This appeared in our local paper today. That sound you hear is my head exploding.
My commentary is in red.
Half the lesson is missing if colleges lack conservatives
By Mark Chadsey (April 26, 2006) —
As a faculty member at the State University College at Brockport, I recently had the pleasure of attending the inauguration of our new president, John Halstead. I was particularly interested to hear his vision for the future of SUNY Brockport.
I was not surprised to hear him stress that the campus should commit itself to the goal of making SUNY Brockport look more like America, namely, a place where diversity would be evident in the faculty and student body. While I agree with this mission, I think this can be an admirable goal only if we are committed to intellectual diversity and not just diversity of color and sexual preference.
Before proposing the changes I believe necessary to achieve that goal, I think it is important to review the reasons why real diversity is important. Diversity ought to be about ensuring that the academic world exposes students to a free and open debate between conflicting ideas. The purpose of that clash of ideas is to assist us in becoming better citizens and further our quest to better understand our world. Diversity of ideas assists our search for philosophical, scientific, political, economic and social truths.
The risk in promoting diversity of ideas is that we will open the door to falsehoods. Those who resist intellectual diversity have always cited this risk to justify censuring ideas. The enlightened answer to those harboring such fears has always been that one need not fear falsehood, for out of a free and open debate will come the truth. This cornerstone belief undergirds both the American democratic system and, allegedly, academia.
If we are to create a campus that looks like America, we must begin by asking ourselves if there are major groups in America that are severely under-represented on campus. Conservatives are the most obviously under-represented group on this and most other campuses in America. I wonder why??? Hmmmm, I guess open-mindedness and love of learning lead to the dreaded "Liberalism" A study done by the Brockport College Republicans several years ago indicated that conservatives are vastly under-represented among our faculty. This study confirmed that SUNY Brockport's faculty has a decidedly liberal bias (admittedly, this is not so in my own political science department).Hahahaha!
Surveys by the American National Election Studies since 1972 have consistently shown that more Americans self-identify as conservative than liberal. How can a college campus whose faculty vastly under-represents a plurality of Americans ever hope to look like America? My liberal colleagues offer a variety of explanations for the paucity of conservatives on campus. "They get MBAs and go into the business world" appears most persuasive to them. But why, I ask, do I find conservative plumbers, bankers, lawyers, shoemakers, etc., but not conservative college professors? I do not know, albeit I suspect, that some form of discrimination is at work here. Nope. I've been involved in many faculty recruitments and the question of political affiliation is never asked of candidates.
Conservatives have a rich intellectual tradition stretching back through Edmund Burke, Thomas Hobbes, Aquinas, Augustine, Plato and Socrates. Moreover they were abundant in America academia through the early '60s. Where have they gone? They're too busy plundering America!
In the end, the important issue is not why conservatives are under-represented but the recognition that they are. It appears to me that a vast majority of SUNY Brockport faculty do not embrace conservatism and so are willing to brook its under-representation. If diversity is to actually mean something, it must reflect diversity of intellectual ideas, not just those ideas endorsed by the academic majority. If President Halstead is serious about creating a campus that looks like America and actually reflects the political views of the nation, he must address this ideological imbalance.
Chadsey is an associate professor in the political science and international studies department, State University College at Brockport.
3 comments:
chadsey's missive smacks suspiciously of affirmative action. maybe they can get tomlinson to draft the application questionnaire....
KEVron
It's not enough for "Conservatives" to be over- represented in business, religion (natch) the legislature and the juidiciary! To truly represent the America of the founding fathers (who god knows weren't in the least bit radical or revolutionary)and the Constitution which should have been written in stone ( but was instead written on malleable paper)it's essential that future voters reflect the truly conservative principles upon which this great nation was founded as long as we all understand that those very principles were the opposite of conservatism back then but having been long established are the conservatism of today as we imagine them to have been even though they weren't but they are now because they are like, 200 years old and stuff, ergo in the past ergo not of the future ergo radicalism then is conservative today ergo radicalism today not conservative and let;s face it having established a perfect society 200 years ago any attempt at further progress is simply wrong and un-American.
The "rich intellectual tradition" of conservatives is to maintain the status quo ( by definition) and to thus maintain rich conservatives.
And if Halstead is indeed serious about the university reflecting the diversity of intellectual ideas, of creating a campus that reflects the political views of the nation then he should indeed act upon it. Unfortunately Chadsey's rich conservative intellect seems to have missed that such a parameter would result in the further isolation of his own political representation given that across the board basically 2/3rds of the nation has abandoned conservative politics.
And of course there is stil the issue of his rich intellectual supposition that universities should reflect political diversity--I always thought political views were a matter of circumstance and choice and subject to change---but as a true conservative Chadsey assumes politics to be fixed--presumably from birth and until death. And in his world it is clear that the point of a university education is learn about diversity and not from diversity, and that education is a vehicle for forming conformist political opinions.
That ain't intellectual, but that sure is rich!
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