I am a card-carrying member of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). I support the right of the Nazis to march through Skokie, the right of the Ku Klux Klan to have a rally in the middle of a crowded city and the right of Barry Black to burn a cross on his lawn. In the public realm, the marketplace of ideas does encompass everything, from race baiting, to gay bashing and religious hate speech.
As a private organization, and one of the finest in the world, we have a duty to go beyond this unbridled marketplace of ideas. With our privilege comes a responsibility to create a mainstream in line with our beliefs. While this does not mean we must silence those whose views go outside our mainstream, it does mean we must take every possible opportunity to explain to the world what this sphere is, both in words and in action. In the case of Antonin Scalia, this means that we ought not to have extended an invitation, or that at the least, we should have authored a statement condemning his anti-homosexual remarks.
The Right would have us believe that a homosexual's right to be free from discrimination is something this campus must consider; that it is a realm of legitimate debate on this campus. I do not think that homosexuals on this campus should have their right to exist challenged. Unfortunately, some would like us to believe that challenging this right is a legitimate part of the conservative position. Amherst College's role in the world compels us to say that while we accept conservatives, we reject gay bashing because a homosexual's right to exist is not a political question.
By attempting to link challenges to a homosexual's right to be free from discrimination to a set of political convictions, conservatives have alleged a discrimination against their entire position. I reject this argument. One need not be anti-homosexual to be conservative. Likewise, being anti-homosexual does not make one conservative. Amherst only rejects those who are anti-homosexual, regardless of ideology.
Unfortunately, many conservatives would like our help in making anti-homosexuality a part of the mainstream. Some have suggested that not hiring Antonin Scalia as part of our faculty would be an outright rejection of conservatism. This argument falls apart when we consider the number of conservatives we would hire.
In efforts to subvert the mainstream with such radical elements as anti-gay rhetoric, many conservatives have begun to advocate ideologically discriminatory hiring on college campuses. To reach this conclusion, they engage in a relatively systematic critique of college faculties. First, they assert that left-leaning professors rarely teach conservative doctrine, and when they do, these professors tend to be critical of such doctrine. In concocting their argument, however, conservatives neglect that professors also criticize liberal doctrines and instead claim they are hostile towards conservatism. As a supposed solution, they thus claim that colleges should begin to institute political litmus tests in hiring. As evidence of discrimination, they count the numbers of conservative faculty on college campuses and raise the numbers as a sign of ideological imbalance, while neglecting the balance in the quality of the teaching. The apparent result is obvious to anyone who has every played a game of tug-of-war-when one side tugs (the conservative side) and the other stands still (the moderate centrists), everything becomes one-sided, moving the ideological center to the right.
If it is only through the hiring of conservative faculty that we can gain an accurate portrayal of the conservative position, why does this argument not hold more broadly? Should we be hiring Marxists to teach us about Marxism? Facists to teach us about facism? How about Nazis to teach us about Nazism? Must we have Creationists in the biology department? I trust our faculty to give us a fair rendering of the world and let us make our own decisions.
We need not have a "conservative" faculty to teach conservative indoctrination and liberal faculty to teach the mainstream. This demand for conservatives is not an invitation for diversity and intellectual discussion, but rather an ultimatum offered to American colleges and universities: Take our money, hire conservative professors or we will smear your legitimacy.
I have a hard time believing that the Right, in control of our Congress and Executive Office, is really having its views silenced. Ironically, the Right on this campus believes that only if you agree with them have you considered the world as a free thinker. It seems to me that what the radical Right wants is another forum in which to preach their radical conservatism, a captive audience of Amherst students.
Although the Right pays lip service to debate, diversity and democracy, this only lasts so long as it is beneficial to them. A diversity of ideology does not imply we should hire Rush Limbaugh or Antonin Scalia. It implies that when we consider candidates for jobs at Amherst College, they should be judged based on their teaching abilities and the merit of their scholarship, and not on their political ideology. Just as it would be wrong not to hire someone for being a conservative, so too would it be wrong to hire an under-qualified person just because he is a conservative. I challenge anyone on this campus to produce an instance in which a professor was not hired because he or she was conservative.
If students think their professors are not giving them a fair education, ask questions! Professors have office hours during which they are more than happy to hear your concerns and talk about your viewpoints, and if you find your professors unhelpful, talk to your classmates and department chairs. Honestly, this is an institution dedicated to learning, not right wing learning, and not left wing learning.
The Right's ultimate goal is not diversity of ideology, it is a re-centering of the mainstream. If we accept anti-homosexuality as a part of the conservative position, and if we accept that we must have ideologically discriminatory hiring, we must hire advocates for discrimination against homosexuals. I will not tolerate the hiring of any faculty member outspokenly hostile to homosexuals; I don't care if he is Antonin Scalia.