OU Continues to Lean Left

April 01, 2009

By Brandon Dutcher

Thought experiment. The head of the OU College Republicans drafts a press release saying, "The University of Oklahoma will join hundreds of institutions from across the country in celebrating ‘National Teach-In for Economic Freedom' to show the President and the Congress that people are ready to enact a bold economic policy that prioritizes income-tax cuts, spending reductions, and a rollback of harmful environmental regulations." The College Republicans take this press release to Catherine Bishop, OU's vice president of public affairs, and ask her to post it on the OU website. Would she do it?

To ask the question is to answer it.

Not only would she refuse to post it, but she would remind these presumptuous pachyderms that no mere student group is allowed to speak for "the University of Oklahoma."

And yet, on February 3 OU posted on its website an article which led with this sentence: "The University of Oklahoma will join hundreds of institutions from across the country for the ‘National Teach-In for Global Warming Solutions' to show the President and Congress that people are ready to pass a bold climate and energy policy that prioritizes renewable energy, green job creation, and an aggressive cap on carbon emissions."

"Great moments in fundraising," I chuckled to myself as I read about OU's fondness for "an aggressive cap on carbon emissions," and I made note of it on the back page of Perspective last month under the wry headline, "OU Lobbying for Anti-Petroleum Legislation."

Well, apparently that didn't sit well with OU president David Boren, and I (like Martin Luther) soon learned that one ought not to tamper with fundraising. Boren trotted out a few crimson herrings about his pro-petroleum voting record in the U.S. Senate and insisted that, notwithstanding the article on the OU website, OU isn't lobbying against the petroleum industry. As Randy Ellis reported in The Oklahoman, "Catherine Bishop, OU's vice president of public affairs, said the article didn't represent an official position of the university. ... A student group called OUr Earth organized and led the event, university officials said."

But of course, the article in question didn't say "a student group called OUr Earth will ... show the President and the Congress." It said "the University of Oklahoma will ... show the President and the Congress." And it was posted on the university's website. Yet it doesn't represent an official position of the university. You understand.

I sure hope those pesky College Republican articles don't represent an official position of the university. Oh, wait, sorry; we already determined they would never be posted in the first place.

Look, it's no secret there's a left-wing bias at my alma mater. I'm under no illusion that I can change it, but the least I can do is point it out.

Ten years ago, an enterprising student went to the Cleveland County Election Board and checked the voter registrations of OU professors in 19 departments (mostly in Arts and Sciences: economics, history, political science, etc.). He discovered 208 Democrats and 36 Republicans.

In last year's presidential race, 93 percent of all political contributions from OU employees went to Democrats. And of course David Boren himself endorsed Barack Obama for president, citing Obama's "sound and good judgment" (hey, it sounded plausible at the time).

Public opinion surveys in this state consistently show that somewhere in the vicinity of 18 percent of Oklahomans describe themselves as somewhat or strongly liberal, while 67 percent call themselves somewhat or strongly conservative. Again, I can't stop OU from sticking a finger in the eye of all these Oklahomans who are paying the freight. But the least I can do is shine a light on it.

I can inform taxpayers (and state legislators) of Darwinian propaganda festivals and of OU professors who support unrepentant terrorists. Taxpayers and legislators deserve to know about academic programs devoted to the promotion of feminism and about the distribution of condoms at performances of "The Vagina Monologues." They deserve to know when a university claims not to "discriminate on the basis of race" but then sets up a "Diversity in Geosciences Project" for "Native American undergraduates." They deserve to know about scholarly articles entitled "Towards Queering Food Studies: Foodways, Heteronormativity, and Hungry Women in Chicana Lesbian Writing."

And they deserve to know when OU is lobbying for anti-petroleum legislation.

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