University + Diversity = Oxymoron
In "The Closing of the American Mind", published in 1987, University of Chicago Professor Allan Bloom observed that no matter how "diverse" the backgrounds of his college students one thing was certain; virtually all of them believed truth is relative, a trademark secular belief. Of course that belief was not only shared by Bloom's colleagues, it was promoted vigorously.
Not much has changed since then, except that diversity at the university is more a misnomer than it ever was. Oh there's lots of focus on diversity when it comes to gender, skin color, ethnicity, sexual orientation... the things our centers of "higher" education seem perpetually fixated on. What you don't see is diversity of the thing that matters most - thought.
As George Will points out in his most recent column, at the University of Colorado, UCLA, Cornell, and Stanford, over 90% of all professors are liberal. The ratios are similar among most of the nation's public universities and ivy league colleges.
Of course the universities would argue that the reason they have so many tenured leftists is because modern liberalism is more intellectually enlightened than conservatism. It's a self perpetuating notion, especially given the way professors attain stature - by touting the liberal mantra. You have to look hard to find dissenting views. Browsing the UCLA bookstore as a new student last year, Garin Hovannisian recorded the following:
I asked a sales employee to check the database for a few conservative books that I wanted to buy. After receiving a negative answer on all three -- a result that, given the prominence of the books, was astonishing -- I inquired further.
Of the 25 political books that were on display, 21 were ideologically to the Left, 3 had no apparent political inclination, and only 1 was ideologically to the Right. But much more perturbing is the following: MIT professor Noam Chomsky (a rabidly anti-American leftist) had more books at the UCLA Store than did Aristotle, John Locke, Adam Smith, Frederic Bastiat, Thomas Malthus, John Stuart Mill, F.A. Hayek, Milton Friedman, Thomas Sowell, Ayn Rand, Nathaniel Branden - in effect, the entire tradition of intellectual classical thought - AND David Horowitz, Dinesh D'Souza, Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, Sean Hannity, and Larry Elder--the current day advancers of the libertarian and conservative legacies...combined. Whether these results were achieved as the result of faculty demands or the tastes of UCLA bookstore administrators they are equally degrading to the concept of diversity - the diversity of opinion. see article
On most university campuses, where group think thrives, there is little tolerance for diversity of opinion. The diversity espoused by liberal colleges is focused primarily on some aspect of sex. And the trend continues to devolve. As reported in the New York Times (see entire article) there is a growing preoccupation among university students (and public high schools) to re-examine the rituals of crowning homecoming kings and queens. "At Vanderbuilt University in Nashville this month, a gay student who ran for homecoming queen and took his place on the court in drag at a football game caused a huge stir. In October, students at St. Cloud State University in Minnesota elected their first male homecoming queen." At the University of Washington two homecoming queens were crowned, but no king. Even a few college administrators have been observed to blanch at this new development, but no action contrary to the student's whims is ever taken. Colleges are, after all, about diversity.
If higher education is to be saved it's unlikely the change will come from inside the publicly funded system. Parents of university bound children ought strongly to consider, therefore, voting their consciences in other places. There are private universities that still espouse diversity in its truest sense. Hillsdale College and Thomas Aquinas are two good examples. They may never have the cache' of a Harvard, Stanford, or even UCLA, but truth is too precious to jeopardize on the alter of economic opportunity.
Not much has changed since then, except that diversity at the university is more a misnomer than it ever was. Oh there's lots of focus on diversity when it comes to gender, skin color, ethnicity, sexual orientation... the things our centers of "higher" education seem perpetually fixated on. What you don't see is diversity of the thing that matters most - thought.
As George Will points out in his most recent column, at the University of Colorado, UCLA, Cornell, and Stanford, over 90% of all professors are liberal. The ratios are similar among most of the nation's public universities and ivy league colleges.
Of course the universities would argue that the reason they have so many tenured leftists is because modern liberalism is more intellectually enlightened than conservatism. It's a self perpetuating notion, especially given the way professors attain stature - by touting the liberal mantra. You have to look hard to find dissenting views. Browsing the UCLA bookstore as a new student last year, Garin Hovannisian recorded the following:
Of the 25 political books that were on display, 21 were ideologically to the Left, 3 had no apparent political inclination, and only 1 was ideologically to the Right. But much more perturbing is the following: MIT professor Noam Chomsky (a rabidly anti-American leftist) had more books at the UCLA Store than did Aristotle, John Locke, Adam Smith, Frederic Bastiat, Thomas Malthus, John Stuart Mill, F.A. Hayek, Milton Friedman, Thomas Sowell, Ayn Rand, Nathaniel Branden - in effect, the entire tradition of intellectual classical thought - AND David Horowitz, Dinesh D'Souza, Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, Sean Hannity, and Larry Elder--the current day advancers of the libertarian and conservative legacies...combined. Whether these results were achieved as the result of faculty demands or the tastes of UCLA bookstore administrators they are equally degrading to the concept of diversity - the diversity of opinion. see article
On most university campuses, where group think thrives, there is little tolerance for diversity of opinion. The diversity espoused by liberal colleges is focused primarily on some aspect of sex. And the trend continues to devolve. As reported in the New York Times (see entire article) there is a growing preoccupation among university students (and public high schools) to re-examine the rituals of crowning homecoming kings and queens. "At Vanderbuilt University in Nashville this month, a gay student who ran for homecoming queen and took his place on the court in drag at a football game caused a huge stir. In October, students at St. Cloud State University in Minnesota elected their first male homecoming queen." At the University of Washington two homecoming queens were crowned, but no king. Even a few college administrators have been observed to blanch at this new development, but no action contrary to the student's whims is ever taken. Colleges are, after all, about diversity.
If higher education is to be saved it's unlikely the change will come from inside the publicly funded system. Parents of university bound children ought strongly to consider, therefore, voting their consciences in other places. There are private universities that still espouse diversity in its truest sense. Hillsdale College and Thomas Aquinas are two good examples. They may never have the cache' of a Harvard, Stanford, or even UCLA, but truth is too precious to jeopardize on the alter of economic opportunity.
posted by Publius @ 10:43 PM
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