I read with interest a recent column by Occidental College student Tejas Varma in his Eagle Rock school’s newspaper.
Its headline drew me in: “The lack of conservative intellectuals at Occidental hurts everyone.”
Its lede: “‘I want to debate a Republican.’ These are words I don’t usually hear myself say, especially considering how frustrating political debates tend to get with my grandparents. But leaving my politics seminars at Occidental, I find myself wishing for someone across the aisle to challenge me.”
His point reminded me of a teaching prompt I tried to use with a group of university opinion writers last year, all of them presumably progressive.
I noted that one of the criteria on which scholars seeking to get professorships at their prestigious school were graded was a demonstrable commitment to DEI principles — diversity, equity and inclusion. They are asked to cite some past example in their academic careers.
“What if,” I asked the students, “the prospective hire seeking a job in the Mathematics Department was a nerdy recently minted Ph.D from a top-notch program with a fantastic resume and an expertise in teaching differential calculus. When asked about DEI, she replied: ‘So sorry, I just don’t know anything about that. I’m a simple numbers geek, I guess.”
Should she still be docked on the grading scale, and likely lose out on her chance for the job?
Of the six or seven student journalists to whom I posed this question, not one took a contrarian position. To them, academic diversity is of such core fundamental importance that they can’t imagine hiring a professor who is ignorant of it.
That was disappointing to me in the extreme. Whereas the professoriate has always been more liberal than a random assortment of insurance agents, we’re at a point where the formerly exaggerated charges by movement conservatives is true: Right-wingers, libertarians and even the apolitical are not represented on our college campuses.
“Political diversity, especially conservative thought, is almost nonexistent at Occidental,” Varma continues.
And then he adds: “I’m not advocating for some far-right, Trumpian version of conservatism. Many of Trump’s policies don’t even fit traditional conservative principles.”
Young fellow’s got that right. Donald Trump probably has no idea who Buckley was.
The good news is that, contrary to what conservative parents think, the lack of diversity is still way more within the student body than among the teachers, almost all of whom — whatever their own politics — still engage with the real world.
“I’m talking about ideas like Austrian economics and free-market policies,” Varma continues, after properly dissing Trump’s know-nothingness. These are “perspectives I encountered in Professor Daron Djerdjian’s economics class. One class with Djerdjian made me realize how much I was living in a political bubble. College, after all, is supposed to challenge our thinking.”
Oops — my bad. In the very next sentence, I discovered that recently Professor Djerdjian’s contract was not renewed at Oxy, despite more than 400 students and alumni signing a petition to hire him, expressing how valuable his perspective was.
None of us are privy to a college’s private rationales for its hiring decisions. It can hire who it wants. But not a good look.
And yet, academics who still value true diversity in thought do exist. Wesleyan University in Connecticut “launched an initiative supported by a $3 million endowment to expose students to ideas outside the liberal consensus,” Varmas writes. Students, you’re harming yourselves when you decline to puncture your philosophical bubble.
Larry Wilson is on the Southern California News Group editorial board. lwilson@scng.com
