The portrayal of Prof. Derrick Bell, who, might I add is still teaching at New York University School of Law, was a tenured faculty at Harvard Law School and willfully resigned from his post in protest of a black female Professor being denied a tenured position that he and many other faculty members felt she deserved. Again, this article is propaganda and slanted towards an agenda, with no real substantiation, and in that vein, it does the same thing that its author claims “crits” are doing at Harvard Law School. Where is the “intellectual rigor” in this piece?

The truth is that many tenured professors at top undergraduate and graduate schools around the country, regardless of race, are brilliant minds but not excellent teachers. Ask any college or professional school student or graduate. There are many professors, both within the Ivy League, as well as the nation’s top public universities, who were hired more for their intellectual talents rather than their ability to effectively teach a group of students. Universities are full-fledged businesses now and though they might deny it, a faculty’s ability to produce intellectual capital in the form of books and papers is sometimes valued more than their ability to teach students.

Yet, I would love to read an interview where Derrick Bell and Harvard Law’s Deans are confronted with these so-called confessions that Mr. Bell made and see if there is any actual truth to these statements. Where is the proof? Where is the intellectual rigor? There are simply claims by a former student, with no corroboration from classmates. If you what intellectual rigor, go read Mr. Derrick Bell’s books, and while you are at it, read Mr. Ogletree’s writings as well. If the hundreds of citations that these books receive around the world aren’t examples of years of dedicated, rigorous, and respected research, what is?

I personally understand and agree with some conservative causes and do believe in the value of having a balance of views in academia. I also agree that our academic bastions are skewed to the left as far as ideology is concerned. Yet, what I also understand what many conservatives find hard to grasp or interpret, why this is so. This is so because American society, especially the American legal system, is very flawed. The “libertarian” and “moral values” and many other conservative fundamentals have proved inadequate safe guards to protect ethnic-minority American citizens. The liberal slant in education is, in my opinion, meant to forge a new path in social, political, and academic thought. Liberals are trying to incorporate the myriad of values, beliefs, and political stances that our very diverse country offers. They understand that historical foundations of beliefs do not apply to everyone in the United States and that America is not the same country it was a few decades ago. Rather than forcing what many see as “white-male” values, beliefs, and teachings on society, “liberals” in various facets of society are trying to expand these views so that they better represent the belief systems of our increasingly diverse nation.

I agree that academia should respect all political views and give students fair access to a variety of beliefs so as give to students a chance to choose a mode of thinking in an environment that minimizes bias. I believe that Conservative/Libertarian thought should be equally valued as Liberal thought because these values built America, the country many Americans, regardless of their race, gender, or core beliefs, love and benefit from.

In my opinion, the issue at stake here is whether or not conservative ideals and beliefs are being disenfranchised from America’s academic community. To this issue, I answer yes, but it is being done to a significantly lesser extent as claimed in the article. The truth is the strength of conservative organizations in the U.S. is slowly growing and conservative-right wing groups are starting to attract more and more young people.

My main problem with this article is this: de-legitimizing another’s views by questioning the “intellectual rigor” of accomplished PhD holders who are obviously familiar with both intellectual thought and academic rigor, is a nonsensical way of going about bringing a balanced political climate into academia. To incorporate Conservative thought back into academia, the stance should be based on the fact that diversity of opinion is a key facet of liberalism and that silencing conservatives is a large-scale contradiction. Expose the fact that dominating public opinion should not be the purpose of any movement, but creating a niche and supporting freedom of opinion is. The negativity in this piece is unnecessary and counter-productive. Most liberals would read this piece and disregard it completely based on the immense lack of substantiation for many of the claims made. Expose the claim of the silencing of conservative thought at HLS, provide “real” evidence for it, and frame it in a way that proves liberals are being contradictory. Accompany with it a solution to the problem rather than asserting the ludicrous claim that the answer is starting a new law school to rival Harvard, Yale, and Stanford, which is more that laughable given the history of these schools and how engrained into the American Legal lexicon they are. Developing the debate within academia and providing concrete and plausible policy initiatives for these schools to enact is a much more legitimate and practical solution to any perceived “leftist” slant.

Conservatives and Liberals have mutual beliefs, if we are the end any oppression on either side or make any significant progress in doing so, we must work in a framework based on these shared values.