Where's the balance, professor?

Good article.

While many people think Professors have absolute power, this is not true in practice--students actually do have quite a bit. The way students can turn the tables (if they are so inclined), is through the end-of-term faculty assessment reports. If professors consistently get "bad grades" from their students on these reports, its brought to the attention of the departments and schools. It can potentially result in a professor not getting tenure. Further these reports are (supposedly) confidential--which makes it hard for the professor to retaliate in the future.

Of course, there are factors that work against this. First, the students may just "go along" to get a good grade and (upon getting one) may not be inclined to flame the professor. Also, the department may protect the professor if they perceive he is being discriminated against by conservative ("evil") students. Still, if it happens enough, it could result in a more objective curriculum.

I recently heard a discussion featuring Victor Davis Hanson, a classicist, a superb thinker and writer and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, a West Coast think tank where I have been a media fellow. Hanson said Rome thrived when Romans thought it a wonderful thing to be Romans, and that it disintegrated when they no longer valued being Roman. He worried aloud that Americans no longer recognize how exceptional they are in history. A problem, he said, is that we are forever measuring ourselves against perfection instead of against other societies. Next to them we fare extremely well.

Good paper,south bay,LA Co.

To get the grades you want, it pays to be on board with a professor's political ideas, said 29 percent of the students. Some 49 percent find campus panel discussions and other presentations on politics to be one-sided.

I knew a guy in college whom I often drove in with as we were both poli sci majors and lived in the same area. In the car, he was very conservative, but in class he was very liberal in liberal professor's classes (i.e., almost all classes) and very conservative in the one class with a conservative prof. Quite the backbone you had there, Keith!

Liberal Democracy vs. Transnational Progressivism: The Future of the Ideological Civil War Within the West.

The key concepts of transnational progressivism could be described as follows:

(1) The ascribed group over the individual citizen. The key political unit is not the individual citizen, who forms voluntary associations and works with fellow citizens regardless of race, sex, or national origin, but the ascriptive group (racial, ethnic, or gender) into which one is born. This emphasis on race, ethnicity, and gender leads to group consciousness and a deemphasis of the individual’s capacity for choice and for transcendence of ascriptive categories, joining with others beyond the confines of social class, tribe, and gender to create a cohesive nation. ^{Immigration & The American Future}

(2) A dichotomy of groups: Oppressor vs. victim groups, with immigrant groups designated as victims. Influenced (however indirectly) by the Hegelian Marxist thinking associated with the Italian writer Antonio Gramsci (1891-1937) and the Central European theorists known as the Frankfurt School, global progressives posit that throughout human history there are essentially two types of groups: the oppressor and the oppressed, the privileged and the marginalized. In the United States, oppressor groups would variously include white males, heterosexuals, and Anglos, whereas victim groups would include blacks, gays, Latinos (including obviously many immigrants), and women. ^{The Gramsci Factor by Chuck Morse - Sierra Times.com}^&^{Welcome to the Anti-Communitarian League homepage!}^&^{Why There is a Culture War- Policy Review, No. 104}^&^{Gramsci: A Method to the Madness}^&^{Gramsci And The US Body Politic}^&^{Gramsci's Grand Plan}^&^{Frankfurt School}^&^{Rigoberta Menchú: Liar}^&^Treason^&

Multicultural ideologists have incorporated this essentially Hegelian Marxist "privileged vs. marginalized" dichotomy into their theoretical framework. As political philosopher James Ceaser puts it, multiculturalism is not "multi" or concerned with many groups, but "binary," concerned with two groups, the hegemon (bad) and "the Other" (good) or the oppressor and the oppressed. Thus, in global progressive ideology, "equity" and "social justice" mean strengthening the position of the victim groups and weakening the position of oppressors-hence preferences for certain groups are justified. Accordingly, equality under law is replaced by legal preferences for traditionally victimized groups. In 1999, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission extended antidiscrimination protection under Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act to illegal immigrants. ^{City Journal Winter 2004 | The Illegal-Alien Crime Wave by Heather ...}^&^{City Journal Summer 2004 | The Immigrant Gang Plague by Heather ...}^&^{Race and Revolution}^&^{Rewarding Lawlessness} ^&^{Racism is Not the Problem: Why Martin Luther King Got It Half ...}^&^{Issues & Views: Increasing "Hate Crime" Punishment Violates ...} ^& ^{Harvard University Fellow Advocates "Abolishing the White Race"}^&^{Issues & Views: Using Racism as a Device}

(3) Group proportionalism as the goal of "fairness." Transnational progressivism assumes that "victim" groups should be represented in all professions roughly proportionate to their percentage of the population or, at least, of the local work force. Thus, if women make up 52 percent and Latinos make up 10 percent of the population, then 52 percent of all corporate executives, physicians, and insurance salesmen should be women and 10 percent should be Latinos. If not, there is a problem of "underrepresentation" or imbalance that must be rectified by government and civil society. Thomas Sowell recently wrote-as he has for several decades-that many Western intellectuals perpetually promote some version of "cosmic justice" or form of equality of result.8 The "group proportionalism" paradigm is pervasive in Western society: even the U.S. Park Service is concerned because 85 percent of all visitors to the nation’s parks are white, although whites make up only 74 percent of the population. Therefore, the Park Service announced in 1998 that it was working on this "problem."9 ^{An FTAA Sneak Preview} ^&^{FTAA: Forced To Accept Aliens}^&^{What is Sensitivity Training}^&^{Psychic Iron Cage}

(4) The values of all dominant institutions to be changed to reflect the perspectives of the victim groups. Transnational progressives in the United States (and elsewhere) insist that it is not enough to have proportional representation of minorities (including immigrants, legal and illegal) at all levels in major institutions of society (corporations, places of worship, universities, armed forces) if these institutions continue to reflect a "white Anglo male culture and world view." Ethnic and linguistic minorities have different ways of viewing the world, they say, and these minorities’ values and cultures must be respected and represented within these institutions. At a 1998 U.S. Department of Education conference promoting bilingual education, SUNY professor Joel Spring declared, "We must use multiculturalism and multilingualism to change the dominant culture of the United States." He noted, for example, that unlike Anglo culture, Latino culture is "warm" and would not promote harsh disciplinary measures in the schools.10 ^{Multiculturalism and the Politics of Guilt: Toward a Secular ...}^&^{Multiculturalism and Marxism}

(5) The Demographic Imperative. The demographic imperative tells us that major demographic changes are occurring in the United States as millions of new immigrants from non- Western cultures and their children enter American life in record numbers. At the same time, the global interdependence of the world’s peoples and the transnational connections among them will increase. All of these changes render the traditional paradigm of American nationhood obsolete. That traditional paradigm based on individual rights, majority rule, national sovereignty, citizenship, and the assimilation of immigrants into an existing American civic culture is too narrow and must be changed into a system that promotes "diversity," defined, in the end, as group proportionalism. ^{Western Civilization Against Itself}^&^{New Mexico Professor Advocates Secession for Southwest}

(6) The redefinition of democracy and "democratic ideals." Since Fukayama’s treatise, transnational progressives have been altering the definition of "democracy," from that of a system of majority rule among equal citizens to one of power sharing among ethnic groups composed of both citizens and non-citizens. For example, Mexican foreign minister Jorge Castañeda wrote in the Atlantic Monthly in July 1995 that it is "undemocratic" for California to exclude noncitizens, specifically illegal aliens, from voting. Former Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) general counsel Alexander Aleinikoff, declaring that "[we] live in a post-assimilationist age," asserted that majority preferences simply "reflect the norms and cultures of dominant groups" (as opposed to the norms and cultures of "feminists and people of color").11 James Banks, one of American education’s leading textbook writers, noted in 1994 that "to create an authentic democratic Unum with moral authority and perceived legitimacy the pluribus (diverse peoples) must negotiate and share power."12 In effect, Banks said, existing American liberal democracy is not quite authentic; real democracy is yet to be created. It will come when the different "peoples" or groups that live within America "share power" as groups.

(7) Deconstruction of national narratives and national symbols. Transnational progressives have focused on traditional narratives and national symbols of Western democratic nation-states, questioning union and nationhood itself. In October 2000, the British governmentsponsored Commission on the Future of Multi-Ethnic Britain issued a report that denounced the concept of "Britishness" as having "systemic . . . racist connotations." The Commission, chaired by Labour life peer Lord Parekh, declared that instead of defining itself as a nation, the UK should be considered a "community of communities." One member of the Commission explained that the members found the concepts of "Britain" and "nation" troubling. The purpose of the Commission’s report, according to the chairman Professor Parekh, was to "shape and restructure the consciousness of our citizens." The report declared that Britain should be formally "recognized as a multi-cultural society" whose history needed to be "revised, rethought, or jettisoned."13

^{The Claremont Institute: The Cost of Ignorance}^&^{Historical illiteracy abounds}^&^{National Constitution Center: New Survey Shows Wide Gap Between ...}^&^{Senate Panel Hears that Ignorance of U.S. History Poses Major Security Threat}^&^{Only half would vote for Constitution} ^& ^{Albert Burns -- Historical Illiteracy & Antonio Gramsci}^&^{the deliberate dumbing down of america}^&^{Frivolous Courses Pervasive at Top American Colleges}^&^{Terrorists Find Allies on Campus}^&^{Marine Shouted Down at UNLV} ^& ^{American Flag Banned on Campuses Across the Nation}^&^{ACTA: American Council of Trustees and Alumni}^&^{The Intellectual Origins Of America-Bashing by Lee Harris - Policy ...}^&^{FrontPage magazine.com :: Battling Bias in Academia by Joseph ...}^&^{Book Review: Why the Left Hates America}^&^{Who Will Defend American Values?}^&^{How Textbooks Distort American History}

In the United States in the mid-1990s, the proposed "National History Standards," reflecting the marked influence of multiculturalism among historians in the nation’s universities, recommended altering the traditional narrative of the United States. Instead of emphasizing the story of European settlers, American civilization would be redefined as a "convergence" of three civilizations-Amerindian, West African, and European-the bases of a hybrid American multiculture. Even though the National History Standards were ultimately rejected, this core multicultural concept that that United States is not primarily the creation of Western civilization, but the result of a "Great Convergence" of "three worlds" has become the dominant paradigm in American public schools. ^{The Multicultural Theocracy: An Interview With Paul Gottfried}^&^{The Relentless Assault of 'Multiculturalism'}

In Israel, adversary intellectuals have attacked the Zionist narrative. A "post-Zionist" intelligentsia has proposed that Israel consider itself multicultural and deconstruct its identity as a Jewish state. Tom Bethell has pointed out that in the mid-1990s the official appointed to revise Israel’s history curriculum used media interviews to compare the Israeli armed forces to the SS and Orthodox Jewish youth to the Hitler Youth. A new code of ethics for the Israel Defense Forces eliminated all references to the "land of Israel," the "Jewish state," and the "Jewish people," and, instead, referred only to "democracy." Even Israeli foreign minister Simon Peres sounded the post-Zionist trumpet in his 1993 book, The New Middle East, where he wrote that "we do not need to reinforce sovereignty, but rather to strengthen the position of humankind." He called for an "ultranational identity," saying that "particularist nationalism is fading and the idea of a ‘citizen of the world’ is taking hold. . . . Our ultimate goal is the creation of a regional community of nations, with a common market and elected centralized bodies," a type of Middle Eastern EU.14

(8) Promotion of the concept of postnational citizenship. "Can advocates of postnational citizenship ultimately succeed in decoupling the concept of citizenship from the nation-state in prevailing political thought?" asks Rutgers Law Professor Linda Bosniak.15 An increasing number of international law professors throughout the West are arguing that citizenship should be denationalized. Invoking concepts such as inclusion, social justice, democratic engagement, and human rights, they argue for transnational citizenship, postnational citizenship, or sometimes global citizenship embedded in international human rights accords and "evolving" forms of transnational arrangements. These theorists insist that national citizenship should not be "privileged" at the expense of postnational, multiple, and pluralized forms of citizenship identities. For example, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, under the leadership of its president, Jessica Tuchman Mathews, has published a series of books in the past few years "challenging traditional understandings of belonging and membership" in nation-states and "rethinking the meaning of citizenship."16 Although couched in the ostensibly neutral language of social science, these essays from scholars from Germany, Britain, Canada, and France, as well as the United States, argue for new, transnational forms of citizenship as a normative good. ^{"America's Border: Who Left the Door Open?"}

(9) The idea of transnationalism as a major conceptual tool. The theory of transnationalism promises to be for the first decade of the twenty-first century what multiculturalism was for the last decade of the twentieth century. In a certain sense, transnationalism is the next stage of multicultural ideology-it is multiculturalism with a global face. Like multiculturalism, transnationalism is a concept that provides elites with both an empirical tool (a plausible analysis of what is) and an ideological framework (a vision of what should be). Transnational advocates argue that globalization requires some form of transnational "global governance" because they believe that the nation-state and the idea of national citizenship are ill suited to deal with the global problems of the future. Academic and public policy conferences today are filled with discussions of "transnational organizations," "transnational actors," "transnational migrants," "transnational jurisprudence," and "transnational citizenship," just as in the 1990s they were replete with references to multiculturalism in education, citizenship, literature, and law. ^{Can Globalism Amend Our Constitution? -- Phyllis Schlafly Aug. 13 ...}^&^{Bipartisan Border Betrayal}^&^{The & Immigration Conspiracy}^&^{Socialist Scholars Call for Dismantling of US Constitution in NYC}^&^{Lawyer Indicted for Aiding Terrorists Becomes Stanford Law 'Mentor ...}

Many of the same scholars who touted multiculturalism now herald the coming transnational age. Thus, at its August 1999 annual conference, "Transitions in World Societies," the same American Sociological Association (ASA) that promoted multiculturalism from the late 1980s to the mid-1990s featured transnationalism. Indeed, the ASA’s then-president, Professor Alejandro Portes of Princeton University, argued that transnationalism is the wave of the future. He insisted that transnationalism, combined with large-scale immigration, would redefine the meaning of American citizenship. University of Chicago anthropologist Arjun Appadurai has suggested that the United States is in transition from being a "land of immigrants" to "one node in a postnational network of diasporas."17 ^{City Journal Spring 2002 | Do We Want Mexifornia? by Victor Davis ...}^&^{Abolishing Our Borders}

It is clear that arguments over globalization will dominate much of early twenty-first century public debate. The promotion of transnationalism as both an empirical and normative concept is an attempt to shape this crucial intellectual struggle over globalization. The adherents of transnationalism create a dichotomy. They imply that one is either in step with globalization, and thus with transnationalism and forward-looking thinking, or one is a backward antiglobalist.

Liberal democrats (who are internationalists and support free trade and market economics) must reply that this is a false dichotomy-that the critical argument is not between globalists and antiglobalists, but instead over the form Western global engagement should take in the coming decades: will it be transnationalist or internationalist?

Vindicating the Founders

When I entered law school, I'd say that at least half the students were at least somewhat liberal. By the time we were "hooded," that number had dropped significantly. The "true believers" were still liberals, but the soft liberals, after having had affirmative action shoved down their throats for three years, had come over to the conservative side.

There's also the fact that most students are liberal and actually applaud their professors for liberal bias. A few conservative students complaining in end-of-semester evaluations are not going to make a difference. If the prof has tenure, forget it. The evaluations make no difference whatsoever. Tenured professors can and do get away with murder, including (at the graduate level, at least) getting involved romantically with their students. One of the profs in my department married his grad student before she had even finished her PhD. Nothing was done about it.

While many people think Professors have absolute power, this is not true in practice--students actually do have quite a bit. The way students can turn the tables (if they are so inclined), is through the end-of-term faculty assessment reports. If professors consistently get "bad grades" from their students on these reports, its brought to the attention of the departments and schools. It can potentially result in a professor not getting tenure. Further these reports are (supposedly) confidential--which makes it hard for the professor to retaliate in the future.

This works if, first, the school offers such an opportunity for assessment, and, second, if they give it any weight. Many schools do not offer it, and some that do often round-file the assessments. Finally, it has little or no effect if the professor is tenured. The old "academic freedom" thing, which can, in practice, be remarkably one-sided.

I was on a committee that helped revamp our department's tenure criteria. Being in a technical field (engineering), there was of course no reference to political ideology. The main factors focused on bringing in external dollars from research activities, and supporting graduate students with those dollars. But, I can well-imagine non-technical departments applying politically-motivated criteria, spoken or unspoken.

It seems to me that conservatives need to find ways to take back our public schools without chilling but rather encouraging intellectual inquiry. I applaud David Horowitz's activity in this area, but there also needs to be political work on governance of schools and public universities.

What a surpirse, a disproportionate amount of liberal swine professors. The socialists always want to have the numbers in their favor.

While many people think Professors have absolute power, this is not true in practice--students actually do have quite a bit. The way students can turn the tables (if they are so inclined), is through the end-of-term faculty assessment reports. If professors consistently get "bad grades" from their students on these reports, its brought to the attention of the departments and schools. It can potentially result in a professor not getting tenure. Further these reports are (supposedly) confidential--which makes it hard for the professor to retaliate in the future.

Student feedback assessments make no difference if the department and school share the institutional bias (and this is often the case).

Students have a small amount of leverage in filing grievances, appeals, complaints, including discrimination complaints, and ultimately cases in state and federal court.

Such documented cases can be collected and then presented to the state and national accreditization organizations, such as WASC, and to elected representatives and the state governor's office.

Leverage is multiplied if students are willing to organize and coordinate. (Unfortunately, this does not happen often because of intimidation by instructors and advisors.)

In some cases, publicity is helpful, but publicity often hardens positions on both sides.

You need to make longer posts.

bookmarking your excellent post

You need to make shorter ones.

hmmm. better mark this one for a longer look.

OK

LOL!
But I ain't about to post an entire thread inside of a post to top you.
You win.

>>You need to make shorter ones.

Second that.

The concept of Transnational Progressivism (and opposing it) is one that was really just coming to the fore here at Free Republic, just prior to 9/11. It is time for it to come back. Thanks for you excellent post.