DENVER -- I passed a pleasant Saturday earlier this month with members of the Colorado Association of Scholars, whose first all-day conference, held at the University of Denver March 13, took as its theme "Prejudices of the Professors."
The attendance was small, because one common prejudice among professors is never to associate with people whose opinions challenge their own. If an organization is considered politically incorrect, and this one is, people fear their careers will suffer if they join it or attend its meetings.In a more innocent time, this used to be called "McCarthyism," and universities deplored it.
The Colorado group is a chapter of the National Association of Scholars, whose motto is "For reasoned scholarship in a free society."
That's far too radical for many academic types, whose philosophy of education is more accurately described as "For political activism in the service of social change."
The organization honors a quaint academic tradition, now all but forgotten on most campuses, of inviting speakers with differing and sometimes controversial views. For the protection of our distinguished speakers, therefore, I must emphasize that their appearance at the conference in no way implies their endorsement of the group or its views.
Would anyone suggest it did? You bet. Guilt by association is big on campus these days.
Not that Dick Lamm would care. The former governor, now director of the Center for Public Affairs and Contemporary Issues at the University of Denver, has seen the decline in academic tolerance first-hand.
Lamm joined the faculty at DU in 1969, "a yeasty time," he said in his lunchtime address. "When I came back in 1987, it was vastly different."
He invited Charles Murray, whose book "Losing Ground" he calls "a profound critique of the Great Society" to speak at the center (this was before the appearance of Murray's book, "The Bell Curve," which caused an entirely different war).
"Instead of a debate, we had consternation," he said. There were pickets; the chancellor and the provost wouldn't speak up.
Lamm acknowledges there may be some things you don't want taught as part of the curriculum -- Holocaust denial, for instance -- but that doesn't mean they shouldn't be debated.
Even more effective than intimidating people who hold dissenting views is shunning them.
I've unfairly neglected other excellent speakers, who testified to the rigorous orthodoxy imposed on their campuses. So I'll give the last word to Hank Brown, former senator and now president of the University of Northern Colorado.
"The marketplace of ideas doesn't come naturally to people," Brown said.
And for the most part, universities today do nothing to teach their students why they should value one.
Linda Seebach is an editorial writer for the Denver Rocky Mountain News in Colorado.