Posted on 04/25/2014 6:44:00 AM PDT by Academiadotorg
The real test of the bias in academia revolves around who gets admitted to the faculty lounge.
“MSNBC television host, award-winning scholar and Wake Forest University alumna Melissa Harris-Perry (‘94) will return this summer to her alma mater as a chaired professor,” Wake Forest announced in an online press release on April 11, 2014.
“Melissa Harris-Perry is one of the nation’s foremost intellectuals publicly exploring—and thoughtfully influencing—the intersections of politics, race, gender, religion and culture,” Wake Forest Provost Rogan Kersh stated. “We are delighted that she has chosen to come home to Wake Forest and help ignite in our students the passion she has for contemporary political issues and social justice.”
Previously, Harris-Perry taught at Tulane, the University of Chicago and Princeton. Conservative historians and economists may have to start their own think tanks in order to ply their trade but apparently having the right attitude is enough to get you an academic berth.
Outside the classroom, Harris-Perry’s observations border on the bizarre, even given the network she works for:
“Over the weekend, MSNBC’s Melissa Harris-Perry weighed in on the Affordable Care Act by saying that the term ‘Obamacare’ was actually meant to be a ‘derogatory term,’ conceived by ‘wealthy white men,’ to put themselves above a black man and to diminish his accomplishments,” Accuracy in Media chairman Don Irvine reported on December 9, 2013.
At the Take Back the American Dream conference in 2012, “Some conservative media attention has been focused on another speech at the conference, a rather bizarre presentation by MSNBC’s Melissa Harris-Perry,” Cliff Kincaid reported for AIM. “Predictably, as a black liberal, she described America as a racist nation. But this Tulane University professor went on to describe America’s response to the 9/11 terrorist attacks as a search for a new ‘racial enemy’ and the ‘imagined other,’ as if Islamic terrorism did not exist.”
As to what Harris-Perry teaches in the classroom, one of the trio of favorable reviews she got at Tulane on Rate My Professors.com offers a tantalizing hint: “MHP is an enthusiastic and intriguing professor. Her lectures are interesting (and usually filled with Beyonce references) and the class discussions are always stimulating. Overall her class is enjoyable but she does have a tendency to be a more harsh than necessary grader.”
Malcolm A. Kline is the Executive Director of Accuracy in Academia.
If you would like to comment on this article, e-mail mal.kline@academia.org.
It is almost inevitable that a whole bunch of academic leftists are going to be purged in the future, strictly by the forces of economics.
The university bubble is past due for popping.
It begins when a state legislator announces that the basic purpose of state funding for universities is so that graduates can get better jobs than they could otherwise.
Then he holds up a list of majors offered at those state subsidized universities. Next to each major are the number of graduates in each who are placed in that career within six months after graduation.
Several majors, like nursing, (elementary and secondary) education, criminal justice and engineering will have very high numbers of placement.
Ethnic and gender studies, and other such dreck will have zero placements.
So, that legislator will say, if these majors do not result in graduate placements, the state should not be subsidizing them in any way. They are a waste of taxpayer money.
If students want those majors in future, they must pay the full cost of those courses. And if not enough students are willing to pay for them, then they should be canceled.
The sudden flood of worthless academics back on the job market will cause a domino effect with other universities, with them booting out their radical deadwood as well.
I agree 100%.
America needs to compete once again. In industry America needs to produce.
In education America needs to truly educate.
Both of our current parties, are a part of the failure. Both are badly running things.
America step up, and lead.
Now.
“...more harsh than necessary grader...”
In the true Marxist tradition all of her students receive exactly the same grade.
I would like to agree with this. Unfortunately, government bureaucracies, community organizations, non-profits, HR departments and regulatory agencies are loaded and will always make room for a few more.
What useful subject is she qualified to teach?
(So the left can indontrincate them properly.)
I see The Onion is still producing cutting-edge stuff...
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.