Politics on Campus

A few words caught my eye when scanning the news last week: "campus culture wars of the 1980s and ’90s."  I was on a campus in this timeframe and I was not aware there was a war.  What war was this?  A cultural one?  How intriguing.

In clicking on the link, I see that the full sentence is this:  "Their goal is to restore what conservative and other critics see as leading casualties of the campus culture wars of the 1980s and ’90s: the teaching of Western culture and a triumphal interpretation of American history."

The article, entitled, "Conservatives Try New Tack on Campuses", published by the New York Times on September 21, 2008 speaks on how conservatives are embittered because they feel compuses, especially liberal arts campuses, are speaking only on a liberal political front not showing any other side.

Not only did I go to college in this timeframe but I went to a liberal arts college, Austin College, in Sherman Texas.  We had a required course that spanned three semesters all based on western civilization.  Each semester had a different focus in that subject.  Usually I had always thought of required courses as boring, but those three, especially the science one, were quite enthralling.  However, I don't recall it focusing on a political side, though the students on the campus did seem to lean left outside of class.

But I am sure that this group, the Veritas Fund for Higher Education, is funding access to these programs at other schools for viable reasons as they apparently (allegedly) did focus too much on one side of the view back in the day.  It is nervous-making, however, when politics starts funds to influence how schools are run.

On the other hand, according to some, politics is the crux on how nations, and thus the world, are run.

Says one professor, "It looked like they had a variety of perspectives,” and “they weren’t controlling” the specific assignment, which was decided by the faculty. She asked a handful of professors to review the book, which also included the United States Constitution and writings from Alexis de Tocqueville and Frederick Douglass. None detected any particular bias.  The faculty was so pleased with the way the program turned out in 2007, Ms. Bacon said, that they unanimously agreed to repeat it this year.

Being that young and in school, I'm not sure I would have been aware of a bias coming in my direction from the teachings.  Now as a librarian, I have a large appreciation of the naked facts and it is what I look for and prefer.  I will make my own ideas once I have the facts, or enough of them.  I would think that a student would require the same as they are learning, especially in a history class, or economics, or ethics, etc.

I can't say for sure how my school taught as that was, ahem, a bit of time ago, but I do know that quite the majority of people I knew at the time were liberal.  Is that because of the college the people attended, or the times?  Why would professors be teaching towards one leaning only at that time in history?  What does that say about the politics of today?  The article doesn't answer those questions.