I’m from San Francisco. It takes a lot to shock me. However, when I stumbled upon UCLAprofs.com, I was at a momentary loss for words.

The Web site is the Internet home of the Bruin Alumni Association – a group made up of UCLA alumni and members of the public but not officially affiliated with UCLA. The site’s motto is, “Exposing UCLA’s radical professors.” The site keeps a list of the so-called “dirty thirty,” UCLA professors deemed too liberal to be fit educators.

Such liberal offenses warranting placement on the list include: protesting the end of affirmative action, supporting Moveon.org, writing anti-war letters to the UCLA newspaper, teaching classes that examine the racial history of America, sympathizing with Palestinian causes, supporting socialized medicine and supporting feminist causes.

Collecting information about professors’ views from various sources, which include paid student spies, the Web site offers a profile of each member of the “dirty thirty” and details each member’s past, any political activism and petitions signed and occasionally includes direct quotes taken from inside the classroom.

Apparently if someone is liberal, or has opposite political views of your own, you cannot learn anything from them. I can now feel free to forget anything I ever learned in classes taught by those I didn’t always agree with politically.

Let’s just surround ourselves with only like-minded people and professors, agree with each other about everything and never be challenged in what we believe.

Is this really what we’ve come to? It’s frightening to think that we fear those with opposite viewpoints so much that it blinds us to what we might learn from exposure to them. What’s educational about sitting in a classroom where professors and students do nothing but affirm each other’s opinions?

If the unexamined life is not worth living, how are we ever to examine ourselves, our lives, our opinions, our beliefs, without them being challenged from time to time? I would go so far as to suggest that professors are here for just that – to educate us not just about facts, but about the world. They help us see the many sides of our society, and push us to examine why we believe what we do.

What is college if it’s not a time for examining the adults we’re becoming? How can we do that without the occasional challenge to our values?

It’s been my experience that being in class with professors who hold different views than my own did not influence me to believe what they do. In fact, it did the opposite – it strengthened my own beliefs and values.

Our society’s diversity demands dialogue, not monologue. Most issues up for discussion in the public forum leave us violently divided. But is being divided such a weakness that we must fear the other side?

Being divided is what this country is about: We will never completely agree on everything and thank goodness – with democracy and a diverse nation comes the possibility of, if not guarantee of, debate. Of course, division is not always strength, but at least it protects us from an autocratic state and blind acceptance of all that’s presented to our society.

It saddens me that there are people who are so afraid of those who hold beliefs contrary to their own, that they would result to belittling their academic careers on the Internet. It’s unfortunate that there are those who strive to deny students’ access to professors who, despite their personal beliefs, may provide their students with educational opportunities they might not have otherwise.

I suggest it’s time for us as a society to grow up and stop being so afraid of each other’s opinions.