Intellectual Incest in Academia

~Published in the Daily Illini on April 24th, 2006.

Editor's Note: This is the first of a two-part series by columnist Billy Joe Mills on accusations of liberal professor bias on campus.

There is a danger to the vitality of intellectual life at American universities. It lies within the overwhelming domination of campus by liberal thought. This problem exists, although many believe it does not. Many professors at our University earnestly see the majority of their colleagues as conservative. Surprisingly, my solution rejects David Horowitz and others who wish to legislate political equality, which I will develop next week.

The donation ratio for University employees during the 2004 elections was 90.2 percent for Democratic coffers and eight percent for Republicans. Out of all employee groups in any sector of our economy, the University of California and Harvard were the top two donors to John Kerry, as published by Opensecrets.org.

An academic study done by Professor Daniel Klein at Santa Clara University surveyed six major academic societies. The average of all six societies was a ratio of 15 Democrats to one Republican. The largest disparities exist in history, anthropology, sociology, and philosophy.

A recent study published by the Berkeley Press entitled "Politics and Professional Advancement Among College Faculty," (a quick and free registration is needed to view the article) found institutionalized discrimination that prevented certain groups from rising the academic ranks. Through regression analysis of large data sets, the researchers found that conservatives, Christians, and most notably, women, are less likely to be promoted and to work at higher quality universities.

The original charter set forth by the American Association of University Professors in its 1915 Declaration of Principles says, "The university teacher's … business is not to provide his students with ready-made conclusions, but to train them to think for themselves. The teacher ought also to be especially on his guard against taking unfair advantage of the student's immaturity by indoctrinating him with the teacher's own opinions."

And from the association's 1940 Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom, "Teachers … should be careful not to introduce into their teaching controversial matter which has no relation to their subject." Academics Stanley Fish and Benno Schmidt have recently echoed this view. These association documents are universally accepted and defended by professors as their foundation. Perhaps they have not read them.

Anecdotal testimony on our campus supports the data. I have personally been in a biological anthropology class where, in front of 500 students, the professor found it relevant to say, "Republicans are in general racist." Perhaps he meant that conservatives have a biological basis to be racist. Another professor called me a "racist" and a "bigot" simply for believing that affirmative action should be economically based.

Many of my conservative friends have dropped classes because they worried that the professor's political bias would consciously or subconsciously influence the way they graded essays with political subjects.

A 2004 survey commissioned by the American Council of Trustees and Alumni, a group created by Sen. Joe Lieberman and other notables, investigated the effects of liberal academia upon students. It found that 49 percent of students say professors' state primarily liberal political opinions in class, even if they have nothing to do with the subject and 29 percent feel they have to concur with the professor's political opinions to earn a high grade.

Few speakers invited to campus are conservative. The Illini Union Board recently rejected a proposal from its own Lectures Committee to invite Bill O'Reilly to speak because apparently they felt he's not the kind of person we want to speak here. Their lineup consistently has people like Ralph Nader, Patch Adams and Spike Lee.

The University YMCA, Allen Hall, Gender and Women's Studies Department, and many other campus groups are dedicated to inviting exclusively liberal speakers. Panel debates purporting to present diverse opinions on issues like the Iraq war usually have a panel of professors with differing reasons why it is an evil war by evil men.

We should not legislate political equality, but we should not pretend the problem is benign. Intellect has never been served by fearing diversity and examining only half of an argument. The continued domination of thought on campus by liberal intellectual faculty is the most illiberal and anti-intellectual sentiment available.

Billy Joe Mills is a senior in LAS. His columns appear on Monday. He loves being challenged by liberal arguments and he wishes campus liberals had the same opportunity. He can be reached at opinions@dailyillini.com.

Remedy to self-segregation in Housing

~Published in the Daily Illini on April 17th, 2006.

Many people with diverse thoughts and cultures live on our campus, but rarely do we mix. We live in the same place, but we do not live together. Our instincts and our upbringing encourage us to self-segregate along racial, ethnic and religious lines.

We all quietly know the facts: Asians and Indians live at ISR, African-Americans and Latinos live at FAR-PAR, and the Six pack barely looks different than my white suburban high school.

"We have found through informal questionnaires that incoming freshmen research the residence halls," said Seema Kamath, multicultural advocate in Weston Hall. "Often their choice is influenced by an older sibling or friend already attending."

Kamath goes on to say, "I believe the residence halls definitely have different racial overtones and that people's reasons for applying to each residence hall are to a certain extent racially motivated."

Students try to self-segregate even before they arrive on campus. Incoming freshmen have a sense about the racial composition of the halls and they gravitate to places they will feel most comfortable.

Those who apply late for housing or who are admitted late usually get placed in FAR-PAR - its undesirable location means there are plenty of free spots. African-Americans and Latinos from poorer schools often do not have the benefit of college counselors encouraging them to apply early. They may also be admitted later in the admissions cycle for other reasons.

These factors, combined with the word-of-mouth effect, results in the unglamorous FAR-PAR housing a disproportionate number of minorities - a latent and unconscious form of institutionalized discrimination.

Housing claims to not consider race in their decisions. But many students believe that in randomly assigned rooms a suspiciously high percentage of minorities are placed together. Often, Six pack halls will have an all-white floor with the exceptions of two or three minorities "randomly" and "coincidentally" paired together. University Housing perpetuates an insidiously complicit promotion of self-segregation.

Our Student Senate, especially President Josh Rohrscheib, investigated the questionable and secretive nature of the Housing process. Last October they requested all data related to the racial makeup of the halls and the application process. After months of repeated excuses from Housing Director Jack Collins, some data was finally provided in February. Exact percentages on racial composition of the residence halls remains sealed. If Housing were concerned about issues of race they would have been equally eager to look into it.

I propose, along with Zenobia Ravji, chair of the Senate's Minority and Cultural Affairs Committee, a controversial and bold remedy. We should continue to allow freshmen to choose their roommates, but they should be randomly assigned to the halls they live in. It would apply only to freshman, but it would not apply to private, specialty or living-learning community halls.

We certainly cannot force diverse groups to interact, but we can have faith that when in close quarters they will discover common interests and explore diverse backgrounds. Such a policy would lead to a radically different campus. Can you imagine how much more exciting, intriguing and welcoming this place would become?

Many students rush fraternities and sororities with their dorm friends - this would potentially break down the extreme segregation within the Greek system. Students also choose their sophomore apartment roommates from among their dorm friends. They choose classes together. Diverse groups of friends would be introduced to each other and remain connected throughout life. Lunch tables would no longer be color-coded. Freshman housing would be fully integrated into the University's educational mission.

If the supposed educated elite of the country cannot break down the thick walls of self-segregation then we should not expect the rest of America to do so. We participate in a great experiment of whether disparate races can thrive together in a democracy. That experiment will be a success in the long run through the courage of individuals to breach racial walls. But we should do our best to hasten it. Challenge us and we will show you our generation's unique ability to learn from, tolerate and celebrate diversity.

Billy Joe Mills is a senior in LAS. It's scary, but true - he is a conservative who cares about issues of diversity and race in society. His columns appear on Monday. He can be reached at opinions@dailyillini.com.

Why They Fight

~Published in the Daily Illini on April 10th, 2006. This was published as a dual defense of the Iraq war - the first from me, a conservative, the second from Brian Pierce, a liberal. I have posted both, beginning with mine.

I am left wondering whether anything, even democracy for 30 million Iraqis, can be worth the 35,000 dead and the countless in pain. Is an enduring democracy worth this extreme suffering?

No one can earnestly deny or trivialize Bush's repeated mistakes. But we should not allow disappointment or hatred toward him to blind us while answering the distinct question of whether creating liberty in Iraq is worthy.

The United States was right to invade Iraq for three primary reasons. First, spreading democracy is the only long-term solution to dictators and violent Islamism. Second, the world has a moral obligation to intervene when human beings arbitrarily die by the hands of a dictator or mob. Third, just as our Founders believed, liberty is worth the pain.

We have always known freedom. Both of my grandfathers fought. They suspended their freedoms with the belief that evil exists among men, but that good can only lose if it remains passive and blinded by illusions of peace. I have been spoiled by their sacrifices. It is easy for me to forget how often the delicate life of human liberty has nearly been ended by kings, Nazis, or Communists. My grandfathers fought for human liberty - the instinct of every person to carve their unique paths to happiness. Let us use the hammer of liberty to remind evil that so long as America thrives, they never shall.

I honor those living and dead, Allied and Iraqi, who believe as our Founders did, that freedom among humans is not easily gained and that the blood of the brave is often necessary. Those brave understand that some things in our world are greater than their lives - that eternal freedom for millions is worth their sacrifice and they make that sacrifice daily. They believe a human life without liberty is not human at all.

Was it necessary for the 13 colonies to create a war with the world's greatest power for freedom? Was it necessary that thousands of our Founders died? They believed it was - why do we doubt them now? Iraq's founders believe it is - why do we doubt them now?

Democracy is not supposed to be easy or quick. It is much easier, as we know from the Cold War, to prop up dictatorships or to leave them in place. Things seem calmer and less messy. Sure, that's nice, our hands have no blood, at least none that we notice. We don't have to hear about the daily deaths. But the people still die, they still hear the midnight knocks from the government-licensed murderers upon their doors, they still live in fear.

It might be true that the U.S. is wrong about democracy. That it is not worth the necessary pains to establish it. But the majority of the world does not think so. If liberty is not worth our fight then nothing is.

Our greatest weapon against terrorists, just as it was against Communists, is the allure of freedom. Every man, every woman, has an instinct to be free. Someday democracy will warm the earth as the realization of humanity.

That day when freedom and prosperity cover all humans is not far. But it grows further with sentiments that run counter to the entire foundation of this country. When we in the free world sit back and relax, seeing that our fight is over, we then slow the final wave of democracy.

Is it necessary for people to die in the Middle East? It isn't necessary if we wish to leave them dangling in tyranny, but if we wish for them to join us in knowing the liberty and creativity of democracy then I say yes it is necessary, and it is worth it. The Iraqis agree. You go tell them that the lives of their family and our soldiers are not worth their lasting liberty - you go tell them.

Billy Joe Mills is a senior in LAS. He is an optimist. His column appears on Mondays. He can be reached at opinions@daily illini.com.

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On liberals and liberty

I am a liberal, and thus stand in staunch opposition to any number of things my fellow columnist, Billy Joe Mills, advocates. I am pro-choice, pro-affirmative action, pro-nationalization of health care, and anti-privatization of Social Security. I wept uncontrollably the night President Bush won the 2004 election.

I stress my bona fides as a blue stater to emphasize why I applaud Billy for his column last week defending the Iraq war and fully agree with his position. Intervention in Iraq is a liberal cause, and thus I have no shame in supporting it.

To a certain extent, I feel like the wool has been pulled over the eyes of the Republicans who have supported this war. They've been tricked by the fact that Bush is waging it, and thus believe it must be a war representative of the values of Bush voters.

It is actually more representative of the values of Woodrow Wilson voters. It was Wilson who once said, "No man can sit down and withhold his hands from the warfare against wrong and get peace from his acquiescence."

Yet today's liberals have sadly turned away from their noble roots. Democrats used to believe that America should have a strong presence internationally, and that sometimes that presence must take the form of military force. Now the long shadow of Vietnam looms over the left, and we have replaced our idealism with cynicism.

I acknowledge that our effort in Iraq could end in failure. This war has been waged recklessly. I write this column not to express my certainty that we will prevail - history will be the ultimate judge of whether this was the right war at the right time waged in the right way.

I write instead to the overwhelming majority of liberals on this campus who share my values and yet turn their backs on them. I ask you not necessarily to change your minds, but merely to open them.

Liberals should not blind themselves from a noble cause simply because they have distaste for the man engaging in it. Hostility toward President Bush is justified, but not toward the ideal of using America's influence confidently in freedom's cause.

It seems arbitrary to me to watch the slaughter of 400,000 Sudanese and summon moral outrage at the injustice of doing nothing, then cry out that America has no place imposing its way of life on Iraq, as if Saddam Hussein's brutal oppression is nothing more than a quirky cultural difference that must be tolerated in the interests of peace and national sovereignty.

Must we stifle our moral outrage in the face of unambiguous human rights violations unless those violations take the form of genocide? Has civilization evolved so little that the only thing we can collectively agree is crossing the line is the systematic slaughter of hundreds of thousands of innocents?

We cannot go everywhere there is injustice, but our inability to go everywhere ought not preclude us from going anywhere. We cannot stand down in the face of evil under the pretense that there's too much evil to stand up against. We will stand up against as much as we can, and have faith that free states will serve, as they always have, as beacons to their neighbors. America's influence does not extend everywhere, but it is considerable enough that it can extend to both Iraq and Sudan, especially if the rest of the world can find the integrity to stand up with us in defense of the oppressed.

John Stuart Mill once wrote, "War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself."

If history has taught us anything, it is that liberty is worth the fight, and we must be willing to defend it not just for ourselves, but for all those who are entitled to its blessings.

Brian Pierce is a junior in LAS. His column appears on Wednesdays. He can be reached at opinions@ dailyillini.com.

Linkin' Logs I

A rip off of Eric Zorn's Land of Linkin' series, I will occasionally provide links to sites I find factual, interesting, or entertaining. I encourage people to post their sites they personally find unique or informative. So to honor one of my favorite childhood toys, this is the first Linkin' Log:

1) Some of the most interesting stuff out there comes from the opinion poll sites. Pew is one of the best. Check out the whole site, but I had fun with political categories. They have a political typology test that is more comprehensive and unique than others I have taken. Plus they have a related report which details where the country falls in this typology test, plus some interesting news about the Moderate Revolution, "During the 1990s, the typology groups in the center were not particularly partisan, but today they lean decidedly to the GOP."

2) I found this link via a story in the WSJ. It is an Iraqi blogger with some great stories and perspectives. He also links to many other Iraqi blogs. According to the article, his earlier writings were more optimistic, but they have gradually become more pessimistic.

3) One of regular blog contributor TC's favorite sites. Jim Dunnigan's Strategy Page provides a wealth of professional military information regarding US operations abroad. As far as I can tell he is fairly impartial and dedicated to facts. He does not hesitate to call the situation an "Iraqi civil war," but he also reports on much of the good news that gets ignored by the NY Times and CNN. There is a specific page dedicated to Iraq. Thanks TC.

4) Campaign finances are addictively interesting to track. Two great sources for that. Nationally, opensecrets.org provides well organized details on who gives and who gets money in politics. Interesting to look at the numbers coming from academia, which show that Harvard and the University of California system were the top two contributors of all employee groups in the nation for Kerry in 2004. Harvard's donations, similar to most others, have 96% towards Kerry and 4% towards Bush...but ya know, overwhelming intellectual lopsidedness has no affect on students access to both sides of any debate...riiight.

Here is the less friendly Illinois version, which presents the raw data. I'm not sure whether there is a site that better organizes Illinois data.

5) The quickest, most reliable source for international facts is the CIA World Factbook. Of special note even to those familiar with it, is that they have recently added a section of the "World" itself, which is very interesting.

6) When looking for data from the Federal Gov't, the FedStats homepage can guide you to the most relevant sites...it helps you sort through the bureaucracy.

7) Northwestern's OYEZ page provides summaries of Supreme Court cases plus links to audio recording of arguments and full text of opinions.

8) RealClearPolitics conveniently links you to all of the nation's major opinions pieces for the day. They also have other goodies.

9) OnTheIssues details "every political leader on every issue." It is complete with voting records and public statements. But they do have some gaps...so not quite "every issue."

Telling Iraq's Whole Story

Published in the Daily Illini on April 4th, 2006.

Recent news has led Americans to believe that Iraq has collapsed into total failure. Our understanding of Iraq has been distorted by the mainstream media's slight liberal bias and its strong profit motivation to feed us violent stories. We should not trivialize the pain of some Iraqis or the poor tactics of Bush. But just as we should reject censorship from the Bush administration, we should also reject the censorship of incomplete stories from the media. The story you haven't been told is brighter than you think.

Establishing democracy among fresh people is often bloody and messy. The greatest country in the world began as a fledgling and loose alliance of states under the Articles of Confederation. The United States took 10 years after the Revolutionary War to forge a stable Constitution. If it took the world's greatest democracy 85 years to establish "domestic tranquility," and then only through a Civil War that killed 618,000 Americans, why do we presume Iraq should be able to create a pristine democracy within a few years?

WorldPublicOpinion.org conducted a survey of 1,150 Iraqis in January 2006. Although Sunnis expressed negative views, they actively participated in the December elections.

The survey found that 68 percent of Iraqis believe the new government is legitimate. Furthermore, 64 percent feel that Iraq is "generally headed in the right direction." An overwhelming 97 percent said that their political leaders should reject terrorism and 99 percent feel that "all groups should participate in the political process."

The survey asked, "Thinking about any hardships you might have suffered since the U.S.-Britain invasion, do you personally think that ousting Saddam Hussein was worth it?" While 44 percent of Americans predicted that Iraqis would have felt it was worth it, a surprising 77 percent of Iraqis actually did believe so. What causes Iraqi optimism and American pessimism?

The Brookings Institute is a major independent, nonpartisan think tank. They publish data on recovery in their Iraq Index.

Even with continual insurgent attacks, free Iraqis have volunteered to protect their new democracy. Today, 272,566 Iraqis actively serve as "trained, effective and equipped" forces. They have read Patrick Henry.

Insurgent attacks are isolated in four of the 18 provinces, where 85 percent of attacks occur. Half of Iraqis "live in areas that experience six percent of all attacks."

Iraqi gross domestic product is 35 percent greater today than under Saddam. Oil production matches pre-war levels. Oil revenue since the war has been $50.7 billion - money that, along with U.S. aid, has gone into the rehabilitation of 3,000 Iraqi schools rather than into palaces for Saddam and Sons.

No independent media existed under Saddam. Today, the number of TV stations has blossomed to 44, radio stations to 72 and newspapers and magazines to 200.

The Economist Intelligence Unit recently ranked Iraq as the fourth freest country in the Middle East based on 15 measures of political and civil liberty.

Americans have about a 55 percent voter turnout rate in friendly neighborhoods. In the December elections, 77 percent of eligible Iraqi voters showed up under threat of death. I dare you to tell those voters that liberty is not worth their risk.

Unfortunately for war opponents, nothing has done more than reconstruction to promote the rights of Iraqi women. Under Saddam, women had limited political participation, but the new constitution guarantees women 25 percent of all assembly seats.

Some of the greatest liberals of last century, Woodrow Wilson, FDR, JFK and RFK, believed that America had a duty to spread democracy as the hammer against human tyranny and misery. Today, many still believe that the U.S. has a duty to intervene in Sudan and Rwanda - that there are definitive instances of evil among humans. Did evil not exist in Iraq? We don’t have the right to impose democracy on Iraqis, but Iraqis do have the right to be free and that is why we fight.

With all said, 35,000 Iraqis have died. But their family, friends and countrymen live at the apex of human achievement: freedom. Iraqis may now freely carve their own personal and political paths. Establishing democracy can be bloody and disturbing, but our ancestors believed that liberty was worth it - the unsung founders of the newly free Iraq agree.