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Organization of scholars criticizes CSU for lack of intellectual diversity in its faculty

May 28, 2003
Author: Kurt Moffett
Source: Journal Inquirer

An organization of professors, college administrators, higher-education officials, graduate students, and independent scholars in Connecticut is criticizing the Connecticut State University system for a lack of intellectual diversity among its faculty.

The criticism was expressed in a letter written this month by Jay Bergman, president of the organization, the Connecticut Association of Scholars, and sent to the CSU administration. The association is affiliated with the National Association of Scholars, a nonprofit organization based in Princeton, N.J., that is committed to the preservation of academic freedom and protecting the integrity of education.

The national organization's Web site says it is concerned, in part, with the "politicization of scholarship and teaching, and the substitution of social reform for the pursuit of knowledge."

Twenty-three other members of the Connecticut chapter, which Bergman says has about 80 members, signed the letter.

"It's something that's been bothering me and other members for a number of years," says Bergman, a history professor at Central Connecticut State University in New Britain.

Joan Kemler, a former state representative from West Hartford and a member of the Connecticut Board of Governors for Higher Education, signed the letter. She says the issue goes beyond CSU.

"I just think it's an issue on all of our campuses these days," Kemler says, calling Bergman's letter "a positive way to go."

"It's what higher education is all about: A balanced exchange of ideas," she adds.

Bergman's letter defines intellectual diversity as the "presentation of as wide a variety of opinions as possible on a given topic."

"Students attend college in part to acquire the information they need to make reasoned and informed judgments about the issues they will encounter after their college education is completed," the letter states. "They cannot do this if their professors present only one point of view, or a limited range of views, on these issues."

Bergman is asking the CSU administration to issue a "formal statement endorsing the principle of intellectual diversity as essential to the educational mission of the university."

That statement should call for faculty and administrators to do "all they can to ensure that a full range of views, including those that are unpopular or out of favor in academia, are presented" when sponsoring programs and speakers on issues of public concern, Bergman states in his letter.

"Any statement you formulate should also include the requirement that professors refrain from using their classrooms as vehicles for advancing their own political agenda."

The CSU system's chancellor, William J. Cibes, doesn't agree with Bergman. Professors should have the freedom "to express their views about their subject without any interference by the administration and outside parties," he argues.

"That's really what academic freedom is," Cibes says. "To begin to say there should be enforced diversity is to begin to interfere with academic freedom."

Cibes says the contract between the CSU system and the union representing the professors on its four campuses protects that freedom. Faculty and scholarly panels have the right to set up seminars and conferences and conduct research how they see fit, he says.

"Overall, we encourage the faculty to make sure everyone has a chance to express all different points of view," Cibes says. "But I don't think it's appropriate to compel the professoriate to do that."

Bergman, however, cites in his letter specific examples of how CCSU students aren't receiving a balanced education. Not once in the past decade, he says, "has an academic program or department sponsored a speaker opposed to abortion or racial preferences."

Not until last month, he adds, "after inviting over the years literally hundreds of speakers to campus who advocated the kind of feminism it favors did the women's studies program finally include on a panel a speaker who opposed it."

Melissa Mentzer, director of the women's studies program, says she is surprised by Bergman's comments. She says the April conference on gender studies included speakers with libertarian, conservative, radical, and liberal perspectives on feminism.

"There's a lot of intellectual diversity at the women's studies program and all over campus," Mentzer says. "There's lots of room for debate and different opinions in and outside the classroom."

In November, Bergman says, CCSU's African studies committee held a conference on slave reparations that was "nothing more than an exercise in propaganda: Not one of the presenters expressed the reasonable opinion, which students attending the seminar were entitled to hear, that reparations are a bad idea."

C. Charles Mate-Kole, chairman of the African studies program, calls Bergman's claims "ludicrous," saying the conference featured several distinguished speakers from around the country who have studied the topic of reparations extensively. He says it's disturbing to be criticized by people who did not attend the conference, adding that Bergman and his supporters could have expressed their opinions at the conference.

But Mate-Kole and Evelyn N. Phillips, an associate professor of anthropology at CCSU, went beyond that objection, accusing Bergman of racism.

"The protests against reparations stand on the same platform that produced apartheid, Hitler, and the KKK," their statement says. "Unfortunately, many of these individuals clothe themselves in academic gowns and hold their 'intellect' as the standard bearer of enlightenment.

"Bergman and his colleagues' cloaked daggered statements suggest that blacks do not have the intellectual capacity to decide what is best for them and how injustices should be remedied. It is unfortunate that the blind rage of hatred against black skin holds so many minds captive both in academic gowns and pinstripe suits, as well as white hoods."

Bergman also accuses several CCSU faculty members of trying to generate opposition to the war in Iraq.

"Discussing public events for the purpose of educating students is, under certain circumstances, legitimate," Bergman writes. "But discussing public events for the purpose of converting students to one's own point of view is not legitimate. In fact, it is a violation of academic freedom and a misuse of university property - the classroom itself - that opens the university to potential legal action."

Cibes says the CSU professors' contract discourages them from using the classroom to advance their political agendas. But he adds that those who are thought to be doing so are likely expressing only their "deeply held beliefs."

But he says the CSU Board of Trustees' academic affairs committee will review Bergman's concerns and suggestions.

The issue of intellectual diversity was raised this year in a Wall Street Journal editorial. The newspaper claimed that a review of federal campaign contributions of more than $200 by professors at the nation's top 22 law schools in the country from 1994 to 2000 found that 74 percent of those professors contributed primarily to Democrats, while 16 percent gave to Republicans.

"When law schools make no progress - and no discernible effort - in correcting the patent absence of diversity in viewpoints, it is fair to assume that their true goal is racial patterning, not educational diversity," the WSJ stated in its editorial.

At CSU and UConn, administrators say they don't consider or request information on political affiliations or personal philosophies when hiring new faculty.

Karla H. Fox, UConn's associate vice chancellor for university affairs, says the administration looks at candidates' academic credentials, such as the types of degrees they've earned, their teaching experience and area of expertise, and the kind of research they conduct.

The administration wants a balance in the subjects professors teach, Fox says. As for what professors teach in the classroom, she says, they work out a syllabus with their department heads that is guided by the course descriptions.

"Faculty have a lot of freedom on how they set up their classes," Fox says.

Reprinted with the permission of Journal Inquirer.

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