Monday, December 12, 2016

Echo Chambers on Campus

Nicholas Kristof, a liberal columnist, writes in a New York Times op-ed, "The Dangers of Echo Chambers on Campus," that campus liberals need to take a step back from their accustomed habit of "being inclusive of people who don’t look like us — so long as they think like us." Progressive academics are gung ho for diversity of all kinds — as long as said diversity doesn't include evangelical conservatives:

We champion tolerance, except for conservatives and evangelical Christians. We want to be inclusive of people who don’t look like us — so long as they think like us. ...
Half of academics in some fields said in a survey that they would discriminate in hiring decisions against an evangelical.
... the lack of ideological diversity on campuses is a disservice to the students and to liberalism itself, with liberalism collapsing on some campuses into self-parody.

When I was an undergraduate at Georgetown in the late 1960s, there was no protective ideological "bubble" in place yet. Professors and guest speakers offered a panoply of ideas from various spots on the ideological spectrum.

Yet there were few non-white students, as affirmative action and other pro-diversity initiatives were still in the future. There were lots of women on campus, but at least half were in the Nursing School and the rest were in "East Campus" schools: Foreign Service and Languages/Linguistics, preeminently. The College of Arts and Sciences (my school) was not yet co-ed.

I never heard anyone say anything at all about the need to protect students from disturbing ideas. That, too, was still in the future.

An early-2016 Washington Post op-ed from liberal columnist Catherine Rampell, "Liberal intolerance is on the rise on America’s college campuses," discusses the issue of campus "free speech." She says:

... while I support and admire students’ efforts to make the world a better place — I also kind of understand the right’s fear that student activism may be disparately used to muzzle conservative viewpoints.

Amen to that!







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