American universities are facing a diversity crisis threatening the very purpose of higher education. I am not referring to diversity of race, gender or sexual orientation, as college campuses are the most accepting places on the planet for personal expression.
No, this crisis refers to a lack of diversity far more paramount than skin color or pronoun preferences. Diversity of thought, the freedom to express dissenting viewpoints intelligently is under fire inside the modern college campus.
It is no secret the majority of college students believe in left-wing ideology, but the reason for this fact is far more sinister. Liberal politics are not innate in every student, they are unknowingly learned by the very people who are instructed to prepare young people for the challenges the world provides: college educators.
According to James Barrett of The Daily Wire, conservative faculty are outnumbered 12.7 to 1, turning college campuses into political echo chambers in which the malleable minds of the students are caught in the center. This cannot be allowed to continue. Irrelevant politics must be removed from college classrooms so that objectivity can be restored to higher education.
The politics of professors, especially in circumstances where it is unnecessarily interjected, is detrimental to creating well-educated individuals who are capable of forming unique beliefs. Undermining students’ active pursuits of knowledge through college education by feeding them rehearsed, superfluous and questionably accurate political rhetoric is immoral, and should bring shame to any professor guilty of the same.
According to former Governor Bobby Jindal’s for National Review, “Many universities are moving away from a search for truth and towards promoting their vision of social justice.” The moment institutions of higher learning move away from its purpose of educating is the moment it fails the next generation of Americans. Professors teach their opinion as objective fact, and when a student questions their beliefs, they are denying truth.
Students are lured into a logical trap, constructed by a liberal conformation bias and perpetuated by the fact that left-wing beliefs are the norm on college campuses. Potentially doubting students are met with the ultimatum to conform to the majority or face the wrath of an angry mob, which includes the person who controls their grades. For many conservative students, the answer is simple: college will be four years of frustrated silence.
In denying students’ dissenting viewpoints, college professors are doing a great disservice to them. According to Haley Glatter of The Atlantic, 42.3 percent of college students identify as moderate, 35.5 percent of college students identify as liberal and 22.2 percent of college students identify as conservative. Despite the fact the conservative presence is lower than the liberal presence, it exists nonetheless.
Imagine the possibilities for learning that could occur, should conservative views not be demonized to the degree they are. Political discourse could be conducted in a civil manner with the objective to educate and find a solution, not to attain a political victory.
Jindal writes, “For today’s students, who come to campus already believing in inherent bias, systemic racism, gender fluidity, and the need for drastic government action to mitigate global warming, I would argue they are better served by being forced to consider the world from the perspective of smart professors and students who disagree with them.”
This is the objective of college: to find the best ideas by the smartest people to work toward a better world. Rather than championing this, academia often act as a roadblock due to their contempt of conservatism. As academia believe conservative ideas are meritless, one would think they would welcome a debate instead of dismissing them as racist, homophobic, misogynistic or whatever the leftist buzzword of the day may be.
Keeping politics out of the classroom should be the standard. Students need to demand an objective learning environment, one dedicated to the pursuit of knowledge above political conformation bias. Groupthink on college campuses must be eradicated for the sake of ideas, for the sake of discourse and for sake of diversity.