Letter to the Editor: George Altshuler '10.5

Dear Campus,

I want to compliment Melissa Hirsch on her 9/30/10 Op-Ed “Truth in Biases.” Her piece was an entertaining read and I think she makes important points. Specifically, I agree that biases are almost everywhere. There are biases in the recent decisions of the Texas Board of Education and there are often biases in the examples Hirsch provides: “liberal political viewpoints,” farm stories and environmental geography.

But I think Hirsch can go a step further in her conclusion. She writes towards the end of her piece, “We, too, are host organisms for a specified vector of belief systems and we target other non-believing host species as antagonistic, just as they do to us. We are no different from the students affected by the Texas Board of Education, or from the board of educators themselves.”

She then concludes: “I’ve now arrived at an impasse.  What the hell do we do now? I don’t know what you should do, but, despite everything I’ve just said, I know what I’m going to.”

I don’t think we should be at an “impasse.” It is my belief that if we engage in a deliberative, rational and compassionate examination of the world around us, we can work towards developing a value system that we can take pride in.

And this value system should make every effort to be open-minded. As defined by dictionary.com, the word “bias” carries with it the connotation of “[preventing] unprejudiced consideration.” Part of being open-minded should be working to overcome biases.

It’s important to remain humble about our ability to arrive at any comprehensive system of values. We should never be absolutely sure of our beliefs, and we should be careful about the ways in which we try to spread our values.

But we can be pretty darn sure that the values of tolerance and compassion are better than the biases of the Texas Board of Education.