It is amusing to pick up an Athens periodical and read the letters of others who believe that their views and stature constitute sufficient validity for the conservative movement to recognize them as a threat and actively seek their individual repression. Not to burst these individuals' bubbles, but as a card carrying member of the vast right wing conspiracy
I can attest to the fact that no Athenian can credit themselves as a true threat to conservatism. As evidenced by the ideologies of the freshmen Republican members of Congress and the success of President Bush, conservatism is doing just fine. Nevertheless, these individuals have attacked restraints on academia as a McCarthy-like attack on free speech. The latest object of their progressive paranoia and loathing is Senate Bill 24.
The bill, although completely void of ideological discrimination, does have a specific and purposeful aim: to ensure that Ohio collegians experience intellectual and ideological diversity on campus. While I agree with opponents who believe that college should be a conversation without diversity of ideology, the college experience is no more than the monolithic sermonizing of a false prophet. In the debate, free speech is a code word for collective leftist ideologies, and the left will do whatever it can to preserve the disproportionate distribution of political economy on American campuses. It is, of course, in their favor to do so, but students deserve better.
It is essential to make clear that there is a difference between free speech and subsidized speech. While professors are different than most public servants, principles of impartiality still apply. The salaries of professors are subsidized by the state; consequently, the state is within its rights as an employer to set guidelines that limit the realm of speech a teacher can pursue while on the job. Outside of the workplace, the right of those professors to say absolutely anything is protected by the First Amendment.
In the case of Senate Bill 24, the state is pursuing a means to protect the rights of students as consumers of education. Students pay universities ever larger sums of money to obtain the tutelage necessary to become informed and productive members of society. Students don't pay to see the world through the eyes of liberals or conservatives; they pay to investigate the world through the diverse research of scholars. When colleges fail to provide their consumers with a sufficient or balanced level of scholarly thought, students deserve a means of recourse.
The idea does not seek to rid academia of liberals, which is indeed a lofty and insidious goal. Instead, it seeks to ensure that students are presented many facets of intellectual thought which they can use to formulate their own ideas. Only a contrarian would question the virtue of that goal.
Though it is not the current practice, it certainly would be ideal for English professors to present the ideas of modernists with the same degree of professionalism as they do those of post-modernists. Instead, the validity of modernists' value for empiricism is questioned if their existence is not outright omitted. Though evolution is often presented as fact, it would also be becoming of a science professor to acknowledge other theories such as intelligent design and creationism in a biology course.
That fair and balanced approach to education is what quality professors value and what predisposed professors abhor. Yet, it is undoubtedly what all students deserve. One must question why the self-proclaimed progressive professors are viciously opposed to ensuring intellectual diversity in course material. Is it because they really view it as a threat to free speech, or is it because they fear that we will learn their coveted and protected ideologies are what Victor Davis Hanson calls little more than ostentatious castles of sand?
-William Munroe is a freshman marketing major. Send him an e-mail at william.munroe@ohiou.edu. 17
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