DIVERSITY OF THOUGHT IS MOST PARAMOUNT

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Lacking a major diversity in ideas
Allison Aldrich, CT Regular Columnist
Monday, September 10; 5:34 PM

In the months after April 16, campuses across the country began scrambling to create programs that encourage diversity and ensure that students have an effective way to report discrimination. To its credit, Virginia Tech has been at the forefront of this movement.
The MOSAIC program was established this year (after a couple years of planning) with the purpose of creating dialogue between participants about race, gender, sexual orientation, religion, political views and numerous other differentiating characteristics.
We also now have SafeWatch, a program launched to reduce harassment and encourage harmony among all groups. These new measures show that as a community we are taking positive steps to support diversity in all its forms among the student body. Despite this progress, I believe the campus has fallen short in promoting the diversity of opinions among professors and in the classroom.
Many professors proudly place "Safe Zone" stickers on their doors, promising that their office is a place free from discrimination regardless of whether a student is lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender. Students should never feel threatened or intimidated by entering a professor's office just because of their sexual orientation. Having said that, how do conservative students feel when they meet with professors whose doors are plastered with bumper stickers, political cartoons and news articles, all of which make fun and are intolerant of their political views?
Students enter college hoping to expand their horizons and learn from the knowledge and experiences of others. We all expect to discover and reflect on new theories and concepts that will help mold us into unique and thoughtful individuals. The diversity essential in the learning process includes hearing from people with all different ideological viewpoints — not just ones based on differences in skin color or sexual orientation.
I doubt you can find an argument that communism, for example, should never be taught in classrooms just because as a political ideology it is responsible for more deaths of its own citizens than any other form of government. Likewise, socialism should be taught, but not because a professor believes it to be a better form approach than "evil" capitalism. It's one thing to teach various political theories, but it's quite different when a professor becomes the champion of an ideology or the scold for political or economic views he or she does not favor.
When a diversity of ideas is absent among professors at Tech, a great disservice is done to students. When professors become apologists, where is the education?
A recent report by the Center for Responsive Politics, a non-partisan group that tracks campaign contributions, exposes the liberal-leaning bias of academia in America. The report states, "College professors and others in the education field have contributed more money than the oil industry and drug makers, with the nearly unanimous goal of putting a Democrat in the White House." Professors should be allowed to support whomever they wish, but when 76 percent of professors' political donations are going to Democrats, I begin to wonder where the conservative representation is in academia.
Many people today seem to think college campuses are one-party environments, and the statistics seem to bear that out. Are colleges places of learning for students who are hungry for knowledge so that they can make informed choices? Or, have they become cushy soapboxes-for-life for tenured professors with a political agenda?
Personally, I have made it through two years as a political science major without being assigned one conservative book to read. Although I have become well acquainted with Marxist thought, had an entire exam devoted to Watergate, and read countless essays against our foreign policies in the Middle East, I have yet to discuss F.A. Hayek, Milton Friedman, Frédéric Bastiat or any other influential conservative thinker in any political science class I have taken.
It is encouraging to see Tech embracing programs that promote diversity on campus. I hope that we can begin to make the same strides with intellectual diversity and create a community where politics, economics, and other such ideas can be intelligently debated no matter what ideology a professor might hold true. Sphere: Related Content