Recently Stanley Fish, an opinion columnist for The New York Times, wrote a piece addressing the issues raised in a new documentary by filmmaker Evan Coyne Maloney. The film, entitled "Indoctrinate U," proposes that college campuses across the country are skewed towards liberal ideas and left-leaning politics, and that in the name of diversity of other kinds, they lack "diversity of thought." Coyne's movie claims that this liberal bias is so institutional in academia that the one difference that is not tolerated is conservative thought. Professors-even in departments like geology or biology-use their position to preach their politics.

Coyne uses the tactics of ambush interview to present himself as a kind of conservative Michael Moore. He cites radical book lists and the preponderance of liberal thinkers invited to speak as evidence for this infringement on "freedom on thought." The film goes on to lament that the movement towards diversity, once intended to bring people together, has instead kept them apart. Allegedly, women spend their time in the Women's Center, gay people in the Gay Center, black people in the Black Studies Center, and so on and so forth for every subsection of diversity that one can name.

Fish, rather than attempting to debunk the validity of Maloney's claims, instead makes the case that although "balance" may be the ideal, and indeed a requirement, in the political sphere, this is not the case in the academic sphere. He says that students who feel that their views aren't being represented by the invited speakers should try to get on the committees that do the inviting, and that professors who feel the same way should apply for grants or dip into their own pockets to pay for more conservative guests. Fish concedes that certain figures on campuses may, at times, forget that their main purpose is to educate and begin to push certain political agendas, and that it is up to administrations to keep this in check. He does not, however, address the possibility that conservative thought might be stifled by certain institutional phenomena.

Both views hold some merit. It is objectively true that unchecked political correctness can have negative results that run completely counter to the diversity movement's original intent, and that sensitivity towards issues of race or creed can turn into condescension. Additionally, hearing both sides of an issue is something very close to the core purpose of higher education (especially a liberal arts education) and our colleges would do well to represent every kind of legitimate view on the full spectrum of academic subjects. It would be hard to argue that any intellectual speaker has nothing to offer to a community that is supposed to be a hotbed of ideas and discussion. Diversity of all kinds is important, of politics as well as race and gender.

In regards to how this issue might pertain to our beloved Amherst, I can say that I have had professors ranging form the super-liberal to the arch-conservative, but in every case the professor in question has-in addition to refraining from his or her own personal beliefs-been respectful and receptive to all opinions. In fact, they welcome differing viewpoints in order to foster the lively discussion that is so integral to what we are trying to achieve here on our sunny hill. And as long as these differences are celebrated rather than squashed, no one at the College on the Hill, on either side of the political aisle, should feel that they are being "indoctrinated."