Letters from the National Campus Director

Enriching Diversity on Campus by Presenting An Alternative Viewpoint · 05 November 2004

Students for Academic Freedom firstly works to document abuses of academic freedom on campus. We encourage you to keep records of such abuses and post them in the complaints section of our website at: http://www.studentsforacademicfreedom.org/comp/complaints_form.asp. You may also email these to me at Sara@studentsforacademicfreedom.org. Students for Academic Freedom promotes the Academic Bill of Rights as a remedy for these abuses.

Now in the post-election season we are proposing a new program: diversity enrichment.
A Diversity Enrichment Program is any program or conference or series of lectures that addresses deficiencies in your education and exposes students to under-represented views.

For example, if you attend a school where the Peace Studies department is overwhelmingly pacifist in its philosophy, ask the school to sponsor a lecture series on "The Role of the Military in Maintaining Peace." Or if your university's history department is dominated by revisionists, you can request funds for a conference on the American founding presented from a more traditionalist view of history.

If these lectures and programs fit the academic criteria for a given university department, ask that students be given academic credit for attending.

Of course, it will take significant funds to finance these kinds of programs, and to persuade your university to pony up, you may have to do some research on how much money is spent on comparative conferences which cater to the already-prevalent intellectual currents on campus. Find out how much your university budgeted to bring Michael Moore to campus and request a comparable amount for a diversity enrichment program headlined by a conservative speaker.

It may be possible to raise money through private donations as well, but it is best to fund these initiatives through the university's coffers because this will serve to further highlight the deficiencies in intellectual diversity of their existing programs and departments. Be creative in deciding on a conference agenda, and make sure you phrase your request in terms of the language of intellectual diversity.

For more information on organizing a chapter or to join the academic freedom movement, please contact me at our Washington, DC office. Please note that our office has moved in the last week, and you can now reach me at our new phone number, 202-393-0123 or at Sara@studentsforacademicfreedom.org. For all our updated contact information, visit this link on our website.

Yours in Freedom,

Sara Dogan
National Campus Director
Students for Academic Freedom

 

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