Some thoughts on academic diversity:
- Nan Keohane has made it clear that she does not believe party identification to be related to intelligence. Her stance puts her in disagreement not only with Philosophy Chair Robert Brandon, but also Duke Professor Emeritus Lawrence Evans, who wrote the following letter to the Raleigh News and Observer on September 23, 2002:
"So John Leo and the (oh so diverse!) American Enterprise Institute think there is insufficient diversity of political affiliation among university faculty. Their poll numbers show that Republicans are a small minority of the professoriate. True, and rightly so.
"In seeking faculty, universities look for people who can analyze and discuss matters of some complexity, who are unafraid to challenge the wisdom of simple solutions and who have a sense of social responsibility toward those who cannot buy influence. Such people tend to be put off by a political party dominated by those who believe dogmatically in the infallibility of the marketplace as a solution to all economic problems, or else in the infallibility of scripture as a guide to morality.
"In short, universities want people of some depth, subtlety and intelligence. People like that usually vote for the Democrats. So what?"
- It's ironic that the above letter came from a physics professor, as the most common attack against the Duke Conservative Union's Feb. 9 Chronicle advertisement was that the voter registration statistics for many departments were omitted.
As far as that argument goes, the DCU made clear that its focus was on "politicized" departments and the classroom atmospheres the professors in them create. To that end, few DCU members were concerned with political bias in classes like math or engineering and tried to focus on departments where ideological diversity would be most important. Had DCU's intent been to cherry-pick the most skewed programs of study, political science would have been excluded in favor of women's studies, study of sexualities, theater studies, African and African-American studies, or French.
- After the DCU's ad ran, Political Science Chairman Mike Munger--by no means a Republican hack--was quoted as saying that he once heard a department chair say that he or she "thought the function of Duke was to rid conservative students of their hypocrisies."
Last Tuesday, Munger went on to say this: "Though the person I heard it from directly is no longer chair of a department at Duke, I am sure that this view is widespread, at least in some departments. I am often at dinners and other gatherings where such views are explicitly advanced. More than a few of our faculty, in some departments, think that their primary role as instructors is to proselytize for a very narrow, and politically extreme, point of view on the left. They just take it for granted; conservative students are mistaken and need to be corrected."
- Some have called for a specific example of bias in the classroom. Here's one:
Midway through last semester, I had a poor grade in an International Relations course and noticed that the liberal arguments I made in my writing were usually starred and the conservative ones marked off.
After my instructor said in class that it was incorrect to say that the United States was any more "capitalist" than Scandinavian countries, I decided to employ a new gameplan and began writing little more than unsupported and hateful shots at President Bush in my assignments.
In one paper, I summarized the President's entire domestic agenda as "tax cuts for the rich" and accused him of having "shifted U.S. efforts away from the War on Terror" and taken over "Iraq's industries and assigned control of its oil supply to Haliburton, the Republican-supporting corporation that Dick Cheney was a CEO of." On my final exam, I said that the biggest threat to our national security was Ann Coulter.
My grades changed significantly. I'll let everyone guess whether they went up or down.
- In response to the DCU ad, Keohane asserted her commitment to ensuring that Duke faculty members "provide an environment that is conducive to robust discussion, where students feel they can express strongly held views and disagree with their professors or their classmates within the bounds of civility."
DCU has never asked for quotas, and agrees with Keohane that classroom atmosphere is what matters. But can Keohane honestly say that departments that show a 17:1 ratio of Democrats to Republicans and are led by professors who call Republicans "stupid," hypocritical, "mistaken" and lacking in "depth, subtlety, and intelligence" provide the most open and diverse climate possible?
Keohane might want to examine this issue with more than a discussion group, because as a Class of '84 University donor wrote with a contribution to DCU, "I may not be smart enough to be hired by Duke, but I am smart enough to give my money to those whom I think will use it the most wisely."
Nathan Carleton is a Trinity junior. His column appears every other Monday.
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