We’ll be the first to admit what everybody already knows. Our campus is liberal. And while we’re no University of Wisconsin-Madison, the ideology of the courses offered at Iowa State, the professors of such courses and the manner in which they teach, the programs available and the students are all testaments to this assumption.

We’re not complaining, either. We see the progressive trend of our campus to be stimulating. Even from the professors with whom we may not always agree, another viewpoint challenges our own.

For years though, the liberal feel of many campuses across the United States has been opposed by conservatives. In fact, entire foundations have been set up to combat the popularity of the liberal-mindedness of colleges.

The Manhattan Institute, for example, created the Veritas Fund for Higher Education to provide funding toward seeking out and financially supporting professors to create “centers of academic excellence.” As reported in a recent New York Times article, James Pierson, a senior fellow of the institute, claimed that the initiatives funded are nonideological, though they “work against the thrust of programs and courses in gender, race and class studies and postmodernism in general.”

In the article, The New York Times reported that some such centers focus on teaching the “traditional” history of the United States, as opposed to the typical focus of “repression and exploitation.” Can there not be a balance between learning both the good and bad of our country? We would rather our classes don’t pick and choose what they teach us, but teach us, quite simply, what happened. Besides, didn’t we already learn the “traditional” history of the United States in grade school?

As it is the norm, we hadn’t previously given much thought or put much weight in the liberal leanings of Iowa State. But when forces are out there funding for the expulsion of, well, the truth, we’re thankful our campus isn’t the guinea pig for these “centers.” We’ll keep our women’s studies and sociology classes, thank you.

Furthermore, as federal money is now being funneled to such organizations as a result of the new Higher Education Act, we’d like to encourage our administrators to think carefully before admitting programs into the classroom that discourage the diversity and , that characterize our campus. Classes and professors that tend to be more conservative certainly don’t hurt — we think politically diverse courses are healthy to a well-rounded ideological education. All things considered, however, let’s avoid learning what’s convenient and continue to learn what’s true.