Letters to the Editor: DCU's position illogical, problematic

Remarkable in the Duke Conservative Union's survey of faculty political affiliation and the ensuing discussion are just how many categorically binary and problematic assumptions are embedded in discussing intellectual diversity and its meaning.

This has already been pointed out by others in the assumption that affiliation as a "Democrat" or "Republican" is any kind of honest indicator of what intellectual positions people actually hold and the diversity of their views. Indeed, my guess is that the "left" that the DCU seems so preoccupied with are themselves likely see little underlying meaning in such party distinctions in what might simply be called a "Republi-cratic" American political system. Equally confusing is the assertion of skew or disparity in the Humanities faculty's political affiliations. Skew compared to what other group? Duke students? North Carolina voters? Faculty in "The Sciences?" Without an explicit comparison to an expectation, the claim of "skew" seems empirically empty of meaning. The implicit (and untested?) assumption within the data collection itself that a political bias is more likely within the Humanities faculty or that somehow skew would matter more with these professors than those in other disciplines presents a whole other set of problematic assumptions.

The comments in the letter-to-the-editor by Herb Childress do little to help this muddle, perpetuating yet another false dichotomy between "the Humanities" and "the Sciences" and the intrinsic characteristics of people in these disciplines (Science is less collaborative? Professors in the Humanities less concerned with reputation?!). It seems wholly conjecture that these asserted disciplinary boundaries relate in any meaningful way to political or intellectual diversity. It is both ironic and symptomatic that in being so concerned to address intellectual diversity we resort to the pat and misleading binaries such as "left" and "right," "Humanities" and "Sciences." If we are really concerned with intellectual diversity, let's start ourselves by moving at least a little beyond a world view of 0'sand 1's.

Andrew Yang

Graduate student, Department of Biology