Amidst nationwide leftist protests for “diversity” and “inclusion,” students at the notoriously liberal University of Massachusetts Amherst (UMass) have banded together to petition their school for a different kind of diversity. The University Union at UMass is currently circulating a petition outlining the critical importance of intellectual diversity, explaining details of the school’s failure to foster an ideologically diverse environment, and suggesting a number of reforms the school could implement in order to better serve its student body. “Unsatisfied” with the school’s imbalanced curriculum, the students of the University Union, who are liberal, conservative, and independent, wrote, “At UMass Amherst, we have many academic departments that are explicitly committed to only one ideology.” They continued, “The professors do not offer a wide spectrum of courses. They do not expose students to a diverse range of intellectual achievements and schools of thought.” The students also noted the university’s unacceptable treatment of conservative ideas in the classroom: “Professors often preach their anti-American judgments to students as final ‘truths’–such as the view that all major world problems, from poverty in Africa to ISIS, stem from American capitalism and imperialism. Professors represent their views and ideologies in ways that make it seemingly impossible for any reasonable person to disagree with. Dissenters from Left-Liberal thought on campus are considered ignorant, intolerant, and uneducated.” These UMass students’ experiences will certainly resonate with most conservative students around the country who face these issues on a daily basis. Young America’s Foundation commends these students for taking action to improve their school and help ensure our nation’s colleges and universities don’t continue on the current trajectory of educating a generation of students through the lens of radical liberalism. Students and alumni of UMass Amherst are eligible to sign the petition, which can be found here. In the words of the University Union, “Students must be exposed to multiple framings of our history, our economic life, our moral life, and our political life if they are to become thoughtful citizens of the United States, and of the world. Only minds that have seriously worked through diverse and competing theories and viewpoints, minds that have been sharpened through lively debates and prolonged exposure to contrasting ideas, are able to understand and solve real world challenges.” We couldn’t have said it better ourselves. 
