A survey of professor opinion about the reasons for war with
Iraq claims truth to the legendary division between North and South
Campus.
Majad Dakak, a fourth-year math economics student, conducted a
survey of 35 professors from different departments earlier this
quarter for his Math 199 course. He found a difference in
professors’ views of the U.S.-Iraqi war that correlated with
the geographic campus split.
“While analyzing data I noticed that North Campus
professors felt that certain factors contributed to the war, while
South Campus professors found that contrasting factors contributed
to the U.S. decision to go to war,” Dakak said.
“South Campus professors felt that the reasons for going
to war were legit and more humanistic than North Campus professors
did “¦ North Campus professors felt that factors such as
exploitation, American imperialism and ending economic recession
were major contributors,” he added.
Dakak conducted the survey by visiting different departments and
approaching professors who had their office doors open. Professors
who chose to participate were asked to rate the importance of
different factors on the U.S. decision to go to war.
The factors ranged from “oil exploitation” to
“strategic national security.” Participants were also
asked to rate their own level of expertise on the topic.
The analysis of the survey was done using traditional statistics
and fuzzy math theory, an approach that allows the researcher to
weigh certain factors or responses more than others.
North Campus professors were defined as those who taught in the
fields of social sciences or liberal arts. Engineering, math and
science professors were considered South Campus.
While professors from both sides disagreed on the importance of
certain motivations, “both sides felt regime change was a big
factor,” Dakak said. However, he added, faculty members may
have interpreted the issue differently.
“North Campus professors probably read it as regime change
so (the Bush administration) can implement its own policy, while
South Campus interpreted the factor as a regime change with more
humanistic motives,” he wrote in a statement explaining his
findings.
Dakak said he did not originally intend to explore the division
between the North and South Campus professors.
“I just wanted to get an idea of where professors stand on
the topic,” he said.
Both Dakak and his advisor, math professor Dario Nardi,
acknowledged the shortcomings of this research.
“I do not claim that my results are in any way
statistically significant. There are a lot of problems with the way
I sampled,” Dakak said.
“Inevitably there is bias because maybe the professors
that choose to participate have a certain mind-set versus the
professors that didn’t want to participate. Another bias is,
well, is it truly random to just go and walk to different doors in
certain departments and knock on them to see if they are
there,” he added.
The small sample size and varied interpretation of factors were
among the biases Nardi identified.
“We offer people reasons ““ then people can easily
interpret them different ways,” Nardi said.
“Thirty-five people is certainly less than 5 percent of
the official faculty,” he added.
Despite biases Dakak and Nardi say the survey served their
initial purpose.
“In this particular case I would say this is an
exploratory study “¦ For what it was, it was not done in any
sloppy manner,” Nardi said.
“We weren’t trying to prove anything, we were just
curious,” he added.
Though the statistical significance is questionable, both say
students can obtain useful information from the study’s
findings.
“I suppose it is one more piece of information that helps
students evaluate what they hear from their professors so that they
can think critically about what they are learning,” Nardi
said.