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Volume CXXXIII, Number 12 |
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Indoctrination needs to be addressed
To the Editors:
Priya Sridhar's article, "Republican professors are scant at Bowdoin," has brought to the forefront an important issue that is usually left out in the ongoing debates about diversity on this campus. Talk about diversity is usually limited to race or economic status, yet in reality this means relatively little when compared with diversity of opinions and ideas.
In the 2000 census, Blacks made up around 12.3 percent of the population, and 3.1 percent of the regular faculty at Bowdoin. This means that there is a disparity of 9.2 percent between the Black population in the United States, and the percentage of regular Black faculty on this campus. Now doing the same analysis for political party identification using the National Election Survey seven-point scale, we find that in 2002 around 43 percent of the population identified with the Republican Party in some way or another. Using Ms. Sridhar's data, (which only identifies Republicans in certain departments and not the entire faculty) around 4.3 percent of the faculty are Republicans. This results in an incredible 39.7 percent difference in Republican identification among the actual population and the Bowdoin Faculty. Why is there such focus on diversity of skin color rather than diversity of thought when clearly one is lacking much more than the other? If people want to talk about diversity on this campus, we should start with diversity here!
Additionally, I find the comments of Professor Levine regarding this issue to be preposterous. How can he claim that "if someone's talking about history it doesn't matter," when next semester he is offering a course called "Interpretations of American History?" It is in my humble opinion that one interprets different historical events largely based on their political ideology. For instance, I view Ronald Reagan as one of the greatest presidents in American history, while several of my colleagues on the other side of the political spectrum might consider him to be the worst! Whether we like it or not, politics plays a colossal role in the work we do here at Bowdoin, and it should not and cannot be ignored in any discipline.
I think the lack of Republican and conservative thought on college campuses is something that needs to be addressed immediately, more so than lack of racial diversity. Until this is solved, the course offering will continue to reflect the liberal bias of the faculty, and the indoctrination of the students will continue.
Sincerely,
Alex Linhart '06
College Republicans Chairman
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