The May 2005 issue of Reed, the alumni magazine of the college I finally graduated from, has an article questioning whether the college’s traditionally liberal campus keeps the conservatives down. It somehow completely misses David Horowitz’s current anti-liberal campus crusade. It prompted a letter.
Regarding the “Uncivil Discourse” article in the May 2005 issue I’m a bit perplexed. When I was a student during the Reagan and G.H.W. Bush presidencies there seemed to be no end of students arguing over virtually everything. Indeed, Anne Bothner-By (’86) is quoted in the article as saying “Reed students are very combative.” Are the conservatives less combative (something that seems hardly likely if you turn on the TV or radio)? Or do they just have a harder time making the kind of fact-based argument that tends to gain support from the type of people who choose to study at Reed?
As I read the article this April weekend, a conclave of Christian conservatives, addressed by the Republican majority leader of the U.S. Senate, was meeting to discuss how a largely Republican-appointed federal judiciary is biased against Christians, and how judges who disagree with them might be removed from office, which might give some pause to those students considering careers in law. The Kansas Board of Education is about to decide whether thinly-disguised creationism should be included in the science curriculum, which would presumably affect whether high school students see the connections between chemistry, physics, and biology as mysteries of nature or acts of God. You tell me whether that will affect their future careers on the edge of science and the lives of anyone planning to teach said students.
The discussion is open. It has been open. I was attacked for pointing out that folks who complained (two years after the incident) about police twisting their arms and letting them go at Safeway after they were removed from the Development Office during the South Africa divestment sit-in got off pretty easy. A few years older than my fellow students and from a blue-collar background, I found Reed student liberalism (and conservatism) broad but not particularly deep. As in the real world, a lot of the people didn’t care about politics at all.
What I found most astounding about Gay Monteverde’s article though, given its premise, is its failure to mention the current campaign led by David Horowitz’s Students for Academic Freedom to pass an “Academic Bill of Rights” in state legislatures nationwide that purports to protect academic freedom but is viewed by faculty groups in states where it’s moving forward (such as Florida) as a restriction on acceptable topics of discussion in the classroom and the ability to correct students whose views don’t mesh with topics like evolution. The campaign is predicated largely on painting the faculties and student bodies of colleges as “too liberal.” As a private college, Reed wouldn’t be affected by anything like that passing in Oregon, but the timing’s certainly a heck of a coincidence.