I went to three Universities during my “higher” education. All of them were “in the South.” I will get back to this in a bit…
Dan Lawson is a journalism student at the University of Oregon. He has an opinion post over at the Christian Science Monitor in which he noted
The University of Oregon (UO), where I study journalism, invested millions annually in a diversity program that explicitly included “political affiliation” as a component. Yet, out of the 111 registered Oregon voters in the departments of journalism, law, political science, economics, and sociology, there were only two registered Republicans.
Mr. Lawson was warned by a “conservative” professor that he was going to be “stirring the fire” with his questions regarding whether such a one-sided political affiliation of the professors would limit discourse regarding politics and political thinking–whether religious, financial, or otherwise.
Here are a few excerpts from his post, and I suggest you go read his article
A professor who confronted me declared that he was “personally offended” by my column. He railed that his political viewpoints never affected his teaching and suggested that if I wanted a faculty with Republicans I should have attended a university in the South. “If you like conservatism you can certainly attend the University of Texas and you can walk past the statue of Jefferson Davis everyday on your way to class,” he wrote in an e-mail.
I was shocked by such a comment, which seemed an attempt to link Republicans with racist orthodoxy. When I wrote back expressing my offense, he neither apologized nor clarified his remarks.
I expected the following
“You think you’re so [expletive] cute with your little column,” she told me. “I read your piece and all you want is attention. You’re just like Bill O’Reilly. You just want to get up on your [expletive] soapbox and have people look at you.”
Why this is bad
People who are unable to communicate and discuss issues when the people in the discussion disagree must be able to remain calm and accept that some people will think differently. Failure to do so makes “you” as bad as “them.”
By this, I mean that if the female professor actually acted in that fashion, was she not “acting” just like “Bill O-Rielly” would act when confronted with some “liberal outrage?” Her failure to listen, think critically, and address the ISSUE presented shows, if accurate, a lack of an ability to discuss and educate the students. Rather, resorting to anger and “cheap shots” is the actions I expect my children to take when they don’t get their way or when I disagree with them because they have yet to gain those skills all of us adults should be required to learn.
Mr. Lawson’s summary follows
After my article on political diversity was published, I received numerous e-mails from students at other schools who spoke of similar experiences. As a result of my research and personal experience, I can now say without reservation that the lack of ideological diversity on college campuses is a dangerous threat to free and open discourse in academia. Sadly, there are few perfect solutions.
I agree.
Rant
Those who attended ECU graduate school may have had a Professor of Philosophy come talk to them during their “initiation” into the graduate school. This professor gave an example of us finding an inhabited island in the south pacific. The “islanders” worshiped a “volcano god” and would sacrifice a young lady to the “volcano god” every year to keep the “volcano god” appeased (i.e., so the volcano would not erupt…).
The professor asked us if this “sacrifice” was “wrong.” I was the only one who said “It would be wrong for me, but I am not going to judge them.”
The professor followed up the question with another. “Should we go to this island and force the islanders to stop what they are doing (sacrificing young women for “no reason”)?
I was the only student to say “No.”
He immediately fixated on me. “Are you saying you would not save the women?”
I have no idea why he didn’t ask “Why” I answered the way I did instead of enter into an attack on my position.
You see, I don’t think you can “force” people to change their opinions/beliefs using force (of arms, of trade, or of any other “power”). My comment to the professor was that “I would bring people to the island and begin educating the islanders about geology, plate tectonics, etc. so that they could understand WHY the volcano erupted so that they, themselves, could alter their behavior so that women would not be killed needlessly.
The professor stated “There is always one in each class.” After a brief pause, he continued, “Can’t you see what they are doing is wrong and should be stopped?”
I replied, “I doubt Hitler thought he was “wrong” to murder the people he killed, so I am not going to judge them “wrong.” I am going to educate them so that they can, perhaps, realize that sacrificing a woman will not stop the volcano–then they will alter their behavior and not feel forced to do so.
The professor stated that “There is always one person who doesn’t get it.” He continued his speech and quickly left after finishing.
I wonder whether he supported Bush in his invasion of Iraq because he stated he was a “liberal.” However, his suggestion to “use force” to “correct an injustice” sounds a lot like a conservative to me…
End Rant
Mr. Lawson states
What’s so remarkable is that I hadn’t actually advocated Republican ideas or conservative ideas. In fact, I’m not a conservative, nor a Republican. I simply believe in the concept of diversity – a primarily liberal idea – and think that we suffer when we don’t include ideas we find unappealing.
Failure to present an idea, however “crazy” it may seem, reduces the ability of those being educated to think critically–to think for themselves using logic and reason. If we simply “belittle” ideas out of the discussion due to their “conservative” or “liberal” nature, aren’t we doing a disservice to those being educated?
I know I bring it up all to often, but this process of “lop-sided” politics is what the Founding Fathers hoped to avoid. The Federalist Paper #10, written by James Madison, states
Complaints are everywhere heard from our most considerate and virtuous citizens, equally the friends of public and private faith, and of public and personal liberty, that our governments are too unstable, that the public good is disregarded in the conflicts of rival parties, and that measures are too often decided, not according to the rules of justice and the rights of the minor party, but by the superior force of an interested and overbearing majority.
…
There are two methods of curing the mischiefs of faction: the one, by removing its causes; the other, by controlling its effects.
…
It could never be more truly said than of the first remedy, that it was worse than the disease. Liberty is to faction what air is to fire, an aliment without which it instantly expires. But it could not be less folly to abolish liberty, which is essential to political life, because it nourishes faction, than it would be to wish the annihilation of air, which is essential to animal life, because it imparts to fire its destructive agency.
…
The second expedient is as impracticable as the first would be unwise. As long as the reason of man continues fallible, and he is at liberty to exercise it, different opinions will be formed. As long as the connection subsists between his reason and his self-love, his opinions and his passions will have a reciprocal influence on each other; and the former will be objects to which the latter will attach themselves. The diversity in the faculties of men, from which the rights of property originate, is not less an insuperable obstacle to a uniformity of interests. The protection of these faculties is the first object of government. From the protection of different and unequal faculties of acquiring property, the possession of different degrees and kinds of property immediately results; and from the influence of these on the sentiments and views of the respective proprietors, ensues a division of the society into different interests and parties.
What James says is that people will have bad ideas, will be greedy and put “self” above “country,” and will not be able to reach a state where everyone “agrees” with each other.
Instead of “ordering” a thought process (anyone remember the Sedition Act?), Madison describes how people, however enlightened, are “interested parties”
No man is allowed to be a judge in his own cause, because his interest would certainly bias his judgment, and, not improbably, corrupt his integrity. With equal, nay with greater reason, a body of men are unfit to be both judges and parties at the same time; yet what are many of the most important acts of legislation, but so many judicial determinations, not indeed concerning the rights of single persons, but concerning the rights of large bodies of citizens? And what are the different classes of legislators but advocates and parties to the causes which they determine? Is a law proposed concerning private debts? It is a question to which the creditors are parties on one side and the debtors on the other. Justice ought to hold the balance between them. Yet the parties are, and must be, themselves the judges; and the most numerous party, or, in other words, the most powerful faction must be expected to prevail. Shall domestic manufactures be encouraged, and in what degree, by restrictions on foreign manufactures? are questions which would be differently decided by the landed and the manufacturing classes, and probably by neither with a sole regard to justice and the public good. The apportionment of taxes on the various descriptions of property is an act which seems to require the most exact impartiality; yet there is, perhaps, no legislative act in which greater opportunity and temptation are given to a predominant party to trample on the rules of justice. Every shilling with which they overburden the inferior number, is a shilling saved to their own pockets.
Re-read that… I’ll wait…
Madison concludes
It is in vain to say that enlightened statesmen will be able to adjust these clashing interests, and render them all subservient to the public good. Enlightened statesmen will not always be at the helm. Nor, in many cases, can such an adjustment be made at all without taking into view indirect and remote considerations, which will rarely prevail over the immediate interest which one party may find in disregarding the rights of another or the good of the whole.
The inference to which we are brought is, that the causes of faction cannot be removed, and that relief is only to be sought in the means of controlling its effects.
How to do that?
Madison suggests
If a faction consists of less than a majority, relief is supplied by the republican principle, which enables the majority to defeat its sinister views by regular vote. It may clog the administration, it may convulse the society; but it will be unable to execute and mask its violence under the forms of the Constitution. When a majority is included in a faction, the form of popular government, on the other hand, enables it to sacrifice to its ruling passion or interest both the public good and the rights of other citizens. To secure the public good and private rights against the danger of such a faction, and at the same time to preserve the spirit and the form of popular government, is then the great object to which our inquiries are directed. Let me add that it is the great desideratum by which this form of government can be rescued from the opprobrium under which it has so long labored, and be recommended to the esteem and adoption of mankind.
By what means is this object attainable? Evidently by one of two only. Either the existence of the same passion or interest in a majority at the same time must be prevented, or the majority, having such coexistent passion or interest, must be rendered, by their number and local situation, unable to concert and carry into effect schemes of oppression. If the impulse and the opportunity be suffered to coincide, we well know that neither moral nor religious motives can be relied on as an adequate control. They are not found to be such on the injustice and violence of individuals, and lose their efficacy in proportion to the number combined together, that is, in proportion as their efficacy becomes needful.
This is the reason we don’t have a pure democracy as a government. This “suggestion” is why politicians should protect the rights of the minority in a manner such that the minority can exercise their rights–rights that anyone can exercise but may not due to their political affiliation or bent. Owning and possession of a firearm by a citizen is one of these rights in my opinion.
I would never suggest we limit the free speech enjoyed by those who argue for their cause, but I see that some people can not think critically and feel a need to make me live in the manner in which they would live–limited to their actions and their beliefs.
This is not the freedom the USA was founded to protect. The freedom to have my own religion, my own thoughts and speech, my political interests, and my ability to “be different” while guaranteeing me the same rights enjoyed by every other citizen is what makes the USA great.
Now, I see politicians and educators trying to limit thought, discussion, and diversity (of thought) as if limiting diversity of thought is, somehow, not as “bad” as limiting diversity of individuals, ethnic origin, or otherwise limiting the rights of “some” to the benefit of “others.”
Summary
Only one of the Universities I attended had any “racist” attitudes that I encountered. To say the “south” is “racist” is a logical fallacy. People may be “racist,” but I doubt geographic regions are…
I have lived in the “South” and in the “North.” In my experience, I have seen too many “racists” in both areas… To say one is worse than the other is irrelevant. The issue, to me, is that we need to educate people since ignorance can’t be “forced out”–either by physical force or by dictating a “way of thought.”
If your opinion is so “right,” you should welcome a calm discussion of the issue. You should not be “afraid” when someone questions your thoughts or beliefs–nobody has to agree with you, and I suggest, as postulated by Madison, that everyone will NOT agree. While we are social animals, we are, at heart, individuals.
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Jul 12, 2010 
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