(AgapePress) - A professor at the University of North Carolina-Wilmington has requested a debate with black activist Jesse Jackson.

Dr. Mike Adams wants a face-off with Jackson on Fox News' The O'Reilly Factor to discuss the issue of affirmative action. But Adams says he doubts Jackson will be "courageous enough" to come on the program and debate the topic.

"But I certainly want to debate someone ... because I think it's an extremely important issue right now," Adams says, alluding to the current Supreme Court case involving the University of Michigan's admissions policy.

"Obviously, I think the Supreme Court is very divided on this issue, and we really need to open it up in the court of public opinion and discuss [it] because it is, I think, a momentous occasion and a very important moment in the history of constitutional jurisprudence."

In a recent column for AgapePress, Adams took a tongue-in-cheek approach when he explained to his students that he has decided to modify his grading policy to be more in line with his university's policy of hiring instructors. His change of heart, he writes, came through personal insight that "public universities have a 'compelling interest in diversity' which supersedes simplistic notions of reverse discrimination."

Adams says affirmative action is a "very Marxist" ideology, and believes for that reason it should be fought with full force in the court of public opinion. That approach has not always been popular on campus, where Adams says he has been ostracized and subjected to hostile remarks because of his opposition to affirmative action.

"One of the most irritating things is at faculty gatherings and at the lunch room," he shares. "There's so many faculty that just blatantly label ... opposition to affirmative action as 'racism' -- and they'll say it to your face."

But Adams states that he holds an exactly opposite view. "I believe that by not doing anything to lift people up to a standard, but instead taking the standard and lowering it to them, that we're really engaging in racism by sort of implying that the group can't cut it on an equal playing field."

The criminal justice professor says college campuses have become immersed in what he calls "identity politics," which he believes is just part of a broader, inherently anti-Christian movement of cultural Marxism.

Adams, who is slated to appear on The O'Reilly Factor program on May 2, says America is gradually moving farther away from the concepts of self-determination and fundamental fairness.

© 2003 AgapePress all rights reserved.

E-mail this page to a friend

Printer-Friendly Version

Read all of our current headlines