College is a good time for arguments – of all types.  Small classes encourage a civil dialogue on academic topics.  The politically minded have opportunities to air their views in print and in private conversations.  And if you’re only interested in the social science of Greek life hierarchies, there’s a place for you on CollegeACB.com.

In all cases, the process of constructing and reconstructing beliefs in arenas from the philosophical to the trivial is the most important part of the college experience.  Ideally, we emerge after four years of dialogue having developed a strong constitution of beliefs that have been thoroughly challenged and either amended or reinforced.

If you look a little closer though, it seems that our arguments are not really about what we say they’re about.  On a national scale, we just saw a debate over health care reform that completely neglected to, you know, substantively mention health care.

At Lehigh, the threshold for what constitutes a campus-wide argument is low, but there are a few issues that have consistently incited loud opinions throughout my four years here.

One example should be familiar to any regular reader of this journal: a few persistent conservative libertarians love to point out the grave threat to their First Amendment rights posed by the liberal establishment. 

Many writers for this publication see The Patriot as a vehicle with which to attack the rising tide of political correctness emerging at Lehigh and on college campuses generally.  But this perspective isn’t the exclusive province of any particular group of individuals; it is spread evenly throughout every corner of the campus.

To a certain extent, it’s a good point: people are sensitive.  You really can’t make jokes or critical statements referencing race, gender, sexual orientation, religion or any other privileged cultural category without undergoing a sociological prostate exam.     

Many of these controversial ideas are discounted not on their merits, but on-face, and this reactionary tendency ultimately works to the detriment of intellectualism and the vibrancy of our campus discourse.  Accepting the politically correct solution as universally correct is the wrong answer if we want to learn anything from the synthesis of diverse perspectives.

Still, I’m not convinced that this particular debate is productive, nor do I believe it’s really about the free expression of ideas.

It’s troubling that we have yet to hear an iteration of these arguments that don’t explicitly target a particular minority interest group or all minorities in general, presuming their efforts for empowerment on campus are superfluous, contrived and somehow a threat to the mainstream.  

More telling is the fact that these claims have a clear rhetorical inspiration in the Tea Partying Fox News style of argumentation.  Denouncing well-intentioned initiatives as dastardly plots to undermine everything that’s great about Lehigh based on broad appeals to efficiency, cost-control, liberty, freedom or other nebulous ideas is hardly an original or intellectually rigorous strategy.

In reality, efforts to empower and institutionalize the representation of minority interest groups on campus are not only necessary, but also insufficient in their current form. 

The math is fuzzy, thanks to an applicant’s ability to choose not to report his or her ethnicity (I wonder what that could mean), but admissions department profiles of the most recent incoming classes indicate that Lehigh is somewhere around 85% white.

Consider that staggering number in combination with the prevailing campus discourse – the way we talk about issues, the way we view ourselves superficially, the way we position and categorize people.  Without institutionalized protections for diversity, the space for the expression of those interests would be drowned out under the guise of “neutrality.”

The argument in favor of objectivity too often serves as a proxy for more insidious beliefs.  It’s not that it can’t be made rationally, citing evidence and in a way that appeals to reasonable people, but it ultimately engenders deeply problematic, even hateful consequences.

The situation closely parallels a 1977 U.S. Supreme Court case in which a contingent of Neo-Nazis planned a march through the town of Skokie, Illinois – a heavily Jewish area whose residents included some Holocaust survivors. 

When the ACLU successfully defended the Neo-Nazis’ right to freedom of assembly under the First Amendment, it was a rational, principled and legal defense of a disgusting and inhumane act.

The logic of that case, that hate speech ought not be excluded because of its moral implications, is frighteningly reminiscent of the debate we’re having at Lehigh.  One side seems to think that any organization or administrator tied to a diversity initiative is a threat to their particular vision of a University’s proper role.  They simply don’t care that these steps might make Lehigh a more welcoming and inclusive place for a significant chunk of students and a more ethically defensible institution for those of us who care.

So this debate is not one between those who want the University to play an activist role in reshaping the campus culture and those who think our wasteful pursuit of that end is better left to market forces.  Those in the latter category seem to have a more unfortunate and selfish agenda.

They’d rather defend the kid who carved a swastika into a campus building (it was clearly a harmless prank!) than stand with those who were offended and intimidated by that action.  In doing so, they’ve chosen empty ideology over the moral integrity of the University and the interests of their fellow students.

President Gast has been out in front of a number of initiatives designed to finally rectify some of Lehigh’s old Achilles’ heels (ahem, diversity) and push the University towards new heights of academic prestige and national significance.

Of course, creating the impression of imminent academic superstardom is mostly a platitude designed to attract the most qualified high school applicants, but there’s nothing wrong with that. In fact, this place could probably use a bit more academic chest-thumping.

In the business and engineering schools, our reputation for post-graduate job placement is highly touted, and successful students usually work hard enough to justify the accolades. But Lehigh should work to create a reputation for rigor across the University. More specifically, it’s time to require a series of intense core classes for all undergraduates. I’ll leave the specific content of the core to better pedagogical minds than mine, but Columbia College’s legendary Core Curriculum should serve as a guide.

At Columbia, students spend the bulk of their first two years as undergraduates completing core requirements in the sciences and humanities. Columbia’s Core is, however, infamous for its level of difficulty. There is a case to be made in favor of the flexibility offered by distribution requirements, but that doesn’t mean the current system is anywhere close to ideal. By picking out the most salient aspects of the Core Curriculum, we can have the best of both worlds.

The first step ought to be the implementation of a foreign language requirement. Lehigh’s “Strategic Plan” is accompanied by the slogan, “Advancing our intellectual footprint.” Inarguably, that footprint can only grow so much if Lehigh’s graduates are marching in boots that only speak English. Proficiency in a foreign language is not only an easy way for job applicants to distinguish themselves from a pack, it’s a way for Lehigh to situate itself on the cutting edge and get out in front of the competition.

Another important course, entitled “Contemporary Civilization,” is a survey of religious, political and social thought designed to provoke discussion and cultivate better-informed citizens. The syllabus includes everything from the political philosophies of Plato through Locke to The New Testament and The Qur’an. If Lehigh is serious about attracting and outputting the best and the brightest, it should entrust its students to internalize and carry on the intellectual traditions that constitute the foundations of human civilization.

Columbia’s “Literature Humanities” course also offers a model to be emulated. An excellent University ought to be more than a utilitarian means to employment – it’s a vital cultural sustainer. Still, too many students are startlingly ignorant when it comes to the most profound and enduring achievements of the human race. College should be a crucial rite of passage in which our rich literary heritage is passed onto a new generation. With that in mind, a survey of “great books” should replace the current freshman year English requirement.

The current incentive structure actually discourages the strongest English students from actually studying English at Lehigh. Someone who enters college with high verbal SAT scores or AP credit would place out of the required English classes. Pursuing an ambitious major or concentration, completing distribution requirements, and attempting to branch out academically while maintaining a high GPA might easily preclude that student from ever stepping foot in an English classroom.

Even worse, the rest of the freshmen are robbed of the chance to interact with the strongest students who would raise the bar for class discussions. Those who wish they could leave dense reading and paper-writing behind for good will be rudely awakened by the barrage of cover letters, graduate school entrance exams and business memos that beckon in a few years. Conversely, a challenging mandatory English curriculum would position students to breeze through those mundane tasks while developing much-needed capacities for critical thought, reading and writing. All these skills are applicable to any profession, but only in college can we immerse ourselves in and concentrate on them as ends in themselves.

Certainly this isn’t an exhaustive list of potential ingredients to constitute Lehigh’s core curriculum, but the idea is simple: a series of rigorous mandatory courses to develop critical skills and encourage introspection to guide the student in his or her choice of a major and improve the quality of work within that ultimate concentration.

All of this would require only a modest investment from the University in exchange for significant returns. Foreign language instructors don’t even have to be professors to be effective, and graduate students or young assistant professors are the best candidates to lead candid discussions on politics, society and the humanities. As for the benefits, they aren’t hard to imagine…

In the kerfuffle over Lehigh’s issues with diversity and inclusion, much focus has been visited upon ways to amend the first year experience. Among the options being considered is a mandatory course in diversity sensitivity training. The idea isn’t terrible, considering the preponderance of students arriving at Lehigh fresh out of a homogeneous suburban bubble. But such a heavy-handed approach isn’t likely to be effective, and the very idea has prompted a strong backlash from some students.

Instead of such thinly-veiled finger-pointing, a core would give students the opportunity to constructively share ideas in a non-confrontational setting. Many students settle into their social comfort zones within a few weeks or months of arriving at college. An extended core would maintain an imperative of diverse interaction through the first two years, fostering a more welcoming and integrated social and academic community.

Some have argued that the distribution requirements in the College of Arts and Sciences are an ad equate way to produce well-rounded students and that anything more stringent is overkill. But distribution requirements are just a convenient way for students to find the easiest courses in each department. Ironically, these requirements reflect the fact that a given discipline is essential to a complete education, but students have an incentive to sacrifice the essential for the expedient when selecting courses.

This phenomenon contributes to grade inflation- meaning that it’s just too easy to pad a Lehigh GPA. Employers and graduate schools are fond of comparing applicants to the mean or median performance at their particular institution. That makes the choice between challenge and success a zero-sum game. If you choose to push yourself academically, you risk losing out to those who would rather coast.

Even though a core curriculum would do a great deal to improve the Lehigh experience, the impact on those who aren’t here yet and those that have just departed would be even more pronounced. For conscientious prospective students, Lehigh would compare more favorably to alternatives, while the intellectually disinterested might stay away. In the crucial (no matter what anyone tells you) US News and World Report rankings, Lehigh is consistently dragged down by weak assessments from peer-institutions, which is worth 25% of the total score. Bolstering our “intangibles” through the introduction of a challenging core would give those reviewers a reason to take a second look.

Employers and graduate schools, too, would recognize the rigorous crucible that all Lehigh students must pass through. This could very easily improve post-graduate opportunities across all majors, but chances are, the students will speak for themselves.

Lehigh’s department of International Relations boasts more majors than almost any other in the College of Arts and Sciences – 130, according to its website.

That Lehigh has a separate department of International Relations, as opposed to one that is only accessible through the department of Political Science, has long been one of the CAS’s proudest distinctions.

However, all is not well in the back left corner offices in Maginnes. The department is losing its patriarch in Professor Rajan Menon, who holds a Bachelors and a Masters from Lehigh and has attracted countless students to the IR major with his masterful lecturing in his Intro to World Politics course.

Amid Menon’s departure, rumors, heretofore unreported by any campus media outlet, of IR’s imminent absorption into the Political Science department have students and professors alike ready to come to blows with Dean Ann Meltzer.

The IR department held its own town hall meeting last week for majors, which was off-limits to the press, but students left the meeting with a larger-than-ever sense of paranoia about the future of the department.

A resistance movement that was the product of that meeting has secured a sit-down with Dean Meltzer on March 2nd.

In a statement communicated to IR students through the department coordinator, Meltzer vehemently denied any plans to dissolve or merge the IR department. Her e-mail left little room for future equivocation, stating, “I am not aware of any proposal to do either.”

This directly contradicts off-the-record statements from faculty in the IR and Political Science departments, who insist that they’ve been approached with plans for some form of restructuring.

At this point, one of two outcomes is possible: The restructuring will proceed, revealing grave deception and a lack of transparency on the part of the administration. Alternatively, Dean Meltzer may already be backing off of this proposal after such a decisively negative reaction.

Either way, this is what college is all about: Professors and students standing up to administrative powers to protect academic excellence from the indiscriminate hatchet of cost-cutting and consolidation.

Anyone who’s critical of the role of tenure in higher education should take note of the crucial ability of professors to act as a check against wayward administrative priorities.

Stay tuned to The Patriot for additional coverage of this developing story.

I had wanted to post this before the weekend, but it’s always easier to let Jon Stewart have his turn, rather than doing the analysis myself.  Luckily, the House GOP’s dismal approval rating and generally objective incompetence should ensure the hilarity of this segment regardless of your political preference.

Start a conversation with a Jewish student at Lehigh on the topic of Israel, and the ensuing moments will look a lot like the movie Flubber. No one will really know what they’re talking about, spectators will suffer whiplash trying to keep track of what’s going on, and more than a few delicate objects will end up broken.

So when the Berman Center for Jewish Studies brought Israeli writer and director Ari Folman to campus to screen and discuss a much different film: his acclaimed, yet controversial anti-war epic Waltz With Bashir, the debate was sure to be fierce.

Bashir is Folman’s account of his role as a soldier in the Israeli Defense Force during the 1982 War in Lebanon. Years after the events took place, the film follows its writer, director and protagonist as he tries to recover suppressed memories from the 20 year-old conflict.

Specifically, Folman has a recurring nightmare about the massacre at the Sabra and Shatila Palestinian refugee camps (Google it). In one of the film’s most powerful and thought-provoking moments, Folman draws an equivalency between the actions of IDF soldiers and those of Nazis during the Holocaust. Both, he posits, stood by idly as thousands of innocent men, women and children were systematically executed.

The juxtaposition is startling, but for Folman, whose parents are Holocaust survivors, the shadow of that experience inevitably frames the discussion of all subsequent history. Yet many American Jews have a similar background, so it’s troubling that Israelis are free to engage in such unrestrained self-critique, yet external criticism of Israel is often dismissed as anti-Semitism in America.

To be clear, Bashir hardly touches the political dimension of this particular incident or Israeli foreign policy in general. The film focuses on the human consequences of war – especially its psychological impact on adolescent men who are tossed into a world of bloodshed and violence. In Israel, where military service is mandatory and conflicts occur at a tragically consistent rate, each generation is bound by the shared experience of the crucible of war.

In America, no such binding agent exists, which could go a long way in explaining why our political debate is marred by suspicions of bad faith and insidious motivations. At Lehigh and in the American press, the discomfort was palpable as Bashir raised issues that are usually considered off-limits. Rather than engaging the substance of Folman’s critique, some viewers simply dismissed its validity because they couldn’t be inconvenienced to amend their half-baked positions based on new information. It’s not that this film demands that every viewer radically shifts his or her perspective, but it does challenge the dangerous popular disdain for critical reflection.

Ironically, it was the Israeli newspaper Haaretz that published a scathing review on the eve of the Oscars (Bashir was nominated for best foreign film in 2009), slamming Folman for his too-delicate treatment of the IDF. When the Berman Center brought another Israeli speaker a few weeks later, he remarked on the high level of implicit censorship in America as compared to Israel. Of course, the internet makes it so that anyone can say anything, but political, social and institutional norms define the legitimacy of specific arguments while excluding others. For instance, in 2008, the Israel lobby and mainstream media outlets pounced on then-Senator Barack Obama’s mere recognition of Palestinian suffering. This statement was soon diluted to attribute that suffering exclusively to the failure of Palestinian leadership to recognize Israel as a state.

With these subtle constraints on dialogue in America, it’s even more remarkable that a film as critical as Bashir was financed entirely by public money from the Israeli government. As that government moves farther to the right under hawkish Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, vigorous debate over Israel’s direction as a Middle Eastern democracy will ensue. We can’t count on Americans to ask the tough questions, so it is even more important that the vibrancy of Israeli public discourse remains.

Token conservative columnist Ross Douthat has an interesting piece in today’s New York Times to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall.  His argument, in short, is that the end of the Cold War has left us without a legitimate target for our paranoid delusions about the next great turn or tragedy in world history.  He takes both political parties to task for their role in perpetuating pseudo-threats in an age of what is actually unprecedented security.

On the right, pundits and politicians have cultivated a persistent cold-war-style alarmism about our foreign enemies — Vladimir Putin one week, Hugo Chavez the next, Kim Jong-il the week after that.

On the left, there’s an enduring fascination with the pseudo-Marxist vision of global capitalism as an enormous Ponzi scheme, destined to be undone by peak oil, climate change, or the next financial bubble.

Meanwhile, our domestic politics are shot through with antitotalitarian obsessions, even as real totalitarianism recedes in history’s rear-view mirror. Plenty of liberals were convinced that a vote for George W. Bush was a vote for theocracy or fascism. Too many conservatives are persuaded that Barack Obama’s liberalism is a step removed from Leninism.

OK, fair enough.  Give Douthat some credit for making a bold claim that directly contradicts conventional psychosis wisdom.  The state of our public discourse is abysmal – but that doesn’t mean our current economic, political and social solutions are actually sustainable.  It just means the crazies haven’t been vindicated…yet.  Twenty years of ideological hegemony for global capitalism is hardly enough time to declare “the end of history.”

What do you think?

Let’s be honest: students in search of the quintessential Lehigh experience will go Greek. Those who move onto The Hill after freshman year will tell you they wouldn’t have done it any other way. Those who go it alone might not have any regrets, but they’ll certainly feel as if a significant part of our campus is walled-off.
For too long we’ve taken in stride that there’s something inherent to Greek organizations that makes the decision to pledge so pivotal in one’s college lifecycle. That joining a fraternity or sorority is widely considered the only way to have a social life is a major blemish on Lehigh’s character.
Students should choose Greek life based on its merits, not because there simply isn’t a decent alternative. For all the grumbling about the demise of The Hill, Greek life will remain Lehigh’s social bread and butter until drastic changes are made. This is because Lehigh’s policies are a deliberate form of social engineering masquerading as neutrality. In reality, fraternities and sororities dominate our social scene because Lehigh stifles social activity everywhere else.
For instance, Greek houses are the only residences on campus without Gryphons. In other words, fraternities and sororities are effectively exempt from the enforcement of regulations that ensnare the rest of us. According to Lehigh’s social policy, 10 people in a room with alcohol constitutes an unregistered party. A gathering that size would go unnoticed in the privacy of a fraternity house – but try it in one of the Sayre apartments. With a nod and a wink, Lehigh gives Greek sophomores and juniors the exclusive right to party. The decision to pledge, then, isn’t made based on the merits of the Greek system – it’s a lifestyle necessity.
This situation would be ameliorated if unaffiliated groups were able to host viable campus-wide events, but social policy also prohibits alcohol consumption in any non-residential campus buildings. The Hawk’s Nest, originally recommended by the Strengthening Greek Life Task Force as a non-Greek social alternative should fill this void. But the task force erred in assuming students would trade a night of partying for a night of waiting in line for chicken fingers. Now that most parties have been pushed below Packer Avenue, there is even less of an opportunity for non-Greeks to establish a presence on campus.
The barriers don’t end there. Our increasingly labyrinthine and unwieldy social policy makes it cost-prohibitive for any unaffiliated group to serve alcohol at an event. Increasing occupancy requirements, a general obsession with recruitment numbers and the recent attrition of several fraternities has increased the average size of each Greek house. Only organizations that collect substantial membership dues and have the financial backing of the University can afford to hire the layers of security and University personnel now required to make a party legitimate.
To solve this problem, Lehigh should encourage the establishment of co-ed social organizations modeled loosely on Princeton University’s “Eating Clubs.” Eating Clubs function as dining halls, communal recreation spaces and hosts to social events. At Lehigh, these clubs would be attractive to students who like the idea of joining a social organization, but not the idea of pledging their souls to one.
Ideally, eating clubs at Lehigh would also lose the characteristic tribalism of Greek organizations. Membership could be determined by lottery, providing an incentive to host open events that draw a more diverse cross-section of the campus community.
The administration has made overtures towards this vision of social life in its recent push for more special interest housing. But their approach buys into the same divisive pattern of social organization that has plagued us for years. Lehigh needs a more inclusive social space, not more pronounced boundaries between different interest groups on campus.
It’s time to debunk the notion that social segregation at Lehigh is a naturally occurring phenomenon. The University’s policies privilege Greek life above all others, and many freshmen pledge reluctantly just because it seems like ‘the thing to do.’ This translates into dissatisfied students in and outside of the Greek system. Students should demand real alternatives to this state of affairs, and the resulting competition will improve campus life for everyone.

Question: How should Lehigh’s administration deal with underage alcohol consumption?

The drinking age debate is doomed. The most passionate advocates for reform have three years to make their case. Then one day, they miraculously stop caring, or worse, they join the opposition.

Attrition is not the only problem, of course. There are no new arguments to be made. Compelling statistics overwhelmingly support a 21-year-old drinking age, and the political will for change is non-existent.

However, that the drinking age is and will remain 21 does little to rationalize the way the law has been enforced here at Lehigh. The administration is in the precarious situation of trying to reform our ‘party-school’ image while somehow retaining it – because, well, you can’t put lipstick on a pig.

If candor were the order of the day, President Gast could express skepticism about strictly enforcing a 21-year-old drinking age. Most 18-20 year-olds at Lehigh drink regularly, and the law is hardly a deterrent. But Lehigh is under the yoke of two separate but overlapping police forces: the LUPD and the Bethlehem Police Department. In recent years, the Bethlehem Police have received grants from the Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board. Those grants provide the money to pay the small army of cops on bikes that patrol the South Side each fall.

As such, it is difficult for the University to find the right tone with which to address this issue. A more progressive attitude could create the illusion of amnesty for underage drinkers or risk undermining the authority of the police.

To walk this tightrope, the administration should reiterate that its primary concern is the safety and security of Lehigh students – safety from alcohol abuse, to be sure, but also from a tarnished permanent record and from the physical dangers of South Bethlehem.

The LUPD should coordinate with the Bethlehem Police so that underage-drinking citations are handled through the University disciplinary system – not a kangaroo court above a video rental store. The University should then scale back the severity of the punishment for first-time offenders so that students stop fearing the police. With this ironclad partnership between students and law enforcement in place, maybe the Bethlehem Police Department will turn its attention to some “real” problems – like plasma TVs with legs.

To Discuss this issue, please see all three of our editor’s viewpoints, and comment here.