In Praise of the Color Purple · 11 April 2005
By Meghan Barr--Cornell Daily Sun--04/11/05
The condescending sneer on Bill O'Reilly's face finally pushed me over the edge. Sandwiched between my parents on our living room couch, my tolerance for Fox News had reached its uppermost limits. I grabbed the remote control and, shaking it in my father's face, railed away at his decision to watch a news channel that dishes out conservative garbage instead of real news.
He simply shook his head and laughed. "You've been at that liberal school for way too long," he said.
His comment struck a nerve beneath the layers of my self-righteousness. I was insulted by the assumption that, instead of forming my own beliefs, I had merely latched onto a popular philosophical trend. Yet graduating seniors face a telling question: have we been liberally stained -- "ruined," as the more vocal Republicans might call it -- by our Cornell education? Yesterday, one of my favorite English professors wryly referred to a famous actor as "one of the worst right-wing assholes in Cornell history." A prominent teacher in the government department frequently peppers his history lectures with wisecracks implying George W. Bush's illegitimacy as president of the United States. Prior to the presidential election, another well-liked English professor handed out anti-war poems from the Vietnam era and encouraged my creative writing class to vote. It didn't require a vast portion of my Ivy League-financed brain to deduce which candidate we were supposed to choose.
Of course we have received a biased education. Any attempts to deny the liberal slant of Cornell's faculty are simply laughable: one need only glance at recent newspaper headlines for the scientific proof. Increased calls from the right for "academic freedom" have produced studies verifying the oft-repeated accusation that liberal faculty members out-seat conservatives by a 10-1 ratio at universities across the nation.
Since I truly like and respect all of the aforementioned professors, I remained silent as they led a chorus of my classmates' voices in ridiculing President Bush and the Republican political machine that currently runs our government. The uncomfortable situation made me feel that I would be viewed as a virtual heretic -- even worse, stupid -- if I dared to speak up and contradict them.
I constitute a rather unusual hybrid of political thought: a liberal-thinking child raised by staunchly conservative parents. On many issues I side with the left, but I also share some of the same conservative values as my parents.
I am only 21 years old. The scandalous truth is that I don't fall into a distinct category. I am neither here nor there; I turn left with one heel grounded in conservative soil. I commend the virtues of gun control and decry the practice of late-term abortion all in the same expelling of breath. The polarizing climate of American politics frowns upon swingers like me. With so many confident people at the helm of red or blue vessels, those wading through a sea of purple tend to get overshadowed by the extremists.
Most faculty members arbitrarily assume that students are dyed-in-the-wool liberals like themselves. When class discussion shifts from the relevant subject matter to the irrelevant sphere of politics, the atmosphere resembles that of a cluster of army generals meeting to discuss the enemy's next move. We're all in this together, they say, and shake their heads at the uneducated, Bible-belt rednecks that helped elect such an idiot to the Oval Office. When people carelessly vilify Republicans, it feels like a personal insult to my family. I may agree with some of the liberal ideology espoused by my professors. But I also believe that it is both inappropriate and unprofessional when they use the classroom as a political platform for their own beliefs.
Enter the controversial "Academic Bill of Rights," a piece of legislation that has unnerved state lawmakers and educators alike in its attempt to rid academia of political overtones. Among other changes, the bill -- designed by activist David Horowitz -- seeks to remove political, ideological or religious bias from the hiring of college professors. It also encourages a balanced representation of all political viewpoints in the classroom. Another strain of the bill is currently being debated by the state of New York for possible implementation in SUNY colleges.
Last year, a group of Cornellians proposed a modified version of Horowitz's bill and presented it to the Student Assembly for approval. The assembly's close final vote -- narrowly defeating the bill by a count of 8-7 -- illustrates how deeply divided the student body, like the rest of the country, remains on the proper role of politics in a lecture hall.
The contentious debate underscores the necessity of grasping our education firmly with our own two hands. Professors disseminate and explain the information; as students, it is our duty to draw our own conclusions from it. Indignant Republicans who lament the waste of their tax dollars on liberal educations should remember that the minds of college students aren't as malleable as those owned by Pavlov's puppies. The same intelligence that earned us entry to Cornell grants us the ability to discern bias from fact and fact from fiction.
And professors ought to remember that college students already represent one of the most liberal sectors of the population. The propagandizing isn't just inappropriate, it's redundant. Save the rhetoric: we're not the ones who need to be convinced.
Meghan Barr is a senior in the College of Arts and Sciences.
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