Ideological backwardness is at an all-time high in the United States. Take a look at the Republican Party Platform of 2012, for example — a document designed to represent the core beliefs of 25 percent of the American population, yet is riddled with misleading, factual inaccuracies. Although Republicans are certainly not the only culprits in deceiving the general public, and they are only partially responsible for the record-low congressional approval rating, one of their core tenets in regard to university students is both fundamentally insulting and inherently false.
Under the heading “Improving Our Nation’s Classrooms” in their 2012 platform, Republican Party leaders state the following: "We call on State officials to ensure that our public colleges and universities be places of learning. . . not zones of intellectual intolerance favoring the Left." As a current student enrolled at a public university, I find this aspect of the platform appalling. Republican Party leaders are insinuating universities do not fit their standard of “learning,” that a college education is intolerant to points of view other than the intellectual arguments of the political left. For a moment, let us disregard the ignorance of a political party declaring that public universities are not places of learning; instead, let us first delve into whether liberal bias is even an issue at current institutions of higher learning.
According to a study conducted by Paul Musgrave and Mark Rom, college educators do not favor students based on their political identifications. This study analyzed how partisan teaching assistants graded the essays of both Republican and Democratic students, and found there was no correlation between a student’s grade and his registered political party. Similarly, surveys conducted among college students across the nation found that students are not impacted whatsoever by their educators’ views; in fact, students are much less likely to give credence to a professor’s statements if the statements do not align with their own inherent political beliefs.
So why do Republicans think otherwise? On the surface, it seems as though party leaders have assumed correlation implies causation, for it is certainly true a majority of college students lean toward the liberal end of the spectrum. However, I believe someone in the hierarchy of the Republican Party took a course in statistics at some point in his life and knows correlation is not causal, meaning this statement is less of a call for initiative than it is a blatant statement of insecurity.
Republicans are scared. They are scared that social conservatism is dying in the United States. They are scared religious identification is plummeting across the nation and Christian values are finally starting to break away from the core of American policy. They are scared their concept of social policy skirts around the edges of totalitarianism, where narrow-minded, elitist individuals find it suitable to impart their visions of an ideal human on someone else. The fact of the matter is that Republicans do not want American college students to lean toward the Left. We are the future of this nation, and many of our Republican elders are falling behind in relation to the social progress that we embody.
I am insulted the Republican Party thinks I would spend four years of my life at an “intellectually intolerant” institution; they have no idea why I am here or what I believe. What a backwards society we live in for such a statement to be taken as fact. Our university was founded by Thomas Jefferson on the basis of the “illimitable freedom of the human mind,” and I have never felt anything close to a sense of intolerance from my professors, my peers or my environment.
What is truly disturbing is that the words in that party platform were carefully chosen: numerous people edited that document with the hope they would unite a strong constituency. Instead, they effectively ostracized an entire demographic, placing a false, prejudiced label on every college student in the country. It is absolutely ridiculous that this statement made it into the final copy of the document. Read between the lines: the Republican Party thinks we are being trained like dogs by our universities, shaped into the perfect liberals by our professors and our environment. Essentially, the Republican Party identified every student enrolled in a public university as a dependent thinker, and they labeled every university as a factory that exclusively produces liberals. But what if the majority of college students are liberal because they want to be? And furthermore, what if students don’t even care whether they lean to the right or left of the political spectrum? What if we’re just here to learn?
We are independent thinkers, and we must not fall victim to the tenuous grasp that party politics has on our consciousness. The Republican Party Platform clearly does not recognize the intellectual independence of young adults in this country, but that does not mean the Democrats — or any other political party — believe in our independent capacity either. At the end of day, it is up to us to determine what we believe and what we want out of life; the human spirit is free from the domineering nature of man. Use it.
Ryan Gorman is a Viewpoint writer.
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