Before I delve into the content of my column for this week, I want to take a moment to apologize for a couple of inaccuracies in my last column. I stated that under the Bush administration, we have lost approximately two million jobs. While overall under the Bush administration, we have lost closer to three million jobs, the net job loss is currently approximately 900,000-still a staggering number. Second, I said that New Yorkers voted against Rudy Giuliani when he ran for the Senate. The truth is Giuliani never actually stood for election for the Senate, dropping out of the race due to prostate cancer. Giuliani was down in the polls in New York City, and his replacement Rick Lazio was defeated.

I had hoped this year to avoid discussing the mess surrounding Antonin Scalia's visit last year. We enjoyed many a healthy discussion as to whether a college offered tacit endorsement to the extremist views of such a man by inviting him to speak on campus. I wrote a column last year condemning the actions of President Marx and received an angry attack from a faculty member in return. I had hoped that this might be considered an event of last year and that we would not be forced to re-enter this discussion with more pressing issues on the table, such as whether we will be able to continue to host a diverse freshman class, how best we can create jobs for those graduating and moving into the workforce and whether student loans are safe. It is precisely this discussion, however that President Marx opened in his convocation speech with the pointed remark that "we can debate profitably about how to understand our founding ideas-as original text, as natural laws or as emerging constructions."

I was heartened to hear President Marx denounce the kinds of nativist beliefs he attributed to Professor Samuel P. Huntington. I wholeheartedly affirm President Marx's declaration that "when we cross the line from parsing ideals to prescriptions of cultural superiority, we have moved beyond what the enlightenment or liberal arts can countenance into a treacherous reasoning that has wrought horrors upon peoples for ages. There we must draw the line together." I can understand this in no other way than that we will not tolerate the propagation of bigotry on our campus.

Yet, it is precisely these claims of cultural superiority that Antonin Scalia broached in the opening line of his decision in Romer v. Evans. "The Court has mistaken a Kulturkampf for a fit of spite." Indeed, in inviting Scalia, we fell victim to precisely what President Marx sought last week to condemn, "chauvinism, akin to that of the past … cloaked in academic responsibility." By inviting people like Scalia or Huntington to campus we add our cover to this "cloak."

I am proud to say that last year, I and many others heeded President Marx's call that "we of the liberal arts are called now to defend again the power of ideas, inclusive and dynamic, over the crabbed assertions of cultural superiority." As we said then, our place as an open-minded institution does not relegate us to a position of neutrality regarding those who would challenge that open-mindedness. It compels us to seek differences within a realm of ideas, but those who cannot abide by the presence of other ideas ought not be invited to propagate their cultural superiority, lending credibility too such assertions of cultural superiority as genuinely intellectual ideas.

What leaves me baffled-and where I believe President Marx deserves continued condemnation-is in his repeated insistence that "originalism" does not fall within his category of "crabbed notions of cultural superiority." As described by Justice Scalia, "originalism" is an ideology that looks to the culture and letter of the law at the time of the American founding and reasons that since homosexuality was illegal and homosexuals received no legal protection at the time of the American founding, they deserve none today. This "ideology" is nothing but "chauvinism … cloaked in academic respectability."

While perhaps slightly more veiled, I find no means of differentiating the beliefs of cultural superiority propagated by Huntington from the belief against the equality of homosexuals propagated by Justice Scalia. Huntington's ideology leads him to believe racial minorities do not deserve equal protection under the law, and he makes little effort to disguise these beliefs. Scalia's "originalism" leads him to believe homosexuals do not deserve equal protection under the law, but he obscures this bigotry through an ideology that supposedly leads him to it. Why would we then invite one to be dispersed on our campus and not the other? If we are really to say that we on this campus accept homosexuals as equal parts of our community, how can we not extend the protections against sexism and racism to homophobia?

I would say that President Marx seems to have realized that by allowing a viewpoint to be propagated on our campus, Amherst endorses that viewpoint and holds it close enough to the views of the college to invite its dissemination on campus. Marx has fortunately decided that nativism will no longer be a part of those endorsed viewpoints. For this, at least, President Marx is to be commended. Ultimately, I believe President Marx has simply lost his way in attempting to be non-partisan. By trying to placate certain implacable elements on the Right, he has fallen into defending an indefensible paradox. Amherst College continues to thrive based on a set of premises that certain political elements in this country challenge in their beliefs. Amherst College could not continue to exist as the place it is today if people such as Huntington and Scalia were allowed to impose their will because, among other things, we guarantee that homosexuals will be free from discrimination and we value our affirmative action programs. If we cherish Amherst, we must fight for these beliefs.

We are not bound as an agent in the marketplace of ideas to continue to provide an audience and appear neutral towards those beliefs that question our existence. We must offer a sound rejection. This may not leave us in the cozy non-partisan position the present administration at the College seems to be attempting to hold. We may have to confront those whose political beliefs counter those premises that allow Amherst to be as great as it is, but we must not shy from standing up for those fundamental beliefs that make Amherst, Amherst.