Elizabeth Rudisill's recent column attacking Students for Academic Freedom and its president ("All becomes clear" Oct. 31) was both disappointing and disheartening. What my "very liberal" peer fails to recognize is that SAF, rather than "simply [providing] a forum for conservative students to whine about their grades," is actually seeking to broaden the definition of tolerance on Duke's diverse campus. Somehow it's become perfectly acceptable for some professors to alienate and deride an entire sect of the Duke student population.
In the same classroom where speech critical of, for instance, different sexual orientations or cultural customs is intolerable, professors seem to have no problem going on rants about the war in Iraq and engaging in crude ad hominem attack against my president. SAF is simply asking that professors respect their students whether or not they share their beliefs and that we try and foster the diversity of ideas once deemed so central to a university education.
While it is quite obviously the job of columnists to persuade the general public of their convictions, it is the professors' job to present the material necessary for understanding their subject and to try and open the minds of their students. If Rudisill would remove her "very liberal" glasses and read the facts, she would find that SAF wants nothing more than intellectual tolerance and diversity.
Garrett Wood
Pratt '08
Column fails to contest SAF pledge
Elizabeth Rudisill's column used every means possible to bash the Students for Academic Freedom pledge except actually dispute the pledge's arguments. She spends 90 percent of the article detailing the "disturbing" and "sinister" way SAF was accepted into Duke Student Government and mentions the horrifying fact that SAF's leader, Stephen Miller, did not support allowing the Palestine Solidarity Movement conference to Duke last year!
Her points are completely irrelevant as to whether the Academic Freedom pledge should be accepted by professors. The pledge wants professors to be tolerant of opposing views in the classroom and not to advance their own ideological agendas. The only time she actually refers to the contents of the pledge is when she claims many professors do allow opposing viewpoints to be heard. If this is true, then what harm is there in a pledge that merely reaffirms what professors are already doing? Trying to link random conservative views with a nonpartisan pledge advocating diversity of opinion in classrooms makes her argument irrelevant.
Greg Bobrinskoy
Trinity '08
Econ BA offers alternate thinking
Last week, The Chronicle's staff editorial ("Calculating econ's future" Oct. 25) voiced its strong support of the economics department's decision to eliminate its Bachelor of Arts degree. In particular, it focused on the lack of an econometrics requirement in the BA program as the primary reason for its weakness, and said, "the University should not be in the practice of handing out degrees that suggest a specialization when only the facade of that mastery is present." It also claimed that the elimination of such phoney degrees "signals a slow but steady strengthening of the Duke education."
I find this narrow definition of what constitutes "true" economic mastery to be troubling. It signals a bias on the part of both the department and the larger student body to glorify mathematics and formal modeling over many other more intuitive approaches to what, in the end, is a social science.
When you require students to adhere to one set of beliefs about how the economic world works and the tools you must use to describe it, you exclude a large number of alternative views that are themselves no less valid and would in fact provide a much fuller range of perspectives that, at this point, are still being neglected in the economic field.
The truth is that very few people believe that economic modeling can describe a significant portion of their behavior, but if those who do believe it are the only ones allowed to pursue economics, then economics as a discipline will continue to find itself extremely limited in the types of human behavior it can describe.
Allana Strong
Trinity '07
Congress threatens to cut aid
In a country that cherishes equal opportunity, we face an unavoidable problem in the great number of qualified individuals unable to afford higher education. Across the nation universities, especially state universities, have increased tuition (some by as much as 40 percent). As a result, more than 400,000 students of low- and moderate-income families have not had the opportunity to pursue higher level education. So, many believe the government should increase spending for student loans and grants.
Many congressmen, however, don't recognize this unavoidable problem. A questionable resolution to "amend and extend" the Higher Education Act of 1965, the staple legislation for higher education loan and grant programs, has already passed through the House Education and Workforce Committee and is ready for the full House's vote by the end of this month.
If ultimately passed, the resolution (HR 609) would cut $9 billion from student lending programs and increase students' loan debts. It implements new formulas for interest rates on loans. Currently, the Stafford and parent loans are scheduled to become fixed at 6.8 percent and 7.9 percent for students and parents, respectively, in July 2006.
The resolution would cancel this change and implement new formulas that could increase rates to as high as 8.25 percent and 9.0 percent for students and parents, respectively. Another devastating aspect, among others, of HR 609 would be its proposal to cap Pell grants at $6,000 per student until 2013. While this is an increase from the current cap at $5,800, fixing it over the next eight years overlooks inflation.
While the provisions of HR 609 reduce federal spending and allegedly contribute to "saving" the federal government $33.5 billion, with every "saving" comes a cost. Realizing the cost of HR 609 as a country already subject to pricey tuitions that limit the opportunities to higher education is simply unacceptable. In fact, the federal government should refinance to spend more on loans and grants and help resolve the unavoidable problem that HR 609 threatens to exacerbate.
Mike Palmer
Trinity '08
Duke Democrats Press Chair
Respectful debate benefits all
Martin Luther King, Jr. once said that "our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter." As members of an academic community, we are encouraged to explore and learn about what matters to us, what matters to others and what ought to matter to us all. It is both our privilege and responsibility to engage in meaningful social discourse that allows for the free expression of all viewpoints. The articulation of particular viewpoints need not silence others.
The Center for Race Relations promotes sharing and listening among members of the Duke community as a means of deepening the well from which we draw the knowledge and understanding that informs our own beliefs. Because we advocate honest dialogue as necessary to achieve respect and understanding, we seek to foster a safe space in which people on both ends of the spectrum and in between are able to voice their beliefs without fear of repercussions.
We invite all members of the Duke community to join us for a facilitated town hall discussion on William Bennett's comments and the issues raised by Stephen Miller and respondents to his recent column in The Chronicle ("Tricky extrapolations" Oct. 26). The discussion will take place this Thursday, Nov. 3, at 7 p.m. in the fifth floor of McClendon Tower.
Let us ask ourselves, "If not here, where? If not now, when?"
Felix Li
Trinity '07
Hollen Reischer
Trinity '06
Co-Presidents,
Center for Race Relations
Get The Chronicle straight to your inbox
Signup for our weekly newsletter. Cancel at any time.