Washington Week: Student Voices (O)

Column: Brown U. graduate Bobby Jindal an unfortunate embarrassment
By Tyler Rosenbaum
Brown Daily Herald, Brown U.
March 03, 2009

As a relatively liberal Brunonian, I've always been somewhat chagrined that Bobby Jindal '91.5 is our highest-profile alumnus. This is not just because he is a paleoconservative, practically indistinguishable from Pat Buchanan, though that doesn't help.

This week, America was introduced to Brown's most famous graduate and the youngest member of our Corporation as he delivered the Republican response to President Obama's address to Congress. If the media response (both conservative and liberal) is any indication, America did not like what it saw.

Again, though it didn't help, this was not just because he delivered the address in a paternalistic, condescending tone that gave the impression he thought the American people were children (and elicited humorous comparisons with 30 Rock's Kenneth the Page). Nor did it help that the governor of Louisiana chose to use his time in the spotlight to disparage funding for natural disaster monitoring as wasteful spending.

No, what was so annoying is that this supposedly rising star's only response to the President's message was that his plan had too much unnecessary spending, and that tax cuts were the only solution to our economic woes.

Where have we heard this before? Honestly, it seems trite, and it seems backward looking, but it's the same thing George W. Bush advocated. Was his presidency the culmination of the conservative movement? It sure sounds like it, if Republican heroes like Sarah Palin, Samuel Wurzelbacher (Joe the Plumber) and now Governor Jindal are any indication.

Another endearing tidbit we've learned since Jindal rose to prominence was of the exorcism he and his friends performed on a girl while at Brown. They forcibly restrained her for hours despite her numerous attempts to escape, forcing her to read Bible verses and rebuking the demon they thought resided in her. A year or two after the fact, Jindal wrote that he believed this experience cured her of cancer.

Finally, and perhaps most egregiously, Governor Jindal openly and unabashedly supports teaching Intelligent Design in the classrooms. Just last year, Jindal signed a bill allowing instructors to teach Intelligent Design in public schools, despite a significant pushback from the scientific community at large.

This might not be such a big deal if Jindal were the typical Bible Belt governor. But he also happens to be a Rhodes scholar and an honors biology graduate of our very own Brown University. Indeed, the biggest disappointment with Jindal is precisely that such an educated man could harbor such ignorant convictions.

It does not put our alma mater in a good light if an honors biology graduate espouses, promotes and imposes Intelligent Design on his constituents, because Intelligent Design, though masquerading as a 'critique of' or 'alternative to' the theory of evolution, has no basis in science. A federal judge appointed by George W. Bush pointed out the obvious when ruling in 2005 that it is "a religious view, a mere re-labeling of creationism and not a scientific theory."

If Governor Jindal was not already the most famous and well-known graduate of Brown before last week's fiasco, he certainly is now. Nearly every media account of his tragicomic address mentions his "Ivy League education," and many reference Brown specifically. Every story about opposing volcano monitoring, about creationism in Louisiana schools or about Louisiana's government now chemically castrating criminals ties back to us.

Ultimately, there are two sides to the coin. On the one hand, it is heartening to see that such a liberal institution could produce a conservative ideologue like Jindal, and to know that Brown is not a factory that converts all of its students into mindless liberal automata. Conservative fears of 'brainwashing' and the ideological suppression of conservatism are clearly misplaced.

On the other hand, it is an embarrassment to see that a man who bears this University's imprimatur, whom this University has certified as an expert in biology, can so brazenly reject one of that subject's defining teachings, for which the evidence is overwhelming and the counterevidence solely religious in nature. What a disappointment.

[ Back to Student Voices ]