On Wednesday, Nov. 3, 2004, there were a lot of distracted and unhappy people on this campus. The night before, we had found out that President George W. Bush would be returned to the White House for four more years. That night, I had dinner with my Focus cluster, Humanitarian Challenges at Home and Abroad.
We had originally been scheduled to listen to Jonathan Glover, who was visiting Duke to deliver the Kenan Distinguished Lecture in Ethics. However, in light of the circumstances, a change was made, and instead the professors each gave a brief speech on their personal feelings regarding Bush's re-election.
On one extreme of the represented political spectrum, one of the faculty made a call for greater understanding and cooperation across ideological and party lines.
In the center, one of the faculty berated our generation for not voting in even higher numbers than our already record-breaking turnout; he also confessed a suspicion that the Diebold CEO's Republican affiliation may have had something to do with the result in Ohio.
At the other end of the political spectrum, yet another professor said that he could no longer countenance living in America.
In spite of the "broad" range of opinions voiced that evening, the Republican student in our Focus, and several others, complained to Professor Elizabeth Kiss, the Focus program chair, that the views might have been ever so slightly one-sided.
And so, in the interest of political correctness, a token right-wing professor was sought out to argue for the other side. The next week's programming was cancelled to make way for a guest lecture by Professor Michael Munger.
Next Wednesday's dinner started off on a rather gladiatorial note, with Munger given barely enough time to introduce himself and explain his goal (to show how a rational person might vote Bush/Cheney), before two of our professors started verbally abusing him.
The whole experience soon took a turn for the absurd when Munger announced that he had not, in fact, voted for Bush. The sorry mess concluded with Kiss apologizing for not having brought a real Republican to feed to the liberal lions.
I have long nurtured a feeling that there was something very wrong with this anecdote, something far deeper than the mere lack of a professor who voted for Bush.
What disturbs me is not that professors shared their opinions: I prefer to know what a person's biases are so I can evaluate their analysis accordingly.
What disturbs me is not that only one side of the argument was presented: I flatter myself that I am not so easily brainwashed, and I would rather learn about opposing viewpoints from those who hold them.
What disturbs me is that class time was devoted to something so completely irrelevant to the subject matter at hand, humanitarian challenges. Worse, once the mistake was made, it was compounded out of a desire to provide "diversity of opinion."
I don't think it matters whether my class time was wasted on a lament for John Kerry or on a discussion of current research in quantum mechanics. Certainly, if we had spent a week's worth of class time on quantum mechanics, I wouldn't want the next week to be similarly wasted by a lecture on relativistic mechanics.
Too much of the debate on the issue of politics in the classroom has been focused on increasing "diversity of opinion." What I dislike most about groups, like Students for Academic Freedom, that have lobbied for affirmative action to promote hiring Republicans, is that they seem to accept the idea that party politics is inseparable from scholarship.
I share in the unease felt by many when I read about the ratio of registered Democratic to Republican faculty in the humanities. I share in the contempt felt by many when I hear that some Duke professors may believe that "conservative historian" is an oxymoron.
However, I don't believe that a conservative historian is any different from a liberal historian. Recent evidence indicates that more hedge-fund managers contribute funds to Democratic candidates than to Republican ones, but this doesn't mean that investors would get a better return on investment if hedge funds hired more Republicans.
What we need is not "balance" or "diversity." What we need is professionalism. Faculty must be free to hold whatever view they wish and to pursue any topic of research they see fit. But Duke must ensure that job applicants will be evaluated based on their teaching and research only, and that, in the classroom, professors stay on topic.
David Rademeyer is a Trinity senior. His column runs every other Thursday.
Get The Chronicle straight to your inbox
Signup for our weekly newsletter. Cancel at any time.