Liberal professors promote tolerance

By John C. Bierk

After referring to "feminism," "affirmative action," "multiculturalism" and "gender politics" as if these were dirty words ("The absent professors, Oct. 2), John Leo then alleges that liberal college professors not only force these concepts upon unsuspecting students, but also punish all those who dissent from the "liberal" view.

The truth lies elsewhere.

While conservatives like Leo work diligently to persuade students that an acceptance of feminism, affirmative action, multiculturalism and gender politics is wrong-headed and even dangerous, it is the position of liberal college professors that every student should be aware, as history amply documents, of these kinds of facts:

1. Women were long considered unequal to men, and this second-class status caused women to be denied equal rights, equal opportunities and equal economic benefits.

2. Blacks were long considered unequal to whites. Even after they were no longer defined as property to be bought and sold, they continued to be denied real equality in either a social or an economic context.

3. Ethnicity has often been the defining reason for denying an individual -- and a culture -- the chance to be accepted within the larger human family.

4. People whose feelings and desires did not coincide with those approved by the heterosexual majority were not only labeled -- and treated -- as undesirable misfits, but according to the Judeo-Christian laws were to be condemned to death by stoning.

In other words, according to conservatives like Leo, the real sin of the liberal college professor is that he documents the hurtful and debilitating results of prejudice, especially those prejudices long accepted by state and church, and that he is willing to profess -- as have all the great teachers in history, secular (like Confucius) and religious (like Jesus) -- that being sensitive to the needs of those who are less fortunate or who are wrongly treated is that which defines a thinking, concerned and educated human being, teachers and students alike.

It is, then, terribly disingenuous for conservatives like Leo to rave on and on about "making faculties more open and diverse" while, at the same time, endlessly criticizing liberal professors who believes that the more open and diverse the student body, the better chance for students to be knowledgeable about and tolerant of different genders, races, ethnicities, cultures, religions and sexual preferences.

John C. Bierk is a resident of Cape Girardeau.