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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.
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.
At last, we can fill in the missing step!
The Professor's Secret Plan To Wealth
--MarkusQ
Please do not confuse Republicans and their followers with conservatives. Indeed, they are very different groups holding very different beliefs.
Conservatives stand for freedom, liberty, individual responsibility, honest prosperity, and peace.
Republicans (and many Democrats, too) stand for the supression of liberties and freedoms (often in the name of "security"), do not promote responsibility, and often resort to corruption and illegal means of obtaining wealth. These days, they obtain much of their wealth via wars, which contradicts directly with peace.
Today it is Republicans who are moving towards (if they're not already in) a state of fascism. It is conservatives around the US who are taking a stand against such anti-American nonsense.
Cyric Zndovzny at your service.
Don't delude yourself: people will always have a political agenda, and it will always be a part of whatever they're doing.
More importantly, it's irrelevant if a professor holds such views, and expresses them to his or her students. Any truly intelligent student (you know, this is at the university level!) should be able to recognize such bias, and take it into account while taking a particular course.
University often isn't about sitting there and accepting what the professors say as fact. It's about hearing ideas that may differ from yours, so as to make you think a little bit harder than you normally would. It takes real responsibility to partake in and make use of a university-level education.
And the worst possible thing to do is either believe or insist that professors not involve their personal, biased views. That's the whole point of getting an education! To be bombarded by views you wouldn't have even bothered to consider, even if you do happen to disagree with them in the end.
Cyric Zndovzny at your service.
No no! The correct answer is always halfway between the opposing viewpoints! Don't you know that if Jill wants half the cake and Jack wants the whole cake, then the right thing to do is give Jack 3/4? Claiming that one group of people might be right and the others wrong is just unfair!
Cheers.
But the UCLA effort sloppily confuses the two and winds up looking like a blacklist, blowing its credibility in the process.
WTF? If something "winds up looking like a blacklist", it is a blacklist. You blow your own credibility by pretending otherwise.
"Arguing that all the smart people are liberals is amazing ignorant."
Statistically speaking people with collage educations are more likely to be liberals. Oddly enough the people with passports tend to overwhelmingly liberals. Furthermore a study showed that on average the viewers of the John Stewart show (liberal) were better educated and made more money then the viewers of Bill Oreilly.
I am afraid the facts disagree with you. Sure there are educated conservatives but the majority of people with degrees as liberals by a long shot.
evil is as evil does
I don't understand. Do you consider the actions Andrew Jones to be "criticism"? Please explain to me how bounties for outing "radical professors" is constructive criticism, or just plain criticism. Cuz to me, it simply smells of someone not being happy with what someone else told him, and decides to pressure that someone into silence. There is no debate, there is no exchange of ideas, just plain political arm twisting. This is not about furthering academic debate; it's about imposing political beliefs.
Because you do know what this is going for, right? This is trying to establish that there is pervasive left-wing brainwashing going on in schools. Then Jones can look to Congress to rectify this problem by passing a law that forces all classes and professors to not discriminate against other political (i.e., right-wing) views. The end-result will be that everyone with a bad grade in a class will argue that they got that grade due to political discrimination, and professors will be forced to teach in the most inoffensive fashion possible.
Between this and the insistence of people to teach ID as though it is a science, the future looks grim for US education. If I ever have kids, I can guarantee you that they won't go to school in the US. Because I refuse to sabotage their competitive future in the world just to satisfy some right-wing nutjobs who have no idea what real discrimination (or debate) is.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
In this case, we have the evidence before us:
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.
That, my friends, is a McCarthyite witch-hunt. There is no good reason to go around recording UCLA professors; if the school is concerned about the content of lectures, they can monitor them in person easily enough. Wanting recordings of the lectures smacks of a desire to rip what could be construed as controversial statements out of context. These quotes could then be circulated in talking points and the like to shore up the case against these 'ideological' professors.
Two years ago I would have regarded my above statement as paranoid - but we have seen the Swift Boating Method employed a few times now, sadly. It's all too familiar.
If Jesus wants me it knows where to find me.
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.
Other than the fact that it's not an arm of the state engaging in this pursuit. Oh, and nobody's being forced to testify against their own will by subpoena. Other than minor little details like that, why the situations are positively identical!
LOL.
ABSURDITY, n.: A statement or belief manifestly inconsistent with one's own opinion.
Tim
Out of curiosity, in what year were you born?
Indeed, I have to admit, I was born in the 1930s, so I was quite young when fascism became a serious matter. However, I do know many veterans who fought in World War II, and were well aware of the political landscape at that time.
One thing you'll notice when you talk to almost any of them is that they're scared today. They think back to what they fought against, and they see it present yet again. Except this time it is being done in their name, by their countries. The proof is all around. It's obvious to them, and even to somebody such as myself, who has vague memories of such times.
Of course, somebody born in the last 30 or 40 years might not be able to notice such things by themselves, as they grew up within the confined of the system and thus cannot see beyond it.
Cyric Zndovzny at your service.
The students in the classrooms can interact and criticize all they like. The professors are probably poli-sci, philosophy, or socology teachers; i'd expect that all that they do is argue with students.
"Without criticism"? This isn't criticism, this is rightist ideological monitoring with intent to intimidate and/or destroy professors who don't espouse rightist viewpoints. This is a program to shut people up. to create a rightist country. to eliminate even the slightist whiff of anything to the left of Ronald Reagan, who is today something of a commie by rightist standards.
students today think that "60 Minutes" is a leftist TV program. They've already been indoctrinated with rightist viewpoints. The spectrum has been slammed to the right by intimidation just like this in the media and the schools. I don't know what an extremist would be, in this climate. Who's to the right of Cheney? What spectrum? It's bivalued: Bush and Cheney on the "right" and everyone else is the "left". The new definitions don't recognize extremism on the right.
America doesn't even have a left, anymore. I don't see many socialists running around. And no, not being a rightist doesn't automatically make one a "socialist".
Brings to mind that other article on slashdot about college students not being literate enough to parse a political argument. Might not be stupidity; might just mean they haven't been exposed to any real political thought besides Limbaugh for the last decade. Semantically mindwrecked, incapable of being reasoned with. Filled with Truthiness.
Germany did this in the thirties. A little nip at a time. Now they come for the professors.
This is fascism. Don't say it's not because a "private" group is doing it. Fascism BY DEFINITION is a partnership of government and private concerns acting in concert. The "non-government" types perform the deeds the government can't yet do; you'll find that the personel switch between government and private employment at will.
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.
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.
Intelligent Design claims that complex natural life forms can only be created by something it terms a designing intelligence. OK... so, let's contemplate that for a bit.
If we allow the creating intelligence to be natural, by our original premise, it too must have a creating intelligence that created it, and so on. We're left with an infinite regress. So, how to go about breaking it?
Well, maybe we could posit a supernatural creating intelligence. But, if we take that option we instantly take Intelligent Design outside the realm of science, and thus automatically forfeit equal status to scientific theories. So, that's no good.
The other option, is to accept that intelligence can arise solely out of natural processes, which clearly contradicts the original premise of Intelligent Design, so that's out the door too.
Dang it. No matter what we do, Intelligent Design ends up being self-contradictory, or non-scientific.
So chew on that.
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.
What about what *I* don't want to pay to support? huh? Like illegal invasions of other countries? Like defense spending that's so overbloated as to prevent any and all social progess programs, and scientific research? In a perfect world a large portion of America wouldn't have any voice in government at all, because they are so twisted, evil, judgemental, greedy, and vicious they should be locked away in pyschiatric wards.
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.