THE BELL CURVE:Assemblyman’s campus criticism flawed

Assemblyman Chuck DeVore does no service for good government with his recent commentary in the Pilot demonizing college professors and adding to, rather than clarifying, the divisive usage of “liberal” and “conservative.”

DeVore properly defined the ideal academic environment as “encouraging vigorous debate and building reasoning skills,” which I found to be very much the case at UC Irvine during the 21 years I taught in the English department there. But DeVore and I parted company when he switched to the opposite tack by using the recent brouhaha with the Muslim Student Union as evidence that the UCI faculty is “too concerned with tolerance to criticize speech that crossed the line from commentary to hate.”

From this springboard, he went on to charge humanities and social science faculties in general with “liberal groupthink,” citing as evidence, for example, a study finding that 58% of humanities faculties “believe U.S. policies in the Middle East have created the problems we face in the region” — a figure that would seem to parallel rather closely current public attitudes toward our activities in Iraq. The same study concluded “social science faculty voted for John Kerry over George Bush in 2004 by more than a 4-to-1 ratio.” This, according to DeVore — who offered no examples — has forced conservative professors underground. If the study dealt with the ratio of corporate executives voting for Bush so we might have a little perspective on these numbers, Devore didn’t mention it.

Nor did he mention that “crossing the line from commentary to hate” wasn’t confined to the Muslim students. By way of perspective, he might well have noted that a Republican student group brought “three ex-terrorists” to the UCI campus who — according to Pilot reporters on the scene — compared Muslims with the Nazis, combined terrorism with Islam, and proudly admitted to embracing hate speech when dealing with what they determined were terrorists.

Defining the parameters of free speech is a debatable issue. Strong arguments can be made from both sides.

But it doesn’t help that debate, indeed destroys it, when it is offered from the position that it is only the other guy who needs to be silenced.

DeVore found it relevant to slide from this exposure of over-tolerant college faculty to easy lumping of “conservatives” and “liberals” into the good guys and the bad guys. There’s a lot of that going around these days, and the only purpose it serves is to further polarize an already highly divided country.

Both sides persist in defining the other by the excesses of its outer edges. Thus the conservatives are fascists who would privatize everything in our society, cater to the wealthy and powerful, and embrace absolutely the Ayn Rand philosophy of survival of the fittest. And the Democrats are wild-eyed socialists who would nationalize private industry, punish the deserving rich with taxes, and cater to the weak and lazy who sponge off the sweat of hard-working taxpayers.

In such an accusatory climate, I like to turn to the dictionary for clarity. So here is how the political aspects of liberal and conservative are defined in Webster’s New World Dictionary:

Conservative: “Tending to preserve established traditions or institutions, and to resist or oppose any changes in them; moderate, prudent, safe.”

Liberal: “Tolerant of views differing from one’s own; favoring political reforms tending toward democracy and personal freedom for the individual; open-mindedness to ideas that challenge tradition (and) established institutions.”

Shouldn’t respectful combining of these two definitions enrich a society rather than polarize it?

And hasn’t that happened during other crises of our history, when bad-mouthing the opposition was set aside in the greater interests of the country?

DeVore ends with a reasonable suggestion that the ban on audio and visual recording of controversial campus events should be dropped so they can be seen and heard and commented on freely — just like the words DeVore and I commit to paper here.

I have long been irritated by being told by strangers who haven’t really the slightest interest to “have a nice day.” I have a storehouse of wiseguy answers to this question, which I mostly have managed to think but not articulate.

Recently the two banks I entrust with my modest paychecks have come up with a new twist. Their employees open our conversation by saying, “Have you had a good day, so far.” Frequently I haven’t, and like the rabbit in “Harvey,” I have a strong urge to say:

“I’ve really had a rotten day so far. Let me tell you about it.”

I went to one of my banks on a stressful day last week to resolve a problem that I was told would be researched and ready for discussion. It wasn’t, and I was irritated.

My body language must have shouted my state of mind. In that situation, as I was packing up, brooding about having to return on another day, the bank lady, in all innocence, said sweetly to me, “How was your weekend?”

Whoever it is this bank has employed to train its employees in dealing with the public must have flunked Psychology 101 and should be fired. Oh, yes, and told to “have a nice day” on the way out.