The University is woefully inadequate at providing an intellectual environment where all sides of any issue are represented equally. I have witnessed many debates of current events as well as course material that are blatantly one-sided, overly emotional or inexcusably ethnocentric.
Last term I took an ethnic studies class, and my professor took plenty of time to lament what he saw as a major contradiction in the image our school presents to the public and the reality of attending the University. He went on to say that the administration should put a major focus on increasing recruitment and hiring of minorities to more truly live up to the University’s reputation as a diverse and multicultural institution.
I agree with him that the University needs a more diverse student and faculty body, but this cannot be achieved simply by reaching pre-set racial and ethnic quotas.
Following the atrocity on Sept. 11, all of my professors took at least a little time out of their lectures to discuss the event with students and share reactions to the military action in Afghanistan.
One of them voiced the opinion that the bombing of Afghan towns and villages where military forces were stationed was appalling and was not going to solve anything. He is a professor of religion, and his philosophy was that more killing could not bring back those who were already dead. He thought we should have been trying to understand the anger and frustration that had driven these men to sacrifice their lives and the lives of so many others in order to make a statement.
He posed the following question to the class: Was the terrorist act of Sept. 11 any different than U.N. forces killing Afghan citizens more slowly with bombs and bullets?
During our discussion, many of my classmates responded no, it was not, and that President George W. Bush was a militant fanatic who would use any excuse to go to war. The professor responded to each student with a few words or sentences before moving on.
I raised my hand and said that, yes, it was different, because the United Nations only attacked military targets, never civilians. The fact that civilian casualties were so high, I said, was at least in part because of the intentional placement of military installations in highly populated areas. As soon as I was finished, the professor called on another student, and I received more than a few dirty looks from my classmates.
A few weeks later, a similar debate took place in a sociology discussion section. The GTF said the United States was even more guilty of terrorism than the perpetrators of Sept. 11 because there were more Afghan citizens killed than there were casualties at the World Trade Center and the Pentagon combined.
“Terrorism” happened to be one of our vocabulary words, and it was defined as the deliberate attempt to harm civilians. I asked him if he believed the United Nations had intentionally killed civilians. He said no.
Then, I replied, by your own definition, that does not qualify as a terrorist act. To my surprise, he refused to admit his contradiction, doggedly repeating himself with no new explanation or qualification.
The University can live up to its reputation as a diverse, open-minded and balanced intellectual community only by redefining its concept of the word “diverse.” If the University wants a politically correct number of this or that phenotype to parade in front of a national audience and use as leverage to sell itself to incoming freshman, fine.
I, on the other hand, care more about interacting with people who think in different ways rather than people who look a certain way or can claim a certain heritage.