In its latest edition, The Primary Source criticized a proposal that would require Tufts students to take a course on social justice. The Source claimed it opposed the incursion of politics into the university, regardless of whether the politics were liberal or conservative. This first raises the issue of whether or not this proposal truly is liberal and then, even if it is, if that fact necessarily makes it a bad decision.
Although this proposal appears to be liberal, I believe that the Source is seeking to politicize social inequality by turning an educational issue into a partisan one. The course−specific emphasis on a form of oppression should not be characterized as being on any side of the aisle just because the studied power imbalance favors one group at the expense of the other. We do not shy away from learning about the horrors committed by Stalin and Mao because we are worried about students rejecting communism, nor do we ignore the American Revolution because it may rile up nationalistic and jingoistic fervor. If the Source, in response, were to say that the messages taken away from those events are not as "bad" as the one taken away from a class on social justice, then they are simply injecting their own moral values into the classroom, something they are ironically supposed to be opposing.
However, the idea that Tufts ought to stray from its liberal inclinations also seems to be political in nature; really, this is a group of conservatives who are unhappy with what they view as a potentially liberal university policy. Unfortunately for the Source, Tufts is a socially progressive institution of higher learning; from the faculty to students, Jumbos tend to be left−leaning, and the community at large has embraced this philosophy. Because of the inherent nature of the university, Tufts is often met with making decisions that overlap with political issues. Students on campus are able to get free condoms and participate in LGBT organizations, permissions that may be considered "leftist." For Tufts to never make policy decisions because their rationale could be deemed as ideological would make the system horribly inefficient and insanely unproductive.
What the Primary Source does not seem to understand is that the study of a subject is not the endorsement of a viewpoint. In classes on social inequalities, students are not asked to pick out the "good guys" and "bad guys" on their final exams, nor are they given lectures that indicate who was "right" and who was "wrong." In these classes students learn the abundant history of inequality in society; to deny the history of discrimination is simply to euphemize atrocities.
The Source may claim that the subject matter itself can guide the students towards making certain moral judgments about societal institutions, but one must wonder why this is a bad thing. If students are presented with history, are then allowed to read differing viewpoints on the matter (which happens frequently in these classes), and then allowed to discuss issues openly as a class, I think they have been given ample opportunity to internalize their own opinion. If studying history tends to bring out certain moral responses in students, it is more likely that the subject material is simply eliciting already−held moral convictions rather than instilling them itself.
Nobody takes issue with the moral lessons taught regarding slavery and segregation, yet when we try to study why these tragic phenomena occur, we are told that it could affect our viewpoints. I wonder what the Source is afraid people may learn. The Source continuously stereotypes these courses as being more about indoctrination than education. This characterization is not only biased and factually incorrect, but offensive at its core. For the Source, it is easy to poke fun at others for "hurt feelings" when they consistently ignore the reasons why people may be upset in the first place.
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