Group thinking
In his Jan. 25 article, "UNC report proposes rules for big gifts," Charles Duncan quotes Sherryl Kleinman on her vociferous dislike for the John W. Pope Center for Higher Education Policy. She avers that we mock and disparage UNC's efforts to "respect ethnic, gender, and sexual diversity and to create a more inclusive scholarly community." It would be more accurate to say that we do not believe that the kinds of courses that have been added to the curriculum, such as "Latina/o Studies," are necessary in order to show "respect" to anyone. An intellectually solid curriculum is neither disrespectful nor exclusionary. Moreover, cluttering up the curriculum with lots of "identity" courses does a disservice to the students who spend their time on them; it's like choosing to eat a bowl of jello rather than a bowl of soup.
for Higher Education Policy
Kleinman also cannot resist the snide assertion that we'd like to see the study of civilization confined to "great white men." Utterly baseless.
Students ought to study civilization without including or excluding people merely because of race or other personal characteristics. I would like to see students reading the autobiography of Frederick Douglass, among other works. What I reject is the idea that the curriculum must be designed to ensure that students read so many authors from this group, so many authors from that group, and so on. Merit has nothing to do with the penchant of modern liberals for assigning people to groups.
George C. Leef
Director, John W. Pope Centerfor Higher Education Policy
Permitted HTML:
- To create paragraphs in your comment, type <p> at the start of a paragraph and </p> at the end of each paragraph.
- To create bold text, type <b>bolded text</b> (please note the closing tag, </b>).
- To create italicized text, type <i>italicized text</i> (please note the closing tag, </i>).
- Proper web addresses will automatically become links.
Latest in Letters to the Editor
-
Re: Food waste
"In 2012, Inter-Faith Food Shuttle recovered more than 7.1 million pounds of food from 365 food donors, including grocery stores, food distributors and North Carolina's State Farmers Market."
- Jun 19, 2013
-
Re: Moral Mondays
"Class warfare as a part of racial oppression explains why most people who have the resources to demonstrate and be arrested happen to be white."
- Jun 12, 2013
-
Re: Slow Money; the film 42
"Even though North Carolina has more than 200 farmers markets and 150 organic farms, less than 1 percent of food sold comes from local sources."
- Jun 5, 2013
- More »
