diversity

Essay by gcronkyCollege, UndergraduateA, September 2014

download word file, 3 pages 0.0

The Real Problem

What is diversity? Most would say a matter of race, ethnicity, and gender. Americans are missing the big picture, oversimplifying the issue and ignoring a controversial topic: intellectual diversity. This branch of diversity includes subjects such as religion, political views, etc. Some would argue that there is a lack of intellectual diversity on campuses no and point out statistics of significant imbalance between liberal and conservative professors and label this as a diversity problem. This is not a problem as statistics or imbalances do not even come close to covering the whole scope of the dilemma at hand. Therefore, it becomes clear that a "lack of" intellectual diversity on campuses is not the problem, but rather when beliefs are brought into the classroom. With this being said, the government or any other higher power should not exercise their right or responsibility to enforce diversity laws as interfering would not fix the perceived diversity problem but rather intrude on the right of free will.

As humans, we have the right to individuality. We are free to feel how we want, wear what we want, and think what we want to. This right does not disappear once we enter onto a university campus, students and professors each have their right to believe in what they wish. As professors have natural authority over the students in their classroom, great power comes with great responsibility. Source F makes a claim stating that "Professors have a duty to inject some degree of controversy into the classroom [to] stimulate healthy intellectual debate". Without this healthy and controversial debate, lectures would be uninteresting to students and they would be dreading class everyday because their cerebral power would remain dormant. Introduction of different viewpoints by professors allows students to be exposed to contrasting ideas therefore...