Student Intolerance

The University System of Georgia has responded in a novel way to pressures from conservative pundits and lawmakers all across the country to require universities to demonstrate "intellectual diversity," by conducting and releasing a survey on student perceptions of intellectual diversity on their campuses. "Intellectual diversity" as a concept is a conservative response to "cultural diversity" or "ethnic diversity," which they consider inappropriate values in an academic venue (why should educators care about the color of their students' skin or what cultures they come from? why should it matter if, say, a student body is predominantly white and middle-class?); since their brief is that universities have become exclusively liberal and anti-conservative, "intellectual diversity" would mandate some tolerance for conservative views in the classroom.

This new study was planned, as Scott Jaschik writes in his Inside Higher Ed piece on the survey, "both with faculty groups and with Republican legislators who have previously called for intellectual diversity legislation — thus making it difficult for either those in higher ed or who like to criticize it to write the study off as politically fixed."

What they found was that students perceived the greatest threat to "intellectual diversity" on their respective campuses to be coming not from professors but from other students. Professors were far more open to differing ideological views than students. The complaints about intolerant students came from both sides of the aisle, finding the left just as intolerant as the right, but both to be about twice as intolerant as professors.

The study also suggests that about one-third of the students surveyed were unwilling to have their ideological views challenged by their professors, and that nearly one-quarter said that they had felt at least once in their college careers that they had to agree with a professor to get a good grade--the majority saying that this had happened only once. One-tenth of the students surveyed felt that some of their professors had spoken inappropriately about their political views, but two-thirds of those said that they had felt free to argue with those professors. And fewer than half of those who complained that they felt they had to agree with their professors to get a good grade said that the professors had done or said something to make them feel that way; apparently the other half-plus brought those fears to the classroom from their stereotypes.