A brief article about a letter penned by the Young Americans for Liberty at the University of Michigan on the issue of diversity of thought has been shared and liked thousands of times on Facebook this morning. The article, shared by the National Liberty Federation, is one of many on the YAL letter that has gained national attention in these past months.
YAL’s letter, written by Sophomores Derek Magill and Cody Chipman, called for the Coleman administration to allow an open forum for all ideas, “not just those that the university sanctions.” The response by the Coleman Administration has been patronizing and inadequate at best. A short letter response by Provost Pollack stated that the university prides itself on it’s diverse curriculum, and that because the students at YAL were libertarian, the diverse curriculum must be working.
The article is transcribed in it’s entirety below:
“In a bold move on today’s politically correct campuses, a group of brave libertarian students at the University of Michigan recently decided to stand up and tell the school that they were, in effect, “mad as hell and not going to take it anymore.”
In a no-holds-barred letter to the powers that be, the students said they were “sick and tired of being treated like second-class citizens, watching their administration fawn over and pander to a vocal group of radical students while they are treated like pariahs” according to The College Fix.
In the letter, they explained that while “nearly every course we have taken has been taught from a liberal perspective by a liberal professor,” there is a “general lack of opposing viewpoints students have access to.”
Since college campuses should represent a free marketplace of ideas, the students suggested that the school make opposing viewpoints available by offering economics courses “taught by competent and fair free market professors; that history courses taught from perspectives other than the postmodern be made available; that for every course on race and ethnicity, there be a course on intellectual diversity which includes liberal, conservative and libertarian cultural and political ideas.”
Moreover, they asked “that an increased budget be developed and extra-curricular programs created to help foster this intellectual diversity outside of the classroom. This would allow students from across the disciplines to engage in fair minded and open discussion with their peers about all ideologies, not just those that the university sanctions.”
Deborah Lambert”
The original post can be found here and on Facebook:
http://www.libertyfederation.com
