Tolerance is not a one-way street.

Although UMass professors and students claim to encourage intellectual diversity and open-mindedness, their repeated actions of intolerance in the four years I have been at UMass suggest something completely different. The true test of tolerance is not whether you tolerate those with whom you agree, but that you tolerate those with whom you don’t agree.
Unfortunately, many at UMass have not passed this test. For instance:

1)    The speech of intellectual Don Feder in the Cape Cod Lounge in March 2009 was shut down by protesters ten minutes into his lecture after Mr. Feder determined he was not able to speak due to the yelling, screaming, hissing, booing, laughing, and mocking from the demonstrators.

2)    A pro-Israel and pro-peace rally organized by the Student Alliance For Israel in the Amherst town commons in March 2009 was disrupted by protesters, who screamed incessantly on microphones and into bullhorns while the rally’s speakers were trying to talk.

3)    A Veterans’ Day American flag display on the Library Lawn November 2008 was disrupted by protesters who held an anti-war rally on the Student Union side steps; they screamed and yelled into microphones and demeaned American troops as people walked by.

4)    Conservative professor Mike Adams was forced to end his lecture and question and answer session in Campus Center room 101 early on 15 November 2006 after protesters dressed in drag and masks continually yelled and screamed at the speaker.

5)    Former George Bush Chief-of-Staff Andrew Card’s speech in the Student Union ballroom was protested and disrupted by demonstrators who screamed and yelled at Mr. Card and staged a “die-in” in which students with red ink on their shirts, symbolizing Iraqi war deaths, were dragged across the front of the room during the speech.

6)    A petition was circulated in Spring 2009 to shut down the recently revived student newspaper the Minuteman, the only independently-run undergraduate student newspaper besides the Daily Collegian.

7)    Protesters shouted down speakers during a pro-WalMart rally outside the entrance to the Student Union on spring 2006.

8)    Protesters repeatedly and systematically rip down, and at times have burned, the flyers of groups with whom the protesters don’t agree, including the Republican Club. They also intentionally place their flyers over these flyers as well.

9)    Two protesters stole an ROTC recruiting roster in the Campus Center in February 2007.

10)    Professors will deem as “different” any student who expresses conservative beliefs during classroom discussions; they will shape course curricula and assign readings to fit their preconceived politically correct biases.

As much as we would like to think that these protests represent only the radical fringe of the student population here, the reality is that even less extreme students still identify conservative viewpoints as “out-of-the-mainstream” and “provocative.” And the consistent inaction on the part of the UMass Administration in failing to punish protesters for disrupting conservative events directly contributes to this stifling of intellectual diversity.

Allan Bloom’s analysis in 1988 when he wrote, “The Closing of the American Mind,” is still relevant to this very day. American universities – professors, students, and administrators alike – suffer from an intellectual mindset which censors alternative viewpoints, stifles dissent, and discourages critical thinking skills. As much as I have loved UMass during my four years here, I have to say that this university is one of the many examples across the United States which create and sustain such an intellectually monolithic and intolerant academic environment.

Because the true test of tolerance is not whether you tolerate those with whom you agree, but that you tolerate those with whom you don’t agree.

Greg can be reached at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .