Last spring, after visiting a rather unabashed and dogmatic conservative-leaning policy center in Washington, D.C., a fellow student turned to the me and the other conservative in the class and asked, ‘I’m so angry after that. Is that how you guys feel all the time?’

Yes, would have been the answer if she had asked me in fall 2008. I was a freshman at Syracuse University when I first hit the brick wall that is liberal academia. If asked two years later, when sitting through a supposed debate about the president’s health care legislation between two liberal professors – one giving an impassioned case in favor, the other trying to somehow find something bad to say about it – I would have said no. By that point I was already used to it.

The sad thing is conservative students are not the only ones used to liberal academic, left-leaning students and professors are, too.

This results in occurrences like last fall when Katrina vanden Heuvel gave a lecture as part of the University Lecture series. In her lecture, she said even the communist movement, which is responsible for the death and suffering of hundreds of millions around the world, helped push societies forward.

This ridiculous statement went unchallenged. Conservative students don’t want the ridicule that comes with sticking their necks out, and most other students simply see it as part of the status quo.

Right-leaning professors are also weary of coming out and sharing their opinions, lest they be derided by their peers. The first time a professor told me there were more right-leaning professors on campus than people knew about, I shrugged it off. It seemed like hyperbole until I received an email from a professor with a column idea. At the end, the professor quite explicitly forbid me from using his or her name in any context.

It’s a shame at a center of learning and supposed free expression students and professors would feel as though they couldn’t express ideas that a good part of the country accepts and believes in.

The academic atmosphere is supposed to encourage greater learning and intellectual growth. It is severely diminished by this occurrence. Students, as well as professors, aren’t challenged intellectually by being in an echo chamber of ideas.

As a result, I’ve come to see some of the least open-minded people are those who claim to be the most; those who say they are the most intellectually adept are often the least; and way too many people seem to have never had the good fortune of hearing the counterargument to their own beliefs.

I don’t mean to disparage the university as a whole, all professors or all students. Some of the best professors I’ve had and people I’ve met have been liberal or simply nonpolitical, and Syracuse has given me invaluable experiences and knowledge. But it’s important to point out this ideological bend causes the university to fall short of its own vision of Scholarship in Action. This is not a shortcoming exclusive to SU, but rather one that has become the norm for academia generally.

After four years at a liberal institution, I wouldn’t want the inverse – a conservative occupied campus – because the outcome would be very much the same. But it would have been nice for my liberal peers to get a bit more familiar with the anger generated from hearing unapologetic views from an opposing ideology.

Patrick Mocete is a senior political science and policy studies major. This is the last Thursday his column will appear in The Daily Orange. He can be reached at pdmocete@syr.edu or pdmocete@gmail.com. 

Published on April 25, 2012 at 12:00 pm