Support for 'Politics'
Date 2/26/2004 12:00 AM | Topic: Letters to the EditorGretchen Springer's "" (Chips, 2-19-04) makes a serious and perhaps valid assertion. Ms. Springer maintains that our Luther faculty is a "politically homogenous" group. She expresses doubt that there are any among our teaching faculty who do not embrace or identify with left-of-center (and probably Democratic) political agendas and constituencies. She has concluded that our faculty is not very diverse when it comes to politics.
If national polling data are to be believed, and if Luther is a typical American liberal arts college, then Ms. Springer is probably correct. According to national tracking polls (year after year, election cycle after election cycle), men and women in academe vote overwhelmingly for Democrats, give financial and other electoral support for political causes overwhelmingly Democratic, and self-identify (by large majorities) as political lefties. Polls suggest that the same leftward political list is characteristic also of American journalists as a group (print and electronic media).
National tracking polls notwithstanding, I want to assure Ms. Springer that tucked away in our small and cluttered offices, roaming the hallways of every academic building on campus, there are indeed faculty conservatives at large. There are at least three or four of us in the Department of Music alone. We musicons occasionally talk politics in the copy room (when we're feeling flush). If we have something really sensitive to discuss, then of course we retire to one of our offices (door shut, sometimes blinds closed).Â
In the meantime, let us all be thankful we live in a country where political speech-even foul, offensive, uninformed, or divisive political speech-is protected by our constitution. You'll find no left-liberal teach-ins, or Democrats reading Thomas Paine in faculty offices at the University of Havana. You'll hear no left-leaning political rhetoric in the corridors and lecture halls at the University of Pyongyang. The only professorial Democrats in Havana or Pyongyang may be found in prison, if they may be found at all.
Let us therefore be very thankful that at Luther College, the many left-leaning professors (and their small handful of right-leaning colleagues, and their students) are free to ramble on and on about what ought to be done, and who ought to be elected, and who ought to be thrown out of office in November. Let the conversation continue.
Daniel Baldwin
Associate Professor of Music
Director of Orchestral Activities
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