Not sure I feel about this:
A fledgling alumni group headed by a former campus Republican leader is offering students payments of up to $100 per class to provide information on instructors who are “abusive, one-sided or off-topic” in advocating political ideologies.
The year-old Bruin Alumni Assn. says its “Exposing UCLA’s Radical Professors” initiative takes aim at faculty “actively proselytizing their extreme views in the classroom, whether or not the commentary is relevant to the class topic.” Although the group says it is concerned about radical professors of any political stripe, it has named an initial “Dirty 30” of teachers it identifies with left-wing or liberal causes.
Some of the instructors mentioned accuse the association of conducting a witch hunt that threatens to harm the teaching atmosphere, and at least one of the group’s advisory board members has resigned because he considers the bounty offers inappropriate. The university said it will warn the association that selling copies of professors’ lectures would violate campus rules and raise copyright issues.
The Bruin Alumni Assn. is headed by Andrew Jones, a 24-year-old who graduated in June 2003 and was chairman of UCLA’s Bruin Republicans student group. He said his organization, which is registered with the state as a nonprofit, does not charge dues and has no official members, but has raised a total of $22,000 from 100 donors. Jones said the biggest contribution to the group, $5,000, came from a foundation endowed by Arthur N. Rupe, 88, a Santa Barbara resident and former Los Angeles record producer.
I don’t have a problem with identifying and criticizing those who use their lectern as an opportunity to berate, belittle, or otherwise abuse students. I don’t really have a problem with accountability and having outside groups look into whether or not professors are abusing their positions. But what I do fear are the kinds of kids who are going to keep Andrew Jones and his group in business. They are the kid who sat in every class with you and loudly and annoyingly recited something he heard on Rush Limbaugh, thinking this showed the professor was a left-wing crank. This is, I am betting, the kid who screamed bias because the teacher seemed to spend more time looking to the left side of the class than the right, or the kid who saw bias because the professor refused to call 1992-2000 the “Dark Years.”
In other words, while I have no problem with an honest acounting of what professors are doing, and I have no doubt that there are, by any standard, some radicals at UCLA, I am afraid a bunch of little David Horowitz’s are not the folks I want rooting them out. And if I am wrong about Andrew Jones and his group, my apologies. But I know how these things work, and in order to get funding from the ‘right’ groups, they are going to have to try to ruin some good people in the process by making charges that are unfair or dishonest.
Hoodlumman
You just described the state of politics today. It’s not limited to ‘right’ groups.
Mac Buckets
Free tip for political groups from a professional consultant: When naming your political group, try not to have the initials spell out “BAA.”
That one’s free. The next one will cost you.
SomeCallMeTim
Uh oh, there’s a working system that does a pretty good job at educating the best students, but it’s too liberal. Better break it. Welcome to the new ID front.
You people can’t keep your hands off anything that works, can you?
nyrev
This is not a good idea. It doesn’t matter which side is doing it.
I taught Bio 102 when I was in graduate school. When the class discussed evolution, a student called me a “Dark Cultist” for teaching it. When we discussed medical research, a different student accused me of “raping the animal kingdom.” (I was an environmental science major, by the way)
There are a lot of students on both sides of the political fence who feel that a teacher should not even acknowledge something that falls outside of the students’ point of view, and that any such acknowledgement equals implicit endorsement. Encouraging that attitude is the opposite of education. This really could turn into a witch-hunt.
db
Spot on, John Cole.
I’ve seen this first hand and on some campuses it has produced a chilling effect for young professors (who have to be worried about evaluations for tenure). Some old professors have shrugged their shoulders at it and know that they are leaving soon. Some other old timers fight back by purposely going way to the left so they can incite these groups to ‘blacklist’ them.
But my real fear is what this is doing to young professors and going to do students even considering entering this field. The pay is often not much of an incentive for people to get into this line of work. Now, when potential professors see their fellow classmates scaring their teachers into teaching the world the way they want it, why would anyone want to put up with that crap?
I just hope that the average college student can see through the load of crap that is being served here. I think/hope in the end that the students who are involved in this endeavor are just upset about grades and/or would not be taking these professors classes anyway.
Jane Finch
When I taught Canadian labour history, I had one guy with a Freemason’s ring gasping at my bias as I characterized the 19th century Knights of Labor as bigoted against Catholics (which they were) and another guy with a French-Canadian accent gasping at my bias as I characterized the the 19th to mid 20th century religious leadership in Quebec as anti-labour and anti-modern, which it was.
So when it comes to Catholicisim, I’m either a bigot or an apologist.
And that’s the sort of reaction that characterizes this group…and from my experience with censorship, once they’ve rooted out the most offensive, they’ll start in on others.
david horowitz
I fired Andrew Jones, the founder of the UCLA Bruins Alumni Association and the author of this website years ago for unethical behavior. He hasn’t changed. I have nothing to do with his site and do not approve of the payments he is making.
David Horowitz
ET
AHHH the right’s version of the PC police. And PC police have made things soooo much better on campus.
DougJ
Maybe you should ask yourself about how you felt when Mao did the same thing that Horowitz is doing. Is it simply a matter of when your side does it, you think possibly it’s okay?
Pull your head out of your ass here, John. This is simply atrocious and horrifying. And I say that as someone who believes so strongly in keeping politics out of the class room that my students think I support Bush because I change the subject when they criticize him in my office (I have a very good student whose brother is in Iraq and goes off on Bush this on a fairly regular basis).
Lines
Please tell me that is the real David Horowitz, because if he’s reading this blog I think the majority here have a lot of things to discuss with him.
My first question: how many times were you dropped on your head as a child?
My second question: Who gave you the right to determine left vs. right and make that decision for everyone else in acadamia?
If you fired Andrew Jones for unethical behavior, he’s got to be WAYYYYYYY out there, because I have yet to see much come out of the Horowitz camp that isn’t unethical to some degree.
And back on topic, when will this group be joining the minutemen for pep rallies?
DougJ
Sounds an awful lot like a translation of something Mao said.
John Cole
DougJ- Well, I tend to agree with you, but I think you are reading too much into my ‘not sure how I feel asbout this’ remark.
Do I like the idea of standing up in front of my class, knowing that anything I say may be used by a right-wing or left-wing group to savage my career? No, not at all.
Do I like that these groups are going to be comprised mainly of what you and I would agree are wingnuts, and that they are not going to be honest about what they do find nor will they be honest with their charges and accusations? No, I don’t.
And do I think that they are goingto approach this from a standpoint of intellectual honesty? Not for one minute.
At the same time, are they doing anything wrong or illegal? I can’t really say that they are.
Overall, I find the practice troubling, otherwise I would not have brought it to your attention. But is there anything that can be done about it, and are they acting within their rights? I don’t know.
Steve
There have already been so many cases where false charges of bias have been levied against professors, I hate to see what happens when people actually get paid to make false charges.
neil
A fledgling alumni group headed by a former campus Republican leader is offering students payments of up to $100 per class to provide information on instructors who are “abusive, one-sided or off-topic” in advocating political ideologies.
Hey, if the bounty-hunter method was good enough to stock Gitmo, surely it’s good enough to defeat liberal bias.
neil
Also: is that really David Horowitz? And if it’s not, can I take a turn impersonating him this week?
SmilingPolitely
Gee, I wonder if there are any biased teachers in Texas? Maybe I should form a liberal coalition and see if I can get some high school students to name names for 1000 dollars.
DougJ
Okay, fair enough, John.
And I agree that they are acting within their rights, by the way. I just think we should all agree that what they are doing is despicable and very much in keeping with the fascist-Stalinist-Maoist model that these sorts of people follow.
I try not to make comparisons with fascism, etc. very often, but the similarities are just too obvious here.
binky
Did you go to their website and read the professor profiles? Good grief. For example, they single out Carole Pateman as someone who is “famous in her odd little world of gender theorists and feminists.” Aside from the major work she has done on democratic theory and political participation, which makes her one of the most well-known current political theorists in the discipline. They cite her discussion of radical social movements. Well, if she’s assigned to teach social movements, which are a major subject in the sub-field of political participation, the history of this area does focus on some movements that are, or have been considered radical (including the Civil Rights movement in the US, among others). And they single her out for signing “radical petitions.” Like this one which calls on the US to observe the Geneva Convention and give the Red Cross access to detainees. The Geneva Convention…radical!
neil
It’s true, DougJ, that it’s not too hard to close the gap between paying kids to try to get teachers fired, and paying kids to break their windows or let the air out of their tires.
Steve
One of my favorite examples, which you see over and over, is when you have this poor crying student explaining their professor’s terrible bias to the sympathetic media, and then when you dig a little deeper, the victim always turns out to be an officer of the College Republicans or somesuch. Those folks learn the concept of publicity stunts at a very young age.
Ancient Purple
Back in the mid-80s, this kind of thing was going on at Arizona State University. The school paper, the State Press, had an editor by the name of Len Munsil, who is currenly running against AZ Gov. Napolitano on the ultra religious right ticket, and several other “conservative” editors who got into the habit of reporting in the paper about what professors were saying in class.
In particular, they were targeting professors who said anything that wasn’t pro-Reagan, pro-America, etc. at every turn. But it didn’t stop there. They then started going after professors who were teaching classes in human sexuality and women’s studies.
It all turned into a horrible mess with students getting PO’d at the paper for its coverage because it came across as nothing more than an agenda to drive people out of the classroom and attempting to whip people into a frenzy.
The professors and the university survived, but not without a lot of scars that lasted for a long time and a lot of trust being lost. Many students were very concerned about what “academic freedom” really meant.
It was an ugly period and one who’s time I thought had passed. Clearly, I was incorrect.
W.B. Reeves
I think your softness here is unwarranted. It is a certainty that at $100 a pop there will be plenty of bogus “tips”. The idea of paying informants to spy on their Professors is both an invitation and incentive to abuse. It is also a confession that the supposed crisis of radical bias on campus has to be stoked with cash in order to generate complaints.
Anyone who would pay cash for complaints isn’t interested in honest accounting.
yet another jeff
This is nothing but Bad Craziness. How can a prof teach critical thinking when the very concept goes against the dogmatic thinking of those that would turn a professor in. Or as Rob Corddry said “How does one report the facts in an unbiased way when the facts themselves
are biased?”.
zzyzx
So what exactly happens to professors who are outed by this? Will they fire up people to attack them during lectures?
demimondian
I’m a lot less forgiving that either DougJ or John here, if only because I’ve had friends targetted by groups like AIA over the years. John, if you don’t believe that this group has an agenda, and if you believe that it won’t tell lies…I’d love to sell you the copyright to an operating system called Linux. Since it’s freely copyable, you can collects royalties from everyone who uses it!
VidaLoca
You’re quite right about this: the Red Guards analogy is spot on. It’s made worse when the “others”, seeing at first that it’s the “most offensive” who are singled out, sit back and say “well, it’s OK that they’re attacking her, she really is a little too …radical…” — and sell her ass out. Come the day that they’re ready to move against “the others”, there’s nobody left to fight back.
And once again those moderate, polite, well-behaved “others” are toast. John, I hope these folks don’t turn up at your school, my school, or the institutions of any of the rest of the folks here. These people are in no way about “accountability”, they are about political repression. And they travel in packs. If the profs don’t stick together, even with the dreaded radicals — they’ll be beaten into submission separately.
neil
zzyzx, I’m guessing that one of the requirements to start formal proceedings against a professor is a student complaint.
neil
This is no fun until Darrell shows up to defend the program. Someone wake me up when that happens.
In the meantime, just in case that really was D.Horowitz above who said “I fired Andrew Jones, the founder of the UCLA Bruins Alumni Association and the author of this website years ago for unethical behavior”, let’s see what Google has to say:
Aha! Andrew Jones was a contributor to Front Page Magazine as recently as November, 2003. Which is, to be fair to Davey, more than 24 months ago, and thus qualifies (barely!) as ‘years.’
Phew! It’s hard to keep your reputation intact when working in these sewers, am I right, Davey?
John Cole
Well- Like I said, I am sure there are some radicals out there, and they should be rooted out. I think the people who should do that, though, are the Department Chairs, and think they do a pretty good job of it.
FWIW- I liked radical professors as a student. But then again, I am always drawn to people like that. Crazy and passionate people are just more interesting.
DougJ
I’m not forgiving, demi. I think these people are fascists and said so. But I doubt what they are doing is illegal.
DougJ
That’s the point. If there are issues with a professor’s treatment of a student, the student should complain to the chair/dean.
An interesting fact here is how the NYT’s “respectable” conservative columnists — Tierney and Brooks — cheer all of this brown shirt activity on with all their tripe about “liberal bias.” You may think this sounds nutty, but I really believe there is a large essentially fascist contingent within the conservative movement that encompasses a large percentage of conservative Op-Ed writers and media personalities.
Kirk Spencer
*sigh* I can see it coming:
Oh, man, I need some beer, but I’m broke. Oh, cool, $100. Dr. Smith was saying something about liberalism in history class yesterday – BEEEER RUUUUNNNN.
Yep. No chance of abuse here.
Kirk
Jason in MO
I must have been naïve or blind but I just don’t remember my professors spouting off politics all that much during my collegiate experience. The only place where political opinions were more frequently and vehemently discussed were in the few political science classes I took and even there I don’t think a student would be penalized for loudly holding a contrary opinion.
And even when the professors did hold an opinion that I found to be different from my own I didn’t feel the need to join the “Cult of Whiny Victimhood” since I was mature enough to realize that a few letters behind a name didn’t make that person an omniscient god. On the few occasions where I did disagree with a professor I felt that I probably learned the most in those classes since my disagreement forced me to think harder about where my personal and political beliefs lay and not build an intellectual foundation on ‘talking points’.
I entered college to the left of the Clintons and left college just a little to the left of Joseph Lieberman and that wasn’t because of indoctrinating professors but because I had emotionally and intellectually matured enough to be confident in my own opinions and not dependant on others to tell me what to think, something I credit in part to my college instructors of all political stripes.
Tim F.
You don’t have to pay them for that. I ran an environmental group in college, but at the core student zealots are all the same. Give them a good excuse to spark their self-righteous missionary attitude and the propensity to violence comes bubbling to the surface unless somebody is there to impose discipline. I did, but I didn’t cut my teeth promoting Marxist-Leninism. I strongly doubt that Horowitz would.
zzyzx
Come on, how could anyone abuse a system where all it would take is the word of an 18 year old?
I remember college politics at Bard. I can only imagine what it’s like when you can also attack people semi-anonymously.
When I was teaching math at NMSU, I occasionally talked about going to see the Dead or something. I also wrote an occasionally letter to the editor. Would that be enough to have me be biased?
DougJ
I think what is frightening about this is that: (1) students are combustible, (2) universities do have a tendency to overreact about certain sorts of complaints (the PC stuff of the late 80s was bad as well, but at least no one was putting bounties on anyone’s head), and (3) David Horowitz is a classic brown shirt/Red Guard type. But he’s also mentally ill, so I don’t blame him. I do blame the “respectable” conservatives who support him.
Steve
Do most people start college at the age of 8 nowadays? Because I seem to remember that by the time I started college, I had developed the ability to think for myself. If one of my professors had started ranting about Bush or Clinton or whoever, I would have had no problem forming my own opinion about whether they were full of shit. This notion that professors are using mystical mind control powers to indoctrinate scores of impressionable young minds is just silly.
jcricket
This is no more about “academic freedom” than the “Clear Skies Act” is about clear skies. It’s about right-wing assholes (and, to a much, much lesser extent, left-wing assholes) being unable to handle real freedom. Being unable to accept that college professors (unlike politicians) don’t back down because of swift-boating. Being unable to accept anything that contradicts what their parents or Rush Limbaugh “taught” them.
College is supposed to be about challenging you. Exposing you to new ideas and, ideally, how to support ideas you hold with rhetorically sound techniques (i.e. arguments free of logical fallacies). Sure, there are professors who are doctrinaire in their approach, but so what? Some of these professors have earned that right, having actually done the fucking research to support their “doctrinaire” approach.
It’s patently obvious these students expect to have their asses kissed by their colleges, because that’s what’s happened their whole life. They’re simply not accustomed to being called on their bullshit, and not being treated as the smartest/bestest people in the whole-wide-world. So they cry bias, rather than, you know, try and learn something.
For example, rather than accept that 150 years of scientific debate has proven evolution to be a sound theory, well-supported by thousands of peer-reviewed scientific papers, they claim its bias because science doesn’t bend to include their unproven non-scientific hypotheses. Or rather than honestly try and debate a professor on the subject, present their own research, they claim bias if the unsound ramblings of the DI aren’t accepted as scientific fact.
These groups are not interested in exposing bias or making college a better place academically, they’re solely interested in turning college into a right-wing think-tank internship program.
yet another jeff
Maybe we need to redefine “respectable”? Lazy student makes a bad grade, says it’s because the professor didn’t like his ideas…not paying attention to the red notes in the margin of the paper saying that his ideas were not backed up by the research. You can say anything you want that disagrees with the professor…if you back it up.
A lot of people are going to make $100 for turning in profs that failed them because they just wrote crappy papers, not because the prof was biased.
W.B. Reeves
I thought the cover story was that this isn’t about the Professor’s opinions but about Professors abusing their position to promote their views. Exactly what opinions would qualify as “radical” enough to get a Professor “rooted out”? Would someone calling for a second secession of the Southern States qualify? Just what opinions or ideas are so heretical that they should be proscribed?
Richard Bottoms
Then you are just plain spineless.
No longer a party of faggot bashing religious fanatics, but one of fascist brown shirt informers.
Fucking Republicans.
slide
ahhhh…. America in the age of Emperor Bush. Telephone calls and emails checked for “terrorist” leanings. Say the wrong phrase and get an FBI agent at your door. Pentagon spying on Quakers and other peace organizations for organizing anti-war demonstrations. Critics of the presidents war policy described as “aiding and abetting the enemy”. Mail carriers encouraged to spy on American citizens to see if they are getting any “suspicious” packages. Customs bureaucrats opening up letters to American citizens if they “look funny”. American citizens labeled “enemy combatats” and imprisoned without a trial or even the right to an attorney. And now, our very own “cultural revolution” marches on with right wing ideologues intimidating professors for their political beliefs. How long before Noam Chomsky is marched through Times Square with a plackard around his neck denouncing him as an enemy of the state?
Sock Puppet
Turning little college boys into snitches.
How Republican.
DougJ
I hate to take people to task here, but why would anyone even address the fact that this may be about honest complaints and bias? To even contemplate that anything the far right might be well-intentioned is to admit defeat.
David Horowitz and his followers are fascists, brown shirts, modern incarnations of Mao’s Red Guard. That’s all there is to it.
This is about intimidation of professors and universities.
VidaLoca
John, I think you’re missing something here:
The problem with this is that these Junior Brownshirts are volunteering to take the job over from the Dept. chairs. The Brownshirts have their own ideas about who the “radicals” are and how to go about rooting them out, and those ideas fall outside the accepted rules of discourse in the college setting. Once they get organized and start acting, it’s a whole new ballgame and the Dept. Chairs won’t know what hit ’em. To the extent that they control the process now, that control will to a large extent be lost.
Once they’ve dealt with anyone they think is “radical” they’ll start in on anyone they think is “liberal”. Once they’re done with the “liberals” (if they don’t, no offense intended, mop you up in that group) they’ll attack the carzy, passionate, interesting RINOs. Where will you be then?
(By the way, John and the rest of you all, sorry to butt into your conversation. I’ve been lurking around here for the past couple of months or so and have really enjoyed the site and the conversations among the participants. I hope you all won’t mind if I continue to hang around, and join in the conversation from time to time. You seem like an enjoyable crowd to hang around with…)
John Cole
The never-ending reward of running this website.
DougJ- I hold you responsible for that.
And for the rest of you, is it really that unclear, reading this post, that I don’t support what these guys are doing?
Mac Buckets
I missed that wacky DougJ schtick while on vacation! Good to see it’s still working.
VidaLoca
DougJ, I know you fish this place for newbies but I’m on to ya, bro. In my experience universities have systems created to deal with honest complaints and bias, and those systems don’t involve $100 bounties for same.
To even contemplate anything the far right might be well-intentioned is to misunderstand the far right. But you said it, not me…
That about sums it up.
Richard Bottoms
What is clear is that you have no understanding the the very Deocrats you denigrate and characterize as fruit loop fringe crazies are the ones who have stood up to this crap from the right for decades.
And your timid criticism isn’t the same as Republicans shouting from the rooftops their party has gone to far, that you can no longer support them or their policy of lying to our face about illegal, unethical spying.
We’re sick of Republican thugs stripping away our freedoms while people like you continue to vote for them while tossing the occasional barb from the side.
Don’t just irritate them. Fight them.
Vladi G
Hell, I took a couple of classes from Francis Boyle in law school. I consider myself pretty left wing, but that guy’s the left wing kook to end all left wing kooks. If students are that impressionable that they fear that they’ll be brainwashed by the political leanings of a college professor, they shouldn’t be in college to begin with.
As for Boyle, he’s crazy, but entertaining. Also, you don’t have to read the book.
slide
yeah… sorta… but you should be OUTRAGED that some POLITICAL group will be monitoring what Professors say. For what purpose? Oh.. to stop them from “abusing” poor defenseless little students. Right. Give me a fuckin break. Your comments:
So John when you ask:
Yes, it is unclear. Well, not as clear as when you are denoucing some minor statement from Cindy Sheehan anyway.
DougJ
Mac — you’re a reasonable guy, you should agree that David Horowitz is essentially a brown shirt. Just because I like to joke sometimes doesn’t mean I can’t be serious when something goes above and beyond. And paying students to be informers goes above and beyond. It’s just the kind of thing Stalin, Mao, and the rest would do.
Read more about David Horowitz and his little project and I’m sure you’ll agree with me.
You can disagree with me, but what I say here is aimed at reasonable righties like you and John. I don’t joke when I think I’ve hit a point where I can change your mind through argument.
Richard Bottoms
Abso-fuckingloutely.
When John finally comes to the conclusion that this “going to far” thing may be a deliberate, calculated siezure of power it may be too late for all of us.
Impeach George Bush and stop this insantiy, now. How much longer can this folksy good-old-boy shit protect Bush from answering for his criminal acts.
Just how stupid is the %51 percent that voted this fool into office?
Darrell
Well I suppose if you come from the perspective that Bush=Hitler, then it’s not such a great leap to assert that Horowitz is no different than Mao, a mass murderer responsible for the deaths of 10’s of millions.
And you’re the one telling us that Horowitz is the one who is mentally ill?
DougJ
I think impeachment of Bush is a totally separate issue from what we are discussing here, Richard. It is an issue about which reasonable people can disagree.
What reasonable can’t disagree about is this: conservatives need to stop supporting the brown shirt activities of people like David Horowitz.
Darrell
Radical professors propagandize students, but profs are protected by tenure. And if you disagree, then you are equivalent to history’s worst mass murderers. Got it
DougJ
Darrell, I’m not comparing Bush to Hitler. I’m not even comparing Bush to David Horowitz. If someone employs genuinely fascist techniques, they deserve to be compared with fascists. I don’t care if they’re ostensibly communists like Mao or ostensibly conservatives like David Horowitz.
If you want to get in bed with fascists, go ahead. But I happen to think you’re better than that, Mac and Darrell.
Do you really think that paying students to denounce their professors is a good idea?
DougJ
Okay, Darrell, I have lost all respect for you. You aren’t better than David Horowitz. I gave you more chances than Earl Weaver gave his first wife, but you’ve blown them all.
Mac, there’s still hope for you.
DougJ
Darrell, what if we just paid everyone to spy on their neighbors and publicly denounce them? Hey, it worked in East Germany.
slide
oh Darrell stop being such an ass. No one is saying that Horowitz murdered millions of chinese. I dont’ know for a fact that he has ever even been in China so I for one could hardly make that claim.
Darrell
DougJ you are a f*cking whackjob and everyone can see it. All your ‘brownshirt’ accusations, your comparisons to Stalin and Mao make it clear to anyone who can read. Get some help
slide
Disgraceful what is now considered acceptable in some corners of the terminally scared right wing. These timid creatures lay awake at night wetting the beds thinking of ways to give up their freedoms so that daddy can protect them from the bad bad terrorists and radical professors.
VidaLoca
John —
If I thought for a moment that you supported what these guys are doing I’d have ignored the whole thing. My only quibble with what you wrote is that it sounded to me like you think there are some “radicals” who deserve to be “rooted out”, which sounds like it concedes some degree of legitimacy to their position.
If that’s an incorrect understanding of what you’re saying, I apologize.
But it seems to me that if you do hold that view you make yourself vulnerable to people like these Campus Brownshirts who are grabbing for yet another wedge isssue to build their shitty little careers, while they create chaos and make life miserable for people like you who are essentially trying to do their jobs.
slide
“those who fail to learn from histroy are condemed to repeat it”
Darrell
Oh my
After the left forces this type of PC, and is rewarded with tenure for it.. they act surprised that there is pushback to their extremism.
John Cole
Vida- I am not sure how that gives legitmacy to this group, but it wasn’t what I intended.
DougJ
Is that your best shot?
Richard Bottoms
I just finished watching the first four years of Babylon 5. The creeping power of the Nightwatch is especially chilling.
But the idea that in this media age that the right will be so overt in their fascistic bent is comforting (we’ll know when it’s going too far) is ludicrous.
No let’s have more subtle means.
Deny them the left their heroes: Kerry, Murtha, Cleland.
Assign mentally unbalanced motives to those who speak loudyly: Sheehan, Gore
Sow doubt about the patriotism of the critics: Moore, Kennedy
Sieze the public sqaure of 2005, the airwaves and shape the opinion: Hannity, Limbaugh
Stoke religious difference: Robertson, Santorum
Best of all start twenty-five years earlier so when if becomes even slightly apperant what is going on it may well be too late.
Create the groups and insittutions to make this work: Christian Coalition, Heritage Foundation, Coors Institute, Fox News, CBN.
Last, convince those who share a less viralent form of the views of the right that it could never happen here. That we are not one real or imagined suitcase nuke away from our freedoms being snatched away, perhaps forever.
“The greatest trick the devil ever pulled is convincing the world he’s not real.”
— The Usual Suspects
DougJ
John, in all seriousness here saying “not sure what I think about this” and using all that “root them out” language gave me and others the wrong impression. Maybe throw up an update explaining this?
dougf
Not sure I feel about this:—JC
Nice as always to see that your comment section is filled with scriblings from the usual suspects, distraught by the the creeping fascism, they see in everything not believed by them.
We all have reservations about any proposal that might imply a serious restriction on academic freedom, but there needs to be some sort of effective system in place to effetively engae in “identifying and criticizing those who use their lectern as an opportunity to berate, belittle, or otherwise abuse students…and there must be accountability …(for) professors abusing their positions.”
There have been many many many studies that have reported on the structural ‘biases’ prevalent in much of the Education System in place today. That the System tends to tilt toward the ‘progressive’ end of the spectrum is surely not a complete distortion of reality. Assuming for just a moment that this might in fact be TRUE, then perhaps something more than the ‘inmates running the saylum’ might well be in order.
Let’s see how this works out and if as you fear it leads to the ‘usual suspects’ on the other(ie,fascist warmonger) side behaving poorly ,and lauching ideological witch-hunts, then let’s all gang up against them at that point.
You should have stuck with your opening sentence. Surprisingly that would have been a more profound commentary than your ‘clarifications’,and the ‘enhancements’ submitted by the true believers.
Sometimes, Less truly is More.
slide
Ok Darrell, I’ll see your crazy left wing professoor and raise you one:
and the point is?
Darrell
I just think your repeated insistence that Horowitz is a ‘brownshirt’, a Stalinist and equivalent to Mao… that you make these accusations over and over is more than a little weird. you’re like an obsessed loon. Doubt me? re-read your own posts on this thread
W.B. Reeves
Here, here VidaLoca. I’m still very interested in hearing just what John’s definition of “Radical” is so I can be certain of who it is that should be “rooted out”. Either that or a raspberry for not getting his sarcasm. Given the implications of the statement, I wouldn’t think silence was an option.
Richard Bottoms
The point folks like you seem to not get is that this little group has ZERO influence in Decoratic politics or policies.
Meanwhile the fag hating, rature hastening crazies on your side of the aisle, who get audiences with the president of the United States by the way, run BILLION dollar television networks.
DougJ
Darrell: you never answered my question about whether or not we should just pay everyone to spy on their neighbors? So I take it you think that’s a good idea.
And I respect your right to believe that.
Darrell
I think it’s inconsistent to criticize the right for stupid crap like pushing ID, while minimizing the (far worse?) extremism of the tenured left on university campuses
slide
John I never suggested you supported the group, that you made clear. But you do seem to support the ideal that Radical Professors need to be rooted out. Since Radical, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder and since EVERYTHING seems to be political these days, it is very disappointing to hear a Professor making that argument.
The Other Steve
Just when you thought the Republican party couldn’t resemble Communists better…
David Horowitz brings us the return of the return of the Cultural Revolution.
John, you better make certain you carry Mao’s little red book with you int he classroom, or you might be turned in.
Darrell
Holding universities accountable for the professors they hire and promote, using the words and actions of the professors themselves, is not equivalent to Fidel Castro-like programs to spy on neighbors.
That you cannot see the difference says much about you. I agree this program has the potential for abuse. But it’s an entirely predictable reaction to the lefts’ extremism on university campuses.
Funny I don’t see you leftists screaming ‘fascism’ when conservative student newspapers are banned or destroyed. Why? because you’re hypocrites, that’s why
The Other Steve
Extremists like scientists who reject ID?
Whatever, nitwit. I remember my days on campus, and the faculty was hardly left wing, or right wing.
The only reason college professors are opposed to Republicans is because the GOP keeps killing funding for academics. Is it wrong to look out for your groups own self interest?
If so, better go tell that to the lobbyists.
DougJ
Darrell, I think it’s inconsistent to pay students to inform on their professors while not paying all Americans to inform on their neighbors.
The Other Steve
No but it is equivalent to making sure all professors love Fidel-Castro equally.
Otherwise. OFF TO THE GULAG WITH YOU!
The Other Steve
Anybody supporting or making an argument that Radical professors need to be rooted out.
OUGHT TO GO READ A BIOGRAPHY ON ALBERT EINSTEIN!
jg
The easiest way to rid the country of liberals is to prevent the liberal message from being heard. If you never hear the alternative to conservative policy why wouldn’t you be a conservative? And once you’re a conservative and can be counted on to vote that way regardless of the issue in front of you then it doesn’t really matter what issues are put in front of you.
DougJ
I’m not sure what you’re talking about and frankly, I’m afraid to ask, given the lengthy Newsmax article I might receive in reply.
But if some left-wing group started paying students to rat out their conservative professors, or rat out conservative students, or rat out conservative student newspapers, or anything of that sort, I would certainly call that brownshirt activity.
John Cole
Look- there are abusive, worthless, proselytizing jerks who need to be rooted out of universities. I just think the university should be the ones doing it.
slide
I look upon University Professors much like I look upon the press. There are good newspapers, government shill newspapers and even RADICAL newspapers. Are we better off as a society by eliminating all radical newspapers? Who makes that decison? Where is the line between rational and radical? Freedom of press is far far more important to me than having FOX news outlawed. Academic freedom is no less important to me, even if it means that there will be professors that deny that the Holocaust ever happened. Freedom, which the righ wing is always babbling about means that there is going to be a lot of shit that you disagree with. Get used to it. It’s the price of freedom. A price that that the current crop of terminally scared right wing Patriots are apparently unwilling to pay.
Richard Bottoms
Really? I know one guy who thinks that Jews will be thrown into hellfire when Jesus returns. He meets with George Bush from time to time, has millions of people who hang on his every word, and he has millions of dollars to spend on anti-fag propoganda & treason baiting.
Who should I be more converned about?
jcricket
The end result of these witch-hunts is never an outing of radical professors attempting to indoctrinate and humiliate their conservative students. Horowitz’s examples always turn out to be flat-out lies>. Also look at the end result of the “investigations” at Penn State.
The best these wingers can do, like any good conspiracy theorist, is claim that the lack of evidence to support their hypothesis is evidence of the cover-up by those that oppose them.
So, yes, I’m willing to accept that it’s theoretically possible that left-leaning professors are intimidating conservative students. I certainly had professors who were enamored of themselves and less interested in teaching than lecturing (although that’s sometimes just the way classes are set up).
The general hypothesis isn’t “out of bounds of legitimate discourse”. However, there is no evidence, besides the “made up kind” (i.e. lies) to support the hypothesis. In fact, in the 10+ years the right-wing has been peddling this cause they have been unable to come up with anything to support their hypothesis, other than the theoretical argument that because more professors classify themselves as liberals, this inevitably means conservative students ideas are unfairly squashed.
So you will have to accept it when those of us on the left proffer the hypothesis that the motives of these groups are less than pure.
slide
If they were that abusive and worthless won’t market forces take care of that? Students get to pick their professors dont’ they?
jg
It would depend on the reasons for the newspapers being banned. If they were banned only because they spoke conservative then thats wrong but I bet thats not the reason any conservative newspaper was banned.
Richard Bottoms
Except that crap like ID is pushed by millions of dollars in funding by right wing crazies whose agenda is to gain power through keeping Billy-Bob in the tent.
How many people does this professor nut job influence each semester? I mean really?
Darrell
The left is too intellectually dishonest to admit that university campuses, by and large, are domininated by the extreme leftists.
If you’re too dishonest to admit there exists bias, even when ROTC is banned from recruiting on campuses and conservative newspapers are banned and/or destroyed.. if you can’t acknowledge such bias, even when it hits an extreme level, then don’t be surprised to see pushback
SeesThroughIt
Absolutely, you damn dirty liberal indoctrinator! If you were still teaching, Darrell and David Horowitz would have your hide!
I can’t decide if this intitiative is more stunning, ridiculous, or pathetic, but I’m leaning toward “pathetic.” I think we need to eavesdrop on–and possibly torture–College Republicans for their bounty-hunting activities.
DougJ
It’s interesting: I only know of one professor in my personal experience who brings politics into the classroom that I’ve ever met: and he’s a right-winger. He manages to do it in a way that is humorous and non-threatening and I have no problem with is whatsoever.
slide
The President of the United States. The House of Represetatives. The Senate. Seven of Nine supreme court justices. Number one cable news show. All in the hands of Republicans and yet the conservatives are poor victims of liberals. Wow. What a bucnh of whinning pampered little spoiled punks.
VidaLoca
John,
This is what I picked up on. Again, if I’m mistaken about what you’re saying, my apologies — but I took the word “radical” as a characterization of these hypothetical professors’ politics as opposed to, say, academic dishonesty, financial irregularities with grant money, sexual indiscretions, or the whole panopoly of other things that can get an instuctor fired from a university. On the latter, you’re right: the administrators have means to fire for just cause, due process is established, and so on.
Once you’re allowing the “rooting out” of people for their politics though, you’re into a dangerous game. I emphatically don’t think you stand for political repression but I think that these Campus Brownshirts (about whom you express some uncertainty about how you feel) do; they’re part of this statist Republican machine that sees repression as a growth industry. So my argument would be that as much as you disagee with and dislike the radicals (for reasons on which we both might agree) you should consider standing up for their academic freedoms now in the face of the Brownshirts so there’ll be some academic freedoms left when the Brownshirts come for you.
More simply put, I’d argue that you should reconsider your mixed feelings about the Brownshirts. I think they’re a danger to people like you.
W.B. Reeves
Fair enough John. But I hardly think such types are uniformly “radicals.” The fact that you would treat them as synonymous, even unintentionally, is what disturbs people. You are describing are flaws of character, not of politics.
DougJ
Does anyone here want to pitch in so we can fund a $100 reward for anyone who catches Darrell jay-walking, downloading internet porn, fudging on his taxes, etc.?
ImJohnGalt
Right. “We’re really concerned about ANY radicals, but hey, here’s a list of a bunch of lefties…we haven’t found any righties yet.”
Is anyone else concerned at all of these “lists of names” being taken by the right? Between Horowitz’s “Hurting America” tripe, O’Bierne’s dross and now this, why aren’t more people alarmed. How many parallels have to be drawn before people start asking “WTF?”
tzs
It’ll be amusing when they start going after the language profs and the math and physics profs….and they WILL.
I’ve seen this from the other side as well. People screaming “racism!” because they got bad grades on a chem test. No, doofus, you got a bad grade because you didn’t know the equations and screwed up on all the reagents.
What’s next? Going after the biology teachers because they talk about evolution?
Yet one more reason why I’m leaving the U.S. for a country that appreciates education, reason, and science. Unless the powers-that-be stop this creeping Lysenkoism in 20 years the US will be nothing more than a bunch of twits scratching out a living by subsistence farming and a bunch of rusting nukes.
DougJ
And I’ll make it $200 if you catch Darrell pushing his politics onto the other stock boys at Walmart.
jg
So what if they are? Whats the problem? Are you so gullible that if you sat and listened to one you would have to vote democrat from that point on? You can’t hear a liberal talk and still be a conservative after that? Whats the danger of hearing the left point of view? FOX News and Rush Limbaugh aren’t far away if you need an immediate conservative fix.
Do you have info on conservative newspapers being banned just for being conservative?
slide
I guess the right is not happy unless the control every single aspect of American life. Fuck diverstity. They want it all. Talk out against the war like Murtha and they try to personally destroy you. That is the right wing in this country now. And they have the audacity to complain about left leaning professors? With no power at all? Pathetic little creatures.
jg
Its about their base only hearing from approved sources about approved topics. They attack you to find a way to dicredit you in the eyes of their base so you won’t be listened to.
Most people don’t even know the context of Kerry’s ‘I voted for it before I voted against it’ but they use it to dismiss him immediately.
SeesThroughIt
That’s not next–that’s already happening.
Richard Bottoms
Probably not. But it could happen, and besides it probably has and the liberual media has just hushed it up.
They have that kind of power you know.
Mac Buckets
Then you should probably get around to making that comparison rather than just repeating “Horowitz is a brown shirt fascist” over and over and over. I don’t hold any brief for the guy, but I’d like to see the meat of your comparison.
No, this Jones fellow is out-of-bounds. Paying students for such information is silly for a number of reasons. No information that is part of a bounty program will be taken seriously by the university without loads and loads of independent corroboration, and of course, there will be fraudulent claims to get the money. If students are too afraid to speak up to their lefty profs for fear of getting graded-down, then that’s just tough.
The Captain of the O
I have in my hand a list of card-carrying members of the Democratic Party…
The Other Steve
Faculty doesn’t ban ROTC. It’s the students. Are you saying students should not have any say over what happens on campus? Well, except conservative students, obviously.
And what conservative newspapers have been banned?
Christ when I was in college back in the late 80’s I used to read the conservative paper on campus, and it wasn’t really fit to line a bird cage. If it failed, it’s cause it sucked.
If conservative ideals aren’t strong enough to stand up to criticism, then maybe you ought to figure it out by now it’s because conservatives are fucking nitwits.
Darrell
The problem with that route is, you’re putting your faith in universtity authorities to solve a problem they themselves helped create.
No easy answers to this one
The Other Steve
Agreed. Makes me glad we have the 2nd Amendment.
A littled armed rebellion against fascism is healthy for a democracy.
DougJ
Mac, one of the things the Nazis did was to organize youth groups to denounce their professors. Mao did the same thing. And under Stalin, people in various positions were encouraged to inform agains their coworkers and neighbors. I thought all of that was common knowledge.
The Other Steve
What problem?
That not everybody thinks like you do?
BOO HOO HOO. Go cry to mommy.
The Other Steve
It should be.
But it’s probably regarded as promoting leftist propaganda for college professors to teach that, by these nitwits.
Fucking commie bastards.
DougJ
There’s a whole system set up to deal with student complaints. They’re anonymous. No one is afraid to speak up for fear of getting graded down.
DougJ
I really think that Darrell would feel happier in a more repressive state. Do you speak any Farsi, Darrell? How about Turkish?
Lines
So because Intellectuals are typically progressive, making our college campuses somewhat liberal and progressive, all Conservatives must keep trying to dumb themselves down?
Do Conservatives really not follow their thoughts all the way through? If the only people that teach are liberal, that doesn’t mean they were “indoctrinated” or that they were hired to “indoctrinate”, it means that intelligence brings about a more progressive tilt in the thinking processes.
So instead of working with the system and trying to understand it, Conservatives fight it and end up shooting themselves in the foot?
Wow, ignorance just keeps breeding itself into conservative circles, doesn’t it?
Krista
It’s all ridiculous. People would be “snitching” on profs that they just don’t like. Revenge, and $100? Sounds like a great way to start the weekend off right.
And as far as universities being hotbeds of liberalism – couldn’t one say that they’ve pretty much always been viewed that way? And yet, bizarrely enough, your country is currently run by right-wing idealogues. Funny, that.
Most professors are lucky if their students listen to them closely enough to get a C. I don’t think we have to worry about mass indoctrination taking place, kids.
Mac Buckets
I’m sorry, this has what to do with Horowitz being a fascist now? Are you seriously conflating advocating a relative balance of ideology with demanding that professors teach only one ideology? Because that argument is really razor-thin.
That’s why I thought your post was a gag.
BTW, is that atheist nut in California a fascist too, for ratting out his kid’s school whenever he sees or hears the word “God?”
Mac Buckets
Yeah, just ask ’em.
slide
Darrell… send your kids (god just the thought of Darrell procriating sent a shiver up my spine) to Bob Jones University. I think they got that placed pretty well cleaned up of any errant professors that might say anything against the right wing agenda.
Tim F.
You miss the point of the program. Horowitz doesn’t plan to convince the administration. As Darrell pointed out, they won’t take him seriously. One sure sign, at least, of their good judgment. This program is meant to provide grist for the rightwing media. The idea is that junior professor Smith will give every lecture with the knowledge that some out-of-context quote will get picked up by Powerline, frontpaged at the Washington Times and played for weeks at Fox News as another sad example of the deteriorating state of American academia. Tut tut. The freep take over from there. I would be shocked if you honestly found that scenario implausible.
Horowitz has alleged this many times. So far he’s batting zero.
slide
bucket brain said:
advocating a relative balance of ideology… my.. interesting concept there buckets. Who gets to keep the scorecard?
Mac Buckets
Oh, no, the prof would keep his job, get the instant respect of his peers, and become a star with 80% of working journos. A fate worse than death. But Powerline would be killing the guy. Who designed that plan for the right — Terry MacAuliffe?
You’re so far offbase on this that I could pick you off by rolling the ball to first.
Tim F.
You missed the part about freep.
Mac Buckets
Totally and utterly irrelevant to my point, Joe. Why am I not shocked?
Mac Buckets
Don’t forget NewsMax, too!
Pb
Mac Buckets,
Look at any of Horowitz’s many disgusting websites, pick anything he wrote, and then research the truth about it. Oh, and check out his bio for a good laugh too. The man’s nuttier than a Planters factory.
The Other Steve
That’s all horowitz is advocating?
Then why does he sound so much like Mao, Hitler or Stalin?
Tim F.
Mac, you’re being dishonest. You think that you know the mind of every American professor well enough to know for sure that they simply crave condemnation and harrassment. Does telepathy come in a pill, or are some people just born with it? By that logic they must love forced anal sex because, you know, I just know how these guys work. It’s a gift. Seriously, that was the weakest answer that I’ve seen from you.
Darrell
With whackjobs like Ward Churchhill, Angela Davis et al being celebrated and promoted within academia, I think there is ample evidence that we’re safe from a freep takover anytime soon
Pb
Good call Mac, don’t forget NewsMax, seeing as how they share a lot of the same funding, people, and BS as Horowitz and the rest of that despicable lot.
Mac Buckets
Well, the notion that students are afraid to contradict their profs’ political views seems to be a fact, if we believe in opinion polls or accept the anecdotes we can google.
Darrell
Do you think he sounds like a ‘little Eichman’ too? 3 out of 4 tenured profs agree
Steve
You have to be completely deluded to believe that a significant number of universities are “dominated” by “extreme leftists.”
The whole point of exercises like Horowitz’s little payoff game is to find a few pieces of damning anecdotal evidence, a few professors out of thousands who are kooks like Ward Churchill. And then a couple of anecdotes can be used to advance the absurd claim that universities are “dominated” by “extreme leftists” – at least among those who are already predisposed to believe such things.
The vast, vast majority of college professors teach their class in a non-ideological way. That’s simply undeniable. To contend that universities are “dominated” by “extreme leftists” is utter paranoia.
Pb
Mac Buckets,
I trust that was humor. 16%? With a slanted poll like that (and “derived from David Horowitz and Eli Lehrer’s study conducted by the Center for the Study of Popular Culture” — which is Horowtiz’s very own Scaife-funded foundation)? How embarrassing–I’m surprised that they bothered to publish it.
Darrell
“Denial is not a river in Egypt”
The Other Steve
Well now we’re off into moonbat land.
16% polled said yes… that proves it’s a fact.
Steve
Show me the evidence, Darrell. Show me the evidence that a significant number of universities are “dominated” by “extreme leftists.”
Mac Buckets
Nonsense, Tim. I never said any prof craves the hubbub (although I suspect that some, of course, would) — I only suggested what the likely outcome would be, and it really doesn’t pay off very well for the right. What I’m saying is that your imagined “condemnation and harassment” by a small portion of the media is only as real as my imagined lionization and admiration by the bulk of the media and their academic peers.
So mindreading, you see, is irrelevant, because what we are both engaged in is fortune-telling.
I’m not sure you’re too proud of that anal sex rant now, either.
Mac Buckets
No, it suggests that a not-insignificant percentage of those polled are afraid of being graded-down for disagreeing with a professor’s political views, which is precisely what I said in response to Tim’s suggestion that such a sentiment amongst students does not exist.
I eagerly await your poll that says 0% are actually afraid of being graded-down. I’ll wait.
The Other Steve
No, it proves 16% of American college students are conservative moonbats.
It doesn’t prove one way or another that any such thing is actually happening.
Mac Buckets
Pb, try reading that again. Only Question 10, which I didn’t cite, pulled numbers from Horowitz’s study. And “slanted,” how? I posted the question they asked.
Mac Buckets
Sure, OtherSteve. Those 16% are lying about their own feelings, because all conservatives lie about everything, even to themselves. Who’s the kool-aid drinker in this picture?
Krista
So, let me get this straight. According to you:
16% saying “yes” = Students are afraid to contradict their profs’ political views. (You also seem to assume that all of these frightfully intimidating professors are left-wing.)
76% saying “no” = ???
Do you mind horribly if I ask you what colour the sky is in your world?
yet another jeff
It means that in the poll, 16% of the kids are scared of their professors. It’s pure speculation that this is due to the professor’s ideology.
yet another jeff
Seriously…”disagreeing with professor’s political point of view”? What point of view would that be? Is it presumed to be Liberal? Conservative? Holocaust Denial?
Darrell
That’s like asking “Show me the evidence that a disproportionate percentage of male hairdressers are gay”
Pb
Mac Buckets,
I just read the top of the page more carefully, and that was even worse. Even if #10 was the only question taken from that Horowitz survey, the wording on your question was still terrible (read up on polling, my friend…), and the source still just as questionable:
And yes, American Viewpoint is a Republican polling firm, and the “Independent Women’s Forum” was originally “Women for Clarence Thomas”, founded by Michael Ledeen’s wife. And, yes, it’s connected to the same far-right money trough that I alluded to earlier–they’re anything but “independent”. And, worst of all, you appear to take their crap seriously. Ugh.
AkaDad
“It means that in the poll, 16% of the kids are scared of their professors. It’s pure speculation that this is due to the professor’s ideology.”
Lets speculate some more.
That 16% are liberal college students afraid of their Conservative professors. =]
Speculation is fun, because we know Conservatives would never retaliate against a political critic…
Pb
Darrell,
17.4%. Your turn.
Darrell
As if it wasn’t already obvious to all but the most dishonest
Look, there’s plenty of room for disagreement over whether or not it’s a good idea to be waving C-notes at students in search of beer money to tattle on their profs. But when you start seriously claiming that the universities by and large are not dominated by leftists, or start accusing those who question such one-sided domination as ‘fascists’.. well, you loons are showing how extreme you truly are with those positions
Darrell
17.4%, and that sounds low, would still be very disproportionate relative to the percentage of gays in the population which I’ve read is around 3%
docG
I wonder how many people bitching about left wing professors and bias in academia are using a college degree bestowed by these evil people to increase their earning power and quality of life?
Personally, I enjoyed the whack job professors encountered in college. Having one’s personal beliefs and values challenged is a useful experience, both in reaffiming one’s beliefs and changing them when better alternatives are presented. Academia is an intellectual free for all from which we all benefit.
If you run into a Ward Churchill and can’t tell that he is as full of shit as a Christmas goose, a college degree isn’t likely a good investment for you anyway.
Krista
“Loons” notwithstanding, you do make a good point, Darrell. I’ll concede that most profs at universities probably are left-leaning. It just seems, however, that many people on the right are using this to claim that the profs are either brainwashing or intimidating their students into following their own personal ideology, which I don’t think is accurate. Otherwise, three-quarters of all university-educated Americans would be left/liberal, and I don’t think that’s actually the case.
SeesThroughIt
So is everybody left of center an “extreme leftist,” Darrell? Because your argument was that the university system is dominated by extreme leftists, and you cite as proof that a lot of professors declare themselves to be “liberal.”
I don’t know why I’m bothering trying to be logical with you; I guess I’m just morbidly curious as to how you’re going to spin your way out of this one.
Darrell
Free for all, being defined as what, 10 hard-left campus speakers for every 1 moderate or conservative speaker? Liberal profs indoctrinating students unchallenged? yeah, that’s a real free and fair debate there
Pb
The solution to Darrell’s ‘problem’ is, of course, to pay professors better. That way you’ll attract more Republicans…
Darrell
Bingo. Although I disagree, it’s fair to argue that the liberal dominated universities don’t push their political viewpoints on students.
As exhibit A in disagreement with that assertion, I’d ask you to look at the campus speaker list of just about every major university in the country
neil
That’s a shame, if Davey Horowitz’ poll only showed that 16% of college students have been taught the right answer to that question. It must mean that the other 84% have simply been brainwashed into never questioning their professors!
Pb
Darrell,
Have you ever been to a college? I’ve graduated from one, and let me tell you, you’re way off. Not only did I see no ‘indoctrination’, (well, there was one slightly nutty religious zealot lit professor I had, but I survived somehow :)) but the worst speakers we had to put up with were the brickyard preachers–mentally unstable guys with bibles. They’d probably be homeless without their church organization funding–instead they’re itinerant idiots badgering the rest of us for getting an education. Much like you, Darrell…
Darrell
Unqualified academia free from market competition just keep raising their own salaries unchecked
AkaDad
“I wonder how many people bitching about left wing professors and bias in academia are using a college degree bestowed by these evil people to increase their earning power and quality of life?”
Best comment of the day imho…
Otto Man
Assuming, for the sake of argument, that most professors are liberal, I suppose there are two ways you can read it:
1. There’s a vast left-wing conspiracy in academia that prevents conservatives from getting Ph.D.s, publishing their work, and rising through the academic ranks. The millions of professors across the country are united in an unholy scheme to oppress conservatives and destroy their way of life.
2. The scholars who devote their lives to studying this nation’s history, laws, politics, economics, scientific research, etc. have mostly come to the conclusion that the liberal approach in these areas is the right one.
The same argument could be applied to media bias. You can either believe that the people who pay attention to these issues for a living have decided that the liberal side is the better solution, or you can believe there’s a massive conspiracy to ignore the conservative truth and destroy the country. Your choice.
ImJohnGalt
Two things:
That’s premium. Gotta remember that.
Secondly:
Darrell, you seem to be arguing that just because a professor self-identifies as liberal or Democrat, that somehow that means that they are proselytizing idealogues.
Are you suggesting that Universities should have to screen new hires for their political affiliation, and impose quotas for conservatives/Republicans? Are they even allowed to ask such questions under the law? Again, please note that I am not *accusing* you of suggesting that, I’m asking if you agree that this this is a logical conclusion of your argument.
I’m sorry. If I’m a professor teaching Electromagnetic Theory to engineering grads, why is that even relevant? Given how hostile Republicans seem to be to publicly funded research and science (unless of course, you work on advanced weapons research), it wouldn’t surprise me that research profs self-identify as more left leaning. So what? I think it’s safe to say that Fast Fourier Transforms are bipartisan.
The Other Steve
No I’m claiming that declaring we must purge the campuses of extreme leftists(defining anybody to the left of Ghengis Khan as an extremist) are fascists.
Look, if that’s what you want and you are obviously fine with a cultural purge, then why are you so afraid of the comparison to fascists?
The only lunatics here are the ones defending anti-American views of David Horowitz.
Krista
Can’t research that right now…I need to get back to work. But I’ll accept your statement that most of these speakers are left-leaning. Hard to determine the reasoning for that, though. Is it because right-leaning speakers aren’t being invited, or is it that right-leaning speakers don’t want to speak at universities where they think that their viewpoints might be vociferously challenged?
The Other Steve
Good point Pb.
There was no lack of conservative commentary on my campus.
Just because people rejected it as mean spirited doesn’t mean it wasn’t there.
yet another jeff
The answer may be quite simple. There should be some sort of program that takes action to affirm that there are the correct proportions of Conservatives teaching at a university level. Maybe some sort of “quota” system could be invoked by the GOP-controlled govt. to ensure that these Liberals aren’t taking jobs from Conservatives that may not have the same desire or qualifications for the job, at least have the right ideals?
John Cole
Woah, woah, woah. We need to slow down here.
First off, there is a difference between leftist, liberal, and left-leaning. Universities may be made up of left-leaning individuals, and certain fields may be dominated by liberals (Womyn’s Studies comes to mind), but the universities are not dominated by leftists.
Even if they were (and they are not, and I will not agree with anyone who says that ‘leftists’ run our nation’s universities), their ‘leftism’ should not disqualify them from their positions. Ward Churchill’s politics should not get him fired, his demeanor, the disrespect he has show his students, his plagiarism, and his intellecutal dishonesty, as well as the damage he has caused his institution should disqualify him.
Are most people at my university to the ‘left’ of me- a goodly number of them, but that is to be expected, since I am the center-right of the political specturm (or at least I was until these incompetent and corrupt fuckers with their religious zealot friends took over Washington and the GOP). But I have been on my campus for a long while, and I do not feel like it is dominated by hard-core leftists.
We need to be a little more precise with our terminology. Also, I would not confuse moderate Democrats who are now screeching and hollering because of the current adminsitration with true leftists. I know a lot of rational Democrats who are mortified by Bush et. al, and they are not the Ward Churchhill left. Likewise, I know a number of my fellow Republican colleagues who are in the same boat I am- confused and disgusted by he current GOP.
Does that make me a leftist, liberal, or left-leaning? or just fed up?
DougJ
Mac, many more than 16% of people believe that the rapture will come in their lifetimes, that Elvis is still alive, that the sun rotates around the earth.
Come on, Mac, you don’t want to wallow in the same shit as Darrell?
Darrell
Or how about hiring profs who don’t believe that America is the source of all evil in the world? Or who believe Communism is a demonstrable failure?
Steve
Darrell’s original claim:
Darrell’s “evidence”:
I see nothing here about “extreme leftists,” nor do I see any evidence that the ideology of these professors “dominates” the university or that the poll results represent anything more than their personal political views.
I continue to contend that the vast, vast majority of college professors teach their classes in an entirely non-ideological manner.
Try again, if you like.
ImJohnGalt
And if you don’t find this to be true, it’s only because you’re a liberal, and didn’t look hard enough.
What, you want Darrell to do the heavy lifting and prove his assertion? It is to laugh. It’s up to you to prove the point he’s making, even if you disagree with it.
I’ll bet also that the speaker list has nothing to do with the particular university chosen, the particular faculty who has invited the speaker, the curriculum of the course the speaker was brought in to enhance, or the personal relationships (read: who can I get who won’t bill me 200K?) of the people running the program.
No no no…you’ll find that uniformly, under every circumstance at “just about” every major university, every speaker is a lefty. Apparently, there’s just no return on investment for conservative speakers, if we take Darrell’s assertion as meet. Why won’t the right let the invisible hand work its magic?
[sigh]
yet another jeff
Awww, all I was doing was proposing an Affirmative Action plan to get more Conservative professors…
Otto Man
First of all, this is an administrator, not a rank-and-file professor.
Second, i’m not sure what the complaint about a sabbatical with pay is all about, since I’m fairly sure that’s how most academic sabbaticals work.
And third, if you think academia is “free from market competition” you’ve obviously never looked at this closely. Remember the battles between Harvard and Princeton over a couple professors of African-American studies a few years back? That turned into a bidding war based on what the market for these scholars would pay.
It’s even truer when you’re talking about administrators, since college provosts and presidents are routinely stolen from other universities. I remember my senior year, the college I attended made a big deal about bringing our new president in from another school. And the old one was then recruited by another college. The market rules.
DougJ
Whenever I read the idiocy that Darrell and Mac (today, but not always) spew, I thank the heavens that I’m a parody troll.
John, you must feel really good about yourself when you look around and see your party populated by the likes of Darrell.
And don’t embarrass yourself with a response involving Cindy Sheehan, please.
Darrell
John, if 3/4 of university profs nationwide have identified themselves as left/liberal and only 15% conservative.. especially given many leftists’ propensity to claim they are “independents”, I’d say that’s pretty clear evidence of leftist domination of universities. Unless you’ve better evidence of course. Otherwise it’s clear universities are in fact dominated by leftists
Krista
John, sweetie, you’re still center-right, I’d say. Not your fault that the “corrupt fuckers” have turned the public face of the right-wing into what they have. It’s like the Christians vs. “Christians” distinction that we made last week sometime. The Christians are no less Christian, just because the “Christians” are a bunch of sanctimonious, power-hungry arseholes. Same principle.
yet another jeff
I’ve never met a professor that thought that Communism was anything more than “a good idea on paper, but human nature itself prevents it from working”. Nor have I met any professors that believe that America is the source of all evil in the world.
Thank God for the blogosphere, or I’d never be exposed to those ideas…sure didn’t happen in the Liberal Arts college I attended.
Darrell
I guess you didn’t see the irony in that statement
W.B. Reeves
This is too rich to pass up. Darrell is now claiming that people who don’t think America is the source all evil or who believe Communism was a failure can’t get hired by Universities.
I don’t know what Darrell is smoking but if I were 30 years younger I’d probably want some.
Darrell
Cited above the academic conference where it declared that “Stalinism got a bad rap”. ‘Reality based community’ my ass
Krista
Speaking of things you learn in university…
yet another jeff
Hmm, 15% of professors are self-identified as conservative…16% of students are afraid to challenge the ideology of their professors…coincidence?
Otto Man
Two employers in a competition to hire prized commodities. Sounds pretty much like the free market to me. How exactly is that different than Ford and GM in a bidding war for some executive?
Nice dodge of my main question, by the way. You keep arguing that most professors are liberal. Fine. Assuming that’s true, is there liberalism a result of their informed opinions and decades of research? Or are their careers the result of some massive liberal plot?
Darrell
Well to believe that assertion, it follows that the most liberal depts, such as Womyn’s studies, would then have to be the most “informed” after decades of research, no? Leftists on this site don’t seem particularly bright
Steve
You’re the one who believes everyone who identifies themselves as “left/liberal” is an “extreme leftist,” Darrell. Don’t project your own shortage of reasoning ability onto the rest of us.
Otto Man
Well to believe that assertion, it follows that the most liberal depts, such as Womyn’s studies, would then have to be the most “informed” after decades of research, no? Leftists on this site don’t seem particularly bright
Yes, I think that women’s studies professors would probably be the most familiar with the history of women’s rights, the legal status of women, and social movements by women. Are you making an argument that econ profs have greater insight into such matters?
You’re the one insisting that universities in a bidding war is somehow not a sign of the free market at work, and we’re the ones who aren’t too bright?
SeesThroughIt
Hey, The Physics of Bong Hits was a really hard class to get into! Plus, the course description was very misleading; it didn’t tell you that the coursework involves addition and subtraction, for example.
W.B. Reeves
Certainly more reality based than your assertion that a supposed paraphrase from an unidentified source at an academic conference is proof of anything other than your own credulity.
Otto Man
So we’re allowed to use one minor figure to stand in for an entire group of people? That means all Republicans are as batshit crazy as Darrell, I suppose.
Darrell
Leftists create and promote Womyn’s studies and black studies depts. Same leftists then bid up prices for profs in those made-up depts. Are the students better off for it? Are those who pay higher tuitions better off?
No market incentives to keep costs vs benefit in check. That’s why so many of you leftists defend and excuse that kind of crap.
Pb
Darrell,
Well, no, not necessarily, but who says that they aren’t? You? Well, why not, you haven’t been able to prove any of your ridiculous assertions yet, so why not make another one…
You’re a leftist now? Make up your mind…
Otto Man
Still haven’t answered this one, Darrell. You keep insisting academia has nothing to do with market forces, and they seem to be everywhere.
neil
Good points made in that last comment, John. Attempts at finding a common ground are so rare these days.
Krista
Those bastards!
En tous cas, even if universities are hotbeds of lefties/left-leaners/left-wings/kooks…it’s pretty obvious that they haven’t been using their evil powers to influence America, isn’t it? Who’s running the country right now? So I think that this is a tempest in a teapot, and seeing as the vast majority of students are NOT afraid that disagreeing with their prof will screw up their marks, why not just leave the universities alone?
Otto Man
You act as though students are rounded up and herded unwillingly into these classes. Guess what? They’re the customers here and they’re free to choose which courses to take. If the students didn’t create the demand for such departments and courses, they wouldn’t exist. Period.
Christ, you sound like some far left environmentalist bitching about the fact that Ford keeps making SUVs that run on gasoline instead of scooters that run on love.
For someone who keeps praising the free market, Darrell, you sure don’t know shit about it.
DougJ
Could math professors be fired for insisting that the order of operations is left-to-right? Doesn’t that seem like a leftist bias to you?
Pb
Steve, yet another jeff, etc.,
Don’t concede anything to Darrell, as usual he’s gone right from being way off base straight out to nutbar-land, all without even grazing a fact. It never takes long.
Otto Man
Literature professors, too. They keep insisting on reading things from left to right. Bastards.
Pb
DougJ,
That’s why the GOP invented RPN calculators… :)
Darrell
What job outside in the real world does Womyn’s studies prepare you for? An honest answer to that question says it all
Hey, if Ford doesn’t make cars/trucks people want to buy, their stock tanks and employees, including executives, are fired.
Name for me an academic held accountable for wasting university resources on a womyn’s studies or black studies dept.? No market incentives. Much of academia exists in a bubble
Mac Buckets
Doug, I shouldn’t have to tell you why that’s a idiotic response. I mentioned off-hand that some conservative college kids might be afraid of being graded-down if they disagree with their liberal professors. Tim F. posted that Horowitz (you know, the fascist brownshirt who you still haven’t explained why he’s a fascist brownshirt) had been trying to prove that for ages and had come up zilch. So I quickly googled a poll, and suggested Tim google as I did for anecdotes, to indicate that the fear sentiment does indeed exist amongst collegians. Whether or not you guys on the (extremely defensive) left think those 16% are morons, Biblethumpers, fascist brownshirts, wingnuts or whatever is totally and thoroughly irrelevant — if they express that fear, then that fear exists.
Include yourself in that paragraph today, I’m afraid. I’m on your side with this UCLA nonsense, and you’re not even making sense to me.
Pb
Darrell,
Social work? Just about anything requiring people skills, or maybe a little compassion? Right there I can see why you find it useless. After all, you apparently don’t know the difference between a university and a trade school either.
Darrell
If the left leaning universities are such a free and open arena of ideas, then why do so many of the left leaning universities ban ROTC recruiting on campus?
That is, if they really were open to competing ideas and all..
Pb
Mac Buckets,
You “quickly googled” a GOP-funded poll (with ties to Horowitz himself) to support your preconceived notions, and even the dubious results that you did manage to come up with was laughable. The fact that you don’t even seem to notice, however… that’s even worse. DougJ is right, you and Darrell are beyond parody today.
ImJohnGalt
The mind boggles. Every course now has to exactly correlate with a trade or profession. Well, at least we know how Bush’s cheerleading course led directly to a career in cheerleading.
DougJ
Actually, you do have to tell me why that’s an idiotic response, Mac. I’m not saying those kids are dumb, just that 16% is not very many of them. I thought it would be much higher.
Also, as I said before there is a system for handling student complaints where the students remain anonymous. Sorry to go all bold on you, but why do they need to go to David Horowitz when they could just talk to the dean? Explain that to me, please.
Otto Man
Same thing happens with the bigwigs in academia, genius. When enrollments go down, or they fall in the USNews or Princeton Review rankings, the administrators get the can.
Did you ever attend college? I ask this seriously, because you seem completely unfamiliar with how a college operates.
Well, you’re assuming that university resources have been “wasted” on women’s studies and black studies without — as always — providing any evidence to support such a claim. That’s a pathetic argument. Provide some proof of waste and we’ll talk about whether or not university officials were held accountable. Until you do that, this point is meaningless.
No matter how much you deny it, the market does affect these programs. There is significant enough student interest in them, so they exist. But the student interest isn’t as big in them as it is in say engineering or history, and so such programs are generally smaller than the big majors. The market sorts it out.
Steve
I conceded what, Pb?
Pb
Darrell,
Does “the Kent State Massacre” mean anything to you? My god, man, crack open a book, or something.
Otto Man
Zing! That may be the best line of the thread.
Darrell
Social work? How does ‘gender theory’ prepare you for that? Compassion? How is it compassion to push the idea that men are the source of all evil?
I read that Womyn’s studies depts have sponsored over 300 performances of Vagina Monologues at campuses across the country. That certainly sounds like a worthwhile use of funds.. preparing pre-med students for OBGYN coursework no doubt
Pb
Steve,
Not much, but specifically that Darrell’s ‘evidence’ might be at all fair or accurate in the first place.
Otto Man
Is that the best you’ve got? Christ, you are bad at this. Can we get some real conservatives in here?
Pb
Er, yeah, Darrell, way to further prove that you’re a moronic cretinous waste of flesh, offensively parroting dreck. Why don’t you take a women’s studies class–you could use a few, but I doubt you could learn anything.
Incidentally, I saw a performance of the vagina monologues. It wasn’t bad, but of course it was performed by a campus dramatic society, and as such had little to do with the women’s studies department itself or its curriculum.
Darrell
Did you find it “empowering”?
SeesThroughIt
Or perhaps go-carts that run on Ed Begley Junior’s sense of self-worth. Sorry random Simpsons joke there….
Anyway, I too think Darrell needs to answer this question:
C’mon, Darrell. Don’t be shy. Use this anatomically correct doll to show the judge exactly where the liberal indoctrination happened.
Pb
Darrell,
I did find it enlightening in a few places, disturbing in one or two others, sometimes quite funny–it is what it is, but it’s definitely worth seeing.
Otto Man
I doubt Darrell would ever see the Vagina Monologues. The topic is clearly one that frightens him.
Mac Buckets
OK, Pb, hit me with your counter to that study. Show me a nonbiased poll that shows that 0% of students are afraid for their grades in that situation. As I said hours ago, I’ll wait. It’s very convenient and lazy simply to whine about how every study must be biased because it’s on a conservative site or it must be GOP-funded or whatever, and it’s simple to talk dishonestly about “ties to Horowitz” (when they just use one of his statistics in an unrelated question)… and then to provide absolutely no proof to validate your own claim.
Mac Buckets
Well, it’s a lot more than 0%, which is what Tim asserted, and why I posted that poll. Only about half of university students self-identify as either liberal or conservative, and you’d have to imagine that only a fraction of those groups feels strong enough about their particular ideology to think that it might pose a conflict in the classroom. Bearing that in mind, one out of six is a significant number.
Mac Buckets
If they’re trying to solve the perceived problem of liberal bias or indoctrination in academia, I’m sure they feel as though academia doesn’t do a good enough job of policing itself. They probably feel that some claims of bias would be greeted with a slap on the back and an attaboy by other liberal academics.
jg
This thread is hilarious. Darrell is in rare form today.
jg
How do you solve a percieved problem? Wouldn’t you first have to deterimine if its real and not just the perceptions of insecure students?
Steve
It’s perfectly natural in all walks of life for people to fear retribution if they complain. I’m with DougJ in that I would have expected the 16% number to be higher. But the fact that some tiny percentage of students have such a fear doesn’t prove that it’s in any way grounded in reality.
yet another jeff
Maybe it’s all a trick to get liberals on record saying that the feelings of a 16% minority does not mean that the other 84% should have to change?
Pb
Mac Buckets,
I looked around, and I can’t actually find any reputable organizations (like Pew, say) doing similar polls–go figure. However, even if your 16% figure were correct, it’s hardly worrisome. Also, Tim F. was correct in what he originally said–“Horowitz has alleged this many times. So far he’s batting zero”. And, it’s not at all lazy to track down the actual conservative ties that the specific organizations you referenced actually has–it *is* lazy to subsequently ignore them. Or dishonest, one of the two–you tell me.
Mac Buckets
That’s why I said “trying to solve.”
DougJ
Mac, I do see your point, but I think you’re missing my larger point: regardless of how the Horowitzavistas feel about bias in academia, they are resorting to brownshirt techniques. And they are not even doing so in the name of a real problem.
I’ll give you a point of comparison: I think my local newspaper has a conservative slant. I think they refuse to cover important issues (such as my local congressmen’s association with DeLay and Abramoff) as a result and I think it is a real problem. But I would never even consider giving, say, interns at the paper a reward for publicly denouncing the paper, saying that they heard editors discuss an intentional slant, etc. Nor would I say that the editors of the paper are right-wing lunatics who need to be “rooted out”. .
Why wouldn’t I? Because I think it’s the kind of thing fascists do. If I don’t like my local newspaper, I don’t have to buy it. If Horowitz’s brownshirt brigadeers don’t like the faculty at the university they’re at, they can transfer to Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University or take correspondance classes through the Institute for Creation Research.
Mac Buckets
I’d argue that 16% is not a “tiny percentage,” and note that it’s irrelevant to my earlier point whether their feelings are grounded in reality or otherwise. Although, I’d love to hear the left talk more about how the feelings of the “oppressed” parties don’t matter — usually it’s kind of the opposite.
DougJ
I think sometimes that we should end this once and for all by having affirmative action for conservatives (Lord knows they need the help) and having a Conservative Studies department that can teach classes on creation science, supply side economics, faith-based approaches to real world problems, and other such quackery.
The Other Steve
I concur with DougJ.
Conservatives need Affirmative Action. They’re being left behind by an academic system that relies far too much on facts.
Mac Buckets
I agree they shouldn’t be paid. I just think the fascist tag is silly.
jg
I’d jump at the chance to hear how Bush’s economic policies are better for me and the country as a whole than the policies the left would be if put in place (or restored). I think John should give us a thread for this like he did with the Plame affair. I would love to know what the future looks like to a conservative so I can get on board with the result instead of sweating out the transistion.
Tim F.
I don’t have a pile of time today, but this deserves a proper response. Like DougJ, I would be shocked if the real number was as low as 16%. Like DougJ I teach in an academic setting (though in a grad-student capacity) and I can tell you that many undergraduates live in perpetual fear of somehow causing the teacher to lower their score. That’s the phenomenon that makes student course evaluations a kabuki-esque ritual. The less pleasant half take their grade for granted and treat it as a personal insult when they don’t get what they deserve, but leave them aside for now.
The problem isn’t the perception of retaliation and that’s not what has Horowitz’s panties bunched up. The problem as he sees it is that there really are teachers out there who intimidate and punish students who express conservative viewpoints. So Horowitz has loaded up his donkey and searched the country in this quixotic search for a verifiable example of this problem that, according to him, is as common in academia as a cribbed term paper. Except somehow, every example that he’s put forward has turned out to be completely bogus. Usually it’s one of those entitled students that I mentioned before looking for an excuse to swing a richly-deserved C.
So far Horowitz has scoured the country for a lurid, real-world example of that intimidation that he claims is so widespread, and so far he’s batting zero. I’m sure that it happens somewhere, but until now he and it have failed to connect.
jg
Even when its pointed out how accurate it is?
Darrell
Can you seriously imagine Ward Churchhill giving a fair grade to a student who expressed support for military action in Iraq? Seriously. And Ward Churchill is not such an anomoly. Remember he was a highly regarded tenured prof. Had he not gone so aggressively over the line with his Little Eichman tag on the 9/11 victims his hateful rantings would still be a cause celebre among academia more than now
Darrell
yes, you kooks really ‘proved’ how accurate the fascist label was, just like you ‘proved’ how the Stalinist smear was accurate too. Such is the way of life in the ‘reality based community’
jg
Whats your fascination with Churchill? His 15 minutes was up years ago.
Pb
Darrell,
That’s rich. You talking about proof, that is. I haven’t seen you find any proof here, except perhaps from whatever it is you’ve been drinking. Hint: lay off the diesel.
Otto Man
Wow, it’s the perfect storm of Darrell posts! First, a supposition based on nothing more than his imagination. And then a spouting of right-wing talking points.
Churchill was a “highly regarded” “cause celebre” among academics before his comments? Care to offer any proof there? Because I have to think that if this guy was such a hotshot, he wouldn’t have been languishing at the University of Colorado at Boulder; he would have — by Darrell’s own reasoning — been snatched up in a bidding war by some evil leftist ethnic studies department at Harvard or Yale.
Pb
jg,
Bill O’Reilly is probably still making love to Ward Churchill’s corpse, and the necrophiliacs like Darrell can’t get enough of it. I think Bill’s the one who dug him up in the first place, too, but who can be sure with that bunch.
Tim F.
It seems to me like behind all of the disagreement here lies a fundamental violation of Tim F’s law.
Here’s what I mean: conservatives have lately become very comfortable with the term ‘evil.’ Fascists were evil, communists were evil, terrorists are evil. For interesting reasons it puts people in a comfortable place where moral decisions become very easy. The downside is that it doesn’t reflect the real world very well.
So fascists were evil. What is evil, exactly? It’s some malevolent, irrational supernatural force. Obviously we’re not evil. So we must never have anything in common with fascists, right? Because they were evil and we’re not. Therefore anything that suggests that we have anything remotely in common with fascism must be a priori wrong, since we’re not evil. Same exercise with communists.
The entire line of reasoning is bullshit. Fascists were people. So were communists. Fascists, communists and the rest of us ran modern beaurocratic societies which handled more or less the same set of problems in slightly different ways. Theirs didn’t work as well as ours, so in the end we won. If fascism was more sustainable and effective as a government system then we’d all be fascists, evil or no evil.
Fascists and communists made certain stupid mistakes which rendered their societies less competitive. If by analogy it appears that we are about to make the same mistakes then we owe it to ourselves to accept the analogy and correct the problem. Remember Tim F’s law. We don’t make the same mistakes as fascists because we have some inner store of evil, we do it because certain ways of solving problems are very appealing to people no matter where you find them, and the downside may not be obvious. It’s our good luck to have the example of other people from which to learn, and it seems counterproductive in the extreme to reject the lessons of history for ultimately irrational reasons.
Darrell
Uh, he was head of the CU Ethnic studies program
Lines
bah da bing, good one Darrell, you really showed everyone up with that last comment!
Otto Man
Yeah, you never went to college.
As I recall, the chair of a department generally rotates among members of the senior faculty. The CU Ethnic Studies program has a dozen faculty members, but only eight of them are tenured and thus eligible to be the chair. If Churchill hadn’t been the chair at some point in his time there, that would be a reason to raise eyebrows.
And from what I remember from discussions with profs — and maybe John can chime in here — the chair isn’t exactly a prize position. It means you have to handle all the administrative work and petty academic squabbling, and don’t get to spend your time doing your own work. It’s not like Homecoming Queen.
And ayway, by your logic, the chair of every academic department at every college in the country is also a “highly regarded” “cause celebre.”
Seriously, can we get some intelligent conservatives over here? The one we have is disappointing.
Tim F.
Darrell, why should anybody care about your hypothetical? If you think that Churchill might on some theoretical planet have intimidated students, why not email Horowitz. I’m sure that crazy Davey could dig up a former student who no longer lives under threat of retaliation.
Seriously, you’re completely full of shit if the best you have to offer is incredulous hypotheticals.
Otto Man
Or Tim! Sorry, I forgot you’re both in academia.
Darrell
What I like about the left is their moral equivalences. Ideologies responsible for the mass murder of 100 million is merely a less efficient competing ideology who made ‘mistakes’. Al Queda supremecists trying to kill as many innocents as possible.. but don’t dare call them ‘evil’ though.
We’re not ‘just like them’. Evil is correct. Sorry if calling a spade a spade makes you so uncomfortable. But it certainly doesn’t make you right. You refer to your ‘rule’ as if you have a valid established point. You don’t
Darrell
Because you made the ridiculous assertion that there were no examples (“batting zero” is what you wrote) of profs intimidating students based on ideology. Given how aggressively liberal so many of these profs are, that assertion is absurd on its face. I gave Ward churchill as an example. Answer the question – Can you imagine in a million years that a professor like Ward Churchill would give a fair grade to any student who openly professed support for George W. Bush? Of course not. So why pretend there is zero evidence?
Pb
Fascists are as fascists do; too bad if that bothers you.
Pb
Darrell,
The point is, Horowitz has found zero evidence. And he’s been caught making shit up too. You can’t even play straight with what Tim F. actually said–back to the penalty box for you.
Steve
That’s kind of weird for Darrell to claim that ideologies killed people. I thought people killed people.
Short of out-and-out crazy genocidal ideologies like Hitler’s, I don’t see how anyone can blame an ideology for causing the deaths of millions. It’s kind of like saying religion has killed X million people by adding up all the religious wars in history.
Fascist dictators have killed plenty of people, but I don’t think that means you can lump them all together and say fascism killed them. And the real fallacy lies in the claim that you can no longer be a “fascist” unless and until you kill millions of people, which just makes no sense.
Darrell
What specifically has Horowitz lied about?
skip
This is like Daniel Pipes and his egregious Campus Watch. Or the Daniel Project at Columbia University where Arab professors were accused of ruling discussion in (!!) New York City.
This is just more of what Eric Alterman called “working the refs.” I don’t like it –even when it was the “Joe Must Go” club at the University of Wisconsin during the McCarthy era.
Get the advanced degree and teach what you believe. I mean, how hard can it be if John and I did it.
Slide
Is it me or is Darrell even more moronic today than usual?
Lines
Lets start that one off with an easy one, Darrell. First off, he’s lied to multiple committee’s about the independence of the studies that were done to look into the dreaded “liberal” presence on campuses.
Anyone else want a piece of Darrell’s ignorance here? This is just too easy.
Darrell
There is a common denominator in communist regimes – mass murder and oppression. Communism goes against the basic human impulse to try and get ahead to do better for yourself and your family. The only way to suppress that impulse is through force. Ideology is to blame
DougJ
Fascist might not be the best word, I agree, since it was a tactic of Stalin and Mao, as well.
Slide
What specifically has Horowitz lied about?
DougJ
Darrell is out of control today. It’s too bad, because I feel like the discussion with Mac is a good one. Darrell is drowning a somewhat reasonable right-wing position with a laughable right-wing position, in effect.
DougJ
Mac: I don’t have the time or energy to document the similarities between what Horowitz is doing and what Stalin, Mao, and the early Nazis did, but if I did, I think you’d find the evidence convincing. I realize that’s a lame argument, but I’ll have to leave it at that.
Steve
This is the same Darrell who, above, made the absurd claim that universities are “dominated” by “extreme leftists,” and then tried to weasel his way out by saying, well ok, a majority of professors self-identify as left/liberal, even though that hardly makes them “extreme leftists.”
But he won’t rest if he thinks someone else has exaggerated the point a tad. “How dare you claim there are zero examples of students being intimidated by professors,” he says to Tim F. “My hypothetical example of how Ward Churchill might intimidate a student counts as one!”
Slide
.
Darrell
Slide, in case you can’t read, 75% of univesity profs ADMIT to being left/liberals.. only 15% say they are conservative. You can argue to what extent they push their ideology, but their is no doubt that universities are dominated by leftists
Slide
Slide
are all right wingers lying sacks of shit?
DougJ
Darrell, at this point, believing in evolution makes you a “liberal”. How could expect that the sciences, for example, would not be dominated by “liberals”?
Look, talk to Richard Mellon Scaife and see if you can’t get him to endow a Conservative Studies department. Students would finally be able to learn about how the earth is 6000 years old, refer to the Civil War as the War of Northern Aggression, refute the whole global warming myth, revere the hero Joe McCarthy, etc. without any of those pesky liberal facts getting in the way.
Lines
No, but they usually eat the truthful ones because they think its a weakness.
Darrell
Cut the lying crap as if you think there is a valid opposing point to yours after your obsessive postings about how tattling on leftwing profs is the same as ‘brownshirt’ fascists, and “stalinists”. Over and over again you posted it. But the discussion with Mac in which you telling him his position was fascist was a ‘good one’, right?
Darrell
I think Womyn’s studies on ‘gender theory’ are great examples of deep thought coming from the liberal left. What’s incredible is the high percentage of leftists on this site who hold the position that there is 1) no leftist control of college campuses. 2) And if there were, so “fucking what” to quote one poster
What happened to the diversity of ideas you lefties keep lecturing us about? Gotta keep ROTC off campus too.
Lines
Hmmm, I think you broke something in Darrell with your “brownshirt” comment, DougJ. Its like an extra screw has come loose.
Good job! Although I would still like to hear from a sane conservative like John more often. I know they are lurking out there, but with the insanity that Darrell and Stormy now flood the site with, they’re probably just afraid of being heard in such a din.
DougJ
I’m a little worried that the snafu in the Medicare prescription drugs program may be denying you your much-needed zoloft, Darrell.
DougJ
So Darrell, you agree that believing in evolution makes you a liberal then?
Lines
Darrell, why do Women’s Studies or studies on diversity frighten you so? Why does understanding historical gender identities and their role in modern day society twist your lacey panties in a knot? You seem to have this unusual and frightening obsession with it, instead of letting the feasability of the class determine its place in scholastic society, you’ve already made up your mind that its a “waste of time” and not worth it to any part of society.
What else don’t you think is worthwhile, Darrell? As an engineer, I can tell you I think that I think that the trucking school really upsets me, and I have taken up a position at the local University declaring that I believe they should be removed because its a waste of my student fee’s, but they just keep laughing at me. In all your wisdom, maybe you can shed some light on that for me?
Otto Man
And referring to “women’s studies” as “Womyn’s studies” is a great example of the deep thought coming from the conservative right.
Keep poking your stick at what you clearly don’t understand. It’s making your side seem brilliant.
Darrell
Horowitz did not retract his claims. He says the professor destroyed all copies of the exam and the students’ answers, even though this was a violation of university regulations
Darrell
Trade school classes like that are no problem, as there is a practical use and demand for them. Unlike Women’s studies or black studies, there is no 4 year and post grad programs for trucking or carpentry, so your comparison is more than a little dishonest
Slide
Once again Darrell you are quite wrong, but what else is new. Here is Horowitz’s retraction, a snippet of which is below:
.
Darrell
Slide quotes from a Horowitz statement which preceded my citation. Horowitz clarifies:
The prof destroyed the original test and the student’s answers in violation of university regulations
binky
Um, with the new privacy regulations professors are supposed to destroy – literally, shred – old exams to as to obliterate any identifying information.
Slide
ugh… I give up lol. I feel sorry for the darrells of the world, living in fear of their own shadow. Terrorists everwhere…traitors… homosexuals… liberal professors… oh my. what a scary place the world must be for you.
Darrell
A recently disputed test which had just gone up to appeal? have you read the privacy regulations for University of N. colorado?
Darrell
I’m not living in fear, I’m pissed off that leftists feel justified in ramming their agendas down the throats of others, shouting down those who disagree as “fascists”. Campus radicals who claim to embrace the open exchange of ideas block ROTC recruiting in a time of war.
SeesThroughIt
I’m in the same boat. I’m on what appears to be a neverending search for a conservative who can explain to me why the mere mention of the word “communism” sends conservatives into conniption fits. I only seem to get rants about how many people Stalin and/or Mao killed. When I say, “Stalin and Mao were people; I’m asking what about the concept of communism frightens you so much,” all I get is more rants about how bad a person Stalin was. Well, duh. But beyond that, communism is both the ultimate boogeyman and the ultimate insult for the right, and yet none of them can explain why that is.
Jeff Younger
Professors need some “chilling effects.” Just yesterday I had to listen to an hour of ranting about Bush and the environment in a two hour Philosophy class. Conservatives like me were called “stupid” and all sorts of political opinion was presented as fact.
Professors have too liberally interpreted academic freedom — they shouldn’t be able to waste my time and tuition money on their personal grudges. That’s academic fraud, not academic freedom.
Professors tend to advocate regulating every industry but their own, but they had better teach their subject and rant after class. Otherwise, prepare for regulation in the Academy.
SeesThroughIt
And yet you offer no proof of this happening. Funny how that works.
Pb
Hah. Apparently I was dead on before–Darrell really doesn’t understand the distinction between a university and a trade school–or if he does, it sounds like he’d be more in favor of graduate programs in trade schools than in universities. Don’t worry, Darrell–my old school has programs in all sorts of things, like textiles, hotel management, animal husbandry… you’ll fit right in!
Darrell
yeah, you really got me there genius. Lines post referred to a LOCAL community college.. community colleges often offer courses similar to trade schools, but at a lower cost
Jeff Younger
I’m a conservative. If you are talking about Marx’s interpretation of Communism, then traditional and libertarian conservatives will have strong disagreements with
the abrogation of property rights, which are tantamount to human rights for Classical Liberals;
the elimination of the family, which is seen as a fundamental social unit;
historical determinism, which conflicts with the notions of free-will established by Classical Liberal ethical theories;
the insistence upon atheism, which brings the state into matters of religion and individual conscience.
Hope that helps.
Pb
Darrell,
Actually, I believe he said “University”. But really, getting you is no prize.
Pb
Jeff Younger,
I’m not sure that all your complaints necessarily apply to Marx per se, but as he himself said, “I am not a Marxist”. However, kudos for coming up with a conservative position that may have facts in it–you’re way ahead of Darrell already.
SeesThroughIt
Thanks for this. Certainly plenty of grist for debate, but that’s not for this thread. Still, I appreciate the clear, calm answer.
DougJ
Jeff Younger is another fake college student in the mold of knayte. It is quite possible he’s affiliated with Horowitz or the Bruin brownshirts.
Sorry, but don’t bring that weak shit in here when I’m around. You can’t kid a kidder.
Steve
I don’t know what you’re talking about, DougJ. Surely it’s plausible that right when we’re having a discussion about liberals in academia, someone pops in that just happened to sit through a one-hour rant from a liberal professor yesterday.
What moonbats like you don’t want to acknowledge, clearly, is that this sort of thing is so common that victims are literally everywhere. Most likely, the reason David Horowitz never presents credible evidence is that he simply has too many examples to recount, and he doesn’t want to be accused of using anecdotal evidence when the examples are so pervasive.
demimondian
DougJ:
demimondian
Yup, coincidences do happen.
Hey, Steve, since John’s not buying — and I don’t think you’d get the joke about Linux — I’ve got a bridge to sell you.
DougJ
Steve, his story about his professor ranting is bogus. That’s all I’m saying. I know bogus when I see it. I don’t think Darrell or Mac or Stormy or OCSteve are bogus. When Stormy says she got drunk and watched Desperate Housewives, I believe it. When Darrell says he was fired from his job at Blockbuster for insubordination, I believe it. But Jeff Younger’s story about his professor ranting is bogus.
Read what he wrote and tell me he didn’t make his story up. If you believe it, I’ve some yellowcake from Niger I’d like to sell you.
The Other Steve
I agree regarding property rights.
I’m not sure where you get the family structure complaint from, other than via the lack of human rights the state has too much control over any given individual to take them away.
My girlfriend is Russian and my impression is their family structures were closer/stronger than ours are today. Since there was no concept of daycare, the grandparents cared for the children while the parents worked. To exemplify this, at Beslan in 2004 it was grandmothers who were there on the first day of school with the children. I believe this is largely because of the poverty inherent in the Communist economic system. The family had to be closer and support one another because they had so little. Children lived with the parents until they were married, and sometimes beyond that. Compare this with the family structure in America where most families are spread across the country, mainly due to their economic independence from one another.
I’m not quite certain what he means by historical determinism.
To add to this…
The fundamental failure of Communism as an economic system is the lack of motivation amongst the workers. It matters not how hard you work, you still only get a bowl of soup and a pad on the ground to sleep, i.e. the bare minimum to survive that is all. Luxuries are not recognized in the Communist ideal. The Soviet and Maoist forms got around this by establishing a Party heirarchy which rewarded people who kissed the ideological ass. You weren’t rewarded for innovation or hard work per se, but for following the party line and not causing trouble.
From there everything else went downhill. Because you want to encourage people to follow the ideology, that means you must crush all other ideologies… which means human rights are abandoned for the good of the state.
I see many people argue that Communism is not really what Marx described. Perhaps. However, I believe that the problems of Communism, namely the crushing of human rights flows back to the economic issues, namely the lack of property rights or more particular the lack of ability of reward for hard work. That’s the central tenant of failure that derives all other flaws. It’s not possible to follow the central tenant without also taking on those flaws, and this is why Communism is a failed philosophy.
I should note however, that Capitalism in Russia is also becoming something of a failure today, largely because it has been too heavily influenced by corrupt foreign influences.(i.e. Republicans and such) As a result, there is now a belief that you can get rich without hard work, all you have to do is figure out a way to scam other people who have money. This latter point is based on feedback I’m receiving from my girlfriend whose parents and brother still live back home.
The scam artists are also influencing the government and as a result the legal system is corrupted and filled with kickbacks and bribes. This is the norm at all aspects of life now. You want to go to a good school? It’s not enough to have good test scores, you must also bribe the teacher to accept you.
Granted, this is not unlike the economic system the United States endured through the latter portion of the 19th century into the early 20th century. So given time, and strong leadership, they can hopefully pull out of it.
I wish the United States would provide greater leadership on this, but our system is also becoming diseased with this notion of crony-Capitalism as a result of Republican policies.
The Other Steve
It’s rather hard to believe any college professor going off on a rant about the current President.
I went to college during the Reagan era, which was a far far more activist era than what we have today. Apartheid protests were going on weekly. Complaints about nuclear weapons proliferation was a daily event on campus.
I don’t recall any professors offering us any political lectures.
Now some of my professors would question the conventional norms and point out interesting research which was going on. Such as at that time, it was organic farming techniques. Or I had one professor who did propose an interesting human behavioral point with regards to man’s obsession with robots and artificial intelligence having to do with an insecurity over the gender roles of reproduction, which I think is applicable to the abortion debate. But he didn’t mention abortion, I simply extrapolated his argument in that direction.
And the thing is, I was no leftist in the 1980s. In fact if you were to go find some old copies of the campus daily from 1987 you’d find a couple letters to the editor with my name that sound strikingly like Darrell. But they were in response to stupid things the GSB was doing, or the daily editors.
My only complaint with professors was one who was simply not a good instructor for a Computer Engineering class on logical design.
Steve
Was it not clear from my comment that I, too, found his story ridiculously implausible?
I may believe Stormy watches Desperate Housewives, but when she says she convinces people to vote Republican by printing out angry liberal posts from Balloon Juice, you know, I do get to thinking she might occasionally embellish as well.
John Cole
The fundamental failure of Communism is that it led to rationing of vodka and shitty cars. That by itself tells me the system is a failure.
demimondian
Soviet vodka was notoriously shitty, so I assume that you meant “led to rationing of shitty vodka and cars”. Now, why is the reationing of truly shitty products an indication of the system’s failure?
demi “words twisted for free on wednesday” mondian
demimondian
Oh, I don’t know. Apparently, Darrell’s belief in evolution was sufficient to convince DOugJ to link to the Institute for Creation Research as his web site…
DougJ
Sorry, Steve, should have been obvious you were kidding — there’s so many fricking steves here I get confused.
yet another jeff
Particle board is not a proper material for automobile construction…the soviets never understood that. But I thank John for reminding me (probably not on purpose) of P.J. O’Rourke’s Holidays in Hell.
mitch
Interestingly, no one has said anything about whether those who pay a University’s tab should have any say in what is being taught or who is doing the teaching. Yes, there are Boards of Trustees, or Regents, however, they are spending taxpayer money and are, for all intents and purposes, accountable to no one.
In the case of publicly funded schools & private schools that take monies from any government source, the taxpayer is forced to pay the bill. In my “real world” of private enterprise, I am faced with the real issue of the Golden Rule: those who have the gold make the rules. Customer satisfaction is paramount. It makes good business sense then to always remember that it is the customer who pays my salary and the least I can do is not to make him angry or spoil his day.
The only real solution is to abolish publicly funded educational institutions.
Steve
The Board of Trustees is unaccountable? Where I come from, the trustees of the state universities are popularly elected.
If someone wants to run for the Board of Trustees on a pledge to make the state universities more conservative, they can take that platform to the voters. In our democratic system, that’s the best form of accountability there is.
DougJ
What if the voters want them?
Oh, sorry, I forgot that Bushies don’t believe in democracy. It’s a bit confusing sometimes because they talk about spreading democracy so much, I forget that they don’t want it here. My bad.
skip
“The fundamental failure of Communism is that it led to rationing of vodka ”
Conversely, Saki opined:
“Say what you will of the Catholic Church, but any institution that gave us Green Chartreuse has much to recommend it.”
BRASS
Jones is engaging in a free market, capitalist system. He is NOT censoring anyone. He is not a government or state in and of himself, so parallels to fascism or Stalinism are invalid. He has provided commercial forum on the internet (the same internet which emobdies the essence of modern free speech). Liberals should post a site with the same goal toward convservatives. As a Libertarian, I dislike for both sides, but enjoy seeing them at each others’ throats. Remember that free speech is not censorship and it begets more free speech.
W.B. Reeves
You are mistaken. While it’s true that Stalinism had its genesis within the State Machine created by the Bolsheviks and was completely defined by its role as State ideology, the same is not true of Fascism. Fascism developed and defined itself as a popular political movement aimed at overthrowing the existing state aparatus. Fascism came into existence independent of and in opposition to the state. The same holds true of its Nazi variant.
When confronted by any organization or movement that makes use of the same techniques as Fascist movements did prior to taking state power, drawing out the obvious parallels is not only valid, it is a necessity.
State power is the goal of Fascism, not its definition.
R.R.
All you liberals so annoyed with the UCLAprofs.com are retarded. Look at UCLA’s English Department! It’s overflowing with leftist radicals. Don’t believe me? See for yourself. (Not that you will. You moonbats never see what you don’t want to.)
mitch
What if the voters want to abolish abortion?
Oh, sorry, I forgot that liberals don’t believe in democracy. It’s a bit confusing sometimes because they talk about spreading democracy so much, I forget that they don’t want it here. My bad.