Academic 'Bill of Rights' or Government Censorship?
 

I wonder how we can do this in a country that protects freedom of speech.


http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlates...795751,00.html

posh. get a mouth, and use it. i argue with my profs all the time...most often i lose, but i've won a couple rounds too.

it doesn't really matter what issue, but when i see people who complain that they have to be quiet in class because the prof doesn't agree with them...i don't have pity. take a risk, and advocate for your viewpoint. see how defensible it is.

I went to a public university for 5 1/2 years and I wasn't indoctrinated with the liberal propaganda. I don't know how much of it is a political agenda or how much is because its just a bit of a left-leaning environment, but there does seem to be a left-slant to a lot of professors' viewpoints. I remember I had one libertarian professor, and a number that were openly liberal. I don't remember one professor that was conservative, but I do remember that for the most part I was offered both sides of an arguement; sometimes it came from the professor, sometimes from students.

every professor would do this, I find something like this just laughable

jeez, just argue with the man. They will probably win the arguement, but you probably will gain some respect from them.(if you didn't argue something idiotic)

I am glad to see something like this. Judging by your reactions, you all have had openminded professors. Often this isn't the case, many professors not only give opinion as fact, but stifle any opposing views. I have seen numerous occurences of this as a political science major. If a professor at a state-sponsored school cannot respect divergent opinions, they should not take public money.

A professor is not the same as a high school teacher... In fact, many are not even teachers, per se.

Professors are hired to do research and publish... teaching is just one of their duties.

The real job of learing in higher education, falls to the student. The prof is really only there to facilitate this process. You may not agree with them... more power to you. You have just learned another lesson about the real world.

That's the point, tho. I have profs that i really disagree with. I've taken grades that were far worse that i deserved for doing so.

So what? There's no need for a law to protect people from this. Voice your opinion, if you think it worth it, and take the results. This is a protection from responsibility, not a freedom.

If they think they can legislate objectivity, they should start with the media. Otherwise they should quit complaining.

There's two things wrong with this:

1. "The Media" isn't a single entity. A state-funded university is. And it's a state-controlled entity at that. I doubt that people would start advocating for state-sponsored news.

2. Media organizations are for-profit businessees. A higher education institure isn't measured by the bottom line. If objectivity was profitable, i'm sure more news outlets would also be.

I don't see what this has to do whatsoever with freedom of speech, unless you take the point that conservative students are having their first amendment rights violated. How many people here would feel the same if a professor instituted a "don't ask don't tell policy" and any gay student was risking a lower grade by letting it known their homosexuality. It seems that people here are only complaining because those with their particular political views are in charge of universities, and they don't want to see that change or allow differing opinions to be allowed.

Clinton! It's Clinton's fault!

(since we are setting up strawmen to attack :D )

Seriously,

There are certainly professors that are more than willing to penalize students based on their view points; to argue otherwise is to argue against human nature as well as many documented cases.

So I don't see why anyone would object to this bill, as it protects a liberal student's rights as well as a conservative one's.

I don't object to the bill in principal. It just seems to me something rather arbitrary and difficult to enforce. I have news for you folks, if i were to waste valuable time in my biology class arguing with the professor about the inherent logic of creationism, i would deserve whatever grade docking i ended up with. Would this type of completely valid consequence be prohibited by this pseudo bill of rights?

In the real-outside-of-college world, saying what's on your mind, even when you should have every right to do so, can result in undesirable consequences. Even in taxpayer funded situations. It's called choosing your battles and it is an essential skill.

I haven't heard any evidence of widespread left-wing indoctrination. In fact, if i may refer any of you to recent national voting trends, it would appear that any effort focused on left-wing indoctrination has failed miserably.

i guess i believe in the principle of the law... but i don't think such a thing to be enforceable by law.

anecdotally, i do know many people who complain that their poli-sci professors will grade their papers according to how they align with what they think the professor would like to hear. several have specifically said they just fill papers will ideological butt-kissing and have learned it's much better to keep their ideas to themselves.

not a big fan of legislating every last thing. i think we should just apply pressure where we are able and let it all shake out without getting lawyers involved.

I agree that this bill will be hard (and that's an understatement) to enforce, but I think it's more a symbolic gesture. I can also see some problems with it's enforcement in relation to more scientific fields. But currently in social sciences I always have to weigh my prof's opinion when answering questions or doing essays.

As for relating to "real-life", college is supposed to be different. It is supposed to be a place where ideas can be exchanged freely and knowledge of differing things gained. It might be idealistic, but I think that the whole idea of college is idealistic in itself, so maintaining that feel is something I think it's good to work for.

And as for voting trends, I think that the political lean of the country shows more about the age of voters than what goes on at campuses. It's generally accepted that as people age, they tend to get more conservative views, and also it's shown that as age increased voting generally increases.

Most social sciences are a vast mishmash of competing theories. I think it is fairly normal for a person to be a little bit ethnocentric about their chosen philosophies. Why would you want to learn a subject from someone who lacks conviction?

I think college is about learning to think critically about the world around you. Part of that is figuring out the myriad different ways that people can be full of shit. It is also important to be able to pick your battles and understand the idea that sometimes the most effective thing you can do i a given situation is to keep your opinion to yourself. Keep in mind that this is not the same thing as indoctrination. I don't think currently that there is any shortage of idea exchange on university campuses.

You might want to let bill sponsor Sen. Larry Mumper in on this fact. He seems to think that indoctrination is an issue relevant to this matter.

Having conviction is one thing, but being closed to well-argued logical opposing views in a field that hasn't come to decicive conclusions about what you differ on is another thing. If I make a logical point, and there is nothing definite factually that opposes my point, I shouldn't be punished just because someone disagrees with me.


I agree, but it's hard to learn to think critically if only one side is ever presented. Then you aren't thinking, you are being told. And judging by what i've seen, there is a definate lack of exchange on campus.



I don't see any real "indoctrination" but more a leaning. It is true that many college students probably absorb more liberal ideas at a university than they would otherwise, but to me that's not the issue nor do I see it as a big problem. I'm more worried about those who have differing opinions being allowed to voice those. And what some senator thinks is irrelevant to me, if the result is what I think is for the best. As they say, the ends justify the means.

Lost points on a paper for using "homophobic" because the prof said that it "made it sound like there was something wrong with opposing homosexuality."

They get federal money, and i don't really give a rats ass. I knew i was going to lose respect for it...it was a conservative place. I didn't expect the grade to suffer, but that doesn't change things.

Lebell...the cure is worse than the disease. that's why i oppose it. What's neutral? What's objective? When you choose to take a course with a prof, you are giving them the chance to evaluate your scholarship. that evaluation may be fair, it may not be. but you asked for it.

not presenting "opinions as fact" is SO laughably unenforceable as to be completely absurd. such a law will never stand on the grounds that it is completely vague as to what the prohibited behavior is.

if students are penalized for speaking out...have them take it up with the dean. there are ways of doing this that don't place the government in charge of policing academic discourse.

Gents,

I counter that it WILL work, simply because it will serve as a very real reminder that academics are there to TEACH students how to think, not to make them little Republicans, Democrats, Communists or whatever..

This is not a matter of disagreeing with your biology teacher of the ATP cycle or with your math teacher over how to do a Fourrier transform. It is about expressing your views in a politics class that Nixon wasn't such a bad president and not having the gal wearing Birkinstocks give your paper a "D" for it. It is about expressing your view in a law class that the 10 commandments has no place in modern jurisprudence and not having the old guy at the front who listens to Rush on the way to work mark you as "unsatisfactory".

While it would be great if all academics could separate their personal feelings regarding social issues from teaching, the fact is that some can't.

A school I'm very familiar with, CU, is a good example of such a place. I've had friends attend there that say it is better to keep your opinions to yourself in certain classes than risk retribution.

That is WRONG, plain and simple, and I would welcome legislation to remind academacians of the fact, especially ones like Ward Churchill.

You shouldn't be punished, but it is very likely that you will be. How would this law effect that? Do you trust the law to make the often arbitrary decision as to what constitutes a logical, unopposed point?

I don't know about you, but i know when i my professors are trying to sell me something. I don't need balanced pedagogy, i need someone who puts things into my head for me to evaluate as i see fit. The people who think on their own do so already. The people who can't think on their own can always find someone who can to tell them what to think.

Everyone is allowed to voice their opinion. Why should those who disagree with a professor be granted special protections based solely on how they choose to behave?


While i agree that it is wrong, i don't see how the law would work. How would you even implement a law like this? Require government set standardized curriculum for all universities in the law's jurisdiction? Who decides what "objective" curricula consists of? How easily could the law be abused by disgruntled students?

All teaching is opinionated. You don't need teachers to teach facts, books can do that just fine.

It's a godsend when a student actually stands up and tries to defend a position with a logical argument. I think most professors would agree with me on that.

It's great when a student comes into your office and actually wants to discuss something intellectual, rather than ask what's going to be on the test and how you're going to grade it.

And it's absolutely wonderful to see somebody who has enough self confidence to speak out in class and try to defend a position. There's nothing like a few argumentative sparks flying to get people interested and excited in a subject.

If anything, I probably reward students for arguing with me. Once I argued with a student in my office for about an hour about creationism. She was older, in her 40s, a southern baptist with a great sense of humor who was concerned about my soul. I calmly gave her all the standard arguments, but she wouldn't budge. We even sort of insulted each other, laughing all the time. I told her she would be the first to know when I change my mind.

Always enjoyed seeing her on campus, she would say "I'm praying for you!" and we would both laugh.

Statisctics have shown that as people attain higher levels of education they tend to become more liberal politically. Do I think this has anything to do with it? Probably not.

Along the lines of Filthertons previous comments... If a student is so weak-minded that the he will listen to his professors' political beliefs and take them as fact, then that person will be just as easily influenced by a variety of other things. One would hope that people are capable of forming their own political beliefs instead of just absorbing those of others. Also, if a professor really is that much of a dick about opposing viewpoints, that would probably decrease his reputation among the students, at least to the point where they won't take everything he says as fact.

Do I think it's proper for professors to stifle differing opinions? Of course not, but they're just professors and they're human too. Not every professor is perfect, and there are a lot that are really only marginally qualified or are just straight-out terrible teachers. I've had a handful in my day. You want better professors and a better academic environment? Go to a better school (going from Stevens to RPI has taught me that lesson). If the professor sucks that much, talk to the department head or the dean if he won't listen.

Beyond my belief that legislation would not be effective in this circumstance, I believe that there are better solutions to the problem.

Lebell, I find your advocacy for legislating these issues misses the point that
the students pass through the school and the professors are the school's
personality. As a moderator of a political forum, I am disappointed that
you seem so eager to take up the side of those who have an agenda of
control by what seems so far to be predominately conservative state legislatures. An advocacy that circumvents, or intimidates the faculty and
administration of our public colleges should be a last resort.

The following appears on the website that is the catalyst for this political
movement
It would be less troubling if the advice was to "Research the party registration of faculty members" before enrolling in the school, and then
adding the results of that research to the other factors an applicant
would use in deciding what school to enroll in. The agenda here seems
to be about stifling the opinion of the existing personality of the school
by gathering intelligence for the potential targeting of faculty members.

The "problem" that this solution is aimed at remedying seems much less
objectionable in a supposedly free society than what this legislative solution
could cause. Revulsion is my predominate reaction....sheesh !!!!!

lebell...i'm just *really* unsure of how it could even begin to work. who decides what's fair? who overrides the proffessor's grade, if it's politically motivated?

what would the government sanctions be if these rules weren't carried out perfectly?

signing up for a course is telling the prof that you want them to evaluate your work.

if you don't trust them to do that fairly...why are you taking the class? if the whole school is like that...why are you there at all? if you have that little trust in the grades, that you want the government involved...what does that say about the school?

This is all I'm going to say...

Had a French Prof who saw me one day in uniform in his classroom. Now this was during the beginning of the Iraq war, and being french he was obviously not fond of Bush.

I noticed a considerable grade drop on my assignments from that point on. Went from mostly A's and B's to C's and D's. I confronted him about it and he said it was to teach me compassion for the rest of the world.

I went to the dean about it and he said I couldnt do anything without proof. Since I didnt record it I had none... I ended up failing that class (With a 94 mid-semester).

i am really not sure of the point of this legislation.
i do not think it necessary, nor do i think it would stand if it was passed.

in the interest of full disclosure, i teach at a university.

i find it curious the gap that seperates how university teaching is understood from outside as over against how it is understood inside....

anyway, the bottom line so far as i am concerned is this: if you teach in a university setting, you have a tremendous amount of coercive power that the students hand you as a function of their orientation toward Grades. there is little that you can do to counter this. one result is that it is all too simple to impose your beliefs on students--all you have to do is let yourself forget about the coercive nature of being in a classroom setting. because it is so easy, it appears as something to fight against.

secondly, students do not seem to enter university with any particular skills at thinking for themselves. it is simply not something that is emphasized in high schools. what they are good at is following directions. most of my teaching works at a philosophical level and is aimed at trying to help them along the process of thinking for themselves. i try to isolate, clarify, and pull apart the systems of thinking that inform various works. ideally, i try to bring them to a point where they have to choose to continue functioning in an unexamined way. but i have no committment to the content of that choice--it can go in any direction.

i try to emphasize a critical relation to texts that i assign. i am explicit about the fact that politics informs the selection of texts, but also that there is a distinction between politics as they inform a historical analysis, say, and politics as is understood in the big wide flat world of american life. in formal argument, you can and should expect the frames to be explicit, the chain of deductions coherent, etc. it si fair game to criticize texts for what their assumptions force out of consideration, for example. in the big wide flat world of american politics, you rarely get to that level.

i have and have had conservative students. they do not constitute a particular target for me--i do not remember any pattern in terms of how these students fare. sometimes they object to what i being done in class--if their objections are well-formed, that's fine. it makes things a bit more interesting to tangle with them. at the level of their work, what matters is that they think about the premises of the arguments that they make--there is no real distinction between conservative and other students at this level--i could not imagine penalizing a student for their politics as such.

but what i find curious is the number of mediocre students who try to claim that the problem lay not with the mediocrity of their work, but in the "fact" that they are being persecuted unfairly for their conservative beliefs.

more curiously still, i know a number of conservatives who teach at universities and they tend to be more rigid, more doctrinaire than their "left" counterparts. sorry, but that seems to be the situation. i dont see a whole lot of complaining about that. i dont see much in the way of legislation proffered to counter it, either. go figure.

Yes... this sort of thing sucks. It happens. But without proof where is a new law even going to help you...

A similar example:

My wife went to a prominent journalism school in Canada. One of the profs there was a notorious pig with the women in his classes. He gave good marks to women who wore shorter skirts. He would make sexist comments, all the time. He would take marks off or fail women who took him to task on this... His actions were well documented by many women in different graduating years.

My wife and some of her classmates took their issues to the Head of the J-School. He was sympathetic and offered to support them if they chose to file complaints or even go so far as to press charges...

He also added to this, that if they ever wanted to work as journalists they should carefully consider their actions. Taking these steps against a very prominent person would brand them as troublemakers, etc. They would have a very difficult time getting work once they graduated.

They chose to *not* pursue the prof.

Sure enough, the following year another group of women did pursue the prof for his actions... and sure enough they were dragged through the mud and painted as "spurned", "jealous", "incompetent", etc.


It's wrong but sometimes you just have to pick your fights.

This was largely my experience when I was a TA...

I understand this probably happens... but I would appreciate if it could be reworded so not to seem like a personal attack (considering it directly followed my last post).

http://www.insidehighered.com/views/...stmodern_right

seaver: i didnt mean it as a personal attack at all...

Lebell,

how do you reconcile your support for a bill that purports to protect unpopular speech/opinoins, and end your comments by pointing out that people like Ward Churchill should remain silent?

I haven't met any liberal professors who target their students, but I have to grade papers in an extremely conservative city. I drop points when their logic and/or writing is shaky, but not for political viewpoint. Students often confront me about whether I or the professor will please not take exception to their viewpoints. I never do on its ideological basis, but the sad fact is undergrad writing is shockingly horrific. If you all are so concerned with the grades students are pulling, take a peek at your kids' homework and actually teach them to read and write. A skillfully constructed sentence would be bonus. Most of us can't even grade grammar due to the fact that sentences are constructed so poorly and we don't have time. But I don't see a bill addressing those issues.

I don't object to the notion that professors are left-leaning in the social sciences. I read a recent article stipulating exatly that in the LA Times and: 1) attributed it to the different places conservatives will go to earn money, corporations (more, less ideologically motivated), and liberals will go (less, more ideologically motivated), education.

2) academia priviledges carefully constructed arguments and open-mindedness. Average "conservatives" don't value the first, instead eschewing things that appear to be ivory tower, and conservative ideology is opposed to openness by it's nature, instead seeking to maintain status-quo.

Those are the points of the article and anyone can dig it up if they'd like. It was written in an op-ed piece within a month ago.

Smooth,

I justify it fairly simply.

A university's primary function is to instruct students not to promote a professor's personal and political beliefs. But this still isn't how I justify it.

I don't subscribe to the notion that a tenure automatically protects what is essentially a public employee (CU is a state funded college) when they something say or write something incredibly offense.

Can Ward Churchill say such things? Yes, as defined by the First Amendment, he can. Does he have the right to say whatever he wants on the tax payer dime? IMO, no.

I can respect the idea that Churchill should be allowed to say whatever he wants to academically (as in his much publicized essay), and I am still wondering if I am being influenced by the nature of his essay and how offensive I found it.

But FYI: as to freedoms and supporting unpopular speech, every year the Sons of Italy try to hold a Columbus Day parade through downtown Denver. And every year, a group called AIM (American Indian Movement), which is composed of radical Indian rights activists, disrupts it. And Ward Churchill is right in there disrupting it with them.

So apparently Mr. Churchill only wants freedom of speech for things he thinks are worthy of it (i.e. his speech, not other people's).

That is beyond the philosophical question you asked, but I would be dishonest if I didn't acknowledge that it probably affects my POV on the matter.


As to your own students, crappy writing is also beyond the scope of the philosophical points I raised. In other words, crappy writing is crappy writing and should be marked down appropriately.

But the fact remains that there are teachers who will let their personal opinions affect their grading and this is the issue that should be addressed.

If you read the information at this link,<a href="http://mediamatters.org/etc/about.html">http://mediamatters.org/etc/about.html</a> it will answer the question as to why investigative journalist David Brock created the website and the organization in May, 2004. Media Matters
exposed the fake white house "reporter" who used the fake name "Jeff Gannon", just two weeks ago. There is more on Gannon in the newest posts
on the "The GOP gets caught in yet another media scam" thread on this Politics forum. Now David Horowitz is held up for examination, a similar process to the one he advocates subjecting college instructors to.

Depends on the professor. I know one "minority studies" prof who refuses to give ANY white male a grade higher than a "B", REGARDLESS of what they say. I still run into her sometimes. She's still teaching, but I'm no longer a student and have a far-more "responsible" job than she does, and it pisses her off to no end. To rip off a line from Mel Brooks: "It's good to be da King!"

And you didn't say anything to the university president? I'll agree completely with martinguerre whom you quoted. Being an undergrad (history/political science) student and having to take mostly "liberal" classes on religion, politics, and history, I have seen people speak up for their religious beliefs in many of my classes. Even if I don't agree with them I think it is incredibly ballsy to speak their mind in the middle of a packed lecture hall. Be pissed off at the professor all you want if you don't feel like chiming in, but at the end of the day you're still accountable for the information he/she teaches.

I've said it on the TFP before, if you don't want your firmly held high school beliefs challenged and want to live a life devoid of any questioning of those beliefs...don't come to college. If you aren't open minded enough to consider other peoples viewpoints stay at home with mommy and daddy, let them teach you what the "real" world is about.

That said, this bill is rediculous. Students have every right to give professors their point of view, but the responsibility lies solely on those students. I know professors at my university would even look highly upon you after discussing those issues with them...as long as you're willing to actually discuss and be open minded, and justify your position.

here we get to one of the hearts of the matter, really: conservatives tend to oppose tenure. except for themselves, and ceo-types for various corporations--then it's fine. just as the right would prefer to break the teacher's union in public education--not by direct confrontation on the question of whether there should or should not be such a union, but by fabricating a range of critiques of public education as such and moving from there to advocating private/church basement schools.

within the campaign against tenure, you only ever see isolated factoids floated about: ward churchill writes an essay that offends the delicate sensibilities of conservatives, therefore the problem must be tenure because it provides a space for what they see as impunity. the vast amount of material generated across the university system by thousands of other folk goes unnoticed: the general question about tenure and its relation to that production go unposed.

you could aslo look at tenure as a device for sheltering academic production--its other-than-lucrative modes of writing for example--and as a way to preserve freedom of inquiry from the corrosion of political and economic pressures. debating this view would come down to what value you place on the fact of academic inquiry--whether for example, you imagine that there should be a particular space preserved for it in american society, whether you imagine that there is any necessity for a correlation between economic and cultural attributes in the fashioning of the corporate elite of tomorrow. because like it or not that is what higher education is about--the reproduction of upper cadres in the american labor pool.

within this bigger function, the question of debate is interesting--it might be an experience that enables the kind of "thinking outside the box" you read about in management literature, which is among the features of "managing change" that these folk are supposed to indulge as part of their professional activities. in a situation of great uncertainty, the ability to step outside existing political and corporate ideologies--or at least to relativize them--can be a prerequisite for survival. this stepping outside or relativization is itself a skill--it is not something that can be undertaken arbitrarily in a moment of finance-driven illumination--but perhaps it is precisely this that conservatives are uncomfortable with.

dont fool yourself: universities have adapted to this changing political situation for their own interests---there are few tenure track jobs available, but many many jobs for adjuncts. flexible labor--except that most adjuncts that i know are far more radical than their tenured compatriots. but that is harder for conservatives to oppose, really, because it does not fit into their mythos--agents exposed to market pressures, to instability in their basic mode of living, should by their "thinking" be more docile, more complaint--because they are more expendable (the "discipline of the market").
in the final analysis, the result of most conservative argument on this (and other) matters is to make everyone equally expendable. except for members of the economic elite, who they would shelter by driving the whole system of repoduction into a private, and thereby invisible, space.

it seems to me that this whole move is self-defeating.


another point: it seems that the same arguments that circulate in rightwing land about public vs. private high schools are structuring the pseudo-debate about tenure in these circles. i cant help but think that what they really want, taken to the limit, is the destruction of the public tout court, and its replacement with a privatized scenario in which class reproduction is made apolitical seeming by shoving its mechanisms back into the private sphere--where only the children of the wealthy get access to a wide-ranging education--where public universities would operate as part of a vast ideological circle jerk shaped by conservative anxieties that maybe, just maybe, their worldview is fundamentally dysfunctional---public universities would be charged with a direct reproduction of the existing order. leave the critical thinking to the economic eliltes, who deserve it.

better maybe to focus on things like ward churchill and whether his writing offends conservatives--at least by that route, it sounds like you might--in principle--have the beginnings of a case to make.

Sorry, the University knew of her practices, and her course was REQUIRED for everybody in the criminal justice field. No passee her coursee, no graduatee.

I hate to tell you this, but the "real world" generally refuses to listen to the crap that liberal professors put out, which is why they are in academia. They flock to academia because they can't hold a job in the "real world". There are still MARXISTS teaching political science in American universities. Hell, even the Russians have turned their backs on Marxism. If you think college is the "real world", you're gonna be HURTING once you graduate, and end up with your first job being one where you ask "Grande, vente, or tall?" all day long.

Daswig, B.S., J.D., and has a REAL job in-field.

Hmmm.

All I can say is that your long, convoluted post is based on several assumptions in this initial paragraph, all of which are wrong.

daswig,

Did you ever wonder that maybe, just maybe, the study of the history of humanity and religion and politics has in fact MADE social science professors liberal? Once you've had the priviledge of studying the Bible from a historical perspective you learn all kinds of wonderful things like: a) the Flood never even happened (or at least the thousands of people it supposedly drowned have no idea it ever happened), b) the tower of Babel never existed, c) the shepherds, the magi, and the manger were never in the same place (a bastardisation of the gospels), and d) organized religion has killed more people in the name of god than anything in the history of the world.

Things like that make you cynical, and make you question the government; make you think that "Hey! People have been screwing people over in the name of god for thousands of years, maybe I shouldn't buy into whatever new propaganda they are spewing!"

If questioning authority, be it religious or political; and causing you to challenge your own beliefs and actually THINK for one fucking second is liberal "crap"...then I guess I'm up to my eyeballs in the brown stuff.

Just because you have to learn about a certain belief, like Marxism, doesn't mean that a professor is a communist. Just because you actually have to learn about evolution doesn't make your biology teacher a godless liberal. And just because your professor makes you a bit uncomfortable by saying, "Guess what people? No WMDs!" does NOT give you the right to silence him.

Might I also ask daswig what you do in the "real world" that is just so goddamn amazing?

lebel: geez. and here i thought it was fairly straightforward.

live and learn.

but tell me if your "accountability" argument concerning ward churchill does not reduce to an opposition to tenure. which would be a priori necessary for the kind of "monitoring" you seem to support for professors who teach at public universities--and therefore on the sacrosanct "taxpayers dime"

Nope. I put it down to their lack of basic intellegence and inability to function in the "real world" driving them to become academics. "Social science" is "soft science". It's like the law. It's not rational, it just is the way it is, and thinking frequently changes. For example, when I was in undergrad in the 1980's, things which were considered gospel then are now considered to be quite suspect. Reality hasn't changed, what's changed is the perceptions of the faculty.
That's not what's going on. What's going on is POLITICAL INDOCTRINATION, nothing else. Some people see through it, but others who are not as intellegent get turned into ideological zombies.

No, what makes them communists is the belief that the communist system will work if we just give THEM control of the goverment so that they can implement it properly. They ignore the literal MOUNTAINS of bodies created by governments during the 20th century by people trying to do exactly that.

Given the fact that they did indeed FIND WMDs, that makes him or her factually wrong. People have a free speech right to say what they want. They do NOT have a free speech right to say what they want on the Government's dime. I have no problem with Churchill saying whatever he goddamned well pleases. But he can do it on a soapbox on a streetcorner, NOT using governmental assets.


As for my job, well, I'd rather not say, since I don't want people going and screaming to my "bosses" or the Governor. Sufficed to say, however, I don't serve coffee at Starbucks.

lol, ok, dawsig, your comments are so wildly out of sync with 'facts' that I wonder what kind of law you practice...hopefully, for your clients' sakes, not the kind that requires logical deduction.

1) how is your description of "soft" science any different than the trajectory of "hard" science?

Do you dispute that even theories in physics, electronics, biology, medicine, among others, have shifted over the course of the past two hundred years?

2) What kind of research did you conduct to determine that "all" white, male students who took your old professor's course never earned anything higher than a 'B'?

How did you ascertain that she is upset at your current achievements?

3) How have the Russians turned their backs on "marxism" and, where exactly, has the world even come close to a marxist reality?

If people derive some semblence of their perspective from historical materialism, or higher socialism, does that brand them a "marxist" in your eyes? Or does everything that ever was uttered from Karl illegitimate to your standpoint?

4) Now what WMD's are you speaking about? That was a bizarre statement from you that prompted me to pose these questions. Before, I was just ignoring your statements as fact, that seemed to be based on ignorance and conjecture.

5) What do you mean (and I wonder if you just echoed lebell) by the fact that Ward Churchill is espousing ideas on the taxpayers "dime"?

Do you mean the book he wrote and published that he is getting a shitstorm for?
Is that the piece that takes a critical look at WTC technicians ensuring the global capitalist economy runs smoothly and compares them to German technocrats whose actions ensured the Nazi machine ran smoothly through their lack of opposition to it?

I wonder how you ascertain whether that piece of work, and subsequent articles were composed during his government paid time. Or why that would be relevant. Should he only be allowed non-critical thought while on the job, and must only dream about personal things at night?

Do you subject that to yourself? Or are you stealing from your employer when you day dream? Or if your job entails composing briefs, when do you know you've strayed into stealing from someone?

Being a student of the social sciences, your ignorance on the subject is simply amazing to me; which also makes it very difficult to understand your point of view, let alone your justifications.

Your opinion of "political indoctrination" is just that. Professors teaching kids the bare facts that happen to collide with their parent-taught conservative point of view is not indoctrination. It all comes down to what (I think) roachboy said about the basic difference in political ideology: conservatives enjoy the status-quo and liberals constantly seek to disrupt it. Why else would we be debating legislation silencing controversial speech in classrooms? If a teacher blatantly docks grades due to a students political views then that teacher should be held responsible and face the consequences, simple as that. But what we don't need is a law forbidding political and religious discussion in classrooms. How would we even monitor and enforce laws like this anyway?

Edit: smooth pretty much covered everything while I was typing this. Damn slow fingers.

Hard science is differentiated from soft science in that hard science can be demonstrated in a laboratory. If somebody comes out and offers a theory in a hard science, and another party demonstrates that the theory is wrong, that's the end of the theory in hard science. That's not true with soft sciences. For example: If guy A says "put X and Y together and reaction Z will occur", and somebody puts X and Y together and gets Q, that's all she wrote.

I polled three years worth of her students within the department for a paper I wrote for another class. It worked out to a sample size of around 600 people total of both genders and all races. After I submitted the paper to her colleague, I gave her a copy and asked her if she had any comment, and she explained her policy to me. WRT her being upset, we met when she came to me in an official capacity trying to place interns.

I rest my case.

Did you read the entire CIA report that came out shortly before the election? It referenced a storage bunker of WMDs that remains under UN seal and that hasn't been dealt with because they don't know how to do it safely.

Actually, I'm referring to things like the America-bashing speech he gave on campus that was broadcast on C-span last week. It was put on using University facilities, with campus police providing security, et cetera.

Environmental biology, astronomy, metaphysics, geology, archaeology, psychophysics, sociology, and acoustic physics aren't science because they don't take place in a laboratory? Please...just because you don't wear a sterile lab coat and mix potions all day doesn't make you any less of a scientist. :rolleyes:

Edit: Again smooth's eloquence and comprehensiveness completely annihilate my meager post. :D

You seem to hold a very truncated view of "hard" sciences. First of all, the first tenet of science, hard or soft, would be to create taxonomies. To categorize them and render them into some sort of interpretive schema. As research progresses, the classic taxonomies have become increasingly problematized and a plethora of research now questions the arbitrary nature of classification in various disciplines.

In the case of physics or chemistry, there is no such thing as direct observation of something like a quark or electron. You need to update your model. Scientists are not standing around mixing two different colors in test tubes to prove or, more accurately, disprove anything. And why would you think that a contrived laboratory environment even approximates objective reality?

I'd like to read your methodology section, your paper sounds very interesting.

I don't know what you are resting your case on in regards to the marxist statements you made. My questions demonstrate your point to your understanding of marxist perspective? Perhaps your perspective is off.

I didn't read any CIA report. I just took what the president and his staff said at face value: that they hadn't found any WMD's.

Now you've got me curious how much tax payers' dollars went into the function you were referencing. Since my understanding is that even 'public' schools derive large portions of their budgets from private sources, I'm curious what information you used to make your fact claim. Or was that mere speculation that the function was funded by public money?

I've seen you attribute very mundane questions about this government and nation's actions to "America-bashing" so I don't even know which of the content you objected to and I'll have to reserve comment on that portion until you explain yourself with something of substance rather than insinuation.

daswig: when you or any other TFP member posts what I am
quoting from you, posted by you on this thread, I am going
to post these three things to refute what you are posting.
I plan to number each instance, consecutively. I'll stop when
you or other members stop, or if Duelfer or his succesor and
the POTUS, and the nytimes.com, all agree that the determination on whether WMDs were found, changes signifigantly. If more than the following documentation is
required by a signifigant majority of readers and posters on
the TFP political thread to "state the facts" surroundingt a contentious issue, then delusion will stifle more reasoned
points of view, in every instance.

this is the full text of page 78 of Section 3 of the Duelfer Report, available at
http://www.foia.cia.gov/duelfer/Iraqs_WMD_Vol3.pdf

Pay special attention to the bold, italicized part that's separated.

Do you have ANYTHING to refute this?

Do you really think of sociology as a "hard science"?

daswig, either you are disingenuous or you have not considered that if there
was anything in your example that would vindicate Bush & Co, they would
not leave it for you to offer here. It would have been cited before Scott McClellan's Jan. 12, 2005 admission..................

First, I'll re-quote your evidence:
The reason that Bush & Co didn't cite your example is because Perle and
the pre-invasion Bush talking points, spin machine, tried to make Blix and
the UN inspectors look ridiculous, as Oliver North spun it......Keystone Kops,
because Blix's inspectors revisited previously sites, such as the one you
now cite, "Al Muthanna" instead of looking for new ones. You can't have it
both ways.....Bush mouthpieces like Perle and North announcing that
Al Muthanna was of no interest, and you now bringing it up as your sole
example of a possible, unexplored "smoking gun" !
Then, daswig, you can click on this google search link and see the list
of sites where the faithful, took Oliver North's "Keystone Kops" talking point,
and ran with it.......<a href="http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&safe=off&q=inspectors+keystone+kops&btnG=Search">http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&safe=off&q=inspectors+keystone+kops&btnG=Search</a>

You're obviously intelligent, and you exhibit a lot of pride in your professional
abilities, education, etc. What motivates you to be more "Bush", than Bush
and his war criminal regime? You should be able to see right through their
bullshit.....everyday that passes, their crap continues to be refuted.

I'll leave you with Ollie North's "Chalabi and his freedom fighters" pump
ending:
Only the closeminded can be more wrong than these assholes are, daswig...

To this specific question (and this one only), I don't deny it in the least.

To me the whole idea of "tenure" goes against accountability.

In no other business or industry do I know of the idea that you are entitled to your job just because you've been there x number of years.

i figured as much--the rest of the post was a series of arguments against this position. to start with, you wrongly assume that a university at the teaching level is like any other corporate gig. and i do not think you have thought out what the implications of abolishing tenure would be--the logic seems to start and stop with the above.

i am myself not tenured, by the way. but i have a fair understanding of what functions it does (and does not) serve from the inside.

for example, what makes you think that "the taxpayer" is in a position to hold academics to account for what amounts usually to highly specialized work in fields they know nothing about? would this not simply but people without the time or interest to track a field or series of fields in a position of making what amounts to arbitrary judgements about the content of this (for the most part) specialized production? and when would this "accountability" become operational? when something published offends the sensibilities of conservatives? if the latter, it is censorship, pure and simple--if the former, it is incoherent as an idea. not to mention as a policy.

I am genuinely interested in hearing why it is not like "any other corporate gig" as well as what you percieve the implications to be.

I think the taxpayer should be in this position the same way the taxpayer should always be in position to have some say where his/her money is being spent.

I usually try to refrain from bringing in other issues, but here the comparison seems apropos: How is this any different from you wanting to have a say in how the military might this country is exercised? Could I not as easily say that since you know nothing about the inner workings of diplomacy, the military and what is going on behind the scenes in the middle east that you shouldn't have any say in what happens there?

Fortunately, the reality is that you don't have to "know" everything to have a say. You have a political voice you use to elect representatives that argue on your behalf. So to finish the analogy, I don't feel that I need to know every detail of sociology, psychology, etc. to have say over what is taught or who teaches at my state universities so long as there is some system (what kind, I am not proposing here) in place where I can have some say.

As in the political arena, this won't guarantee I get my way (any more than you have gotten your way with recent elections), but I believe it is the right way if you truly support the voice of the people in governing themselves.

on the question of who owns taxpayer money: i dont know if you ever read thoreau's "on civil dosobedience" or not--but one of the arguments run out there--which still holds--is that no single person or abstract double of a person can know where exactly their particular monies go once they are paid into the tax system--so ownership arguments, like thoreau's anti-war arguments, that rely on such claims as their point of departure are moot.

public universities have boards of trustees who already operate in your representative function--the extent to which they are informed about what goes on within the normal processes of production that comprise what the university actually does is more often than not laughable--unless it happens that a particular trustee has a particular interest in a given field, in which case the situation becomes variable. but in the main, it would seem to me that creating another layer of mechanisms for "accountability" is redundant.

since tenure decisions have to pass through a whole series of administrative hoops to be finalized, up to the provost, who operates as a kind of intermediary between the university as administrative entity and a fiscal entity (and so is accountable to and interacts with the financial oversight of the university, which includes the trustees) they are already subject to the kind of review you call for.

why is it necessarily a problem if an academic makes statements that provoke or offend anyway? if there are not problems with the sources material, and no problems with the logic according to which they are assembled, then where would the problem lay? and if there is one, again, how does your "accountability" argument not amount to a rationalization for censorship? again, there are already numerous professional organizations that do (in principle at least) monitoring operations, that outline and enforce academic (NOT political) standards...how would what you are talking about not be redundant again at this level?

and who would mointor the monitors? how would you assure, for example, that a conservative ideologue (to keep with this--it could come from elsewhere just as easily--but the argument is itself a conservative bugbear, so) does not make statements that try to impugn the academic rigor of a given piece because he or she does not like its conclusions?

as for the question of why an academic gig is not like a corporate one: you can figure this out.l start with the lack of profit. move from there. this is not rocket science. the inverse--the attempt to crunch these types of work into each other, seems either uninformed or disengenuous to me (here i refer to the argument--which you did not invent, lebell--rather than to you personally)...

if somehow this question remains a mystery, i would be happy to write more about it once i have a bit more time to devote to the matter. (there are other issues you raise in your post as well that i glossed over for the same lack of time reasons)

lebell...how would you protect profs with unpopular views from being fired simply for their views?

I don't see consistancy in what you're arguing. Government interferance is necessary to produce academic freedom for students, but professors are best selected by laissez faire economics and serve at the whim of their popularity?

I don't understand.

and if this kind of thing is an indication of the outcomes desired by the right--through the illusory "accountability" argument, then i see nothing to recommend it.

source:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/...415508,00.html

I guess the same way we protect the jobs of engineers, newspaper columnists, and fork lift operators from being fired for their views. Hopefully we would be tolerant of those with opinions different than us but I see no reason why they should get more protection than the folks whose taxes help pay their salaries.

I'm not necessarily for the "Academic Bill of Rights", just mostly against tenure.

And here I thought it was because they were simply illiterate.... ;)

The supposedly DEFINITIVE report says that they found stockpiles of chemical weapons. They weren't new production, which is what Bush gave as the reason for going into Iraq, but they were still dangerous chemical weapons. Then there was the case of the binary SARIN shell that was turned into an IED that "fizzled".

No matter how you slice it, they DID find prohibited chemical weapons in Iraq, and the fact that Bush isn't smart enough to point this out doesn't alter the fact.

I think the "Academic Bill of Rights" is a waste of time. While I agree with many of the points of the supporters, I think we already have too many laws and adding another one that is near-impossible to enforce is a waste of time.

I think there is another way to handle this problem.

And, it works beautifully, in my opinion.

Give your money to a different school, one that is more akin to your beliefs, if there is such a one.

I heard this on local talk radio (I am in Denver) this afternoon, so I have no source for it, I am just passing on what I heard.

I believe the radio show hosts were interviewing the dean, or the head of the regents or whatever, but he said that they (CU) have already lost 1000 students (current and prosepective) over this Churchill flap.

1000 times whatever money these kids were gonna spend at the school equals a lot of cash and also equals a point well made. They expect that CU will continue to lose students and money from alumni, so I think the school is going to really feel the pain over this.

That is how I like to see things like this handled. Money gets the message across a lot faster than walking around with some clever sign. Banter about this all you want, use big words, elevate this discussion to super high levels of thought, whatever.....it won't have anywhere near the effect of that tiny sound made by little dollar signs leaving CU and going to somewhere else.

In my opinion, that is what the uppity-ups are paying attention to in the CU situation, they are paying attention to the dollar signs.

Also...

For the record, if you didn't know already, I am Conservative and I don't give two shits about tenure--it doesn't play into my thinking at all.

and, lastly....a prediction regarding Churchill: He will be fired and it won't be from this 9/11 article, essay, whatever. He has made himself a target (don't kid yourselves, he is loving the attention) and even the left-leaning papers here in town are digging shit up on him. He will either go down for plagiarism or for making up facts to support his claims (i.e. Native Americans).

Along similar lines, passing such an academic bill of rights is, in effect, allowing the voting public to determine what should be taught (and in effect defining what "truth" is) in any given area of public interest. Alhough some professors may misuse their academic authority, they still, as a whole, are much more knowledgable about their respective subjects than the general public, and therefore should not be told what or how to teach by said public. Professors should be responsible for maintaining academic integrity on their part, and it is because of this that I also oppose tenure.

Oh, and just since this some people are getting off topic, I will institute the forum command:
[/end WMD threadjack]
...I kindly request that you start another thread if you would like to discuss this further, as it has nothing else to do with the issue at hand.

(ooops.....on edit, I just read your post, C4 Diesel. I apologize for the
thread hijacking. I am disappointed, though, that no one has posted any
comments in response to the info I posted here on David Horowitz, the man
who organized and promoted this academic accountability movement.)

daswig, you ever read or hear something while you are drinking a liquid, that
you react to by laughing spontaneously, and that causes your nose to fill
up with your beverage and it blows out your nose ? I wasn't drinking anything
when I read your latest reply, but my reaction was the same as if I was.

I couldn't understand the guys who voted for Bush because they considered
him to be someone that they thought they would enjoy having a beer with.

Now, after reading your post, I feel a perverse desire to sit down with you
and a couple of beers, and shoot the shit with you until the product of your twisted mind has me snorting beer out my nostrils........

Good post, very informative.

And here I haven't even gone into my "drinking theory" that milk is actually a vegetable, and that some ice cream does indeed have bones or cartelage when first grown.

:eek:

(FYI: a "drinking theory" is one which can be rational and plausible when all parties are properly and sufficiently intoxicated. They can be handy for inducing separation of young women from their panties.)