TO THE EDITOR:
I don’t think people appreciate the extent to which the conservative groups on campus actually provide the intellectual diversity we Carolina students so love — or at least pretend to.
Imagine a UNC sans College Republicans, Carolina Review or Students for Life. Liberals could lead blissful lives with their world views confirmed every morning by the Daily Tar Heel. Intellectual diversity at Carolina would extend all the way from Robert Gibbs to Noam Chomsky.
Allegedly “open-minded” liberals would gleefully point to the Imam Feisal Rauf event and say, “See! We believe in diversity — he believes in God!” There would be no meaningful discourse on first principles. Non-leftist intellectuals like Friedrich von Hayek or Robert Nisbet would be dismissed because, well, they must be wrong.
Groups like College Republicans fill this void. Conservatives at UNC have brought speakers like Karl Rove. They defended ideas that you wouldn’t read about in class — at least, they wouldn’t be taught with any level of respect. But they cost money. George Will, a respected columnist, costs $50,000. Raise your hand if you think that event would have happened.
Inviting speakers who aren’t famous don’t draw crowd.Ann Coulter would have filled a room. We were lucky to draw 50 people to a Harvey Mansfield speech, a scholar more influential than, say, Judith Butler.
Until this University as an institution supports intellectual diversity, Coulter is what you get: famous enough to justify the cost. The issue isn’t Coulter’s (relatively inexpensive) honorarium, but that this University is unwilling to pay $20,000 to support the intellectual diversity it supposedly holds dear.
Anthony E. Dent
Co-Editor
Carolina Review
