<p>I’m sorry - I just couldn’t make stuff like this up if I tried. I missed this earlier this month, when the right wing nutjobs started paying students to rat out professors at UCLA who were seen as being too far to the left for their tastes:
</p>
<p>The whacko’s website makes clear that reporting “non-pertinent ideological comments” means “Exposing UCLA’s radical professors” - and "radical’ is apparently a description which only applies to leftists and (gasp) lesbians. Here’s an example of one of their “exposes”:
Unfortunately, the hearty martyrs of the “Bruin Alumni Association” who are behind this brilliant operation decided that paying the little narcs had become a “distraction” and withdrew the offer. </p>
<p>Seriously, who here at CC could dream up stuff like that?</p>
<p>The paying for information seems a bit extreme but the problem of imposed (leftist) political agendas is real. For example, my son had an **engineering **prof who, for the first part of her lecture each day, would berate George Bush and all of his evils.</p>
<p>The facts are that most professors, especially in the liberal arts, are far more liberal than the average US citizen and some have used their relative autonomy in classrooms to require acceptance of an extreme liberal viewpoint on issues covered by the class. Those who refuse are often verbally abused and suffer when grades are assigned.
While the UCLA group used a somewhat heavy-handed approach, there is some merit to their cause.</p>
<p>Have either of you considered that “average US citizens” - including college students - are constantly barraged with right wing propaganda of the sort which could convince 40% of the public to believe that WMD’s actually were found in Iraq long after it was clear that there were none there (55% of Republicans who got most of their information from Fox News)?</p>
<p>Maybe being an educator isn’t limited to repeating the views of the “average” US citizen who generally only hears the viewpoint of those who can afford to print a newspaper or own a TV station, but might include subjecting those poor students to ideas they won’t hear elsewhere? College…different views…actually thinking about the world instead of adopting the viewpoint of your parents, boss, teacher, etc.<br>
Just a thought…</p>
<p>Sounds like another version of political correctness. And that’s just what we need–more thought police. </p>
<p>Another amusing irony: I assume these are the sort of folks who object to tenure. And why shouldn’t they? There’s certainly no need for a system that protects professors from forces that seek retribution when they hear something they disagree with. I mean, sheesh, what an outdated idea!</p>
<p>This was a fact before Fox news even existed. I saw it at the UW in the early 70’s. There’s a difference between presenting a viewpoint and requiring its acceptance to pass a class.</p>
<p>Most administrators realize that such behavior is deeply unprofessional, a violation of academic freedom, and every university I know of has disciplinary systems in place to deal with documented cases in which it can be established that the professor’s actions were coercive. So I’m all for people who want to document cases of coercion, but, call me crazy, I don’t think it was the high-minded intent of the folks in the article to root out such coercion regardless of the professor’s ideology.</p>
<p>idad - whether you knew it or not, you are a leftist BECAUSE you bashed Bush. Anyone who finds any of our president’s actions illegal, immoral or just disagrees with our invasion of Iraq is considered a leftist.
Anyone who is less hawkish than Joe Leiberman is a leftist.</p>
<p>And leftists are communists. Get with the program!</p>
<p>So then report this crap to the administration or department head, but don’t pull silly blacklisting tactics and revive McCarthyism in this country.</p>
<p>They already have a blacklist of Professors, and a major issue of copyrights for the class materials etc.</p>
<p>A couple of Board member of the UCLA alumni group have already resigned (the group is not connected to the official UCLA group or the university) and its basically run by one guy with an agenda all his own</p>
<p>“”…Jones said that it was just random that the professors his Web site has focused on include many female and minority scholars. He said that he just started researching professors who had signed radical petitions and that led him to many such professors. He acknowledged that he was not a fan of ethnic or womens studies…"</p>
<p>Everyone retreats into me-search. Im black so Im going to study black issues. White folks dont feel the need to do that, he said. Jones, who graduated from UCLA in 2003, said that he took a Chicano studies course while he was there and found it to be absolute intellectual rubbish.…</p>
Oh come on, kluge! At times your posts make you out to be quite smart - this wasn’t one of them. When an educator is speaking to a group comprised of college students, he/she is not addressing “typical”, middle of the road people. She is preaching to the choir of the already converted to the leftist agenda. If you doubt that, then you clearly have not spent any time on a campus.</p>