Students For Academic Freedom

An Ideological Double Standard · 02 April 2004

By Erin O'Connor--Critical Mass, 03/30/04

Many a campus "conservative" is born in the crucible of the ideological double standard. As students of campus politics well know, conservatism in the ivory tower is a very different creature than conservatism beyond it; outside the ivory tower, if you are pro-choice, anti-death penalty, pro-gun control, and pro-gay marriage, that pretty much certifies you as a liberal.

On campus, it's not that easy: you can be all these things on campus, and yet still be labelled "conservative" if, for example, you question the logic or practice of affirmative action, if you think religious and Republican students should have just as many expressive rights as liberal agnostics and atheists, or, even more strangely, if you believe in a traditional curriculum that emphasizes mastery of a defined set of skills and a defined "canon" of content. Bottom line: if you depart from a widely accepted set of institutionalized norms, you are a problem whose name is, in the lexical oversimplifications that define the messier pockets of campus life, "conservative."

Mike Adams is, in campus terms, a conservative thrice over: an institutional gadfly who also happens to be a Republican and a Christian. For the good people at UNC-Wilmington, where Adams is a criminal justice professor, that's just more conservatism than others should have to stand. People were offended by Adams' views; some of his colleagues even found that his open, public expression of those views made them feel "uncomfortable." So Adams' administrative superiors did what they apparently do best: they solved the problem not by reminding Adams' colleagues that he has a constitutional right to express his beliefs, but by forbidding Adams to talk about anything that might make his colleagues uncomfortable while he is at work.

How did they rationalize this? By invoking political uniformity as an institutional ideal. "Not everyone sees things the way you do, Mike," they told him; in other words, those who "see things" the way Adams does should keep their visions to themselves. There's that pesky little problem of liberal bias, again. You know, the one that doesn't exist?

Details are here, along with a list of the things Adams' colleagues have said that make him personally uncomfortable. Those of us who have been the recipients of similar administrative directives will feel a certain sympathetic thrill at how Adams unmasks the righteous hypocrisy of his local feel-good censors.

Adams is hoping that the administration will honor his discomfort as swiftly as it honored those who complained about him. After all, since UNC-Wilmington admins have undertaken to violate the law in order to provide the comfiest workplace possible, they should at least take care to violate it in a fair and non-partisan manner.

Thanks to Todd Hartch for the link.

UPDATE: Ralph Luker has more. Don't miss the comments, wherein is discussed an emerging trend in college syllabus creation: the inclusion of an "offensive material" disclaimer. So far, no one has addressed the hypothetical in which a student, colleague, or administrator is offended by the offensive material disclaimer.

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