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UCLA Students Urged to Expose 'Radical' Professors
rts008 writes to tell us Reuters is reporting that a conservative alumni group is working hard to expose 'radical professors'. The group is a creation of 2003 UCLA graduate, Andrew Jones, who stated that he runs the organization on his own with $22,000 in private donations. From the article: "Jones told Reuters he is out to 'restore an atmosphere of respectful political discourse on campus' and says his efforts are aimed at academics who proselytize students from either side of the ideological spectrum, conservative or liberal. 'We are concerned solely with indoctrination, one-sided presentation of ideological controversies and unprofessional classroom behavior,' Jones said on his Web site." The tactics used by Jones and his group are raising quite a few questions, however, offering to pay students for recordings or teaching materials that could provide 'evidence' against professors in question.
...does not include the right to speak without criticism.
ABSURDITY, n.: A statement or belief manifestly inconsistent with one's own opinion.
While most professors encourage honest debate and discourse in their classes, there are always some who use their captive audiences, and discretion in grading, to further their political agendas.
You're paying for your education. You have a right to critique your professors.
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
Indeed, it should be taken as an honour to be "exposed" by this fellow and his group. These are the kind of people that it's good to piss off. They're the sort who either have a vested (often financial) interest in the status quo, or are completely incapable of peacefully accepting the views of others (which in itself is completely anti-American).
If I were a university student, I would think of this sort of group as a blessing. They'd show which professors have the guts to provide their views without trying to self-censor. Those are the sorts of professors who are worth learning from.
Cyric Zndovzny at your service.
I always find it strange when people accuse academia of unfair bias. When the majority of the best and brightest in the country all lean towards a particular political philosophy, what should that tell you? (Hint: It's not that they were brainwashed and indoctrinated...)
You can argue that academics are too detached from reality, but I think that's wishful thinking from bitter people. All the people I know in academia are well-informed, widely-read, and thoughtful voters. A lot of universities also have many international scholars, which contributes to a wider perspective on politics. They tend to take a less simplified view of things, and to be more open to ideas coming from Europe and elsewhere. And if all that taken together leads one to a more socialist stance, that view should be taken seriously.
Now, if a professor were to mark down a student for expressing a different view (assuming they were able to defend their reasoning), that would be beyond the pale. But the things this group is talking about hardly rises to that level. There's nothing wrong with talking about your opinions in a university class where everyone is assumed to be a rational adult.
Please do not confuse Republicans and their followers with conservatives. Indeed, they are very different groups holding very different beliefs.
Conservatives stand for freedom, liberty, individual responsibility, honest prosperity, and peace.
Republicans (and many Democrats, too) stand for the supression of liberties and freedoms (often in the name of "security"), do not promote responsibility, and often resort to corruption and illegal means of obtaining wealth. These days, they obtain much of their wealth via wars, which contradicts directly with peace.
Today it is Republicans who are moving towards (if they're not already in) a state of fascism. It is conservatives around the US who are taking a stand against such anti-American nonsense.
Cyric Zndovzny at your service.
Don't delude yourself: people will always have a political agenda, and it will always be a part of whatever they're doing.
More importantly, it's irrelevant if a professor holds such views, and expresses them to his or her students. Any truly intelligent student (you know, this is at the university level!) should be able to recognize such bias, and take it into account while taking a particular course.
University often isn't about sitting there and accepting what the professors say as fact. It's about hearing ideas that may differ from yours, so as to make you think a little bit harder than you normally would. It takes real responsibility to partake in and make use of a university-level education.
And the worst possible thing to do is either believe or insist that professors not involve their personal, biased views. That's the whole point of getting an education! To be bombarded by views you wouldn't have even bothered to consider, even if you do happen to disagree with them in the end.
Cyric Zndovzny at your service.
But the UCLA effort sloppily confuses the two and winds up looking like a blacklist, blowing its credibility in the process.
WTF? If something "winds up looking like a blacklist", it is a blacklist. You blow your own credibility by pretending otherwise.
Academia is very biased. Bias is not necessarily a bad thing. It is hard to study a topic for years and not end of taking a stand on it. The issue is when your bias prevents you from teaching people who have a different bias. In 95% of the schools out there, it is completely and utterly impossible to go through the sociology program as a fiscal and/or moral conservative. At best, you will get poor grades, constantly have to defend your every breath, and receive little to no supporting reading material to back up your views. At worst you will be failed multiple times.
My girlfriend is a sociologist. The worst case of abuse I have seen was when she took a class called "Capitalism and the Environment". Every single book and handout that she had was without exception Marxist. How in the hell you can justify teaching a class with the word 'capitalism' in it without reading a single pro-capitalist thinker is utterly beyond me. Not even addressing the opposition is the absolutely most dishonest form of teaching that you can do.
The worst part about this is that it insulates an entire field of thinking from any sort of opposition thinking. A brain dead liberal can make it through the sociology program that my girlfriend made it through. Hell, my girlfriends best friend is sweet, but dumber then a sack full of bricks and made it through with a B. A conservative or libertarian on the other hand would have to fight every single step of the way. Teachers teach nothing but a single side and challenge conservative students every step of the way. I am sure the few conservatives that make it through are as tough as nails, but you shouldn't need an iron will and lead skin to make it through a sociology program.
I am not sure that UCLA's methods are right or effective, but I am glad that they at least acknowledge a problem. A liberal kid should be able to learn economics. A conservative kid should be able to learn sociobiology. Certainly they should be challenged, but they shouldn't have to fight tooth and nail while others float past by simply nodding their heads in agreement with the subjective opinions of their teachers. Liberals have interest in economics and conservative have interest in sociology. It is a travesty that these programs at some school intentionally try and convert or fail the few brave souls willing to cross the lines.
Perfectly Capitaslistic plan to me.
There are a lot of nut job professors... think Churchill Hell when I was at Stony Brook I tangled with some nutjob in Womyn's Studies and almost got throw out of school. Ultimately SUSB saw it my way and they gave me an A a I never went back but I'll bet a lot of kids forced into that class just got bullied or thrown out of it.
Fuck them. Do you job. Don't waste the student's time telling them America is a corrupt regime of facists and that GWB should be impeached for stealing the last 3 elections, and being AWOL, and Katrina, and Plame, and Iraq, and the 9/11 was inside job, yadda fucking yadda. Or that Bill Clinton's Penis (Clenis) is evil and that the Left hates America, is shrill, is on the wrong side of history, is responsible for Wellstone's death, yadda yadda fucking yadda.
You know what? If a professor is doing their job they have nothing to worry about.
This
Well, see that's the thing. If you have a disagree with the professor, you have to keep your damn mouth shut, or you'll end up paying for it. Some of these professors have decided to turn their classrooms into a platform for their political views, even though it has nothing to do with the subject they're teaching. Take a class on French History, and you're all of the sudden bombarded with political views that have nothing to do with French History, and then have the professor turn on you when you try and point this out?
If you walked into a class you needed to have to graduate, and the professor turns out to be a radical right-wing nutcase (or a left-wing moonbat, take your pick) that you disagree with, what do you do? He spends more time yapping about his current axe to grind, rather than teaching the subject... what do you do?
There's no "agreeing to disagree" with these people. You have to shut the hell up if you plan on passing the class. Meanwhile, there's nothing you can do.
It seems you didn't read the rest of my post. The Democratic party is best viewed as a "Republican-lite" party.
These days, actual conservatives tend to vote for independent or libertarian candidates. They don't vote for the Democrats, and they sure don't vote for the Republicans, because neither party truly represents the views and ideals of conservatism.
Remember, if somebody votes Republican they are not a conservative. They are a Republican. Likewise, if somebody votes Democrat, they are not a liberal. They are a Democrat. "Republican" and "Democrat" are two political ideologies, much like conservative or liberal. As such the Republicans do not represent conservatism, nor do the Democrats represent liberalism.
Cyric Zndovzny at your service.
I expect I'll be flamed for this, but...
As a political term, radical refers to those who critique the roots (hence "radical") of society. Since ours/yours is a capitalist society, this entails a critique of capitalism. Liberals, on the other hand, follow in the Enlightenment tradition of pluralist democracy, capitalist free markets, etc. Hence, the main position the radicals critique is liberalism - or neoliberalism, which is inclined more towards laissez-faire and minimal government intervention. While in an American context their sympathies will almost always lie more with Democrats than Republicans, radicals are hardly knee-jerk supporters of the US government. Liberalism is not a left-wing position - except in the US, where it has been redefined to be both center/center-right in practice and leftist by reputation.
You learn well, grasshopper. Now you only need switch to regurgitating Republican talking points and you have a bright future ahead of you.
If Jesus wants me it knows where to find me.
He just adds a "signing statement."
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
I have had experience with this. I had to take an English class whose theme was "War and Society"...and this was in the fall of 2003, not too long after the Iraq operation started. My instructor (a master's student) was very far to the left- about every day he would say, "Did you hear what happened in our illegal invasion of Iraq today? F*** Bush!!!" We had to write largely opinion-based papers and I wrote one that several who read it thought was pretty politically neutral. I turned it in and got a C-. I am not that great of a writer, but I do better than that. So I went and talked to him about the paper. He said that I needed to write what I thought, and being a naive young freshman, I wrote what I thought, which was a little right of center. Bad move: D-. So I asked him for advice on the next paper and what I ended up writing literally made me sick, but I wrote a very left-wing paper and got a B+ on it. He liked to see that he "helped me see the light" and so from then on, I wrote what he wanted to hear and not what I really thought and I did well.
However, I got the last laugh as when evaluations came around, I wrote a very accurate review of his class that was about as flattering as a miniskirt on Roseanne. (That makes my cringe just thinking about it! Gaaah!) Next semester came and he was not listed as a staff member. I inquired why and I was informed that he was terminated due to bad evaluations. He was let go from his TA position and now had to pay $30,000/year to continue his grad classes. He didn't have the money, so he quit school.
So the moral of the story is that you have to be *tenured* to pull that crap off in the classroom. Otherwise, it just might catch up to you.
Just "gittin-r-done," day after day.
Please RTFA.
As a university student, I hate professors who go off-topic with politics. They spend entire lecture sessions discussing how Bush has ruined the country. If this was a political science class, I could understand some leftist speeches. For crying out loud though, this was a CS course!
But it's a cash bounty for actual evidence. What's wrong with that?
I'll take a stab at this one. But first, yes - the student can offer his bounty if he wants and I'm kind of glad to see people here arguing the rights of this from first principles rather than breaking up on partisan lines. That said, I'll explain what is wrong about this.
Presumably, after outing a professor who has expressed some unapproved opinion, the intention is to follow it up with pressure to stop or a PR campaign for "the other side" (whatever that will be). $22,000 has a purpose and whoever is donating this clearly has an agenda. The arguments for this student's right to do what he's doing have all centered on "Freedom of Speech" but clearly the intention is to curb the professor's freedom to promote her own views. Maybe it's only to present students leaving the lectures with pro-Intelligent Design or pro-Capitalism or pro-whatever leaflets, but I think that's highly unlikely.
The arguments for pressuring the professor not to give unapproved opinions in his lectures are that (a) he is paid to teach a particular subject and not another; and (b) the students don't have much choice to avoid his opinions if they have to go to that class.
Counter-argument A. applies to anything else that impairs the professor's teaching as well. There should be a system in place to check if students are suffering from poor teaching and if they are not, then there is no problem here to be addressed. Bear in mind that in many cases, the professor's individual views may be tied up with the subject they are teaching. It would be hard not to give views on ID if teaching biology, difficult not to explain socialism in economics.
Counter-argument B. has to do with whether he is misinforming the students. The intention to "out" the professor suggests that the opinions are minority or dissenting opinions. The students are over 18 now however, and have plenty of opportunities to hear the other side and make up their own mind. Whether or not the professor's opinions are considered "subversive" by others in the community has historically been a poor guide to whether those opinions are valid. Essentially this student with the bounty is attempting to bring pressure to bear on the proffesor to curb his Freedom of Speech. Powerful or numerous individuals ramping up the efforts to drive out opposing viewpoints.
So illegal? No the bounty may not be that and attempting to curb it with legislation would be misguided. But harmful and chilling effect? Yes.
Aide-toi, le Ciel t'aidera - Jeanne D'Arc.