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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!
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.
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.
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?
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.
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...
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 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
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!
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 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
I'd be willing to bet that the vast majority of professors that get labeled as radical would wear the term as a badge of pride.
I'll never make that mistake again, reading the experts' opinions. - Feynman
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.
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
Pretending to lack a bias is utter hypocrisy, not to mention unattainable and hence useless. A good professor will encourage thought and dialogue not by bland neutrality but by respect. That said, Andrew Jones' tactics recall the tactics of the most totalitarian governments, and his methods say a lot about his true understanding or regard for freedom.
That said, I've had self-described Constitutionalist conservatives and John Birchers for teachers and professors, and I've yet to see anything like them in academia for idealogical intolerance. The curious and fair-minded are probably not going to call blasphemy at the opposition.
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
He just adds a "signing statement."
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
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.
"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!
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.
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.
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
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
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!
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...
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.
So we get two groups: Students who have been carefully indoctrinated not to ask hard questions, and students who don't need to ask hard questions because the answer will always be,"Society would be better if those other people would just do what we tell them to without asking so many questions."
fast as fast can be. you'll never catch me.
...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
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.
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
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.
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 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
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.
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.
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
"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
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.
"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!
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.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
That seems to be an article of faith. It's not reflected in the people I see around me. I teach a contentious bioethics class, so I'm constantly running into views that go against mine.
If that were the only problem, a prof's academic integrity would be a suitable counterbalance.
You've really missed the point here. I was arguing that the system is set up in such a way (via grievance procedures and the like) that flagrant lack of academic integrity can be challenged. It's a system that doesn't depend, Pollyanna-ish, on the unfailing good will of everyone involved.
It's not professors having opinions that is the problem. It's that expressing those opinions creates a herd mentality in the classroom.
I freely admit to trying to produce a herd mentality in the classroom: that of a herd of truth-seekers.
Disagreeing with those opinions means fighting the herd, something a young person finds difficult, and should not be forced, to do.
I'm trying to understand this and I can't. I do understand that it is difficult to express one's thoughts in what one feels is an unfriendly environment. (That's why I strive to produce a civil environment in the classroom and hold students to that standard. It's not really difficult to do. That said, I also think it's appropriate to respond to aggressive comments in such a way that reflects how aggressive they are.) But how do you go from "that's difficult" to "no one should have to do that"? I happen to think the skill of remaining in conversation with someone who doesn't agree with you is an essential component of thinking, and probably ultimately of peace, as well.
Adults disagree. You claim that students are "paying for knowledge." Maybe they should gain the knowledge of how to disagree without being disagreeable.
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.
I think you couldn't be more wrong. Some of what I convey to students is information: that, however, is the least significant and easiest to verify or disprove. Much of what I strive to convey to students is the ability to think for themselves. That means precisely what they have to learn to do is to "filter chaff from wheat." That said, I don't do this by pummeling them with anti-administration talking points in classes that are not about that.
You claim it's the nebulous "environment" of presumed authority that is the problem. Let me note in passing how much this resembles a kind of point that's been made by opponents of racism, sexism, etc. for decades, and one that has been routinely mocked as an invalid kind of complaint for appealing to "unreal" entities like environments, communities, and unstated norms. My point is that if you've got actual leftists for professors, like myself, they are very familiar with this kind of idea. I for one strive to make students into authorities. My long practice at challenging half-articulated convictions is a tool for this kind of constructive work, not for "brainwashing." I happen to believe, as you apparently don't, that persuasion requires cooperation on the part of the person being persuaded. They have to choose to treat the person who's doing the persuading as an authority. I strive to help people make those sorts of choices and judgments less on the basis of personality and more on the basis of demonstrable truth.
I say all this only in order to offer a different perspective on what you think you're seeing in the classroom environment.
Shop as usual. And avoid panic buying.
"What we gonna do right here is go back *How far back?* Way back!"
You just got troll'd!
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