional interference of middle-men and government attention (Browning 1).

Despite the fact that the growing debate has become rather intense within our university and college environment, there seems to be little hope of respite in the near future. Over the past several months, David Horowitz and his Center for the Study of Pop Culture has been urging state legislatures and Congress to adopt an "Academic Bill of Rights" that would encourage colleges to foster a plurality of political and religious beliefs in hiring faculty members, making tenure decisions, and performing other academic activities (Horowitz, In Defense 1). At its core, the "Academic Bill of Rights" deals with the single most important issue facing higher education today -- that the humanities and social-science faculties of American colleges are preponderantly, and in many instances overwhelmingly, liberal or left-leaning from a political perspective (1). This prejudicial slant limits the possibility for well-informed, truly free and open debate on campus, and easily slides into political bias against students in the classroom (Horowitz, In Defense 3).

Although Horowitz's bill is a near replica of the AAUP's 1940 academic freedom statement, there remains opposition to his proposal from both sides of the political ring. Most scholars will admit that there is a genuine and pressing problem, but according to Reed Browning, a history professor at Kenyon College, the approach embodied in the Horowitz's bill is "unwise, inviting unprecedented governmental and judicial intrusion into the personnel decisions of higher education." Browning feels it may be better to encourage colleges to develop their own program for self reform and suggests several ways to approach the issue without government interference (Browing 2).

Beginning with the "simple power of group-think", Browning feels that organized discussions regarding the importance of political diversity can negate the reluctance that traditional liberal professors may have towards violating community norms (3). "Since academics in the humanities and social sciences rarely need to confront anything like a chastening reality," Browning says, "more often than not, they generate and debate interesting theories that fall in and out of fashion, but experience rarely pronounces a theory wrong. For disciplines like history, literature, philosophy, political theory, American studies, and so on, reality is simply not much of a constraint when academics confront their major questions." (3). Further, if reality rarely intrudes to require people to reconsider their intellectual baggage, they have little cause to change their most fundamental professional views (4).

Because the real world is diverse, the campus should reflect that fact. Students should have to listen to critical approaches to the greats of Western Civilization and, hearing both sides of the perspective, can shape values and a style of moral living around them. It is astonishing that some factions of societal influence do not recognize the benefits of multiculturalism. A radical right-thinking group, sponsored by the Ayn Rand Institute, defines multiculturalism as applied to education as a "threat", which "instead of encouraging students to question their assumptions and the assumptions of their parents and society, multiculturalism demands that students accept blindly what they’re given. Instead of encouraging reason and independent judgment, multiculturalism demands obedience to authority: the authority of the ethnic group." (Ayn Rand Institute 1). Horowitz's Bill of Rights would mercifully preclude Rand's opinion, and those like it, from the uncontested spread of such profound untruths to our next generation of leaders.

The theory behind Browning's reasoning is that the "most important step is to raise the issue of imbalance -- frequently and in many different forums." (5). Once faculty and administrators are persuaded that a wider range of political views is a "good and just thing" (Browning 5), changing patterns of hiring and the delivery of diverse perspectives will be easier to achieve. "This argument", states Browning, "is not hard to make, and while many faculty members will probably resist it privately, few will be prepared to deny its validity openly." (5)

The terms describing the liberal arts controversy have come to represent yet another culture war within the higher education system. Phrases such as "intellectual diversity" or "political correctness" seem to have been reversed; but in all actually, the political parties have just come full circle. The right is now challenging the status quo of today's higher education the way multiculturalists did in the 60's and 70'. It now seems that the left must defend its position as the forerunner in the creation of mainstream ideas. It is really a very circular argument that has come to point recently over use of these specific terms regarding higher education.

There is virtually no way to name the winner as both the right and the left fight over terms (Fish 1). If winning means that the preservation of growth programs -- Women's studies, Chicano studies, Gay and Lesbian studies, American Indian studies, etc. -- have not been retarded by intervention from the conservatives, then the left has won (1). These studies abound in universities across the nation, and remain a source of much intellectual energy in the liberal arts (1).

However, if the prize is to be awarded to the party that persuaded the American public to adopt its characterization of the academy, the right wins in a landslide (Fish 1). "It is now generally believed that our colleges and universities are hotbeds of radicalism and pedagogical irresponsibility where dollars are wasted, nonsense is propagated, students are indoctrinated, religion is disrespected, and patriotism is scorned." (1). It seems then that though the left may have won the curricular battle, the right has won the public-relations war.

American universities do not fulfill their promise when they cater to only half the population and fail to provide protections and appropriate representation for the other. As the liberal perspective is so inherently entrenched in the world of academics today, reform will not occur overnight. Nevertheless, what will at least initiate an understanding of the severity of the issue, and perhaps the following rebirth of a well-rounded liberal arts education, is that each side must discontinue pathologizing the other side. Again, it remains a matter of opening up all perspectives accurately and without prejudice.

Works Cited

Ayn Rand Institute. "Diversity and Multiculturalism: The New Racism." AynRand.org.
10 May 2004: 3 pp. Online. Internet. Direct page link.
< http://multiculturalism.aynrand.org/ >.

Browning, Reed. "How to Hire Conservative Faculty Members." Chronicle.com. 9 April 2004:
3 pp. Online. Subscription only. <http://chronicle.com/weekly/v50/i31/31b01401.htm >.
Accessed 24 May 2004.

Fish, Stanley. "Intellectual Diversity: the Trojan Horse of a Dark Design." Chronicle.com.
13 February 2004: 5 pp. Online subscription only.
< http://chronicle.com/weekly/v50/i31/31b01401.htm > Accessed 10 May 2004.

Horowitz, David. "10 Reasons Why Reparations For Blacks Are A Bad Idea For Blacks And
Racist, Too." 31 May 2000: 4 pp. Frontpagemagazine.com. Internet. Online. Direct page link. < http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Printable.asp?ID=1098 >.
Accessed 22 April 2004.

Horowitz, David. "In Defense of Intellectual Diversity." Chronicle.com. 13 February 2004:
5 pp. Internet. Online. Direct page link. <http://chronicle.com/weekly/v50/i31/31b01401.htm >. Accessed 24 April 2004.

Horowitz, David and Lehrer, Eli. "Political Bias in the Administrations and Faculties of 32 Elite
Colleges and Universities." April 2003: 4 pp. Online. Internet. Direct page link.
< http://www.studentsforacademicfreedom.org/ >. Accessed 10 May 2004.

Stearn, Peter. "Expanding the Agenda of Cultural Research." 2 May 2003: 5 pp. Online
subscription only. < http://chronicle.com/prm/weekly/v49/i34/34b00701.htm >.
Accessed 14 May 2004.

Students for Academic Freedom Website (SAF). "Bias Incidents on Campus." 12 May 2004: 14
pp. Studentsforacademicfreedom.org. Internet. Online.
< http://www.studentsforacademicfreedom.org/ >. Accessed 14 May 2004.