My letter to the editor

I wrote the following as a letter to the editor for the school newspaper back in late April. They have not printed my letter and yet they printed another attack on the so called "Liberal Prof."
Just a point of clarification I am not the "Liberal Prof. " that they are attacking, and the complaining students are right to a certain extent about these Prof.

I would like to challenge the tone of the opinion piece in the April 7th issue
of Viewpoints “The big battle in the classroom” and point out some of the faulty
reasoning that was used in this piece. As an economist I have been trained to ask for data to back up claims that are made. I would ask the author to back up her assertion that “majority of students and instructors are liberal”. Has she surveyed the student body? Is she citing a survey of instructors? What methodology did she use? How did the study define “Liberal”? How did the study separate the “Liberal” from the “Conservative”? Was it by Party Affiliation?
My second objection to this piece is as an educator.
Sometime educators play the role of Devil’s Advocate to challenge student
beliefs, providing a new perspective to them. Sometimes I take on positions in
my economics class that I do not believe myself. I do this to give students a
different outlook on the issue being studied. Education and exercise are similar
in that they are both uncomfortable. Most people both on the so called “left”
and the “right” when challenged with an unfamiliar or different idea become
uncomfortable. Could it be that the instructors accused of being “liberal” are
just challenging the students to look at the world differently and thereby
causing discomfort for the student? For example the reader might have me pegged
as a “liberal” instructor. However, I am a registered Republican and view myself
as “conservative”. I would argue a “conservative” student will learn more from a
“liberal” instructor then from a “conservative” instructor, and the “liberal”
students are the real losers in these classes. Having one’s views challenged is
not comfortable but if views are not challenged they become flabby ideas or
worse meaningless dogma.