This past week, a video entitled “Harvard students think U.S. is a bigger threat to world peace than ISIS” was posted. The video featured several students on Harvard’s campus being interviewed by “Campus Reform,” a conservative watchdog group that claims to “expose bias and abuse on the nation’s college campuses” — liberal bias and abuse, that is.
Immediately after the video was posted, there was a backlash from conservative news sources, such as Fox News, that fervently lamented the lack of patriotism in college youth. In one Fox segment, political commentator Andrea Tantaros expressed her belief that “kids nowadays are increasingly hearing anti-American sentiments in schools.”
There is an increasing push from conservative groups in America to counter what they believe to be some sort of liberal conspiracy on college campuses. They seem to imply that political criticism should be stifled for the sake of national unity. Choosing nationalism over rationalism is not a permissible methodology in any department, field or profession, and certainly not in the halls of academia.
This argument — that criticism is “unpatriotic” — does not deserve much attention due to its absurdity. Rather, this logic begs the following question: Why does right-wing ideology shy away from critical examination?
This avoidance stems from conscious choice and necessity. It is not accidental that conservatives hope to shy away from rigorous discussion and put forth conspiratorial arguments instead. When any critical lens is applied to the ideology of right-wing parties, their ideals fall apart under the scrutiny. Perhaps it is time for the right to consider that its lack of support in the halls of academia has more to do with the racism, elitism and cronyism that many students and academics alike see in its ideology and less to do with academia itself.
Further, one must question the entire premise on which these conservative outlets and college watchdog sites are working from: Elite institutions are not only liberal but are force-feeding liberal values down the throats of their students.
Perpetuating this belief, Herald columnist Graham Rotenberg ’17 recently cited the statistic that 96 percent of Ivy League professors who donated to a political campaign donated to the Democratic Party. Of course, this pattern of contribution is not part of some agreed-upon crusade. It hardly needs to be said that the Brown faculty is not convening in a back room to overthrow the Republican ballot. Each of our professors is a bright individual with an illustrious track record who make political judgements independently.
Another overwhelming oversight embedded in this statistic is the chosen sample. If 96 percent of non-Ivy-League professors made similar contributions, would it still be as significant? What if the statistic cited 96 percent of students?
There is a belief that Ivy League institutions are top-tier in terms of intellectual rigor, which lends this particular demographic’s choice added connotative weight. Of course, this is highly upsetting to those on the right, as the 96 percent statistic implies that the Republican point of view holds no weight in an environment of careful scrutiny and critique. Thus, there is a need to invert the logic on its head and insidiously insinuate that the dearth of conservative support in Ivy League universities is some form of liberal collusion.
As I have insisted, the high standards and careful methodology inherent in intellectually elite universities are what shapes political sentiment. That is, it is the form of rigorous scrutiny and not any specific content which results in a prevalence of left-leaning top-tier universities.
Now, remaining true to this conviction of being critical across the board, one must ask an important question: Are the liberal universities as liberal as we believe them to be? I am going to posit that there are some failures in the Ivy League’s brand of liberalism — namely, that the campus is left-leaning in thought but not in practice.
With the manifold opportunities for present enrichment, immediate action and future platforms that Brown students possess, the jaded lack of involvement with the causes that supposedly matter to Brown students is disappointing. On our campus, the only figure more prevalent than the bitter conservative is the lip-service liberal.
Brown students are capable of unprecedented levels of doublethink. Why are our students maintaining such lofty ideals, while pining to become the next investment bankers, corporate lawyers and hedge-fund managers? Goldman Sachs info sessions are standing-room-only while the anti-war movement is non-existent. And, if supposedly 96 percent of our professors are so liberal, then why — as Professor of English William Keach has testified to before — is it so difficult to get them to an anti-war meeting? It would appear that the chasm between appearing left-leaning and acting in such a manner is not a problem limited to the student body. Liberal universities have an affectation problem: They understand the United States’ propensity for terror but, at times, utilize it as a trendy fad rather than as a base for sincere action.
While I consider myself lucky to be part of such a progressive environment at Brown, I often feel that it is the same periphery of students who are active in all of the social justice work ranging from the Divest Coal Campaign to the Student Labor Alliance. Yet it is certainly more than a small periphery of students who speak of bold liberal ideology. Looking forward, the progressive Brown campus must recognize that our biggest obstacle in affecting social change is not conspiracy theories or mocking news articles but our own indifference, our own resignation to the idea that the problems we understand are simply not our task to change.
Peter Makhlouf ’16 can be reached at peter_makhlouf@brown.edu.
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