Dear Editor,
I read with interest the description of Students for Intellectual Diversity, (Oct. 9, issue) as concerned with “protecting students from being politically indoctrinated by a partisan professor.” That seems good, but Kamolnick’s comments suggest that SID may be promoting a “partisan” and “politically indoctrinated” bias of their own.
First Kamolnick refers to students who have complained about unfair grading as “refugees from political correctness.” Does that not suggest that what in fact bothers these students is respect for other opinions and a tolerance for diversity?
Kamolnick denies that SID members have researched party memberships of their professors, allows that he views it as, “an important but insufficient way to try and understand why there is, in certain departments, the likelihood of a liberal to left political consensus.” The obvious inference is that Kamolnick and his group are not worried about protecting students from the bias of right wing conservatives.
Are we to assume that bias from that direction is all right with them?
Why are there liberal and left-leaning professors on campus, just as there are conservative and even reactionary right-wingers? We have all kinds, because that is what diversity means, and that is what we should expect and promote in any free society.
One last point, I have been associated with this university for many years, both as a student and a teacher. Unlike the colleagues quoted in your article, I have seen examples of instructor bias forced on students.
One was when I was a student: an economics professor assigned proof of tithing as an assignment counting 10 percent of the course grade. Yes, I said tithing.
His students were also required to bring a church bulletin to class every Monday; the grapevine had it that it had better be one of the very conservative Protestant churches, if we knew what was good for us.
The second example of bias was a few years ago. A math major hired as a tutor in a DVS math lab, insisted on ‘witnessing’ for 10-15 minutes in the lab to students assigned to him for math tutoring. When asked to stop, he asserted that lab supervisors were interfering with his religious freedom. Yes, students complained constantly.
My impression has been, because of these incidents, that religious fundamentalists and the very conservative political right will sometimes force themselves on others who don’t agree with them. Does SID intend to overlook this type of bias?
Existing appeals procedures are fair and adequate; perhaps that very fairness is the reason Kamolnick and SID are dissatisfied with them.
Thank you for your article and your consideration
Anne Koehler

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