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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.
As I've noted elsewhere, it's OK to argue for more intellectual diversity on faculties, and it's okay to complain about faculty members who bully students with different views. But the UCLA effort sloppily confuses the two and winds up looking like a blacklist, blowing its credibility in the process.
InstaPundit! Ahead of the Curve Since 30 Minutes Ago
When someone mentions a radical professor, I'm thinking of one pulling a 360 on a skateboard in a half pipe.
But once you got someone pegged as radical, what do you do then? Just warn kids picking classes about him? Or what?
God spoke to me.
Something tells me THIS IS IT. This is totally going to work as planned and not be abused to destroy people's careers
a way to balance classrooms as much as it's a witchhunt for "undesirables" and those who aren't quite right-of-center (Academia is considered to be more liberal than conservative, or at least it's presented as such). It shouldn't be allowed - What ever happened to the time when you could disagree with someone, but still respect their opinion? It's gotten disgusting in America - to the point now that you're either with us or just some asshole...
But this kind of crap shouldn't be allowed. So you disagree with your professor? Big deal - take it like an adult and agree to disagree.
-thewldisntenuff
My MythTV HowTo
You know, I'm generally against tenure, because, well, it lets lousy teachers stick around long after their sell-by date. But this is exactly what it's for. Screw this guy and the nutjobs who are sponsoring him, once you have tenure, there's jack-all people can do to you. Which (in this case) is as it should be.
Looking for a Rails developer in Chapel Hill?
The Nazis didn't start out in control of the government. They and the groups that they sprang from (nationlist right-wingers with a good deal of support from the military) started out by intimidating opposition and those who spoke against them.
Any program relying on (nontrivial) preemptive multithreading will be buggy.
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.
**Yawn**
Someone wake me when it's $1,000,000 and a Stanford grad.
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
Not to be outdone, a USC student group has requested that students create a list of their most 'awesome' professors.
This guy's the limit!
Who wants to set the over/under for the number of comments posted? ;)
ABSURDITY, n.: A statement or belief manifestly inconsistent with one's own opinion.
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.
At last, we can fill in the missing step!
The Professor's Secret Plan To Wealth
--MarkusQ
this group is not affiliated with the government
When colleges were paid for primarily by the student or private funds, you KNEW what type of college you were attending. The best schools even had professors who still worked in the industry "Those who can't do, teach" was not really an accurate cliche.
Now we have primarily public funding in college. What do you expect but State-loving socialists instead of true masters of academia? Is college even necessary if you're to go on to a non-science profession?
One of the few professors I still admire is Hans-Hermann Hoppe, who had something to say about the system and the garbage bin it has fallen into. I'm not sure we'll see any real changes until we remove the federal funding of education from all education, especially the college grants and loans that the government seems to happy to dole out.
It should be just as easy, and a lot cheaper, to collect a list of
reactionary professors too. Then there will be _two_ meaninless
lists to kick around.
Here's a bit from the article itself (for those that haven't read it..)
" The Web site of the Bruin Alumni Association also includes a "Dirty Thirty" list of professors considered by the group to be the most extreme left-wing members of the UCLA faculty, as well as profiles on their political activities and writings."
This story was covered a few days ago by one of the local radio programs here. Despite what the slashdot headline says about these guys going after "both sides," in reality it's a conservative witch-hunt... McCarthy would be proud of these clowns. Someone should send them a stuffed jesus doll to cuddle up with at night.
We should at least make things interesting and try for a bet on the split of positive reactions to negative ones.
I pity whoever has to tally them, though.
I once heard Umass Amherst described as "90 acres surrounded by reality." Professors are always going to have a liberal or progressive (depending on your viewpoint) orientation. Collecting recordings and "evidence" of this is downright scary. It could be used as cute sound bites on the oreilly factor or worse be used to intimidate or harass faculty. eventually, it can only lead to bad.
I've heard of professors who dress up in period costume. Maybe Political Science 101 should be taught by four professors dressed as Stalin, Hitler, Jefferson and Robert Owen each defending their systems.
In just a nod to modern rationalism, it would nonetheless be nice if there were a fifth professor to provide commentary.
Considering the behavior of the present government, please don't mind me while I remain skeptical. The peddling of influence sufficiently blurs the line as to just where the government stops nowadays.
Is it fascism yet?
Somehow, these groups trying to make a watch list think that their actions will make a difference.
What will actually happen is that those on their side will make a really huge deal about this, inflame the people who are just as extreme on the other side, and everyone in the middle will just get sick of it cluttering up the student newspaper.
This is McCarthyism in a shiny new wrapper. Who appointed this guy the radical hall monitor? I had profs in college I thought were assholes, it goes with the territory. Some might have been "liberal", though I'm not sure what that means. Some were just petty and mean. But I survived them all and the only ones we put on any kind of list were the ones with 8 books on their required reading list.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
Bullshit!
No instructor or professor should be allowed to display a political agenda of any type. That's unethical, unprofessional, and just plain unacceptable. And I dare say your acceptance of it is a large part of what's eroding America's education system.
People complain about accepting the status quo, then go apeshit when someone ACTUALLY QUESTIONS IT. You people are absolutely *bathed* in hypocrisy.
Also, I'm outraged that the so-called 'professors' of physics don't give fair coverage of the theories of the time cube.
Honestly. Professors - what do they know?
Malike Bamiyi wanted my assistance.
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.
I've noticed that the professors who come from industry are pretty conservative. Professors who have been in the ivory tower of academia their whole lives, however, are very liberal.
Dr. Godwin, you have a call on the white courtesy phone.
Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.
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.
The problem here isn't nutral ideaology, it is that the truth is made to be an opinion or subjective, and free will is made to be an irellavent abstract. I don't think I'd have a problem with libertarian biased professors. (though that bias is almost impossible to have in a public funded institution)
A link to the site in question would help:
http://uclaprofs.com/
Not to be confused with the professor review site at http://uclaprofessors.com/
Uh-oh! I think a whole lot og biology teachers are gonna get pegged for their radical views on the "controversy over evolution".
You can't take the sky from me...
So what if they find out a professor is a raging liberal? And then what? Most professors are. Conservative people tend to go into business instead of education because they view capitalism as nervana, so there are less of them in the teaching profession. No news there. These are not the droids you are looking for. Move on.
Table-ized A.I.
Yay, another Witch Hunt to keep track of. Finding people to blame is so much easier than trying to be an example to everyone else. Better yet, claiming to be oppressed is better than actually accomplishing something. Damn, which to be... I'll just claim to be a persecuted persecutor of persecuted people who do bad things (imho - and yours too if I have my way).
US Democracy:The best person for the job (among These pre-selected choices...)
Are they more learned or are they just able to fit in successfully with another group of liberal academics? It could be the more learned have moved into the private sector? You could play this game all day long. :-) My experiance is that for some of the professors I ran into, the academic setting is the only setting they would survive in.
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
I think this goes in the Politics section. This has nothing to do with my online rights, or the professors.
I am apalled by the comments here, especially this one. Fascism? This guy is getting people to find out which professors are spouting (what he deems) absurd or unbalanced ideas and engage in (what he deems) unprofessional behavior, and then getting these people to document it.
... ?
And what's wrong with that is
Why are people afraid that others will find out their opinions? If you don't want people to find out your opinions, DON'T VOICE THEM TO A LECTURE HALL FULL OF STUDENTS. If you don't want people to think you act unprofessionally in your position as a professor, DON'T ACT UNPROFESSIONALLY IN YOUR POSITION AS A PROFESSOR.
When did it become damaging to free speech to spread someone's message?
That's not a rhetorical question. Please, tell me.
Rank my idea: http://www.sinceslicedbread.com/node/531
...of professors who encourage discussion of all sides of an issue?
Of course, self-proclaimed liberals and conservatives would rather punch someone in the nose than pat them on the back, but perhaps a libertarian group could do something like that.
This tagline is copyrighted material. Please send $10 for an affordable replacement.
There's no need for them to resort to legislation prohibiting slander. It is perhaps the worst possible thing they could do, as it in itself is promoting censorship.
Indeed, the best things they can probably do here is to laugh at such efforts. Taunt the group organizing this. That's far more effective and beneficial than for them to also resort to censorship.
Cyric Zndovzny at your service.
It may not be illegal, but its likewise not a development that has any real positive connotations for the education process (unless we're viewing intimidating people with different ideas than out own as a "positive" now). In that respect, it's also not something that a group associated with a university should probably be involved with.
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
Again, such people can't be classified as "conservatives", as their views and actions do not fit the criteria necessary of being considered "conservative".
The kind of people you're thinking of are Republicans, and Democrats to a lesser extent. They are not conservatives in any way, as my earlier post showed quite clearly.
Cyric Zndovzny at your service.
I've seen and/or heard of many profs that use their position to push their politicial/social/etc views as well. Those who follow their views in class get high marks, those that don't do poorly no matter how good their arguements.
Other profs I've seen argue a given point, but give credit to those who can professionally and convincingly give their own. The suck-ups don't do so well in that class, except those of course that have an equal skill at presenting their arguements.
I think many teachers/etc chose their position to be able to push their views on others, or at least have wandered that directions. Good teachers realize that a strong view with good backing is important. They might pick apart your opinions, but they give you credit for standing by them and supporting them well.
Its about damn time somebody did something about this Intelligent Design nonsense.
Uh...that is what we're talking about, right?
If Jesus wants me it knows where to find me.
The real problem I have with this position is that the whole political spectrum concept is the wrong paradigm for approaching the problem of dysfunctional approaches to the over politicization of education. First, the political spectrum concept has flaws, as has been widely known for some time, thanks to the Nolan Chart and other alternative political spectrums.
Secondly, what ever happened to seeking the truth? That's the real problem with university political education. For instance, there is not much research being done at universities, who are instead just focused on shilling for and indoctrinating people toward their side. In the media, nobody focuses on what to do and how and why to do it -- instead the focus is all on ad hominem attacks against the other side. If the left vs right war wasn't front and center, all day, every day, people might be studying concepts like The Land Value Tax. Which is an interesting approach to taxation that is not really a left vs right or center issue. These things never get much attention in the political dialogue because the academic and media political dialogue has become, well, politicized. Nowadays, the only thing approaching "research" goes on in political think tanks, as their members can escape politicization, or at least already agree with the principles of the think tank's governance.
Your political views......Do they belong to you because of you, or because your pappy told you to think like that?
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.
The best anecdote I remember from my university days was a literature class. This was in the 80s. A student once asked the professor "what's a libertine?" The professor then gave the text book answer, witha couple of examples drawn form the French plays we were studying. He then said "Reagan. Reagan is a libertine. He as no morality."
Looking around the class room, I was shocked to see many students dutifully writing down that answer.
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
Hmm, this criticism reminds me somewhat of the common newsgroup "argument" which pounces on someone's spelling or grammar failures, and concludes from the existence of same that the poster's entire point, whatever it is, must be equally bogus. In short, the "argument" goes, if you can't spell you must ipso facto be wrong.
Whether or not this group is "sloppy" or shrill or gets their information in an unsavory, ungentlemanly way, or fails to state their case in the polite polysyllabic language of the academy has very little relevance to whether or not they're right.
As an amusing side note, I've noticed that professors on both sides of the political spectrum have solidly lined up against these folks. Apparently one thing all professors can agree on is that students and alumni should be a lot more respectful to professors than this group is being.
When the majority of the best and brightest in the country all lean towards a particular political philosophy, what should that tell you? ... that the people in administration are using politics as a litmus test in their hiring practices. Either that, or they aren't as "best" as you'd have us believe.
All the people I know in academia are well-informed, widely-read, and thoughtful voters.
Whereas all the people I know in academia consider being well-informed reading a set of magazines that reinforce their current viewpoints, and pull their "party line" when it comes to voting without actually reviewing the full slate of what their politicians represent. But both cases are merely our personal experiences.
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.
I was curious, so I actually to the website in question. It appears that they have collected statements from the professors that are quite interesting, to say the least, and certainly worthy of concern to past alumni. Now, its one thing if the alumni organization was just harping on political contrarians because they held different poltiical views; that's intimidation... teachers are citizens too, and they are free to speak whatever they wish (though we are not required to listen). However, when the teachers carried their views into the classrooms, that's when these alumni decided that enough was enough...
It's an interesting read, and it makes me glad that I did not go to UCLA.
Actually, it's more of the case of academics surrounding themselves with people they agree with politically, and black-balling those who don't. If you spent any time in an academic environment and actually sat on some of the hiring commitees as I have, you'd be quite surprised at what tenured professors get away with.
I know of a department that had a professor that didn't get tenure because of that. The professor I'm talking about is a well-known person that co-authored a book that's quite popular. (I'm not going to say what it is, because this guy's been through enough crap already). When I say "quite popular", I mean, it's damn near required reading in nearly every department I'm aware of. The reason he didn't get tenure? Black-balled for his political views. He was a popular professor, his book is well known, as is his reputation in the field he's in, yet he wasn't granted tenure because of his poltical views. He was by no means a radical either. He just happen to mention to the wrong person who he voted for in when they elected the last governor. After that, all hell broke lose as word got around. The guy wasn't treated the same after that.
Seven years wasted, and he's gone to another university now. I think if they would have known his political views before he was hired, he never would have been hired in the first place. He probably would have been better off.
When professor's stop bitching about the Republicans/Conservatives/Bush I'm going to start to worry.
You're not worried now? We have kids coming out of these very schools who can't balance a checkbook but can proudly hold up a degree. If that doesn't worry you than I fear you're already lost.
Put your thoughts on the current administration aside. If you were having a debate on a subject with someone who didn't have enough sense to master the skills of basic mathematics how much can you respect them?
Teachers should teach their subject. If it's a PoliSci class than fine, the pros and cons of current events certainly come into play. Aside from that have these idiot professors see to it that their students are getting the skill that are needed for a person in society and leave their politics at home. If they have time to lecture about Bush or whomever but their students aren't learning what's on the syllabus than what the hell is going on?
Dedicated Cthulhu Cultist since 4523 BC.
This guy can do what the hell he likes with his money, freedom includes the freedom to be an asshat. What worries me is that in our current bullshit culture of intelligent design, affirmative action and arbitrary 'fairness', management will see this as a reasonable and credible endeavour and embark on a witchunt for anyone not presenting all opinions (no matter how retarded or blatantly false they may be) or daring to teach in a passionate and meaningful way. It doesn't seem at all unlikely to me that within a generation it'll be impossible to express an opinion, play devil's advocate or open up a debate in a classroom without fearing for your job. It's all part of the sterilisation and homogenisation of how we teach young people. Here in the UK the national curriculum means that teachers are required by law to in effect teach to a checklist with OFSTED inspectors ensuring that teaching is done in accordance with this season's fads and fashions and we're suffering for it - in all but the most elite of public(private) schools, there's no time to teach anything but what's on the curriculum and no time to teach that in any meaningful way, leaving our young people with a vast Japanese-style collection of disparate factoids learned by rote but without the skills and experience needed to make sense of them. Employers are increasingly finding that young people have bags of qualifications but can't actually do anything. They've spent all their time analysing Shakespeare 'in accordance with the learning framework', being spoonfed canned opinions on the Suez Crisis and being told 'you need to know this as it's on the exam, but don't ask me to explain it, you don't need to know how it works'. Most British 18 year olds don't know how to write a formal letter, what double-entry bookkeeping is or how to work a lathe but are supposedly better qualified than any generation before them. Those that go to university either get spoonfed more useless shit or spend three years catching up on things they should have learned in the last thirteen, then graduate and wonder why they can't get work.
When my professors said something I disagreed with, I spoke up. When a teacher was obviously giving a politicized speech, I spoke up. When the first thing a teacher said went something like, "if you believe in God, get out of my class" ..... guess what, I SPOKE UP.
This "organization" is another version of the thought police. At the college level, teachers can say anything they want. Its up to the students to filter out the BS (which, I'd estimate, is about 90% of what I've been taught).
-dave
6th Street Radio @ddombrowsky
Outstanding! Thanks for the link, I'd not seen it before. I'd say the people who made it are right on the money, wouldn't you?
What a long, strange trip it's been.
So, you think that conservatives are uneducated, eh?
I am a libertarian (a.k.a. small government conservative). There is a lot of theory and books written by all sorts of conservatives, and many of them have valid arguments to back up their beliefs. I disagree with social conservatives and neoconservatives, but I wouldn't say something like "the more learned members of society disagree with conservative values."
Just because you're not a leftist doesn't mean that you're uneducated.
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.
....more like this
The Tenured Professor's Secret Plan To Wealth
1.) Tell your students to bring tape recorders to your next lecture
2.) Read Marx to them making long asides with inflammatory remarks about the Bush Administration being the new Nazi party
3.) Tell them you will tell them were they can sell their tapes for $100 if they split it with you.
4.) Watch the media go on a senseless crusade to force your resignation
5.) Force the board of directors to give you a nice compensation package to make you go away
6.) Profit!
--MarkusQ
I think the invisible hand of the market has its middle finger extended
--A wise old fart named SC0RN
1) Professor Alice - teaching Economics 101 at College A. Retired KPMG executive, denies human contribution to global warming, attacks consumer protection, antitrust etc laws, advocates absolutely minimal government, no welfare...
2) Professor Bob - teaching Economics 101 at College B. Active member of ACLU, Part time EFF volunteer, longtime consumer advocate, successful small business owner, teaches the importance of balancing business expediency with human and social impacts.
Both professors are reported to this almumni group.
They receive very similar treatment and criticism from this group.
And in other news, veterinarians observe the spontaneous mutation of porcine front limbs into large powerful wings...
-- In the beginning was the WORD, and the WORD was UNSIGNED, and the main(){} was without form and void...
Nice way to brainwash the people that there are only two sides in politics. So that's how republicrats and democans maintain their oligarchy?
How about a reform that allows us to move toward a 10 party or a 100 party system? I am so sick of the "two side" system...
You're right. Plus, I'm at a complete loss to see how this is a nerd issue at all -- you know, something about hardware, software, games, mods, science, rocketships, Star {Trek|Wars}, the net, overclocking CPUs or undermining DRMs. It seems purely political. And I thought nerds weren't into politics, figured wide-ranging sociopolitical discussion the kind of silly waste of time you got out of your system somewhere between your sophomore year in college and your first 60-hours-a-week summer co-op job.
I must be getting old.
The problems probably arise when not only science tries to gets itself involved into politics, but when politics tries to get itself involved into science. In the end, politics will determine where part of the funding goes to, more or less, but it should never determine what is spoken in the academia. The fact that it's happening out there at the other side of the ocean is sad in one way, but on the other hand the bright people that want to avoid this mess are of course always welcome at this side.
All things combined (e.g. foreign scientists hardly being able to get visa due to 'anti-terrorist' measures) it will just be a matter of time before the US politicized its way out of the forefront of science. Or it might already be happening, and there are a lot of places that would be happy to take over this position.
molmod.com - computing tips from a molecular modeling
The "dirty thirty" professors are all liberal. The man who started the website is conservative and said in a statemeent to the "Daily Bruin" (UCLA's daily newspaper) that he does not think that the conservative professors would do somethign like this. Read all about it on the Daily Bruin Online. Many people have been making fun of the site. Although the letter is not online Friday's Daily Bruin included a letter to the editor from a professor asking to be added to the list.
Great webhosting, cheap rates! Enter code SlashdotDiscount
You may be correct. However, in the future please refrain from signing my name to your posts. I'm assuming you just block copied my post & edited it, forgetting to remove the "--MarkusQ", and not that you were trying to put words in my mouth.
--MarkusQ
Don't confuse a political party's name with its ideology. They're often two very separate things.
After talking to a number of my relatives who live over in various parts of Canada, we tend to agree that the Conservative Party of Canada does not represent conservatives. It can best be viewed as the Canadian branch of the American Republicans. Hence it would best be referred to as a "Republican" party, rather an a "conservative" party. Why is that? Because they do not follow the ideals of conservatives, but rather a train of thought oft associated with the Republican Party in the US.
Cyric Zndovzny at your service.
For the record, I used to be a republican. thirty years ago I was mainstream repub. Now my views havent changed much. however, now I am a right wing conservative independant and, I guess, many would add extremest, have at it brothers.
No neo-conservatism here, move along.
The last several years I have been saddened by the steady shift of the political climate of the USA. This stuff gives me chills.
Now we are set to elect our own extreme right party here. I never thought a party this far to the right would get elected in this country. High on their platform, abolishing gay marriage. The new leader ends his speeches with God bless Canada (something usually not done in Canadian Politics). Beefing up the military, tax cuts aimed at the wealthy. He has already complained of activist judges.
I am not looking forward to history repeating itself up here.
From my understanding, we don't do more webcasts because of economic issues -- a human shows up and tapes the lectures, someone has to pay him or her, etc.
The very fact that the above post got modded +5 Insightful provides strong evidence that it's anything but. If you've read ./ for more than a few days, you know the power of groupthink: Microsoft is Evil, etc. etc. And yet, in an environment where the group has far more power to enforce group think (peer review, tenure applications) . . . I'm supposed to believe it's impossible? And I'm supposed to believe the standard line that liberals are better educated than the unwashed conservative masses? And that's insightful?
One of the best Profs I've ever had was a staunch conservative that believed strongly in everything I opposed. Politically that is.
Because he was so passionate about his beliefs, he was also passionate about teaching. I think the passion just bleeds over. Perhaps he could have been passionate about anything and it would have bled over into teaching, but I know his politics for him.
I am now a college instructor and try to keep that passion for teaching any way I can.
Leo Strauss was a prof at the University of Chicago (1949-1968) who had a tremendous influence on the current president, his vice, the secretary of defense, the chief of staff... whatever Karl Rove is... and many more.
This guy would certainly have landed on the proposed list of 'ideologically fixated' professors, assuming it truly is focusing all edges of the spectrum...
Here's a snippit from the wikipedia entry. As you read this, ask yourself: does any of it seem at all familiar?
According to Strauss, modern Social Science Positivism (the heir to the traditions of both Auguste Comte and Max Weber), in making purportedly value-free judgements, fails the ultimate test of justifying its own existence (which would require a value-judgement, of sorts) and ultimately leads to nihilism. Strauss taught that Liberalism, strictly speaking, contained within it an intrinsic tendency towards relativism, which in turn led to a sort of nihilism--a kind of decadence, value-free aimlessness, and hedonism which he believed he saw permeating through the very fabric of contemporary American society. In the belief that 20th century relativism, scientism, historicism, and nihilism were all implicated in the deterioration of modern society and philosophy, Strauss sought to revive Classical Political Philosophy (essentially the Socratic-Platonic-Aristotelian corpus, but one freed from the Scholastic hermeneutic).
While modern liberalism had stressed the pursuit of individual liberty as its highest goal, Strauss was interested in governments taking a greater interest in the problem of human excellence and political virtue. Through his writings, Strauss constantly raised the question of how, and to what extent, freedom and excellence can coexist. Without deciding this issue, Strauss refused to make do with any simplistic or one-sided resolutions of the Socratic question, What is the good for the city and man?
Strauss noted that thinkers of the first rank, going back to Plato, had raised the problem of whether good and effective politicians could be completely truthful and still achieve the necessary ends of their society. By implication, Strauss asks his readers to consider whether "noble lies" (Plato) have any role at all to play in uniting and guiding the cities of man. Are certain, unprovable "myths" taught by wise leaders needed to give most people meaning and purpose and to ensure a stable society? Or can society flourish on a foundation of those "deadly truths" (Nietzsche) limited to what we can know absolutely?
If Jesus wants me it knows where to find me.
ref: College Students Lack Literacy Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Saturday January 21, @04:31PM http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/01/21/191420 9
Thank you for saying this. One of the biggest thing that bothers me about much of the current anti-academia rhetoric used in much of the neoconservative movement is that it often portrays students as mindless autobots who have no ability to think critically and develop their own perspective.
This talk of "brainwashing" is a concept that takes such a cynnical perspective on how the human being learns, thinks and adopts ideas and identities.
Emma Goldman's words on war and free speech is not allowed at University of California Berkeley as of 2003. This is the same school where the 1960's Free Speech Movement started and apparently ended http://womenshistory.about.com/library/weekly/aa03 0115a.htm
Maybe I'm just apathetic... but it's college. If, at this stage in the game, they get all their opinions from their professors, it's too late for them. The news will do the same. As long as it doesn't get in the way of the course material (in the few classes on government I've had, I don't see how radical doctrine would even apply to the subject matter... how about getting teachers to stop wasting students' time?), I don't see the big deal.
There's nothing more "positive now" than the average modern history course and the balance of power is way out of balance. A friend of mine once made the mistake of giving a positive opinion on property qualifications for voting. He got mauled, for the rest of the semester, by the teacher and half a dozen suck ups for his trouble and ended up with a bad grade. Campus administrators often feel their mission is something "more" than research and critical thinking and would make a propaganda camp Stalin would like if they could.
Avoiding intimidation is what this is all about. Education is about presenting things and letting the student make up their minds. As long as they can present their ideas reasonably with complete factual recall, they deserve an A. Indoctrination is when the teacher presents "the truth" and everyone agrees or fails. There are some teachers out there who provide more indoctrination than education and there is NOTHING students can do but drop the course. If it's a required course and there are no others, things really suck. A smart student keeps their mouth shut and regurgitates whatever stupid stuff the teacher demands. An anonymous fink system restores some balance to the situation and will curb a lot of abuse. You would think that people would present recordings free of charge.
Sure, teachers will have to be careful but that's life. There's nothing a teacher should say in a classroom that they would be afraid publish. The antidote to unfair treatment is your own recording, so you can present out of context statements in context. Really unfair treatment ends in a libel suit.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
These Brownshirt students have brought to my attention critical academics and activists I would not have otherwise known about. The way they play these professors up is rather silly, in my view. But then, I'm twice their age, so maybe it's just an aesthetic thing on my part. Still, idealists like Douglas Kellner (http://www.uclaprofs.com/profs/kellner.html) are hardly "radical" in any sense. At least, they're no Weathermen. These academics, having a nuanced view of history and a strong affinity with common people, come across to me as concerned individuals of a Liberal mindset - like me the computer geek. Like my mother the folk artist. Like anyone concerned with the direction of our society in the midst of power abuses, rising populism, an obfuscating media, and unjustified wars.
This student group's attacks are full of cute asides, winks and nods to their compatriots: those sorts of people who think that protesting the Vietnam or Gulf Wars amounts to treason (they like to call it "treason" because it carries the death penalty). The writer makes a lot of fun of Kellner, for example, for doing what many young people did in the sixties - growing his hair, smoking weed, and rebelling against symbols of authority. (I like to remind such people that Jesus Christ himself preached open rebellion against authority, but not all these kids call themselves Christians. Still, they almost universally cite "authority" to back their views, and what better authority than the penultimate divine, right?)
As near as I can tell this student group is really just a bunch of kids who have glommed onto the extreme right-wing because it makes them feel powerful. They can go around pointing fingers at professors who are unhappy with the direction of American politics - those who refuse to applaud every time Bush tells a whopper or the corporate media cites American mythology - and count themselves among the "tough, rugged individualists" represented by such bastions of goodness as Bill O'Reilly and Rush Limbaugh. They have taken the short road to authority by becoming like-minded sycophants of the Regimented Order. Instead of having a truly nuanced view of human affairs and the politics of power they have attitudes based largely on pure style founded in nothing. Toughness for its own sake. Their kind of strength requires someone else to be weak, and they've chosen professors as an easy target.
If these students had truly critical minds they would be more like these so-called "radical" professors. They would be more interested in undermining authority, taking the road of self-discovery, and after gaining some experience, perhaps taking part in the unglamorous social movement to restore social balance. They would be less interested in ridiculing professors, who have about as much political power as your friendly neighborhood bartender, and more interested in restoring honor to our representatives in Washington by freeing them from special interests that run increasingly counter to the general welfare.
Have I said anything too "radical" here?
-- thinkyhead software and media
Beat me to it. Bingo.
Shop as usual. And avoid panic buying.
Outstanding! Thanks for the link, I'd not seen it before. I'd say the people who made it are right on the money, wouldn't you?
It seems that most people who make political comments online are "right" on their money (pun not intended) and this is the same subset of people who have the necessary education or skills to go online and click so-and-so buttons to get so-and-so thing done. Basically if you are online, you are already a step ahead because you get to participate in so many ways and get to exercise your rights and mind more freely.
It is also true that if you use something, you make it stronger, and so no wonder most online communities, blogs, and political flash videos actually make a point in a way which is more influential and "right on the money" than what we get to see in everyday life.
It tells me you don't know what "best and brightest" means other than "agrees with you". There are as many opinions at Universities as there are tenured professors. It's the ones who do not treat their students with respect that are the problem. Publishing their abuse will curb the problem.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Small government conservatism is personified by Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan, and is also represented by libertarians. However, there are other types of conservatives. You have social conservatives, who deeply belive in the government protection of morality. (That strand of conservatism flies in the face of Goldwater conservatism; Goldwater's catchphrase is "You can't legislate morality," after all). You also have neoconservatives; this article best describes neoconservatives. There are also paleoconservatives; the article desribes it well.
Small government conservatism isn't the only form of conservatism out there. Our current Republican administration is a mixture of neoconservatism and social conservatism, which combined, completely flies in the face of small government conservative beliefs. The combination of neoconservatism and social conservatism leads to a government policy that expands government power both in economic issues and in the issues of personal liberties.
I think all 4 parent posters hit the issue right on the head. Academics as a rule tend to be liberal and thus tend to attract and hire other liberals. Conservatives tend to work in business and thus tend to attract and hire other conservatives. Like tends to beget like.
Just "gittin-r-done," day after day.
Is it? Who should one ask to find out? Surely, the most virtuous and morally exemplary people would know best. Are universities in fact shining beacons of righteousness as well as intellectual and artistic centers? Many people think that they fall far short of this sought-after ideal, and hence have little authority to lead.
Is theirs not a reasonable position to take? That is, should we not perhaps seek the true "best and brightest" in some other place?
He just adds a "signing statement."
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
Rewards are often effective. I suspect the objection is to the aims advanced by the rewards. I don't think the opponents are saying "We like busting radical profs, but rewards are inherently bad and going too far."
The free enterprise system at work or Adam Smith's invisible boot stamping on a human face -- for ever?
If I had no integrity and chose to reward people for agreeing with me and punish those who didn't, there are institutional procedures and protocols set up by which students could appeal their grades. If this happened often, my grading practices would be placed under close scrutiny by the administration. I wouldn't last very long. Harrassment and belittlement are indeed more difficult to prove for the aggrieved student, but there are still ways.
What groups like the one mentioned in this article have thus far failed to do is to provide any credible evidence of such malfeasance. What they do instead is to present evidence of professors' political leanings on the basis of those professors' public statements and activities. Unfortunately, people like you, Anonymous Coward (and you do live up to your name here), take that as evidence that a conservative can't get a fair shake. All it actually proves is that profs have opinions, which I believe they are still allowed to do here in the U.S.
Shop as usual. And avoid panic buying.
There's some radical religious right professors that should be outed.
"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."
/. today:
Here is the link to the web site of Jones' organization for those interested:
http://www.bruinalumni.com/
This has got to be one of the best examples of what is wrong in America today. On the one side we have professors (usually liberal Democrats) that we are trusting with the higher education of our children abusing their power and influence. Then, we have on the other side, a pissed off (usually republican) man that is going to fix the problem by paying these young adults to spy on their teachers. What a mess. What an "Us against Them" attitude we are setting as an example for these young adults.
But hey, why should it be any different on the college campuses of America then it is in Congress? This article and the information in this article is another example of the "Left-Side of the isle Right-Side of the isle"; or, "us against them" mentality that is ramped-up in America today.
Now that i am done with the rant part, I'll give an opinion on the issue. The professors are only marginally better in their behavior then the group that is paying cash for spying. I say marginally because i find them wrong but not as wrong as paying students to be spies. This has a complete and total ring from the 1950's called McCarthy-ism. For those that do not remember, McCarthy-ism is a period in our history when everyone was afraid to say anything against government (or say anything else for that matter) else they might end up on "The Black List" and called communist.
This black list was nothing to joke about. People lost their lives, lost their businesses, lost their homes, and were falsely jailed. Some even committed suicide due to the finger pointing and mass hysteria caused in this country by McCarthyism. And guess what? During McCarthyism we saw Americans being asked to spying on each other in similar fashion that we see in this article. What a disgrace.
So I'll add up what i read on
1)Two groups file Domestic Spying Lawsuit
2)censorship in the workplace
3)Old men and Old women at Quaker Church spied on, asks for congressional hearing and gets it
4)Google being threatened if it does not fork up private information.
5)Censorship of web pages
6)Various related topics too numerous to list
When ya add it all up, it reeks with censorship,spying, and finger pointing called McCarthyism.
This has been another valuable and informative opinion from:
Catahoula!
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!
And what was the goal of his coup? To institute a fascist government. Hitler was always fascistic, but fascism didn't begin--outside his head--until he had power in government. AFAIK, to say a practice is fascistic (reminescent of or the product of fascism) is entirely different than saying something (other than a person) is fascist.
Disclosure: I am a conservative. I am not a republican. I have never voted republican in a national election. I've also never voted democrat. I think national politics in America is an institution rotten to its core.
So I see 7.5 out of 14. We'll call it 8. Terrible score overall, but it doesn't add up to fascism to me. I'm pretty sure we'd see a lot more suppression of dissent if we lived under a fascist regime.
Slashdot - where whining about luck is the new way to make the world you want.
Small government conservatism is personified by Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan, and is also represented by libertarians. However, there are other types of conservatives. You have social conservatives, who deeply belive in the government protection of morality. (That strand of conservatism flies in the face of Goldwater conservatism; Goldwater's catchphrase is "You can't legislate morality," after all).
You had me at Goldwater, you lost me at Reagan. Reagan was a social conservative who deeply believed in the government protection of morality. Reagan might not have been a Religious Right Winger by personal conviction, but he was certainly beloved by them. The Social Conservatives and the Neo-Conservative imperialists have hijacked "Conservatism." Conservatism wants to preserve what works, like the Constitution and the Bill of Rights and the use of the National Guard and the Armed Forces Reserves primarily to handle domestic disasters and public enemies. Theirs is not Conservatism. Theirs is a radicalism of the Right.
Reagan started it all. If he wasn't a believer in what the Social-Cons and Neo-Cons were selling, he used their resources and their monies like he was. And ultimately he advanced their cause. He certainly didn't advance the cause of fiscal conservatism: he ran the deficit up to record heights now only topped by George W. Bush's hideously unbalanced budgets.
You are probably too young to know what it was like living during the Reagan Presidency, when it looked like nuclear war between the US and the Soviet Union was right around the corner all the time. I don't know whether these troubled times are as bad or worse. But it sure feels the same or worse.
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
...And "democrat" and "republican" (lowercase) mean basically the same thing, but that doesn't mean the Democrats and Republicans believe the same things.
I know you're probably posting this inflammatory oversimplification on purpose, but I feel like responding anyway. Socialism refers to governmental programmes to bring economic security to all citizens. A further extreme would be communism; the converse would be American-style conservative economics, the further extreme of which is laissez-faire capitalism. If I remember correctly, the "national socialist" name referred to their Aryan nationalist ideology, the "socialist" bit referring to their policy of promoting the "Aryan race" above all others. The ideology of socialism (beyond economics) strongly favours democracy and social progress. The Nazi government was fascist, which, in general, is something like a corporatist-oligarchic authoritarian state; this is practically the opposite of the philosophy of socialism.
Signature.
Now, it seems to me that the parallels are clear and factual. Leader worship? check. Patriotic symbolism? Check. Common enemy? Check, disdain for human rights? Check. etc, etc, etc.
They don't say that the government is completely facist, only that it's headed that way. It looks to me as though you're willfully distorting the content of the (implied) argument. The name calling crap (far left-wing/liberal pansies) is sad and unpleasant. I mark anyone who responds this way as incapable of facing evidence of facts undermining their beliefs, intellectually brittle and insecure.
BTW, as a far left-wing/liberal pansy I can give you at least a few better practices/methods than our current government. How about "never start a war with falsified intelligence?" or maybe "torture sucks as a way of winning hearts and minds"? or "If you're going to do a drug plan, consider the needs of the people taking the drugs before the needs of the people selling them"? Try turning down the Rush Limbaugh.
This mythical split between the "real world" and academia is just that, mythical. How did George W. Bush survive in the business world? Plenty of bullshitters and incompetents in business with nothing more going for them than somebody's say-so, plenty of VC clown boys who throw money at them again and again.
Shop as usual. And avoid panic buying.
Conservatives once again resort to Nazi tactics!
Do you know many other university professors who write "if they would have" for "if they had"?
People sue for tenure for much less unjust decisions than this, and they win, so I call bullshit.
Shop as usual. And avoid panic buying.
The mods I'm seeing don't agree with your thesis. Case in point, all posts by general_re. As of now, one 0, Troll, and quite a few 5, Insightfuls.
Shop as usual. And avoid panic buying.
Recording the lectures is against my university's policies (whether or not I agree with it, can be saved for another discussion). Encouraging others to break a universities rules and policies...
A university's policies are not laws.
It's not against the law to encourage someone to break a policy.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
I think tenure applies more to arts and humanities faculty than to science and engineering faculty. I think.
Engineers do get tenure.
A poster over on Metafilter suggested that the profs drop some juicy liberal bits (which is what these people are REALLY after, make no mistake), and then split the proceeds 50/50.
It's funny how some partisans can see and complain about what the "other side" does, but fail to see it when their own "side" does it. They just think, in that case, it's god's honest truth and anyone saying otherwise is trying to censor them.
It's even more entertaining when the partisan fails to realize what they are complaining about is actually a retalitory strike.
Just an observation.
Any sufficiently advanced influence is indistinguishable from control.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
He was the leader of a party that aimed to implement fascism for the government. Fascism is a system of government, so something can only be fascism when some kind of government does it. Now this government could, I believe, be the governing body of an organization that is not a nation. And this thread of posts should not be modded down as much as it is regardless of whether the moderator agrees with them or not, they are neither offtopic, nor trolls, nor intentional flamebait. And why is one of the posts modded - troll (before the metamod) also modded overrated? How can a negative rating be too high?
Stupidity is like nuclear power, it can be used for good or evil. And you don't want to get any on you.
People do not go to a college without knowing how it is slanted. I'm in a rural tech school and they are most definitely xtian and proud of it. I chose it because I was sick of being in a constant debauch at my last school. Xtians do not know how to party, thank god.
An Education is the Font of All Liberty
I agree with you. I was thinking about Reagan's gubernatorial term and theoretical economic policies (which, as you pointed out, led to huge budget deficits. Tax cuts + huge military increases = huge budget deficits), but forgot about his social and war policies. The Religious Right did start moving into the party during the Reagan administration, and Reagan did support some issues that libertarians and other small-government conservatives wouldn't (expansion of the War on Drugs, for example). Margaret Thatcher might have been a bit more true to small government conservatism than Reagan was, but that can be disputed, too. But neither are libertarians.
And, yes, I'm just a college freshman, so I don't remember much about Reagan (or even Bush Sr.) at all.
For those who can't hack the left-of-center politics at UCLA, I have two local suggestions for alternatives:
Alternative 1, for those wanting to study Political Science, Business or Law: Pepperdine, Malibu, CA.
Yes, you can study at a law school where Kenneth Starr is the Dean! And that's just the beginning. Pepperdine was founded by Southern Baptists and is almost thoroughly Conservative-run. Only the school of Education and Psychology (why am I not surprised?) harbors liberal rebel scum. If you avoid that bastion of hippie-dom, you are good to go. And besides, it's in Malibu. Righteous waves and babes in bikinis. You know you want it.
Alternative 2 for those wanting to get their Divinity degree: Biola, La Mirada, southern Los Angeles County, CA.
The Bible Institute Of Los Angeles has been known as the province of fire-breathing Fundamentalist Christians for about a century. You don't have to go to the Southeast and the Bible Belt to get that old time religious education, it's right there. Perhaps the only place more hardcore than Biola is Bob Jones University.
Both of these places are realistic alternatives for those who would rather not go to UCLA. I guarantee you, you will not have your precious Right-Wing political preferences challenged either place. You might have to pay more, because both of these are private institutions, but that wonderful feeling of not having to listen to grubby liberal eggheads spouting off with opinions that Rush and O'Reilly and Hannity tell you are "just plain wrong" is priceless, right? Right?
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
Answer #1: You are exaggerating. He is saying that opposition to the government in the form of free speech would not be allowed if it was fascist. You responded that we shouldn't have to wait for imprisonment, torture, and death to oppose an abusive government. Restriction on free speech is not the same as imprisonment, torture, and death and would certainly be a precursor to such.
Answer#2: He never said he ignored what they had to say.
Answer#3: He didn't. He assumed they were trying to appeal to people that were ignorant, not that they were.
I'm not saying I agree with what he had to say, or how he said it, but your questions were phrased in such a manner that they made it seem like he said things that he did not. This is a common, and rather irritating, way that people try to draw support for themselves in an argument. Sort of like: Guy1: I voted for Bush. Guy2: How can you support torture, corruption, violence, fascism, etc.? Guy#3-10: Wow, those are bad things, Guy1 must have have made a bad decision/be a bad person/be an idiot.
Stupidity is like nuclear power, it can be used for good or evil. And you don't want to get any on you.
This happens a lot already. Introductory general biology was taught by only one professor, and this course was a requirement for all biology majors so everyone was in it. I wouldn't say he was fanatical about evolution, but it was definately on the far side of being energetic about it and thus a large part of the course was about plants and animals evolving. I was enjoying the class, but apparently other students weren't appreciating it as much, and they would convey their feelings to their parents. One day I was walking by the prof's office and he had posted an E-Mail from an angry parent (Who didn't use their name and used a hotmail account to protect the child's from retaliation) about how it was inappropriate of him to be teaching an unsubstantiated theory which doesn't explain why monkeys still exist and why a rock won't come to life even if you look at it for a billion years (These were actual arguments used by the parent). I forget if God was mentioned, but it wouldn't surprise me if it did. The parent also complained about how her child didn't have any alternative to this mandatory class and was thus impinging on her rights and such. The prof posted was his reply in which he stated that this was a science class and he was going to present the facts that are currently accepted in the scientific community. He also stated that whether or not the students believed the material from a theological perspective was irrelevant, since as biologists they would be expected to be well versed in the currently accepted theories regarding the progression of life. He finished by saying that if the material was truly offensive to her, the child is welcome to drop the class, and the prof would sign all of the required papers without any issue. So I'd imagine that all biology professors who teach evolution already get a lot of grief.
Ha ha! Cheese eating surrender monkeys can't do anything right! Or can they?
If the "money follows the student" model of funding education interests you (and they do it in Belgium too) then maybe you should also look into France's wonderful health care system. Does it work? Mais oui!
But then again...it's FRANCE!
Care for a Freedom Fry or a slice of Freedom Toast? ^_^
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
Byte Magazine once had an interesting interview with Woz. He told about returning to Berkeley to finish his degree. (He used an assumed name in class.) He mentioned a class where the TA was socialist and told the kids that businesses made money by ripping off the consumer. Woz tried to disagree, but the TA told him to shut up or he'd give Woz an "F." It's too bad he couldn't reveal his position at Apple.
So you're saying that these people should rebel against authority by agreeing with their college professors. They should "take the road to self-discovery" by conforming to the academic order and failing to stand up for their beliefs.
Have I said anything too "radical" here?
Nope. You've gone right down the line you're supposed to. (We'll overlook the fact that you didn't mention the environment -- this time.)
In order to qualify for federal funds, colleges must meet federal mandates for levels of education.
And in order to stay accredited in the field of engineering, a school must hold itself accountable to ABET whose standards are not lacking. Without accreditation at the time of graduation the piece of paper stating that I am a mechanical/aerospace engineer is worthless. Hence despite the fact that anyone with a 20-something ACT can get into the school I graduated from, not just anyone can graduate from its engineering program. And those who excel are further rewarded with scholarships and reserarch assistanceships based on academic performance.
Where I went to school (University of Alabama in Huntsville) in the math/engineering department is was against the rules for a professor to discuss politics or morality. It has no place in rational discussion. End of story. Whatever happened on the other end of campus (liberal arts) I dont know.
Its not a matter of "students being able to recognize bias" or "making you think harder", it has no place in the study of math or science. And even in the lib arts department, I don't really give a fuck what my professor thinks. His thoughts are no more richeous than my own. I'm old enough to have my own biases, just teach me the material so I can pass.
"They don't say that the government is completely facist, only that it's headed that way."
:-p.
Watch the Flash again. They said the Bush run government meets all/"fits nicely" into all 14 categories/signs of facism. To me, that sounds like they are indeed calling Bush and his cabinet facists. Name calling crap? Calling liberals pansies is worse than calling a Bush supporter a facist?
Alright, your better practices. Who knew we had bad intelligence? Your socialist friends over in France? Nope. Bush? Show me proof it and I'll listen. Til then, you're speculating. Torture... How many times has our military toruted someone and done so without punishment? Again, provide proof without speculation and assumptions. The new drug plans? Yeah, they're crap. Not less complicated or expensive. From what we can figure out so far, my grandmother's prescription bills monthly are going up from about $130 to over $900 with the new plan. Remember the people selling the drugs are a need of the people buying them.
I don't/can't listen to Rush anymore. I do watch the No Spin Zone often though
Actually the main differences in fascism, socialism and communism are degrees to which the government controls the means of production. Fascism - the means of production are owned by individuals, but they are told what, and how much to produce by the government (much like what America is becoming under both Democrat or Republican control). Socialism - means of production is owned by the government as well as dictated by the government. More expensive to the government than fascism. Communism - the "people" (whatever that is since there is no such thing as a group entity, merely a collection of individuals) own the means of production in common and are the government. No individual ownership since Communists don't believe in individuals.
How did this post get modded down? Nothing vulgar/wrong/over-controversial in it...
But to the point - this guy's making a group to find out who's mixing far-left (radical) politics with their lectures. An admirable goal, although politics of any kind should be kept from the lecture. (Barring classes on politics of course.)
It isn't really "fascism" because:
DATABASE WOW WOW
#1: Not all, just the liberals, but when did I say that before? Find and show proof of abuses before complaining. Then I have no problem. Almost every complaint I hear about Bush is subjectively based upon assumptions created by personal bias and ignorance.
#2: What/which suggestions? I often agree with the goals of liberals actually. It's just that I find them clueless how to reach them. I didn't say they didn't have ideas. I said they didn't have any better ideas.
#3: It's not about automagic. It's about common sense.
Call bullshit all you want. It happened.
He just happen to mention to the wrong person who he voted for in when they elected the last governor. After that, all hell broke lose as word got around. The guy wasn't treated the same after that.
Who was the candidate? You can say that right?
You see, if the candidate was someone like JM la Penn, this whole things comes into focus.
May the Maths Be with you!
The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently. Friedrich Nietzsche, The Dawn, Sec. 297
Todays higher education shouldn't encourage everybody to be different, and it certainly shouldn't encourage everybody to be the same. Observers should wonder why hard science and math professors rarely get into trouble with with political leanings in their subjects, and realize that its because they have huge huge history of established fact that can be seen, felt, measured and observed. Even history has some standardization that students and professors can hold onto, that is until one asks about particular motivations of people and events.
Then take into consideration all the vogue subjects like SO-and-SO studies where all they have to grasp are notions and ideas that ultimate are self reinforcing to ones own political and socialogical thinking. This type of teaching provides the catastrophic regenerative feedback we see to day where only those that think alike are exceptable or worthy of good grades.
Colleges and Universities all over should flock to and agree to David Horowitz "Academic Bill of Rights". http://www.frontpagemag.com/Content/read.asp?ID=50
After the Waco massacre, I have less faith in the applied practical side - the FBI, who could have picked up David Koresh on any given Sunday preaching his religion in the city street corner, knowingly decided to confront him and his group instead with a warrant for their gun/weapons violations. Then they act "surprised" they get attacked by this "cult" and eventually firebomb the compound - killing many women and children in the process.
Cowboys and Indians, I tell you.
(Quotes are to show their words, not any disagreement on my part)
difficult to defend yourself when a single, neutral, purely fact-based position is considered ultra liberal.
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
OK, on reading TFA, this is not tech, science, internet or geek related, except in the remotest sense.
God danm you ScuttleMonkey.
May the Maths Be with you!
Then the prof should have sued.
Shop as usual. And avoid panic buying.
This black list was nothing to joke about. People lost their lives, lost their businesses, lost their homes, and were falsely jailed.
Give one example?
If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear. -- George Orwell
That said, I'm also tired of hearing the Bush bashing from professors. For one thing, they're preaching to the choir (University of California). But more importantly, some of these profs just ramble on and on so long it's easy to forget what the lecture was supposed to be about. In a quarter-based university, it's important to be concise and get to the point immediately. If I want to talk politics, allow me to do so outside of the lecture hall. I do not want to hear the latest bush joke, I want to hear the solutions for the problem set assigned the week before. Or for my most recent bush-bashing professor, the ethnomusicological analysis of the Ottoman Empire, a class which is completely lecture-based and has no accompanying textbooks...
Perhaps you have mistaken me for someone else?
Of course they want the government to pay... because THEY don't have to!
Most people don't pay their fair share. Apparently only those of us who work our butts off have to pay.
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
When colleges were paid for primarily by the student or private funds, you KNEW what type of college you were attending. The best schools even had professors who still worked in the industry "Those who can't do, teach" was not really an accurate cliche.
When was this? Oh, right. Back in the 1930s, when only a small fraction of the population attended college, before World War II and the GI Bill. You knew what you were getting alright. You were getting an elitist preserve of WASP men that excluded virtually everyone else.
Now we have primarily public funding in college. What do you expect but State-loving socialists instead of true masters of academia? Is college even necessary [lewrockwell.com] if you're to go on to a non-science profession?
The humanities in academia are obviously dominated by liberal Democrats, which is probably not good for academic discourse. As to whether the cause is public funding can be debated, particularly in the absence of proof. If public funding automatically leads to socialism, then the military ought to be populated by Lefties. As to whether a college education is necessary for non-science people, that seems to be an obvious expression of bias: The sciences require learning and rigorous thinking, but the humanities do not.
One of the few professors I still admire is Hans-Hermann Hoppe, who had something to say [lewrockwell.com] about the system and the garbage bin it has fallen into. I'm not sure we'll see any real changes until we remove the federal funding of education from all education, especially the college grants and loans that the government seems to happy to dole out.
That would certainly make changes. Things could go back to the way they were back in the halcyon days before the GI Bill and the democratization of higher education, when Jews could be excluded by policies crafted specifically to deny them entrance into top schools. I suppose that doesn't matter if you're a white male, but a lot of other people out there might not be so excited about the society without democracy that Hans-Hermann Hoppe advocates. He goes far beyond the question of public funding of higher education, and into the realm misty-eyed libertarianism, where unimpeded commerce rids us of all social ills:
Do you suppose the good Professor would have wanted to fight to free slaves in the days leading up to the American Civil War? Would he have fought for a woman's right to vote? He obviously would not have wanted the government to stop "businessmen" from employing 10-year old children. But hey, economic efficiency invariably leads to nirvana for white males, who cares if the scum have to suffer?
As for the old c
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
Yahoo!: ___fuck_Bush_you_on-liberty_pissing_freaks___ |SEARCH|
In a couple quick looks over the comments I see alot of hand-wringing and talking about how this is a slippery slope to Nazism and oh nos about the Conservatives beating up the Liberals and how the profs need to be able to speak freely.
What about the student's rights to an education and to speak freely?
I'm a Graduate Student in History, I focus on the Military History in the Middle East since 1918 and the American West from 1865 to the close of the Frontier in 1900. I've been graded down for writing about the Israeli Defense Forces vs. Egypt and Syria rather than focusing on the Palestinian "cause" in the Arab-Israeli Wars. I've been told flat out lies about the Conquistadors and when I tried to cite facts have been shouted down for it.
I'm not paticularly Conversative and I don't spout off in classes but I know that I can't take any class I want from any professor I want because there are some who do grade you down for your outlook on History and the subject matter you write about. In Israeli-Palestinian classes as I said before, I've been docked for looking at Arab-Israeli conflicts and history rather than the "occupation and resistance" even after clearing the subject with the Professors. I've had papers returned with a lower grade with the justifaction of "you pay for your focus". I've had TAs stop speaking to me and refusing to let me ask questions because I told them I lived in Israel, was attacked by Hezbollah and have more of an Israeli viewpoint to the Golan Heights.
Today, in Public Universities I don't see where a Student, at least in History, can study what they want and look at a subject from all sides because many professors either won't let you or punish you for it.
A quote from a conservative organization:
The organization then uses the lack of evidence (despite all their hard work) to "prove" that the "liberal intimidation" is hiding the evidence - i.e. that lack of proof is proof itself. Apparently they read their Orwell quite well.
Another quote from a blog:
Read my response to MsGeek's post saying the same thing.
"Disclosure: I am a conservative. I am not a republican. I have never voted republican in a national election. I've also never voted democrat. I think national politics in America is an institution rotten to its core."
Hear, hear!
" 1. Powerful and continuing nationalism - check, but this isn't new to Bush."
Agreed, however it has gotten stronger under Bush Jr.
" 2. Disdain for the recognition of human rights - check, and this one makes me sad. Even if the administration was angelic in every other respect, this is an unforgivable fault."
Agreed.
" 3. Identifying enemies or scapegoats as a unifying cause - check, but the enemy is real. That's a matter of convenience, I know, but something still has to be done."
I agree OBL and his band of bandits are legitimate, and Saddam would have to have been delt with at some point. However, if you notice, those aren't the only sapegoats present. You may have noticed the hatred of the French and the calls to execute "liberals" as traitors for not unquestionably obeying Bush.
" 4. Supremacy of the military - check, I'll give this one, but it's sort of overstated in the flash. As a conservative, I recognize the need for a military."
Agreed, however, I smell corruption in the military expenditures. For some reason the performance/budget ratio has dropped drastically over the past several years.
" 5. Rampant sexism - no, not really, although it seems unneeded for fascism anyway."
I agree this is fairly weak. There is some merit to it. A push to ban contraceptives and a lack of women in positions of authority come to mind. But, the glass ceiling is largely historical.
Oh, it is needed in facism for this reason: fresh bodies. A facist nation needs soldiers to fight their wars and to police their police states. Therefore, women's rights are erroded in such a way as to facilitate this. IE: baby factories.
" 6. Controlled mass media - again, no. Sure, some media outlets lean the same way as the president. Others don't. It's a pretty good mix, in my opinion. On the other hand, I'm not like most people, which is to say I don't suffer from the disease of wanting to have my opinions parroted back at me. Overall, the media sells what people want to buy."
I disagree. The media has shown a tendancy to avoid reporting anything beyond the spin of the two major parties. There is little attempt to find out who, if either, is telling the truth. This can be blamed on several things, including lazyness, budget concerns, profit margins, but also on people that become extremely irate and petty in their actions if their party is critisized, justly or not. The polititians in power are not excluded from this and hold legislation and selective enforcement above the heads of the media companies. Couple that with frivilous legal threats, releasing false information and later quietly revising it, firing people that speak out, etc...
That constitutes a controlled mass media, albeit not completely controlled.
" 7. Obsession with national security - check, but once again, the enemy is real."
Again, some of the enemy is real, not all of it. Part of the reason the administration is in such hot water is not that he's spying on Americans, but that it is spying on American simply because they are political threats. If they where going after national security threats, it would have been easily handled with the retroactive FISA warrents.
" 8. Religion and government are intertwined - no, not really. As a devout atheist, I'd probably notice. The President spouting personal religious beliefs does not a religious government make."
I have noticed. There are new churches springing up everywhere around here. Thanks to the Department of Faith Based Initiatives, it has become profitable to run a church. It seems especially helpful if said church promotes administration policy. For example: the Justice Sunday trilogy and funneling money to Pat Robertson's organization.
The constant i
Any sufficiently advanced influence is indistinguishable from control.
Sounds like these bunch of students just need to chill and get laid.
Nobody is going to read this post because it's way the hell at the bottom... but, there's something that I've always wondered about. Who stuck a pole in the ground and called it moderate? Where's the pole and who gets to decide where it lies?
But isn't it the job of the Judicial Branch to interpret the law if it is vague, poorly written, or otherwise unclear?
Since when does the POTUS have leave to impose additional conditions on the will* of the people?
*FYI - will of the people = the actions of elected representatives (congressmen and senators)
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
If I were taking a class that I expected to make use of in my career and the teacher went off on an offtopic rant more than once or in such a way that it distracts from teh lessons at hand, I'd politely ask him/her to get back to what I'm paying for.
as any student serious about such a class, should do.
This is not that. Plain and simple.
I don't doubt it, but define "Marxist". Is something Marxist for saying that capitalism needs growth to be successful and the Earth is a limited resource which can't sustain growth forever?
No, what you've described more like some kind of environmentalism.
Marxism has to do with the idea that there is a historical pattern of class struggle between the wage-slaves (a.k.a. the proletariat) and the owners of the means of production (a.k.a. the bourgeoisie). "The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles." In these struggles, the proletariat seek higher wages while the bourgeoisie seek to go on oppressing the proletariat.
Every so often the struggle breaks out into open revolution, in which the bourgeoisie generally string up a few of their oppressors from lamp-posts and consequently gain a few more privileges. However, revolutions need not be violent. They can also take the form of a peaceful, but radical change in government. Extrapolating from this, one may claim that it is inevitable that eventually the bourgeoisie, as a class, will gain full control of the means of production, and so the distinction between the classes will gradually melt away. A classless society, the communist ideal, will (according to this theory) eventually result.
[Caution: This is meant only as a very basic outline. Plus, I'm no expert in Marxism, and I'm generally unsympathetic to its ideas in general.]
Or was it really, really bad?
This viewpoint is a very limited and biased way of looking at capitalism. It is extremely factory-oriented, and so needs nontrivial updating to apply to today's economy. Furthermore, this method of extrapolating historical patterns is rather unscientific.
Personally, my real problem with this is not so much Marxism as a way of looking at things. It is that many academic Marxists get bored with studying society from a Marxist perspective, and become determined to agitate to create the socialist paradise. If they want to do that, they should get into politics, or at least become an honest, full-time revolutionary. Sociology should be about studying society, not remaking it. Furthermore, calling for the downfall of the capitalist pigs while at the same time hiding from criticism behind the protection of your well-paid professorship is not cool.
...the Bush bashing comes from the students. Admittedly, this is Canada, but I've been teaching in one way or another for ten years now, and Bush is the only contemporary political figure that inspires almost universal loathing from students of all backgrounds. Sometimes their papers veer off into Bush bashing for no apparent reason. It's weird. FTR I hate him too, but I don't make a point of telling students this, so it's not like they are fishing for higher grades.
"by that I mean people who don't sit on slashdot all day wondering why everyone else isn't building robots" DECS
Hey, it's been a quarter-century since I was in college, but the last professor I had like that wasn't remotely focused on politics. This was a calculus class, and this guy would go on and on and on about the remodeling he and his wife were doing on their kitchen in the "unique fixer-upper opportunity" they had just bought. He would ramble on about the ancient COW GLUE used to hold the old linoleum down and how bad it smelled when they tore it up, and so on ad-infinitum. I switched out of his class because I wasn't getting anything from it. Well, I did learn a lot about cow glue.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
In France and Belgium schools are not assigned to students and funded by a school district, basically the French and Belgian governments fund each student's education and the parents can send their kid to any school they please. Public school? Sure. Catholic school? Go right ahead. Yeshiva? Yes. Madrassa? Mais oui. Secular private school? You bet. If there was a Satan's School For Girls franchise in France or Belgium, you'd be able to send your kid there if you wanted to. The schools all have to meet standards for education. They have to teach to government standards.
The trouble with vouchers as they are implemented in the US is that usually voucher schools are not forced to meet the same standards as public schools. So you have egregious abuse, like schools where kids watch movies all day and play Monopoly and this only breaks for Bible Study. And some of the advocates for vouchers are familiar faces in places where white-only academies popped up as an alternative to mandated busing. And the voucher movement is very strongly wedded to the Religious Right.
A "funding follows the student" approach would be an interesting thing to try. I also think that the Charter Schools and "small schools/learning communities" movements have some possibilities. But there must be academic standards that all schools must measure up to. Even if those academic standards upset people who believe that Gawd created Life, the Universe and Everything in 6 literal days and that fossils are either remnants of the Flood or Satan's attempt to fool those of insufficient faith.
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
Yes, it's about time someone came out and said it. In order to be considered unbiased by this conservative group, a professor would actually have to prevent class discussion of some issues that conservatives consider sensitive (e.g. homosexuality, atheism, abortion). An equal and open discussion of these "non-negotiable issues" (as conservatives actually call them) would be completely unacceptable.
Freedom of speech isn't freedom from criticism or consequences. They just booted a guy for being a right-wing neo-Nazi nut. Does the left get an exemption? http://www.nj.com/columns/ledger/mulshine/index.ss f?/base/columns-0/1137649957316870.xml&coll=1
Frankly, I'm amazed anyone can argue against this, because it amounts to basically recording and repeating what the professors are saying. A classroom is a public domain; you can't reasonably expect political views expressed in a lecture to have some right of privacy.
Read what David Horowitz himself had to say about it. And I don't mean the guy who was the consumer reporter on KNBC Channel 4 in Los Angeles, either.
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
Statistically speaking more than half of students at four-year colleges -- and at least 75 percent at two-year colleges -- lack the literacy to handle complex, real-life tasks such as understanding credit card offers.
These are people who are attending college, not college graduates. It is a distinct possibility that these illiterate college students will never graduate. Without further data, whether they will be conservative or liberal after dropping out is a matter of speculation. In either case, they won't be counted among the number of college-degree holders who are conservative, liberal, or something else.
blog
Go ahead and mod the parent as "insightful". Ignorant would be better. I go to a Baptist school and every single subject, no matter what the content veers into creationism or bigotry. It's a private school, so why do I go? Know thy enemy. Trust me, I know the politics of public schools, I've been to them. But, in my school they don't read poems that are controversial . . . controversial because the authors were African American.
You consider a university a legislative body with the ability to pass laws ??
Seriously what you are talking about is an unenforceable contract enacted by the university for its own benefit without providing consideration to the student. I would describe it as fascist but its much more accurate to classify it as authoritarian. The funny thing is that liberals decry authoritarian practices very loudly except when they are participating in them.
That this is more than conjecture is attested to by this report.
The article includes the results of a number of studies. In addition, consider this statement:
And finally, some here will find it irresistable to attack the messenger (which is a rightist organization dedicated to attacking political correctness on campus). I would suggest that responses should address the issues and data raised. Ad hominem attacks, while having a long history on Slashdot and before that on Usenet, are mere failed arguments.
The only good weather is bad weather.
I have had some professors whose political views were way far to the left of mine. But guess what? All of them, to a one, were more than happy to give me decent grades if I was able to back up my disagreements with their political views. I even had one prof who was quite literally a Communist and was pleased to let you know it and 100% open about it. I was a little frightened in the beginning that she would flunk me for my political views, which sit on the Political Compass at Economics: -4.63 Social Issues: -6.92.
Well, I got an A in her class, and I didn't even do the oral presentation of my paper because I got all crossed up about when the final was to be held. I've kept in touch with her, in fact. We disagree a lot, even now, but we respect each other. And on issues that really, really matter, we find more to agree upon than disagree.
I've yet to meet someone on the Right, however. Very odd. Closest thing was another prof who was staunchly pro-Israeli to the point of fanaticism. I suspect that folks that are on the Right tend to get jobs at political think tanks, in campaigns, and in business instead of going for a career as lacking in financial reward and respect as being a Community College or University Professor. You have to have motivations other than the Almighty Buck to put up with all the crap you get teaching for the money you make.
Then again, Kenneth Starr's the Dean of Pepperdine's College of Law, as I pointed out in an earlier post.
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
The radical professors are _allowed_ to be there by the incompetent administrators of our universities. I mean, the stupidity has reach epidemic proportions. If you saw "Stupid In America" on 20/20 the other week, you know what I mean.
Think of it this way. If you go to McDonald's (food jokes aside), and you get consistently bad service, unclean tables, and horrific restrooms, who's to blame? It's the manager, of course. If you go the post office, and it's really slow, it's because the manager is not running a tight ship. Well, in the academic world, the administrators are the managers, and they need a serious kick in the ass by Donald Trump.
As a current student at UCLA I've found that most of the professors are left-leaning and do indeed every now and then tell a Bush joke or make a reference to politics. But you know what? That's to be expected. Hell, in high school during senior year they teach you in AP Econ that people who go to college become more left-leaning, and that a better education correlates to becoming more liberal. I expected there to be more liberalism at UCLA, and I was right. As a liberal on social issues and conservative on economic issues, I think it's important to get information from both political sides, but I don't think the appropriate way to do that is to go about slandering the other. I realize that being a Bush supporter and attending a class where the teacher jabs at the President may be demoralizing, but isn't part of the college experience to learn how to cope with people who don't believe in the same thing as you do? Granted you shouldn't bring in too much politics into a classroom where it doesn't belong (like CS), but I think it's important for the professor to be able to say what they feel. Even if you disagree it at least gives him or her more personallity and they become more interesting.
I'm glad someone else brought this up... I had a pre-Renaissance Europeean History Class where the prof used to come to class in an Israeli Commando uniform and spent a quarter of the course (6 of 24 class periods) talking about the Holocaust.
I later saw a prof who described herself as a "Soviet-style Communist" (and ironically had spent much of her youth with her parents in a Soviet-run Gulag in Kazakhstan) who one day went on a class long rant about the inherent evil nature of people of Germanic descent... and implied that the high crime rate in our city was largely because of it's large German-American population. She went on an unannounced "leave of absence" after that for the rest of the semester, so I'm assuming somebody complained.
I couldn't agree more. I had a philosophy (- biggest mistake in my academic history) teacher that insisted that liberalism, and then ultimately, communism was the only government that could ever possibly work in the long term. Redistribution of wealth was necessary for the United States to survive. Lots of people would sit and listen to her, then talk about how enlightening she was.
I couldn't stand it, and neither could a conservative friend of mine. She would spout her liberal happy place nonsense, and then we would hipcheck her back to reality. When she insisted communism was the only form of government that would ever last, we pointed out how long it did last. When she pointed out that capitalism "discriminates" against people that are not capable of working high paying jobs, we pointed out that communism discriminates against those that are.
The real problem with wealth redistribution is that it takes away from the most capable of society to give to the least. The reason capitalism works so well is that the people that are "discriminated" against, really aren't very capable of doing anything about it. The people that make the most money tend to be the smartest, most well adapted individuals. When you tell them they have to work in demanding fields for long hours to receive the same as the guy flipping burgers, these are the people that are capable of, and will ultimately, rise up and do something about it.
Leftist professors should leave there "political insight" at the door and teach the class.
You don't make the poor richer by making the rich poorer. - Winston Churchill
Fascism is about corporate rule, not the people's government. Look it up sometime.
... and then they built the supercollider.
Do you have examples of forceful tactics being employed? If not, I don't think the analogy holds.
In fact, if it's only words and pictures, it seems like mostly valid criticism. Of course we don't want anyone to resort to harassment (or worse), but I see no evidence of that yet.
Many political groups do engage in various forms of harassment, such as posting names/addresses online to encourage a barrage of hate mail upon the person. However, that's not happening here, unless you have information to the contrary.
Social scientists are inspired by theories; scientists are humbled by facts.
from the official site "Do you have a professor who just can't stop talking about President Bush, about Howard Dean, about the war in Iraq, about MoveOn.org, about the Republican Party, about the Democratic Party, or any other ideological issue that has nothing to do with the class subject matter? It doesn't matter whether this is a past class, or your ongoing class this winter quarter" What do they plan to accomplish after collecting people's money? Fire these teachers? Create some huge protest?
Ronald Reagan made a big deal about his public religiosity, although to be fair, not as much as George W. Bush. So the first definition is right out. Reagan was also a major promoter of conventional morality, at least as defined by his Religious Right allies.
I think this prof isn't a liberal...he's an asshat who needs to take some remedial reading for comprehension courses.
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
I believe you are right, that McCarthy's targets were not, even in light of later evidence, Soviet spies. The problem, however, is that what we know now, not only from Venona but from the brief access the West enjoyed to the Soviet archives in the early 90s, is that there were as many Soviet spies as McCarthy shrieked about high in American policy-making circles, and the the CPUSA was run by the KGB, and not just a domestic political party, and there was just as much reason to be concerned as McCarthy hysterically claimed.
The guy was an alcoholic paranoid nutcase, personally loathesome, and he fingered the wrong people. But on the general point, that the US was far too complacent about Soviet infiltration and subversion, he was, alas, dead right. Just because the messenger is a fruitcake doesn't mean the message is wrong.
I think your analogy is not quite right. For one thing, a conversation I have with my boss is private by definition. But a lecture given in a giant public lecture hall by someone whose salary is paid by my taxes is quite another thing.
Look at this way: do you think it equally troubling that newsmen and members of the general public might tape record the speeches of other public employees, like your Congressman or the Governor? Even if those speeches are later posted to blogs and used to criticize the guy?
Part of the bottom line here is that when your salary for speaking is paid by the citizens, you give up most of your rights to keep that speech private. I think professors at a public university have almost no reasonable expectations of privacy during their lectures. If they really don't like that, the solution is simple: give back the nice money to the citizens, and go work for a private organization supported by private money.
According to TFA, this man is neither a government agent nor a university employee. He is just exercising his freedom. Should we condemn him for it? If he does something illegal, then prosectute him. If he does something that should be illegal, then a citizen or member of congress should propose legislature to make it so. Just like your expression of scepticism is protected by the first amendment, so is this man's exposition of professors whose views he believes are radical. If he turns over this information to the public and the press, then we will be able to judge for ourselves, and the professors themselves will speak more cautiously regarding their personal opinions. When I was in high school, i had plenty of teachers espousing fringe positions and advocating them to every student who sat in their classrooms. This is dangerous because the teacher is viewed as an expert who illuminates the material in the curriculum, and many students, even 18- and 19-year olds, have difficulty separating fact from opinion in the context of a lecture. Just as it is wonderful to have a debate in the public square about gasoline prices or environmental issues, it is great to talk about what is being taught in schools, so that the citizens who vote for school boards and legislatures can determine the curriculum and the teaching methods in their children's schools. This really is about freedom of speech, allowing people to bring information to the public so that the people can be informed voters.
So where does the US government stop nowadays? It stops and starts (or should) at the same place it always did - an informed electorate.
There are 10 kinds of people in the world: That averages about 660,000,000 of each kind.
No, I think the problem is in the books for some classes. There are just some courses that have very biased books-- "Capitalism and the Environment" was mentioned above, and I've seen some really bad women's studies stuff. In no case was the professor biased or a bad person, it was just that the material sucked.
Fundamentally it comes down to an issue of educational resources deeming a correct answer to very subjective questions, while only presenting a very narrow viewpoint. I don't think playing "The Final Solution to the Biased Teacher Question" is going to change anything, even a pretty reasonable professor is gonna have a tough time when the underlying material is crap.
Maybe there a few really biased profs out there, but it seems to me like there are already systems in place to deal with that. But when the books themselves are biased nothing can be done because the money's already been spent. There is no resolution. And in some cases pretty much all the books on the subject are total crap, at least from what I've seen.
[...] the whole political spectrum concept is the wrong paradigm for approaching the problem of dysfunctional [...]
Bingo!
From someone who was around during the Reagan years, just wanted to point out that under Reagan's tax cuts, government revenue did increase significantly. So you can't blame deficits on tax cuts that had the effect of increasing revenues.
The problem was that government spending under a Democrat controlled congress and your mentioned military initiatives managed to increase faster most years.
The party of stupid and the party of evil get together and do something both stupid and evil, then call it bipartisan.
Cash bounties seem a tad over the line, to me.
Isn't Churchill that guy who lied about being a Native American? Is that sort of thing widely respected?
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
So, if someone disagrees with you, they're easily reducible to a cultural stereotype? Man, that's harsh.
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
... that whatever the influence of signing statements in the past, they're not the place to say things like, "I will obey and uphold the law, unless I decide that I won't."
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
This whole movement of intimidating and targeting professors is nothing new. I go to Columbia, and last year there was major upheaval within the Middle East Language and Culture department after a special interest Jewish group http://www.davidproject.org/ made a video accusing professors of discriminating against pro-Israeli students. Following the video, lots of professors received death threats, conservative NY newspapers demanded the university fire them, etc. They appeared before a university committee reviewing their actions, which found that it was in fact the exact opposite, certain students, encouraged by the "David Project," were intimidating the professors.
The pattern I see here is a movement where conservatives (in the current sense of the word) are starting to be whiny bitches, a traditionally liberal occupation (and believe me, at Columbia, there is no shortage of whiny liberal bitches). Conservatives now don't want to hear opinions other than their own, and are using their new power to make it happen. I have honestly never been so disgusted with the state of American education, where special interest groups are allowed to interfere with private universities.
Students have a right to a respectful classroom environment, but this is not a question of intimidation. This is a question of students being bitches when they hear things they don't like. In my opinion, the solution is for those students who are uncomfortable hearing things they don't like to either grow a pair or get out. No one is forcing them to attend a certain college, and a private university is not required to heed students' demands concerning curricula or ideological presentation.
So Bush is the "smartest, most well adapted individual"? He must be to have gotten to be President. It couldnt have been his father's influence and his money, he was such a studious student all his life, no boozing at all
yup, our system is the best, no flaws at all
I read http://www.uclaprofs.com/profs/kellner.html, the "Radical of the Week" and I thought they made him seem like a great guy. They thoroughly skewered their own viewpoint and revealed how mindless their politics is.
"Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery?" - Patrick Henry
"They spend entire lecture sessions discussing how Bush has ruined the country."
Would you rather they spend the entire lecture session on their cell phone?
Welcome to university, it's called "tenure."
Not saying it's not true, but when I "look it up" at places like Merriam-Webster, I see a lot about "government" and nothing about "corporate".
Why is there an "insightful" mod and why isn't it "-1"? If I wanted insight, I wouldn't be reading
This is demonstrably false. Just look at how new york city votes. There aren't eight million academics in NYC. But there are an awful lot of business people. I think the real issue is the rural/urban divide. Population density corrolates very strongly with voting patterns. I think academics, especially in the humanities, tend to be more liberal poltically. Which makes it appear to someone in a more conservative sector that liberals==academics and conservative==private sector. But it isn't like that. People in very conservative areas really only encounter liberals in an academic setting, mostly because people who choose to teach have little choice in where they live. You might teach at a small liberal arts school in the south, surrounded by very conservative southern baptists, but you have a phd in Gender studies from berkley.
Sig removed because it was obnoxious
That's an interesting comment coming from someone who starts out by telling us McCarthy was right. Talk about being surrounded by lunatics....
But it's a cash bounty for actual evidence. What's wrong with that? If you're studying the university, you can either try to take the classes yourself, which is impractical for a variety of reasons, or just ask someone else to collect the evidence for you. Seems logical to me, although it is a little strange, I'll give you that.
Social scientists are inspired by theories; scientists are humbled by facts.
I thought that guy was bald....
The parent has made their point very badly (imho). Fascism is not about government vs. corporate rule, it's simply the mode of government. However, government is whoever governs, not necessarily who was ostensibly elected, and if you want to say that corporations govern then it's perfectly reasonable to say that corporations can be fascist.
In so far as corporations have power over your life, you can debate whether that power is fascist. Given the amount of lobbying and law buying that's been going on in the USA, it's reasonable to say that corporations do form part of the "government" in the sense of who holds the power.
Aide-toi, le Ciel t'aidera - Jeanne D'Arc.
I am no professor, but I hold lectures and keep lab practices from time to time at a university, and oh, I don't live in the US. On my lectures I only talk about the topic and about my subject, nothing else, even if asked about something not connected I tell them to keep the question till after the lecture. Ain't no way someone could record me saying anything about policital, philosophical or religious matters - not that anyone would want to. Still, I don't like the idea this Andrew Jones fellow pursues. Anyway, who is this guy thinking that he is the right person to question what a profesor is talking about during his own lecture time ? If one professor is so often way out of line and out of topic people will undoubtedly hear about it after a while and if it's against university policy then probably something will be done against it.
Other than this, I only think this Andrew Jones guy is just behaving like the society he grew up in, probably thinking that he has right to do everything. Also, he has a fairly easy job since generally no matter how you address political, religious, philosophical, etc. topics, you will probably clash into some crowd who will want to hang you on the first tree. So it's probably the safest not to talk at all. --- Quite familiar situation, but I guess for most americans it won't sound that familiar (no fear, modding can't disturb my sleep).
I wouldn't want to live in a society where people have to think a dozen times over every sentence they want to speak out loud in fear somebody will smack them.
I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all I can think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do.
You forgot: 5b.) Write a book which does nothing but rehash old ideas and a few new buzzwords and hit the lecture circuit.
1 is the square root of all evil.
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.
It just goes to show that the old adage is quite true. Those who can, do. Those who can't, teach. Those who can't teach, teach gym.
I've run into people like her before and without exception they have all been some of the most delusional people I've ever met. Their capacity for intellectual dishonesty is truly astounding. These are the kinds of people who could, if it served their ideological committment, say with all sincerity that night is day and up is down.
Barnum said that you can fool all of the people some of the time, some of the people all of the time, but you can't fool all of the people all of the time. To this I would like to add that fooling leftists is not necessary since leftists fool themselves.
Muslim community leaders warn of backlash from tomorrow morning's terrorist attack.
I would argue that such tirades are even less appropriate within the context of a poly sci class. Those who devote their lives to the study of politics and the political process should know better than to fall victim to brain-dead partisanship. Unfortunately some 95% of poly sci professors self-identify themselves as Democrats. This is a big part of the reason that the humanities in general, and poly-sci in particular, have fallen into decay and disrepute. When an endeavor of the intellect is so thoroughly infected with intellectual dishonesty, failure is the inevitable result.
Muslim community leaders warn of backlash from tomorrow morning's terrorist attack.
... Germany in 1933 Nazi students made lists of "jewish", "anti-german" and "communist" professors. A lot of these professors lost their jobs after the take over, some later "disappeared". Amerika, wehre den Anfängen!
Your logic is flawed. ID says that the *physical* world could not have naturally developed. God is outside the physical world. We can only know God by what He has chosen to reveal to us, making it very difficult for us, constrained to the physical world, to put any soft of scientific test on God.
To me, trying to figure out how life originated it outside the realm of science. So far science has been unable to reproduce the phenomena. Stick to what we do know. We know that external forces can cause changes in *living* organisms. This is otherwise known as natural selection. Anything beyond that is speculation.
...then there will be battles to control ideas.
Because big-government types (among whom I number as many Republicans as Democrats, and Bush is among the worst) have wrecked the limited state and turned it into electoral dictatorship, people genuinely have something to fear. Conservatives fear that liberals will intrude with tax, nationalization and bureaucracy. Liberals fear that conservatives will make church compulsory and happiness illegal. Therefore they struggle and polarize, and hate one another. Nothing less than total annihilation will suffice!
Libertarians like me look on and think "make the state powerless, and there'd be no need to brawl over the remote control".
To me, trying to figure out how life originated it outside the realm of science. So far science has been unable to reproduce the phenomena. Stick to what we do know.
I'm sure you could have said the same thing about physics and the structure of matter 150 years ago. Odd, how we science actually learned about those things. See that is the difference between religion and science, science actively tries to fill in what it doesn't know while religion covers it up. We're not sure about many things; science doesn't claim to be right in any case, simply be the best answer(s) we have at this moment.
It's also utterly stupid to say that because we haven't in 100 years been able to reproduce what took nature billions of years, god must have done it. We also can't recreate the moon or an asteroid (or the sun) but we cans till say how it formed.
We know that external forces can cause changes in *living* organisms. This is otherwise known as natural selection. Anything beyond that is speculation.
You should tell that to the ID people, they're the ones who somehow got it into their heads that evolution deals with something more than everything after life began (ie: the first cell). ID supporters are challenging evolution, they are challenging the premise of natural selection NOT the theories (and there are various ones) about how life formed. There is a difference, maybe you should go look into it before making opinions on issues.
If the best you can do is an ad hominem attack, I mourn for the death of your last brain cell.
Face facts. Your government (and mine, in Australia) are taking on fascist traits at a disturbing rate.
What a long, strange trip it's been.
"Unstable" implies a state of being. That makes it not nothing anymore. There is regression here. Add enough science and anything sounds reasonable, even everything coming from the absence of anything.
My argument makes no mention of a deity. Whether your particular flavor of deity exists and its nature is an entirely different matter -- one that I will be happy to debate with you in a more appropriate medium.
My logic is not flawed. My argument specifically addressed whether Intelligent Design is science: It is NOT. The reason for that is because ID either posits a supernatural designer and thus is outside the realm of science, or requires a natural designer that, by the premise on which ID is founded, does not require design, making the "theory" self-contradictory.
To me, trying to figure out how life originated it outside the realm of science.
You are, of course, entitled to your opinion.
Whether the origin of the physical world is pushed into the past of the physical world or into a spirit world doesn't really matter.
Stick to what we do know.
We know a physical world exists, we don't know that a spirit world exists.
The fact is that all versions of the "watchmaker argument" have this weakness, scientific materialism may not have an answer either - but at least it doesn't fall back on mystical knowledge to fill in the blanks.
[Set Cain on fire and steal his lute.]
Well, for one, as stated in the article it's a cash bounty for illegally redistributing the professor's intellectual property. Universities make a lot of money off taped lectures.
Jesus was hated by the traditionalists of the rabbinic law because he clearly stated that they were unnecessary and even harmful in many cases.
Even the "Caesar to Caesar" story you mention is an example of preaching rebellion to authority. Defying the authority of the Roman Imperial cult was a serious crime punishable by death - and that is the message of "Caesars things to Caesar (taxes) and God's things to God (worship).
Anyway, way OT here, but if you bother to actually read the bible you would find that many of the teachings of Jesus were in direct opposition to the established powers of the world at that time.
[Set Cain on fire and steal his lute.]
"This black list was nothing to joke about. People lost their lives, lost their businesses, lost their homes, and were falsely jailed."
/ 01/news/wyoming/8cf263f85d4be99387256f3e0020f92f.t xt [casperstartribune.net]
k er-blacklist.html [upenn.edu]
e r6.htm [uiuc.edu]
s m.htm [schoolnet.co.uk]
"Give one example?"
Only one?
Suicide:
"On Feb. 9, 1950, in Wheeling, W.Va., McCarthy claimed that there were 205 known communists in the State Department. Later on the Senate floor, he reduced this number to 57. That led to the House Un-American Activities Committee hearings and McCarthy's continued attacks.
In 1951, Hunt noted that "there have been many suicides due to the smearing received either in Committee hearings or from remarks made in the United States Congress." He introduced a bill providing for lawsuits against the United States for those who were defamed by members of Congress. The bill did not receive enough support."
http://www.casperstartribune.net/articles/2004/11
Lost Jobs:
"Yale Law School professor Ralph Brown, who conducted the most systematic survey of the economic damage of the McCarthy era, estimated that roughly ten thousand people lost their jobs. Such a figure may be low, as even Brown admits, for it does not include rejected applicants, people who resigned under duress, and the men and women who were ostensibly dismissed for other reasons. Still, it does suggest the scope of the economic sanctions."
http://www.writing.upenn.edu/~afilreis/50s/schrec
Frightened Students:
"In the late 1950s a group of graduate students at the University of Chicago wanted to have a coffee vending machine installed outside the Physics Department for the convenience of people who worked there late at night. They started to circulate a petition to the Buildings and Grounds Department, but their colleagues refused to sign. They did not want to be associated with the allegedly radical students whose names were already on the document."
http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/mccarthy/schreck
More:
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAmccarthyi
Not convinced?
Do a google search on McCarthism + Blacklist
This has been another valuable and informative opinion from:
Catahoula!
The point is not merely that a professor's grading habits may be influenced by his biases. Of course they are. If that were the only problem, a prof's academic integrity would be a suitable counterbalance.
It's not professors having opinions that is the problem. It's that expressing those opinions creates a herd mentality in the classroom. Disagreeing with those opinions means fighting the herd, something a young person finds difficult, and should not be forced, to do.
The problem is the environment. The professor is an authority with the full weight of the presumed wisdom of a civilization behind him, and the students are paying to receive knowledge from him. Students expect to learn, and have to have open minds to get the most out of their studies. Students shouldn't have to filter the chaff of political opinion from the grain of truth with which it's presented.
Raise your children as if you were teaching them to raise your grandchildren, because you are.
a public and private good, get back to us and we can have a real discussion.
For example, except in the case of communicable diseases, your health is a private matter. Benefits clearly flow to you and those you choose to share them with. This would be contrasted by something like defense. I cannot purchase or consume defense separately from you. Defense is a public good - one that is inherently shared by everyone.
Public goods should be in the realm of government, because individuals have no incentive to fund them adequately. Private goods, like health care or retirement insurance, have little or no externality and government intrusion is unnecessary.
There is no reason for government to fund higher education. If it does this anyway, it damned well better do it under strict conditions of political neutrality.
I dunno, but having "right-thinking" students running around enforcing idealogical correctness is not my idea of fair. It creates a feeling of fear - and stops the kind of free-wheeling debate that you need to break out of the provincial attitudes you can pick up in America these days.
Anyway - to hell with both of those labels. They don't mean anything anymore - they are buzzwords that are used to identify political opponents. I'd rather have some fuming crypto-Fascist idealogue as a professor than some limp know-nothing. At least the idealogue will force you to think - even if it's only to argue with him.
But the kids of the elite don't want to learn how to fight - and don't want to challenge authority directly. Instead, they want to run home and cry to Daddy, and have their parents fix it for them.
Unpopular opinions are absolutely critical in a college. And it's the students' responsibility to do something about it - organize a picket of the professor's class or something, for God's sakes. That would let people know that there is a real problem with this professor, and the media circus, if well managed, is just as effective. This program sounds like East Germany.
Why can't I mod "-1 Idiot"?
Half the day or thereabouts should be core curriculum. The other have should be up to the school. If some kids want to study extra science, some music, some Satan worship - go ahead.
The article talks about resignations from the group's 'advisory board' which implies that the board is part of the group, they are apparently missing something.
I first read about this yesterday here and according to them that 'group' has one registered member, Andrew Jones.
Group?
Mielipiteet omiani - Opinions personal, facts suspect.
Nice rant. Tell me, is there some reason you don't propose any solution to the orginal problem?
I like the way you say that the professors are better than the people pay for evidence of misconduct. Yes, people who abuse their positions to further their political causes are much better than the people who try to stop them. I am sure you are against pay police informants, foreign spies, and the like.
Comparing this to McCarthyism, is the pot calling the kettle black. McCarthyism involved a goup of people abusing their positions and authority to further their politcal causes. Wait... lets see... Professors abusing their position... Senators abusing their powers... I see a connection, just not the one you throwing out to add emotion to the debate.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
Is it just coincidental that the best and brightest minds are almost always liberals?
I see it all too clear that the righties will try to force all the liberals out of their university posts. Too me, this will be like trying to keep the gays out of seminary.
-------- -------- Support Wesley Clark for president!!!
Republicans stand for unfettered greed and a social darwinism that is based on survival of the theft-iest.
They only TOLD us these other things to get into office. Once they have all the reigns of power, they show their true stripes.
Fiscal responsibility???? I don't think so. They support hamstringing the IRS to audit their chronies while at the same time launching jihads against poor people who RIGHTFULLY claim the earned income tax deduction.
Support the military??? I don't think so. They support unending warfare and bloated defense contracts for political cronies.
Against abortion???? I have yet to see this congress vote on an anti-abortion amendment. Republicans only care that they have the abortion issue to harp on. They certainly don't care about abortion in the Marianas islands where sweatshop owners FORCE women into abortion.
The Republican party is just a conglomeration of liars and thiefs. They NEVER stood for ANYTHING!!!!
-------- -------- Support Wesley Clark for president!!!
Take the whole thing and leave them cakeless.
That's the real game, isn't it?
Gotta love it when you are attacked for speaking your mind. Did we just teleport back to the 50's or what?
---- Booth was a patriot ----
And I'm not sure who here actually looked up his website, but you might want to consider something. He claims to only be going after Professors who bring their strong ideology to the classroom and push it onto their students. Even though that's the claim, you're forced to wonder why his site has posted a page with a listing of what "radical" petitions various professors have signed. (Of course signing a petition against impeaching Clinton means you're a pinko!) So now professors' private actions outside of the lecture hall are subject to scrutiny as well?
Jones' claim that he just wants more ideological equality in the classroom is completely transparent. He wants to merely subject professors whose views he doesn't agree with to scrutiny and hopefully silencing.
I only had ONE class by an open socialist. And he was fairly unabashed about it.
Beyond that, I'm not sure exactly how much communism you can get from a math or engineering professor.
I think what we see on Universities are a rich diversity of viewpoints through various extra-cirriculur activities. This in essense is considered "leftist" as righties typically seek to get their way by limiting people's options.
"Fair and Balanced" means a person who espouses your viewpoints and disparages the other. They schew you view.
Their are PLENTY of activities on college campuses that espouse right-wing views. And you will find that pretty much EVERY campus is very supportive of such groups speaking their peace and meeting on their campus. That is a LIBERAL idea, that everyone should be able to express themselves.
The true bias on college campuses is that students gravitate towards new ideas. They've already had the traditional stuff crammed down their throat. College is for experimentation (and drinking
Conservatives shouldn't worry about higher education as deep down we all have a knuckle dragging egocentric caveman inside us just waiting to be nurtured by some hate spewing evangelist like Anne Coulter or Sean Hannity. The urge to be a didactic simpleton is very strong and must be CONSTANTLY fought with reason and compassion.
Conservatives have lazy minds and simple human greed on their side. You shouldn't really need to worry about communist computer science profs (or right wing economics professors for that matter).
-------- -------- Support Wesley Clark for president!!!
Yes, I'm sure you would like to have an Alan Colmes at EVERY University.
BTW, the ONLY professor I've ever had political discussions with was a Poli-Sci professor. In that case, the man was openly socialist and I would listen skeptically.
Music professor, I would have music discussions. CS professors, I would have CS discussions, etc... I think you'll find that most professors are pretty confident of their viewpoints and have no need to get students to agree with them. I think that MOST would consider debating some uninformed, wet behind the ears teenager about politics would consider that "a waste of time".
When some kid tries to draw ME into a political discussion, I consider THAT a waste of time. Invariably, I just distract them without addressing the issue.
-------- -------- Support Wesley Clark for president!!!
This sounds like the way the Nazis injected their amazingly stupid notions of Aryanism and anti-Semetism into every subject and EVERY class.
If members of the legislature would like to engage kids in discussion, perhaps they should get a sub license and do it on the cheap. College professors are supposed to be teaching their subjects.
-------- -------- Support Wesley Clark for president!!!
Good grief.
You said: "Small government conservatism is personified by Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan, and is also represented by libertarians. However, there are other types of conservatives."
You should listen to Norm Chomsky on this, he clearly states that Reagan, et. al., were big government's best friend.
I'm not sure why people believe Reagan was a good president --- he was absolutely NO LIBERTARIAN, in fact he eroded personal liberties as he expanded Federal and State governments. The growth was unprecedented and he increased the tax burden of the average American many fold.
In a sense, you, like most Americans have been royally hoodwinked.
Free iPod?
"We've been attacked by the intelligent, educated segment of the culture."
-- Ray Mummert, creationist from Dover, Pennsylvania, 2005
*"Cogito Ergo Liberalis"*
There exists the "data" that university professors are more liberal then the "average" and that as a result, students are exsposed to a bias - more liberalism then average, and that this is wrong.
There are so many logical flaws, this is, like joelonsoftware likes to say, a good test for hiring bright people
who ran these surveys that show univ profs to be moreliberal
is this because tenured ups are able to speak their mind, and company employees are not, and the situation is not that ups are more liberal, but that the rampant liberalism of the avg american is chained by corporate bosses
is the liberlism of ups based on facts, as opposed to factless consevatism (fox news viewers thinking saddam = osama)
Virutally ever major institution in our society - exec branch, congress, judiciary - is overwhelmingly more conservative then us pop (polls show most americans favor universal govt health care; both dems and gop against; therefore govt more conservative then avg)
the press is overwhelmingly conservative (eg, the supposedly liberal ny times recently said, without any source, that cheap imports and loss of jobs is a net plus for us consumers - says who what data ?)
I could go on, but the bottom line is that a vrwc (vast right wing conspiracy) does in fact exist, and it is waging war on the american people, to transform our economy into one where employment is mostly cooks and butlers to the super wealthy
Creationism was a fairy tale. It is religion. Religion and science have a nice boundry as long as you can differentiate the issues of WHAT and WHY? Science doesn't have to have a deeper meaning, it just is how things work.
The reason is that intelligent design is a religion masquerading as a mish-mash of bad science whose sole purpose is to cast stones at modern biology. It is congnitive dissonance that teaches people to put their desires and needs over reason. One has to turn their brain into mush before they can accept intelligent design in an informed fashion.
This is what ANY cult does. They force their members to accept a myriad of conflicting rules and ideologies that are so farsicle to reason that it makes them succeptible to any degree of social programming.
-------- -------- Support Wesley Clark for president!!!
He was appointed, actually.
Find your friends!
So I suppose that he should also be advocating forcing the economics department to employ openly enthusiastic advocates of Marxist planned economies???
Perhaps we should force theologians to take classes on athiesm.
Maybe ROTC students should be forced to pasifism seminars.
-------
Yes they have a lot to be opposed to from this group. These people have spent their life dedicated to their subjects and they want the ability to teach them instead of having to dribble out right wing talking points and allow paid disruptors masquerading as students to shut down teaching any subject objectionable to the right wing.
The right wingers are taking more and more chapters out of the Nazi playbook.
-------- -------- Support Wesley Clark for president!!!
By this, I don't mean he's a satanacist. An effective professor will challenge the student REGARDLESS of the students position. ESPECIALLY if the student agrees with him.
-------- -------- Support Wesley Clark for president!!!
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
In a philsophy course, that may very well be the case.
In a History or poli-sci course, I think you'll find that some ideological students will often lean on traditional urban myths that cannot be justified. A professor will try to show them the difference but they'll keep parroting these nonsense data points.
You are entitled to your own opinions, but you are not entitled to your own facts. Professors have typically read enough scholarly papers to know the difference.
For example, if you wrote a paper about George Washington that talked about how the Cherry Tree incident influenced his character you would probably receive a poor grade because you relied on popular urban myths instead of doing research.
This is the point at which conservative synchopantic students get confused. It is not enough to muse on how bad the veitcong was in order to justify your opinions. You have to cite FACTS from scholarly sources instead of relying on personal sentiments (or the afore-mentioned bogus data points).
I think you'll find that philosiphy and history teachers really LIKE debating an informed counterpart. And they will very much appreciate engaging opposing viewpoints as this is the core of liberalism.
However, a students lecture on the problems of evolution to a biology teacher is a discussion probably best left to office hours.
-------- -------- Support Wesley Clark for president!!!
The worst thing about it, though, is that it's a cycle of positive reinforcement -- some (particularly susceptible) people start the leader worship (etc.) and incite others to "join them or else." Then as more and more people join, the pressure on everyone else increases such that even moderate and reasoned people get caught up in it, and at that point it can only be stopped by some kind of revolutionary force (e.g. World War 2).
In other words, unless reasoned, dispassionate people take steps to prevent the degeneration in the first place -- before most people see anything wrong -- the slide into full-blown fascism is inevitable. The only question is, is it already too late?
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
Stick to what we do know.
You intelligent design guys are SOOOOO self contradictory. If you would stick to what you KNOW, you wouldn't claim that life must have been directed by an intelligence. You would just say that you do not know.
Intelligent Design is religion disguised as bad science.
-------- -------- Support Wesley Clark for president!!!
The post by Sharp'r' is mostly accurate. Unfortanately, you were not around to witness the Reagan administration for yourself, so perhaps you are too easily convinced by the ridiculous "MsGeek" post. The Republican party before Reagan didn't care about serious tax cuts and reduction of government. They have always been an entrenched interest in Washington, with their own pork barrel agendas. Hell, Bush Sr. didn't believe in lowering taxes. He thought it would result in decreased revenues (and thus a higher deficit). Reagan argued for lower taxes (which led to increased tax revenues, look at the figures for yourself, and compare 1980-1989). He argued for less government and less government spending. That, he didn't manage to get through as well, due to pork barrel politicians wanting to bring home the bacon, and massive, politically entrenched entitlement programs.
"when it looked like nuclear war between the US and the Soviet Union was right around the corner all the time"
I can vouch that the above line is horsecrap. Excepting some hysterics amongst those on the far left, people were more confident about our ability to defend ourselves against the "Red Menace" than ever before. Much of this confidence was a result of Reagan's strong backbone, and his willingness to show it to the Soviets. He proved his technique, dissolved the embargos, and proposed and signed the first Nuclear *reduction* (not limitation) treaty (S.T.A.R.T.), convincing Gorby to do the same.
This is why this Alumnus is trying to get free speech into the university. Because if I was the student, and "MsGeek" were the professor, I would probably get a lower grade after this post for "not understanding the issues".
Vidar
The brains of a chicken, coupled with the claws of two eagles, may well hatch the eggs of our destruction.
Science's dirty little secret is that they have no idea where anything came from. Anyone who tells you differently is selling something.
Science's plain in your face assertion is that it really isn't concerned. Science is the process of defining the natural world as it IS. It is doesn't care WHY it is.
The problem of the Cleric is that they believe they can find the definitive solution to everything in their moldy old tomes. They cannot accept the notion that creation itself is a better source of revelation than prophets.
I'll go one further. If you believe in creationism, you're a satanist. If you believe in intelligent design, your a satanist. The right wings arguments are typically that all these bones left in the dirt are just "demonic deceptions". This would imply that Satan has more power than god to affect natural revelation. If you believe that Satan is more powerful, you're a Satanist.
-------- -------- Support Wesley Clark for president!!!
Methinks you need a polisci class - there's no relationship between fascism and capitalism.
If you notice, there's no mention there of economic policy *except* that of "stringent socioeconomic controls" which would be dead-set *against* capitalism. Not saying that unbridled capitalism is the best thing necessarily, but that it's a tad over-the-top to say that it leads to fascism. That comparison is way overdone here on slashdot.
Multi-culturalism is not a scientific theory. It's a social programmed designed to brake down the walls of racism in our society.
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"but clearly the intention is to curb the professor's freedom to promote her own views. "
i dont care LESS if a professor wants to PROMOTE their views. Its when they force their views on students, who are there to learn, be moulded, are open to plug in your ideals. If a professor held a debate with an opposing person, or gave a lecture in a public area, great, more power to him!
It is when the professor assigns an essay where you must talk about [insert political party], and anything else will get you a lesser, or in extreme cases, failing grade, even if you did A+ work on the essay itself. Stuff like this happens in ENGLISH class, no less! what does grammar have to do with political view?
yap
perfect. Once again i must flex my mighty brain and suggest a plan that works. Try this: A. Create classes where science becomes "science". Examples might include Intro to I.D. Biology 101, Flat Earth Theory 201, etc. B. Students who wish to be I.D. majors can fullfill their requirements with these classes. Students who wish to pursue normal classes may choose normal classes. C. Take with a small dose of LSD and repeat...
This goes to the heart of the REAL issue that conservatives are mimicking.
This is not a political issue. It's a TEACHING issue and it really has no bias.
Teachers being inappropriate in class is nothing new. Institutions just need good mechanisms to deal with this. It will NOT help for right wing groups to come in and try to nitpick everything a professor says. It will just make it harder for the Dean to discriminate between legitamite complaints (as listed above) and right-wing students baiting professors into off-topic discussions.
-------- -------- Support Wesley Clark for president!!!
Isn't it a shame that the most outspoken people always percieve bias the strongest??? Or is their a statistical bias of perception there???
-------- -------- Support Wesley Clark for president!!!
They say they're looking for idealogues on either side of the perspective, but the likelihood of finding a coservative at UCLA makes this look like the Massachussetts health care law. Yeah, it covers everything, but it's intended to cover only one thing.
I don't have time in a geology course for the professor to invite a guest lecturer in to extoll the evils of George W. Bush, and to continue to use classtime each day to discuss the same on his own (but without the expert witness). But that's what has happened. Some students and professors want to spend their time protesting; let them skip class and not teach class that semester. Some students want to spend their time learning about a particular subject; don't tease them by entitling the course "geology" and switching the topic to politics. I guess liberals aren't in support of honesty just as much as the Republicans they criticize.
What if all doctors decided that instead of saving patients, it was more important to teach them about liberalism? Well God bless their protest-mindedness, but get me another doctor! Not everyone ranks pushing a political agenda as high as others, and I'd appreciate the opportunity to avoid those who think that politics (and their particular form) are the answer to all the woes of the world. It's the same shit but a different can. But you are self-righteous about your can of shit, and hence you don't have to teach me (or be honest with me) about anything; to almost all political activists I have encountered, the end justifies the means. And then people who want to identify those professors who rank politics above learning as "political activists" are called "nazis" to try to keep them at bay. Hahahaha. Which label is more inciteful? Hahahahaha.
If Andy Kauffmen were alive today, I think he'd be Bill O'Reilly. His right wing spew disguised as objective pragmatism outdoes even John Stossel.
Above all things, Bill O'Reilly is a liar. He lies about EVERYTHING. When he doesn't have a lie pre-prepared he makes one up.
He has a good shtick, I'll give him that. He is absoluetly hypnotic. I hate his guts and he pulls me in sometimes before I realize that he is the god of deception.
My best analogy to him would be Thulsa Doom. Conan know's he's an asshole who killed his girlfriend. But at the end, there is a point where Thulsa whips out that snake tongue of his and he ALMOST convinces Conan to be his son. Than Conan cuts his head off. If we all could only be more like Conan (ESPECIALLY Arnold Schwarzenneger).
-------- -------- Support Wesley Clark for president!!!
Intelligent Design isn't a scientific theory either, but a (particularly lame) attempt at injecting religious dogma into the world of science. What is Multiculturalism? Whatever it is, it fosters the idea that a mulicultural society is somehow better than a monocultural one. As to multicultural societies, there is no guarantee that including various dissatisfied minorities will somehow make race tension disappear. Neither one of these views is particularly "scientific", neither one stands up to reason and neither one should be a part of a supposedly science based curriculum. Unfortunately US universities nowadays are abandoning the teaching of science ( viz. the college literacy thread). I don't know about you, but for me this is a recipe for tragedy, what with the US already having to import competent scientists and engineers.
Wow, you're right but you fail to understand what you say.
Say it with me again, " Correlation does not imply causation! "
Yes, people getting college degrees does not cause them to watch Jon Stewart.
But perhaps, just perhaps their exposure to diversity and complex ideas allow them to appreciate sarcasm and irony. Whereas people who live sheltered lives and who have only regurgitated the rhetoric they've been fed since they are 3 years old are more likely to see diversity as an attack on their person and their way of life.
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At the bare least multi-culturalism allows you to form your own bigotries based on peer interaction instead of relying on those projected by your elders.
Too often we form opinions on something we know nothing about. If we're going to have racists, at least they should be INFORMED racists.
Beyond that, it is a typical observation that people aren't so bad once you get to know them. That being said, it's just as easy to hate a black person for his personality as it is to hate an equally annoying white person. Than you have a choice to make. Is he annoying because he's black, or is he just an asshole?
-------- -------- Support Wesley Clark for president!!!
I am not an economist, but have read a bit about it. As far as I understand it, there is only one phylosophy that is supported by evidences. And this phylosophy doesn't seem to have a name around here, as it is different from left and right views, it is not completely liberal, nor completely authoritarian and so on.
Those labels you use at the US really make my head spin. But I'm quite confident that this phylosophy doesn't have a name there either.
Rethinking email
The flaw in your arguement is the phrase "generally some social good". An ideology is usually identified by what it considers a social good, or in some cases social evil. Politics exists because people duke it out over how to define what a social good is and what, if any, social good(s) they and their fellow humans ought to pursue.
"In a perfect world a large portion of America wouldn't have any voice in government at all, because they are so twisted, evil, judgmental, greedy, and vicious they should be locked away in pyschiatric wards."
What you're really saying is that people who don't agree with your viewpoints and your viewpoints alone are obviously crazy and should be disposed of to prevent dissent and trouble. Herr Hitler and Comrade Stalin proudly support you.
Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not entirely sure about the universe - Einstein
perhaps it's because those who are more conservative woule be more likely to go into insdustry. Don't confuse correlation with causation.
It has been statistically shown that helmets increase the risk of head injury.
They would employ fair use to distribute a very small portion of the lecture. There is no reason to redistribute an entire lecture. You can't use intellectual property laws to avoid scrutiny.
Social scientists are inspired by theories; scientists are humbled by facts.
You make some good points, but you assume that pressure on current professors is the only possible goal.
Perhaps the actual goal is to change hiring practices to create a more intellectually diverse set of professors. You don't need to strong-arm any current professors to do that.
It would be hard not to give views on ID if teaching biology
Huh? Biologists have been teaching biology without mentioning ID for the past couple millenia. I'm not sure that I understood your point here.
Social scientists are inspired by theories; scientists are humbled by facts.
Fascism is about corporate rule, not the people's government.
i sm
No corporation are at the mercy of the fascist government as well. Just like the citizens the corporations will only survive and prosper if they suck up and obey the dictator.
What has confused you is that in the same way that the nuts on the right call everyone communists, the nuts on the left call everyone fascists. They used to just call everyone nazis but then the audience blew them off as the nut cases they are. Dialing the rantings back to fascist helped the nut case's credibility.
Look it up sometime.
You should practice what you preach:
"A system of government marked by centralization of authority under a dictator, stringent *socioeconomic* controls, suppression of the opposition through terror and censorship, and typically a policy of belligerent nationalism and racism."
http://dictionary.reference.com/search?r=2&q=Fasc
In the future you may want the use AC when making posts that dumb.
...Using anti-copyright arguments to prevent the denunciators from recording the profs "UCLA spokesman Phil Hampton said the university planned to send Jones a letter warning him that faculty hold copyrights to all their course materials and that his campaign encouraged students to violate school policy." Sickening, when copyright law gets used to uphold freedom of speech.
They who would give up an essential liberty for temporary security, deserve neither liberty or security - Ben Franklin
I would gladly take that professor over my CS professor who goes on for hours about how a Saudi prince accused his wife of having an affair with my professor's warrant officer while the warrant officer was in another country at the time. Or how the Saudi prince then had his wife stoned to death just outside the U.S. compound. Or how that prince then went on to marry a twelve-year-old girl. Sometimes, he spends the entire class period doing nothing but verbally bashing Arabs. What does this have to do with CS?
He goes on about how some event that kills a large number of people in the northeast (a boating accident was one of the more prominent ones) is a good thing because it means fewer Democrats to kill. And he's not joking.
Or how "I've only known one gay guy. He fell out of our helicopter from a couple thousand feet up. A bullet hit him through his harness and broke it. At least, that's what the accident report said."
The sad part is that I'm being dead serious. I have a professor that actually does this. What's worse is that he's the only guy who teaches the higher level courses, so I've had to take some 25 semester-hours from him so far.
I don't care which party a professor supports as long as he doesn't talk about killing members of the other party on class time.
To me, trying to figure out how life originated it outside the realm of science.
Baloney. We already have some promising ideas in that direction.
Stick to what we do know.
If we stuck to what we know, we'd still be relatively weak gatherer-scavengers living on the savannahs and trying to avoid the lions.
"What we gonna do right here is go back *How far back?* Way back!"
You just got troll'd!
Well, individuals aren't important and are downplayed. Things are owned communally. Importance is placed on group identity. This is why communist regimes so easily become "evil" because individual rights basically don't exist or at least are subordinated to the "good" of the state. And it becomes easy to get rid of "undesirable" groups for the good of the state. You aren't an individual with your own particular beliefs, ideas or rights, you are a member of a group. Hope your a member of a desirable one, else it's off to the gulags.
Well, technically speaking, if you're a small government conservative, but disagree with social cons and neocons, it sorts of makes you a "classical liberal." But I hear that's what some libertarians call themselves nowadays.
There are a huge number of yeast infections in this county. Probably because we're downriver from the bread factory.
"Hope you're a member of a desirable one, else it's off to the gulags." I guess I should preview before posting.
He's not collecting taped lectures in order to resell them to lazy students who didn't attend class. He's collecting them for purposes of commentary and criticism, and undoubtedly will only republish short excerpts. This should fall under what is left of the Fair Use exception to the copyright laws. That's usually a favorite hobby-horse around here, but judging from this thread, there seem to be people who think the privilege should not be extended to holders of conservative opinions.
-ccm
Too much Law; not enough Order.
Wow. A true conservative; I wasn't sure you guys still existed. Me, I'm a true liberal (and don't vote democrat, of course). Oddly (although not really), in this day and age of the "neocon" and "neoliberal", we have more in common with each other than we do with supposed "conservatives" and "liberals". (Hint to the label-slingers: True conservatism is friggin liberal).
Why not? Politics have shaped math and science greatly. It is not very responsible of them to give you an incomplete education.
There is a difference between explaining Gallileo's problems with the Catholic church and a math professor going on a rant over his issues with the current local/state/federal government. And what you state is only a partial truth: politics do NOT effect derivations. They may effect the speed at which research is performed but they do not effect the relaying of information in undergraduate curriculum.
Consider: a typical family earning, say 50K might pay about 10K in taxes - fed/state/fica, etc. There is a kind of floor created with standard deductions, etc, where you don't pay "much" in taxes until you reach a certain point.
On the other end, if you make a lot of money - say 500K and up, you have essentially have get flat rate. Taxpayer A makes a million dollars and pays $300K in federal taxes. Taxpayer B makes two million and pays $600K in taxes - seems fair, make twice as much, pay twice as much.
Now, back to the middle income folks. Taxpayer A makes 50K and pays 10K, taxpayer B makes 100K, but pays 30K in taxes - he made twice as much, but paid 3x as much in taxes. That doesn't seem fair. If you are in the 70-200K income bracket it becomes painfully obvious that not only is your amount of taxes going up, but your rate is going up too, the very definition of progressive taxing.
Since this progressive taxing only applies to those in the middle, how is that fair? Also note some double whammies in that range - Roth deductions go away, various credits go away, etc. Remember the child credit a few years ago? IIRC, it phased over a range - like you lose 50$ of credit for every 1000$ you made - one way of looking at that is it is an extra 5% tax, just because you happened to earn in a certain narrow range. Don't even start on the AMT, and tons of other crap in the tax code.
Enough of that rant, the way taxes are collected was not even the point.
You make it sound like government spending is only favored by people who don't pay taxes
Statistically, half of taxpayers only pay 4% or so of the taxes, The other half pay 96%, so by definition, half of the taxpayers have no incentive curb government spending.
Trust me, politicians will always offer bread and circuses and there will be plenty who take it.
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
ck them. Do you job
How the fuck did you ever graduate, you dumb fuck? You can't even use the English language. If you would apply to me for a job with your grasp of the English language I would kick your dumb ass out the door faster than you could say, "yadda fucking yadda", stupid cunt.
From a libertarian/fiscal conservative and a somewhat soclal conservative I argue that vouchers are a bad idea although probably not for why you think they are.
Imagine you are a private Christian school. Or it can be an Islamic school, Jewish school, or whatever. Well, you start to see kids wanting to enter your school on the government's dime. Of course you typically want more income but government money NEVER comes without stipulations.
This is how Congress and legislative bodies work. They give money in order to advance their agendas. So if you are a private school you might be able to accept 50 students on government vouchers, but you might be forced to change or modify your cirriculum in order to recieve that money. Or it could be regulations that must be followed in order to cash in on those vouchers.
So the voucher idea as far as Im concerned is full of good intentions, but the road to Hell is paved with good intentions. It is a way for the government to get more into the business of private educate by way of regulations and stipulations.
Libertas in infinitum
There is a real simple solution. Abolish government schools and get the government out of the education business.
When a government has control of anything, it will typically use it to push its own ideas and agendas. Same for schools. When conservs are in power they will try to push their ideas through the school system. When liberals are in power they will push their agendas.
If the government didn't have a platform for indoctrination then there would be a lot less governmental doctrination going on. If the gov was taken out of education and all of the taxes spent on education were repealed or put back in the economy, we would see a surge in wealth in this country. That money could be then spent by parents to educate their children in whatever idealogical school they wanted. Christians could send their kids to Christian schools. Muslims could send their kids to Muslim schools. Jews could send their kdis to jewish schools. Athiests could send their kids to secular schools.
The government high school where I graduated from spent over $12,000 per student per year in their budget. The much higher rated Prepratory school down the road only cost $9,000 per student per year. If the government had not spent that money on me and repealed those taxes which funded the schools then I could've gotten a better education because my parents would've been able to afford it.
It is indeed proven that non-governmental students on average out perform governmentally educated students. Education is not a right, it is not in the Constitution, it is not guarenteed. Not in the US anyway.
Libertas in infinitum
I am glad to see someone else around here has some good and solid logical insight to American politics. Kudos...
Libertas in infinitum
and you're missing the point. What does either of these non-issues have to do with a science based curriculum? Why do we have to put up with some prof's personal predjudices which have NOTHING to do with teaching of science? For that matter, why should we put up with pseudo science such as ID or transgendered lesbian history?
The student is distributing the entire lecture, on tape, to the organization for money.
The idea is an oxymoron. Anything can be turned into political grist. Nor is it rational to suggest that the New Deal or the Great Society are more readily considered objectively now than in the past. The nearest thing to neutral would be for professors to present various views with their supporting evidence and criticisms of other views. That isn't likely any morfe than you would expect a Creationist to actually be knowledgeable about the real theory(ies) of evolution, rather than the 19th century pastiche of a straw man they prefer to take potshots at, or liberal, green offering data that questions the reality of global warming. Reality never has and never will fall neatly into some politcal party's, scientific theory's, or religious sect's ideas of what is permissible and what is forbidden.
------ The only greater hazard to your liberty than n politicians is n+1 politicians.
Well, I don't think you need to worry about the lesbian studies department unless you take a class in feminism to get dates.
I'm not overly fond of "minority studies" when the delve into the whole "our people did this or that" thing. To me this is no different than listening to some white sumprecists rail off all the things that "white people" have invented as if that somehow meant that their ignorant trash asses where any better.
But there ARE real issues dealing with how sub-cultures interact with societies and economies. And they are certainly worth studying.
-------- -------- Support Wesley Clark for president!!!
Yes. That's the big problem with vouchers. Currently, special needs kids consume more resources than mainstream kids. Under a voucher program, they get fewer resources. The public schools currently assume a disproportionate level of this burden.
___
It's the end of my comment as I know it and I feel fine.
Looking back at the thread, it appears I've given you the impression that I think you grade unfairly. I don't think that, nor do I care about grades in this context.
Of course. Opinions are merely symptoms of underlying beliefs, beliefs which also generate bias toward the opinions of others.
That is why I said you can't give your opinions without revealing a bias. Everyone has biases. There's no shame in it. The trick, which I believe you are able to perform, is to keep your biases separate from your objective criteria in other matters.
By your refusal to abstain from creating a herd mentality in your classroom, however, you demonstrate your lack of confidence in the rightness of your positions. Given a level playing field, apparently, your ideas aren't good enough to win.
Raise your children as if you were teaching them to raise your grandchildren, because you are.
Well DUH!
UCLA is just an anagram for the ACLU. Sneaky left-wing radicals.. thought we wouldn't notice.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
You really need to improve your reading comprehension skills.
This has been another valuable and informative opinion from:
Catahoula!
University is where students should be exposed to radical (and that's not just far left) ideas
Of course - I think students should be exposed to ideas of all sorts as soon as they're capable of independent, rational thought. The difference is between being exposed to controversy and getting force-fed an ideology by a professor who controls the future of your education and career.
DATABASE WOW WOW
1. name calling: You seem to be saying that since there are people on the left saying bad things about people on the right, and people on the right saying bad things about people on the left, they are equivalent, or maybe you can rank them based on which is meaner. I think there's a huge difference between calling someone a name to shut them up or to obfuscate, and calling someone a name as a way of labelling something so that it becomes more clear. Now I know you disagree with me, but if you believe ( as the original author does, and as I do) that the Bush administration is dangerous to us for the reasons specified, then calling them "fascist" actually clarifies-e.g. "look, not only do we not like what these people are doing but it is dangerous in that it resembles other historical precedents that are scary". If you look over at, say, Ann Coulter, you get someone who (has been clearly documented to) basically say whatever crap comes out of her mouth, and every other sentance starts with "liberal traitors".
In otherwords, the difference is not in the vehemence but in the truthfullness. Some things are just wrong.
2. How many times has our military toruted someone and done so without punishment?
I guess that makes it ok.
3. "Your socialist friends over in france" -That's just plain pathetic. How about "everyone who opposes Bush is unamerican"? Have we reached that point yet? Are you willing to say that?
Try not to let the freedom fries stain your brown shirt.
You're right. I have no idea why he didn't. My only thought was that it would be harder for him to get a job at another university, because if they heard he sued is former employer, they'd be afraid he'd sue them too. It's a shame that happened. Hiring should be based on merit. They lost a good guy.
I'm afrid you've been taken in. Here is some enlightening commentary by Mr. Horowitz:
What I Told Pennsylvania's Academic Freedom Hearings
The Strange Dishonest Campaign Against Academic Freedom :
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
A public good is one where unrelated people share substantial benefits. It is likely your education benefits you, your family, your customers, and your employer. These are not externalities. Your education may have a minor impact on other unrelated people, but these externalities are so small that government intrusion is not likely to help the matter at all. Why? Because government action is almost always coupled with externalities of its own. The dead-weight losses resulting from the collection of the taxes to subsidize higher education are going to be far larger than the original problem, which is a tiny degree of under-consumption of education in the absence of government.
At the moment, I believe we have on many fronts a vast over-consumption of education, all thanks to government education subsidies. For example, in my own field (science) there is a massive glut of PhDs who cannot find regular jobs. The costs of over-education are just as real as the costs of under-education. I have no idea why you trust bureaucrats and congressmen to guess the correct balance.
Yeah right, Jack Abramoff couldn't find 30 Republican professors on the entire UCLA faculty.
This is UCLA. Every department on campus is run by liberals or by leftists.
Tough criticism in a free society is not McCarthyism; it's free speech. -- Andrew Sullivan
Slashdot "libertarians": Small government for me, big government for those I disagree with. -1, I disagree with you
So, God can't be scientifically studied. therefore God has no place in science-classes. if we put God in science-classes we should put Santa Clause, Tooth-fairy and Flying Spahgetti Monster in there as well. I mean, what makes God more important or more believable than those three? Because you personally happen to believe in God?
What makes you think that? The purpose of science is to expand the boundaries of knowledge. Trying to figure out where life came from fits that perfectly. If you are uncomforable with having scientist figuring out where life came from is YOUR problem, not mine and certainly not scientists problem!
But considering that you openly advocate ignorace over knowledge, I'm not one bit surprised by your comment.
Really?. Granted, we don't have the few billion years needed to make advanced lifeforms appear from primoidial soup, but tests HAVE been made, and theories have been formed based on those tests.
yes, never try to learn anything new! Ignorance is the key to happy life! God will give us all the answers we need, we should just be blind and stupid sheep. We should dismantle schools and universities and just "stick to what we know".
And that means that "God did it"? Gotcha.
Lesbian Nazi Hookers Abducted by UFOs and Forced Into Weight Loss Programs - -all next week on Town Talk.
The peddling of influence sufficiently blurs the line as to just where the government stops nowadays.
That works for the left as well as for the right...
The most dangerous strategy is to jump a chasm in two leaps. - Benjamin Disraeli
If they believe what they say why not let the world know. Hope he keeps up the exposures
No. He's not radical. He wants to know why the powerful are able to get away with so much crap. It's so very common. Nearly everyone I know is suspicious of the administration's motives. It's almost banal at this point.
So you said: "You demonstrate why it is radical. Unlike you, he can't figure out it was, at worst, incompetence."
I think it would be more accurate to say "he can't accept it was, at worst, incompetence."
Because the Bush Administration has been very anxious for us to reach that conclusion, I am suspicious of it. And the anxiously proposed solution to Intelligence Agency incompetence: increase their funding! Seems like a win-win situation for everyone concerned.
The fact you're not suspicious of the right wing makes me wonder if you're really paying attention.
-- thinkyhead software and media
The fact you're not suspicious of virtually everyone in the halls of power makes me wonder if you're really paying attention.
-- thinkyhead software and media
I guess my real beef is why does the original poster get to imply that "traditional values" means "slavery, segegation, dominance of a single racial group, sex, or class, etc."