In response to Kathryn Gilbert's criticism of a fellow student's take on the recent War and Peace Center's Middle East Panel ("Deserving of More Nuanced Debate," June 30), I felt more compelled than usual to comment on yet another bout of bickering, courtesy of the op-ed page.
First things first: if anyone is shrill, it's Ms. Gilbert in her repetitious insistence that government policy is too nuanced to be defined as either good or bad. Though overall policy is made up of many small decisions, they do add up to something, and I think it's fairly clear to most people, conservative or liberal, what that policy is. Resorting to a circle of semantics in which nothing can be defined as "good" or "bad" is a cop-out, and suggests an inability to commit oneself to one side of a debate. Maybe at an individual level, each member of the defensive line of the Packers isn't great, but if they win the team some games and get to the playoffs, it's safe to say they're good. Some good decisions plus a lot of bad decisions adds up to one big, bad decision (depending on your viewpoint). But you must commit yourself one way or the other to have a meaningful debate before you let semantics throw away the whole debate for you.
Now, more to the point: while I did not attend the Middle East Panel (and I do think many would agree with me that it is possible to say, overall, Middle East policy has been bad), there is undeniably a liberal bias in how all such issues are handled at Dartmouth and other college campuses. Ms. Gilbert focuses on criticizing a fellow student's argumentation using semantics to confuse the fact of the biased ideological representation of the panel. All the while, college administrators everywhere are protecting the presumed sensibilities of the student body by whitewashing classroom and campus debates with the rhetoric of political correctness.
Look at our fellow universities -- examples abound. The Lawrence Summers affair at Harvard: an opportunity to discuss in an educated and adult fashion the expression of scientifically proven biological differences between the sexes? Of course not. Instead, an uproar leaving Summers defending his right to his job. Or University of Colorado professor Ward Churchill, who claims that the United States played an important role in the 9/11 attacks, an intriguing item for debate; his critical (and very un-PC) language left him clinging to his job (putting some of his other missteps aside). And at Dartmouth, something we all take for granted: the school still refuses to recognize the Dartmouth Review, often going out of the way to try to shut it down.
All around are examples of potentially enlightening, educational or, at the very least, worthwhile debates that are snuffed out before they have a chance to spread because of -- yes, the L word again -- the liberal, PC-minded bias in academia, which waits at the ready to apply a thick slab of white-out to any thought that may corrupt young, fragile minds. My Dartmouth experience was similarly affected by this phenomenon on several occasions in such a way that it fundamentally altered the course that my four years would take. Two years after graduating, my grudges at having a potentially far more enriching academic experience robbed from me because of the need of certain professors and administrators to quell viewpoints perceived to be antagonistic to their sensibilities still festers, numbed a bit by time.
We are all hesitant to open our ears to the thoughts of those with whom we disagree -- a sentiment I repeatedly expressed in four years of writing for The Dartmouth -- but a liberal arts education is not liberal without that openness. However, the more I read stories like the one regarding the Middle East Panel, the more disillusioned I become that this is not even a question for debate anymore; it has simply become a fact of higher education. I do hope that the election of our two new trustees can help pull Dartmouth out of this funk. After all, they would not have been chosen if the need had not been clearly felt. Then, perhaps, Dartmouth can be a leader in providing an open, enriching academic environment in which all viewpoints, all of them, can be freely expressed.
Ms. Gilbert and I do agree on the need for open debate that incorporates disparate viewpoints. What Ms. Gilbert and, indeed, many college students, professors and administrators need to realize is that in order to hear those disparate viewpoints you need to recognize them when you see them or acknowledge when they're being implicitly or explicitly silenced. Glossing over their exclusion with rhetorical devices suggesting the presence of an open debate where none exists perpetuates the stifling of a major part of the educational experience brought on by this dreaded liberal bias.
