Are Liberal Universities A Problem?
First of all, a disclaimer: I tend toward the liberal more often than the conservative. Having said that, I don’t generally read liberal commentators, but almost always read George F. Will, a highly-respected conservative editorialist.
Fact is, I like Will’s logic and deliberative style, even though I don’t always agree with his starting points. Regardless of how I feel about his conclusions, there is a rational consistency there.
And even more than that, Will doesn’t always toe the party line. When he objects to what other Republicans are doing, he says it. That is a critical attribute for any political pundit, and even, any citizen: if everyone is thinking the same way, who’s thinking?
Having said that, I would like to disagree with one of Will’s current criticisms, that our colleges are dominated by liberal (or even radical) thinkers.
First, the Pentagon absorbs the largest share of the US Budget; if you consider that VA is part of our military budget, then the military budget is even a larger behemoth than we normally consider it. Not surprisingly, the military and the industrial lobbyists that support it have tremendous sway over our government. And this highly influential military-industrial complex is overwhelmingly conservative. But Will doesn’t object to that.
Large corporate interests now influence our private time, by constantly advertising their services and products to us. Most of the entertainment and news outlets are now also owned by large business, and critics constantly decry the loss of independence in news. Big businesses are run and staffed by people who, not surprisingly, are almost all conservative. So here is an enormous educational counterbalance to our colleges, and one that influences us from cradle to grave, not just for 4 years. But there is no outcry about that.
And then there are our temples of worship. Christian Americans lean heavily to the right, and certainly the teachings of the church are a force to match higher eduction. But George isn’t so concerned about that influence.
So my first question is, does George F. Will fret that some critical aspect of our country is too partisan? Or is his concern simply that it isn’t his party?
Next, there is a matter of critical thinking, which is essential not only to democracy, but also to free will, which is essential to religious doctrine. If we only expose our young people to one aspect of human political thought, only indoctrinate them in the ideology of one party, then we cannot say that we have faithfully discharged our obligations to our country, nor to our religions.
That’s an important point. Before and after college, corporate advertising and corporate news will be the main sources of information for our citizens. So if our young people aren’t exposed to liberal ideas in college, when will they consider them? When else will they get an opportunity to truly reflect on different ideologies and decide– decide for THEMSELVES– what they believe?
George F. Will has been a staunch defender of freedom of thought, and freedom of choice. He cannot argue now that we should deny young adults the full range of these freedoms.
Nor can he argue that this arrangement has hurt the democracy. Even though liberals dominate higher education, the electorate regularly alternates between the two parties, and the two political stances… suggesting that, in fact, they are sufficiently exposed to different ideas, that they are thinking for themselves; and that exposure to different doctrines produces a stronger, not a weaker, citizen.
Last, we need to consider what a university is for. If, as the name suggests, conservatives ‘conserve’– i.e., defend the traditional– then obviously, our universities need to be liberal. Our universities are our primary institutions of research, which means that one of their primary missions is precisely to question the traditional, to examine what is currently believed. If progress is a matter of constantly questioning the accepted and the obvious, then to be effective, our universities will always place themselves in opposition to conserved ideas.
And so, to be effective, our universities must be liberal.
With deference to George F. Will, we should not be asking our universities to be anything other than liberal. That standpoint is critical to progress, and to our way of life.