An Outing

I'm 29, female, a New York native, and an educator. And I'm a registered Republican.

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Today at our faculty meeting, we had a presentation from the advisers of a group that promotes tolerance in an academic setting. Although the group was originally founded as a support group for LGBTQ students, it has since expanded to all types of tolerance: race, religion, physical appearance, and political party affiliation. 

"Especially in an election year," one of the advisers said, "some of the students may feel alienated because of their political beliefs. It's important we recognize the legitimacy of all our students' beliefs and promote tolerance."

This may sound absurd. (Did I imagine that some of my colleagues snickered?) But my entire professional life flashed before my eyes. What do we do if we ourselves feel alienated from our own colleagues?

As a teacher, I've only outed myself as a conservative to select colleagues and students whom I deemed safe. Usually they are obviously conservative. I usually make a joke about a secret handshake.

Photo Credit: My Dad

Seriously, though, I've generally found the academic setting to be inhospitable to right-wing ideas: to be labeled a conservative was to be labeled fanatical, heartless, barbaric. I feared that politicizing my views would alienate me from the colleagues who had otherwise respected me.

This is a great irony. Academia, a bastion of nonconformity, has discouraged me from breaking its ranks. Many teachers feign tolerance in the classroom but behind the doors of the faculty rooms laugh at students naive enough to consider voting for a Republican. "Don't these kids think for themselves?" one professor asked me in Fall 2008.

But if everyone is telling him to vote Democrat, wouldn't considering the opposing side make him open-minded?

I realize that there is some barbaric rhetoric spouting from the mouths of conservatives these days (and all days). This is perpetuated by the soundbites that run on 24-hour news channels and memes that flood the Internet. But there's some preposterous stuff coming from the other side, too. Understanding conservative ideals is more than the pro-gun/anti-woman oversimplification that it's made out to be.

We try to teach our students independent thought and a close examination of argument. We try to teach them to accept others who are different from themselves, to engage in discourse, and to work toward tolerance and acceptance. Why, then, have we not learned these lessons ourselves?