News Reporter
The Moss Performing Arts Center recital hall was half full as Regent Gallegos took the stage and spoke about the University of Colorado’s approach to education. Speaking about current Boulder statistics and how the university has cleaned up the famous annual gathering of marijuana smokers on April 20, Gallegos quickly turned the mic over to the keynote speaker Dr. Steven Hayward. Hayward, a new professor at CU Boulder, was in town Saturday morning to hold a community meeting around the ideas concerning conservative thought on policy in regard to higher education.
“The biggest problem is not a liberal bias or liberal indoctrination from our professors, but rather it is an omission of the conservative point of view within our establishments,” Hayward said.
Hayward addressed an argument that universities have become progressively more liberal in their approach to education. Hayward also noted that even as CU graduates 58 percent of the degrees within Colorado each year, there are still declines in numbers of enrolling students within the humanities.
“The decline in enrollment within humanities nationally is a shame,” Hayward said.
One reason for the decline is due to graduates wanting to find a job after school, and the lack of conservative thought is leaving a gap in academia. Others argue that many institutions are leaning more on the liberal side due to a narrow focus of research within large universities, and many conservatives are not able to share their work with a wider audience.
“In terms of the professors, many are just not aware of the bias they are sharing, whether it is conservative or liberal,” Hayward continued.
Some professors share a conservative view, but they don’t use the banner of conservatism to inform students of what side the view is actually on.
“There is no banner for some conservatives,” Hayward said.
“How many people have read The Prince By Machiavelli?” Hayward asked.
Many people shook their heads yes.
“How many of you read it slowly?” Hayward said.
The audience was unsure on how to answer this question.
“Reading slowly can allow for you to get more out of the text,” Hayward said, leading into a short discussion about how many professors will assign readings and quickly run through them without allowing time to gather the full amount of knowledge from the text.
The community meeting was a joint project between the CMU’s newly formed Political Science club, Associated Student Government, and CU Boulder. Dr. Hayward was hired at CU to expand the political views of the institution. He self-identifies as a conservative, and to works on outreach in the wider community to help share other views than that of the alleged liberal universities.
“It was really great to do a collaboration with Colorado University,” said Ariel Diamond, CMU’s ASG President. “We all have a lot of great knowledge within our own institutions and when you’re willing to share those faculty members you really create this great state-wide learning environment.”
ldaniel@mavs.coloradomesa.edu
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