Campuses Plagued by Hypocrisy

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Have you ever noticed that the same people who claim to love "tolerance" and "diversity" are the same people who refuse to practice it? Sure, they are tolerant of views with which they agree (how hard is that?), but they revile anyone who dares express views not in keeping with their own.

Here at UT, the College Republicans chalked an announcement of their first meeting on the side of the Humanities building. Shortly thereafter, some people chalked "join the facists (sic)" below the announcement. Whoever did this may have been a product of our public schools, as they didn't spell "fascist" correctly.

Unfortunately, incidents like this are common on campuses across the country. At Michigan State University a conservative speaker was nearly arrested earlier this year. Dan Flynn had been authorized to speak as a guest of the College Republicans. Apparently an administrator was offended by a flyer promoting the event which read, "Why the Left Hates America: the Irrationality of Anti-Americanism." The administrator demanded an explanation from the students coordinating the event just minutes before the lecture was scheduled to begin. The students offered to show her Flynn's lecture notes. The administrator refused and threatened to call the police.

At Citrus College in California, Professor Rosalyn Khan gave her students extra credit for writing letters to President Bush letters concerning the then-pending war in Iraq. There was a catch, however: students only got credit for the letters if they opposed the war. So much for diversity of viewpoint.

In 2001, David Horowitz placed in ad entitled "Ten Reasons Why Reparations for Slavery Is a Bad Idea - and Racist Too" in college newspapers. The ad was submitted to 71 student newspapers, of which 43 rejected it. The ad caused an uproar on campuses where it did run. Students stormed into newspaper offices demanding apologies, and attempted to bully and intimidate others until they got them. Newspapers were stolen and burned. Apparently censorship is okay as long as it's against ideas that aren't politically correct.

The attacks against free speech on campus aren't just directed at students. Sometimes professors are muzzled as well. Jim Miller, a professor at Smith College in Massachusetts, was recently denied tenure (which translates into being fired in academia). His crime? He published articles in National Review Online, a conservative publication. Miller appealed his denial to the Smith College grievance committee, who, to their credit, unanimously ruled that his academic freedom had been violated. "There are far more conservatives than you might think on campuses, but they're afraid for their jobs," Miller said.

A recent study by the University of California at Berkley attempted to determine what makes conservatives tick. This profile of respect to diversity determined that conservatives are intolerant and view the world in simplistic terms. Rush Limbaugh and Ronald Reagan were compared to Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini. Who helped paid for this study? The taxpayers, of course.

How can universities, who claim to be beacons of academic freedom and who never tire of lecturing us about the virtues of diversity, be so monolithic in their ideologies? How can they in good conscious repress thought with which they disagree? Perhaps it's because, as Lord Acton put it, "Absolute power corrupts absolutely." College professors and administrators were once students too, and many saw themselves as being oppressed by "the system" during the 1960s and 1970s, when campuses were even more radical than today. Their views were repressed, at least in their minds, and now they want to protect those views at all costs. Somewhere along the way they missed the fact that they have now become "the system."

George Orwell's Animal Farm is a good analogy. In this classic, the animals revolt against the oppressive farmer, and establish a new order where all animals are equal. Gradually, however, the more powerful animals took power, and they were just as brutal as the farmer. In essence, the other animals had simply swapped one tyrant for another. The situation is the same on campus: many administrators and professors, who abhorred restrictions on speech as students, have unwittingly become that which they once hated.

If colleges and universities really want to embrace diversity, maybe they should try to recruit more conservative professors. Colleges are strong advocates of preferential treatment in hiring, but this creates a superficial diversity: you get professors of various ethnic groups who all have the same ideology. This is no true diversity at all.