College - that place that you go after high school to learn critical thinking and analysis skills, and where you go to gain advanced knowledge of a particular discipline in order to pursue a career in that field.
Well, that’s how it’s supposed to work. Sadly, in modern America, it doesn’t. Couple the fact that many college students see their college years as an opportunity to party and experiment with drugs and dangerous behaviour, with the fact that many college administrators and academics see their roles as agents of social change rather than as educators, and you end up with a colossal failure on the part of American colleges and universities to deliver the goods that we all expect them to deliver. Always havens of controversial and anti-”norm” thinking, since the 1960’s most colleges and universities in this country have become unabashedly liberal, hiring academics who seek to brainwash rather than teach, administration who support every oppressed group with a social axe to grind. I don’t think that you’d find a lot of people in this country who would dispute the fact that our colleges and universities are dominated by modern liberalism.
Now, there’s nothing wrong with presenting a point of view that diverges from that which society holds as dominant. Intellect isn’t developed through just accepting the prevailing views - it comes through honest questioning, critical analysis and through debate. People learn who they are philosophically by learning how to defend their points of view. Thought that is unchallenged is not nearly as robust as is thought that has been challenged and has survived the challenges. The problem is that when the vast majority of your professors and administrators come at you from one perspective there is precious little of that debate. By being as universally committed to modern liberalism as they are, colleges and universities have become the very evil that they sought to remedy - they have become monolithic, iconoclastic and unbending centers in which thought and actions are dictated and where free will is routinely discounted. Where is the diversity of opinion on the modern college campus? Where is the academic freedom to explore any topic or theory? Where has the ability to conduct dialog and debate gone?
A couple of recent events in the news have served to highlight the problem that we face with our centers of higher learning. The first it the firing of an administrator and the University of Toledo, Crystal Dixon. You can read about it here. Ms. Dixon had a column published in the local rag that was a rebuttal to an editorial written by the editor-in-chief of the same rag. The main point that she made is that homosexuals are not civil rights victims in the same way as are those whose civil rights are affected because of immutable characteristics such as gender and race. She believes that homosexuality is a lifestyle choice that people make and cited the number of homosexual people who have converted to a heterosexual life as evidence that it is a choice. Her argument is that things about you that you can change don’t deserve the same protection under the law that things about you that you can’t change. Oh, and she made a number of comments about her religion and how her religion sees homosexuality as something that is outside the realm of God’s law. Did I mention that Crystal Dixon is a black woman? Well, she is.
Ms. Dixon was the Associate VP of Human Resources for the University of Toledo, and although she made her comments as private citizen, the university suspended and eventually fired Ms. Dixon because she proffered an opinion that was outside the ‘accepted’ thought at that university. This is not an unusual circumstance. Colleges and universities have become increasingly intolerant of any divergence from their ‘party line’. This is extraordinarily ironic, because colleges and universities usually trumpet their tolerance for diverse points of view. And yet, when afforded the opportunity to embrace a Christian perspective, the University of Toledo rejected it. When given the chance to engage in support of the First Amendment, the University of Toledo chose not to support it. When provided with a moment to celebrate the position of a black woman who had risen to a moderately high rank in their organisation, the University of Toledo decided to cast her from the organisation instead.
Suffice it to say that the University of Toledo has reached the very pinnacle of hypocrisy - slapping down a black woman for speaking her mind as a citizen of the community. My, that’s a liberal action, isn’t it?
The other story that’s hit the news lately can be read here. It’s a piece in the Denver Post that outlines the efforts of the University of Boulder at Boulder to establish an endowed chair position called “Professor of Conservative Thought and Policy”. What is driving this effort is the observation of the Chancellor of the university that there is little intellectual diversity at UC Boulder. Of course, this initiative has sent off the usual howls of protest from the usual suspects. What’s new?
But, according to the Denver Post article:
Boulder is far from the only campus to recognize a leftward tilt to the ivory tower. National surveys have repeatedly shown that liberals dominate faculties at most four-year colleges. And conservative activists have grown more aggressive in demanding balance. A group called the Leadership Institute now sends field workers to scores of campuses each fall to train right-wing students to speak up. College administrators are beginning to respond.
Academics studying the trend cite Georgetown University’s recent hiring of former Central Intelligence Agency Director George Tenet.
And Stetson University in DeLand, Fla., kicked off a conservative lecture series with a talk by the now-deceased William F. Buckley Jr.
Well, more power to them and their efforts to provide some diversity of opinion on the college campus. It’s long overdue.
