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19 April 2004 During my daily perusal of the local rag, I was yet again confronted by an article yapping about the problem of politcal diversity on college campuses. Now, you might be wondering why I want to rant about this, since (you'll find) I actually agree with the premises. Academia is largely liberal. I won't dispute that fact. What I will dispute is the reason for yapping about the issue. I'm a graduate student working toward my Ph.D. in English. I have a B.A. in English from a private Christian college. I have a M.A. in English from a large state school. I started my Ph.D. in English at a private Catholic univeristy. And now, I've begun the process of the Ph.D. in Eglish at a reasonable-sized state school. These are my credentials. I'm also a liberal, but that's really neither here nor there. What's important is my observation regarding this issue across four very different colleges. I will only speak to the humanities, but this is enough since every student will have to take those dreadful core humanities classes where they're apparently being indocrinated. As an undergraduate (at the small, private college), I could probably count on one hand the number of conservatives in my English classes. Most of the conservatives I knew leaned toward business or Education (note: Education majors do not go on to teach at universities, for the most part). Most of my professors in English, history, etc., as I recall, were liberal, but they didn't really force their ideologies on us, since we (minus that small handful) were already in their boat. In fact, I don't recall anyone being "punished" for speaking their mind if they spoke intelligently and with some sort of relevance to the subject at hand. This held as true in my Political Science classes (my minor) as in my English classes. But, that's the exception, you might be saying. Perhaps. I can't really speak toward undergraduate classes at other universities (besides the classes I taught). This isn't really my point, however. Remember, I mentioned only handful of conservatives in my English classes. This is more important to my point. Of all those who graduate with a degree in English, only some of them go on to pursue the M.A. Statistically speaking, this would inevitably narrow the field even more. And so it was. I could probably count on one hand the number of conservatives in the entire M.A. program I attended. Now, we can also assume that not everyone who gets the M.A. goes on to the Ph.D. After that, we can assume that most people do go on to academia after the Ph.D., but not always. If there were only a handful of conservatives at the beginning of the process, one can see why there are only a meagre handful at the professorial levels. This isn't a new thing, nor is it very surprising. In the humanities, one often has to confront things that aren't particularly pleasing to one's moral sensibility. One case in point: I remember a girl in a junior-level Modern British Lit class who refused to read both D.H. Lawrence's Women in Love and James Joyce's Ulysses on the grounds that the books were far too graphic, and went against her religious convictions. Well, that's fine and great for her, but unfortunately most scholars would say suck it up. I say suck it up. I don't like Melville, but I've read his stuff anyway. I'm not a Christian, but I have a pretty strong grasp on the Bible because a great deal of literature has Biblical allusions that I need to understand. I read things even if I don't agree with their content or their philosophical lean. Why? Because one can't really call oneself well-read (which every English major must claim) if one goes around refusing to read canonised works for any reason. One can't be a philosophy major and refuse to read Nietzsche for the same reasons. These are the people who will not get very far in the humanities because there are things that departments expect their students to know. If you don't know these things because you object to their content, you're not going to find a job. The fact is that conservatives aren't flocking to academia. Personally, I think the reason is moral objection to content, but that's just my opinion. To all of these folks who are lamenting the lack of a conservative view on college campuses, I have only one piece of advice: Go get your doctorate and get into academia. Tell all of your conservative buddies to do the same. Don't whine about tiny paychecks and all of the work you have to do (working for peanuts as a grad student) to actually get to the point where you have a tenure track position. If you want to make a difference, make a difference. No one is stopping you but yourself. If half of my English classes as an undergraduate had been filled with conservatives, I'd think that maybe, just maybe, the cards were stacked against you. But they weren't. And I'd imagine that they still aren't. 2 April 2004 This is why Georgia is terrible. They spend half a day (into the early evening hours) to debate a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage when they don't even have the budget straightened out. Here we are in the very last day of the legislative session and they've spent at least four days that I know about on the gay marriage issue. I'm all for gays being allowed to get married, but that's beside the point. Even if I didn't want gays to be married, I'm intelligent enough to know that getting a budget pinned down is FAR more important. I know that the constituents were bugging the poor legislators about the gay marriage issue. I know that it cuts deep into some people's moral fabric, but who cares when you're FIFTIETH (I want to stress this) in Education, and you haven't figured out just how much money you can provide for your schools starting in July. To quote the great AJC: With Thursday counting as the 39th day of the 40-day session, the General Assembly had little time left to agree on a $16 billion budget. By midnight, the chambers were expected to decide how much time, if any, to take off before burning up the final day. If the Legislature does not approve a budget by the end of the 40th day, Perdue will have to call legislators back for a special session, which could last several weeks and cost the state $45,000 a day. I don't know about the rest of you guys, but in my world, a budget is more pressing than gay marriage. They could have spent the hours that they were engaged in reading passages from the Bible and the dictionary regarding marriage in discussing the issues in cutting Education's piece of the budget pie. Remember, we're FIFTIETH! I'm not advocating that tossing more money to the public school fiasco will make it better, but I am advocating that letting these schools know what sort of budget they're going to have is more important for legislators to be worried about than whether or not gays can marry, women can have genital piercing, etc. Someone should tell their constituents that, too. 1 April 2004 Okay. I'm slacking with this. Arguably, I've been busy at work (which is when I usuall do most of my updating. Ah well. A lot has been going on in the wonderful state of Georgia. We're banning female genital piercing. We're banning gay marriage (or at least trying to constitutionally do so, since we already have laws dictating such). Let's see. We're still 50th in Education. We're going to tear up (and ultimately boot businesses out of) the increasingly booming Midtown section of Atlanta to widen a stupid road. We're cutting back drastically on any form of public transportation, i.e. the only real solution to the godforsaken traffic woes of this city. Let's see. Oh yes, the state is going to subsidise the renovation of the Coca-Cola museum. I'm all for museums as they are, but people! get your priorities in order! Well, at least we gave up trying to replace "evolution" with "biological changes over time." (In case you missed it, refer to my lovely satire on this juicy bit.) I'm beginning to think that this state has lost its ever-loving mind! But then I realise that the entire world has lost its ever-loving mind, so we're not alone. A question for all you conservatives out there (you know, the ones who I'm sure have never read a word of this blog): Why is it that you're all so gung-ho about preserving the almighty foetus, but are against helping (or rather, letting the government help) those children after they're born? It seems to me that people only matter from the time of conception until the time they're veritably squeezed from the sanctity of the womb. Some say that those poor children, if they are in such dire straits after birth should be promptly removed from their homes and given to foster care or such. But isn't foster care subsidised by the goverment? Your hard-earned tax dollars are still going to those programs... or rather, those programs you'd like to see eliminated. And what about DFaCS? You want to give them more money so that they can ease their case worker's loads so they might be able to catch these abuses? Nah. So, what, then, do you want a woman who lives below the poverty line to do when she wants an abortion because she's responsible enough to know she can't afford to have the child? Adoption isn't always the answer. If you don't have an adoptive parent set up prior to birth, your child's chance of being adopted drops significantly, and significantly drops the older he or she gets. So, you want her to give birth to the child... and then? Do you want to personally shell out the money to take care of it? There's the problem. You can't just care about a child's well-being prior to its birth and then say it's the mother's problem. That stance is hypocritical at best. Ah well. It doesn't matter to me either way. I'm pro-choice. If you want an abortion, you should have the right to have one done by a doctor in a sanitary environment. If you are against abortion, you have the choice not to have one. In other news, a townhall article that I actually appreciated. When I get back to teaching, I might have this printed up and hand it out to my students. |