Posted on 05/07/2003 12:57:55 PM PDT by Behind Liberal Lines
A study recently issued by student Republicans and Tompkins GOP Chair Mark Finkelstein has kindled accusations of liberal bias at Ithaca College.
After checking voter registration records of 125 faculty members in 14 departments in the social sciences, Republicans found that 117 were registered Democrats or Greens while only eight were registered Republicans or Conservatives. The English, History and Politics departments have no Republicans, according to the study.
Some may wonder what a professor's political background may have to do with, say, the study of authors like James Joyce. But Republicans argue that the lack of balance gives faculty members liberty to frame issues and discussions in a way that reflects their political viewpoints.
IC Republican Chair Michelle Meredith, who helped with the study, says some professors have "given me a harder time than they would students of the left." Meredith, a television and radio major, says she regularly finds herself at odds with professors over issues such as political bias in the media.
"People who say there is a liberal bias [in the media] are told they are wrong," she says. "All three professors of my classes said that there is a conservative bias."
But the college administration and faculty question the significance of the study. David Maley, IC's director of media relations, called the study "a publicity stunt", based on faulty methodology.
"The college recruits and hires (faculty members) on the quality of their teaching and their scholarship and their ability to make a positive contribution to the academic community," he says. "It does not hire based on political affiliations or political viewpoints."
"Since 'Democrat' and 'Republican' are such extremely broad categories, a faculty member's political affiliation is probably going to reveal very little (if anything) about her or his approach to literature," says Claire Gleitman, who chairs IC's Department of English.
Asma Barlas chairs the Politics Department, which is frequently the target of the Republicans' ire. She calls the study "convoluted and opportunistic," and argued that Republicans are trying to "stamp out diversity in the name of diversity."
"Our department is home to individuals who represent a broad range of what one may term progressive views, even though we express them in singularly distinctive ways," Barlas says. "But, given that the academy is generally conservative, notwithstanding the party affiliations of individual faculty, that makes us a political minority, hence also politically diverse.
"Those who are attacking us for not being politically diverse are not exemplars of political diversity themselves," Barlas continues. "The Ithacan has a conservative white male as its faculty advisor (who has attacked me in the local press), and all the (Ithacan) editorials written against the department and myself are written from a right-wing, conservative, Republican position. Where is political diversity in that?"
Barlas was referring to Michael Serino, manager of student publications, who also writes a column for the Ithaca Journal.
"The students (at the Ithacan) seem to have struck a nerve," Serino says in response. "As far as my own role goes, as an Ithaca Journal columnist, I'd describe myself as politically conservative on some issues and liberal on others. As adviser to The Ithacan, though, my job is to teach students how to be good journalists, not to pursue some kind of political agenda. Good educators foster the cultivation of critical thinking, not political indoctrination - a fact Professor Barlas might try to keep in mind."
Ellen Stapleton, a senior journalism major and the Ithacan's editor-in-chief, says the paper and its opinion board have attempted to incorporate a wide range of views. "To say that our 'white male conservative advisor' has any sort of influence over any positions in our editorials is just wrong," she says.
Still, Stapleton stands by the Ithacan's recent editorial, which also criticized the lack of political diversity on campus. "When they say diversity, they mean racial diversity, ethnic diversity and a diversity of progressive ideas - but not ideas from all perspectives," Stapleton says. "Our editorial was simply pointing that out."
But Matt Hughes, a freshman politics major and self-described progressive, says he sees a lot of freedom of expression at the college. "I just think they are crying wolf," he says of the Republicans. "If you were to ask a lot of people to examine their political beliefs, I think a lot of people would be conservative because it is a pretty wealthy campus."
At the very least, the idea that college campuses tend to be dominated by the left is widely accepted.
"There is a striking lack of political and ideological diversity [on campuses]. It's actually scandalous," says Harvey A. Silverglate, a Boston attorney and the co-author of "The Shadow University," which argues that universities are routinely hindering free speech.
"And yet every college claims they are diverse," says Silverglate, a self-described liberal and civil libertarian. "People who look different but think alike - that's phantom diversity. Unless you are a racist you believe ideas are more important than color."
A lack of political diversity, Silverglate says, can lead to the squelching of ideas via speech codes or other measures. Ithaca College does not have speech codes, though many students, and the Ithacan, argue that the college's policy of posting "bias alerts," which notify students of reported cases of offensive speech, muzzle free expression.
The current generation of speech codes favors liberals, Silverglate says, and dictate that if one says "something that upsets a member of a historically disadvantaged group (such as) women, gays and blacks ... you have thereby harassed the person and you violate the code. And these codes are applied in a manner that is not uniform, they have double standards.
"For example, if a student gets up and says that abortion is murder, that student on many campuses will be disciplined as being unnecessarily provocative to women. But if a student gets up and says, 'Keep your rosaries off my ovaries' - a common chant that women have in arguing against the Catholic Church - that would be core political speech."
Liberals, Silverglate argues, should be wary of accepting hindrances to free speech just because they have the upper hand.
"The whole nature of restrictions on speech is that nobody is ever safe," he says. "Your group may doing the censoring now but, in 25 years, the pendulum swings."
Of course, being the media, in Ithaca, they base their call for balance in part on the theory that if conservatives aren't allowed to spaek, "they are more likely to vent on the bathroom walls or with a stupid prank," and suggest its good to expose students to conservative ideas to demonstrate how "offensive" they are.
They also feel compelled to make a snide comment or two about how conservatives "apparently are not content to dominate the government."
Sounds like she is a bigot. She obviously believes that only white males are conservative. The thought that there might be some female black conservatives out there willing to teach must seem out of reach for her. Remember, Asma, diversity of thought is just another kind of diversity. Diversity of skin color means nothing if everyone thinks the same way.
They are merely speaking the truth as they see it. Anything right of marxism is a "conservative bias."
We have both kinds of music here, County and Western!
I have never seen such an understatement in my life. This ranks up there with remarks like "Tariq Aziz has not been very forthcoming" and "Clinton was occasionally flirtatious." Not to mention the Powell habit of referring to French duplicity as "not helpful."
My favorite has always been "Welcome to the university! We have both kinds of views here, Socialist AND Progressive!"
Yep. A rainbow of people all thinking alike isn't diversity, it's just scenery.
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