Diversity NOT Tolerated!
John Leo
When is the word "diversity" not tolerated on campus? When someone
tries to put the word "intellectual" in front of it. The debate over
David Horowitz's campaign for intellectual diversity has been raging in
Colorado for five months. By spring or fall, the debate may come to an
intellectually not-very-diverse university near you. Horowitz, the
veteran conservative activist, is promoting an "Academic Bill of
Rights" to protect students and professors from the aggressive leftist
monoculture that dominates campuses today. Though clearly taking aim at
the left, Horowitz scrupulously framed the bill in language that would
protect everyone on campus, left and right. The text says, "All faculty
shall be hired, fired, promoted and granted
tenure on the basis of their competence and appropriate knowledge in
the field of their expertise," never on the basis of political or
religious beliefs. Stanley Fish, one the best-known professors on the
left, says that
it's hard to see how anyone who believes in the distinctiveness of
academic work "could find anything to disagree with here."
The fairness of the language hasn't done much to mollify the left,
partly because Horowitz unleashed a barrage of statistics to show how
lopsided liberal universities are in hiring professors, picking outside
speakers, and granting honorary degrees. He says there are 10
Democratic professors for every Republican one, with the disparity
rising sharply at many elite universities.
Students themselves now look up the political affiliations of
professors and complain about indoctrination that passes for teaching.
(Check out www.noindoctrination.org for detailed student reports of
unbelievable professorial drivel.) Members of the Republican Club at
Wells College, an all-female institution in upstate New York, reported
that 92 percent of their professors in the humanities and social
sciences were registered either as Democrats or with splinter parties
of the left. (A month later, the women's application to be recognized
as a campus club was rejected.) Last week conservative students at Duke
announced that the university's eight humanities departments contain
142 registered Democrats and only eight registered Republicans. The
Duke Conservative Union also charged that a number of humanities
departments "have become increasingly politicized over the past few
decades" and that this politicization has had "a significant
impact on the daily workings of faculty members." Student challenges
such as this are beginning to raise temperatures on campus. So are the
spread of satirical bake sales opposing affirmative action and
resistance to speech codes, speech zones, and the defunding of
conservative political and religious groups. Republicans at the
University of Colorado-Boulder now have a Web site for reports of bias
based on political beliefs. In the current climate, sites like this are
likely to spread.
Running afoul. The one worrisome aspect of Horowitz's bill of rights is
that he took it to the Colorado legislature as a bill to be passed. The
bill's version of Horowitz's text says the academic freedom of students
"will not be infringed by instructors who create a hostile environment"
toward their ideas. But "hostile environment" is a dubious and elastic
legal construct. It can easily be stretched into restriction of stray
remarks. Will professors run afoul of the state for offhand comments
that offend the most sensitive person in class? Probably not, but why
put the provision into law? Horowitz is right to say that "universities
should not be indoctrination centers for the political left." Once the
student radicals of the 1960s became professors and took control of
hiring committees, dissenters from the rising campus monoculture became
rare. Words like "knowledge" and "excellence" faded, replaced by
"transformation" and "social change" (i.e., politicization).
But it's doubtful that legislation is the way to go. It would be far
better for Colorado to pass a "sense of the legislature" resolution
backing the academic bill of rights in principle but making no attempt
to legislate
reform. Apologists for wayward campuses say these matters are best left
to university administrators. Yes, but the administrators are the ones
who created the current ideological mess. Pressure must be brought to
bear to open up the humanities curriculums from their narrow postmodern
and race-and-gender obsessions. But that pressure should come from
protests and persuasion, not the involvement of politicians. Student
governments at several universities have adopted a "Student Bill of
Rights" modeled on Horowitz's. Think of his bill as a model for more
protests and a badly needed kick in the shins for university
administrators.
--
Left-wing liberals are EVERYTHING they accuse the right of being. They
are mean, vicious, hateful, greedy, cold-hearted, closed-minded,
selfish, intolerant, bigoted and racist.
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