With ISU President Geoffroy’s call for input on campus diversity, here is an alumnus’ perspective: Don’t forget about intellectual diversity!

What about the diversity of ideas? Take free speech for example. If you want a test of diversity, look at how unpopular speech is dealt with.

Since universities tend to be very liberal compared to the broader culture, which is fairly evenly divided between Democrats and Republicans, the most unpopular speech is, more often than not, conservative speech.

In recent years, many campus newspapers have had their production run stolen and publicly burned because they featured, for example, a pro-life cartoon or a letter arguing against paying reparations to blacks because of slavery.

Ward Connerly, a civil rights leader who argues against racial preferences, has been shouted down and prevented from speaking at scheduled events at several schools, such as the University of Wisconsin-Madison, because of his conservative views.

Iowa State has a more tolerant student body than these other schools. Campus liberals may label conservatives as “racist” or “Nazi,” though because, after all, being a racist is ultimately the worst thing to be in America, and calling someone a racist is useful when losing an argument.

But ISU students are not censored, hauled before some campus disciplinary committee or sentenced to a re-education workshop for espousing mainstream conservative ideas.

At Iowa State, it is not a crime for students to be in favor of color-blind governmental policy, low taxation or a strong national defense.

However, faculty members have it harder. Case in point: Could an outspoken conservative get tenure in the English department?

Is there a single ISU graduate student in English teaching freshman composition who favors national missile defense, or who favors individualism over “group-identity politics”?

If so, they must keep their head down — as a student, I never saw a letter to the editor in the Daily from a graduate student in English with a conservative perspective.

Would an ISU president or any president of a major American university who argues against racial preferences in higher education last more than a month before either quickly “clarifying his statements” or being forced out of the job?

Would an otherwise qualified candidate for a resident assistant position in a dorm be hired if the interviewer knew the applicant thought homosexuality was immoral?

“Diversity” sounds wonderful, and that is why campus leftists use that word instead of the more descriptive word “liberal.” Liberal has the strong connotation with both failed public policy and with equality of economic outcomes being more important than freedom.

In the words games used by university administrators, “diversity” means “conservatives need not apply.”

What passes for “diversity issues” under campus diversity is simply the left side of left-right issues that the broader society has been talking about for decades. Racial quotas (“goals”), segregation and class-warfare rhetoric are hardly new.

Want 10 percent of ISU professors to be black by 2010? Do you want a separate dorm for black students where they can celebrate their culture?

Want a “culture of inclusion” where minority students will not be offended?

You can easily have this at Iowa State through quotas, racial segregation and speech codes just like those programs were put into place by the Ivy League universities. After all, it is a lot easier than cleaning up K-12 education and treating college students as individuals.

Do you want real diversity? Start by bringing in some conservative speakers as well as the liberal ones as part of diversity programs. Have a humanities department where being a conservative won’t kill your career advancement.

A university is not diverse when the last conservative is driven from campus.

A university is diverse when conservative perspectives are well represented on campus, just as they are in the broader American culture.

Ben Studenski

Alumnus