Posted on 02/21/2005 8:49:34 AM PST by 82Marine89
Regardless of age, we have all heard the phrase, "First Amendment Rights," bandied about. Free speech has been the rallying cry of the liberal elite since the 60s, and every time violent protesters are beaten back by police or cordoned off from a rally, the ACLU comes a calling. However, the same team of trial lawyers, rebel billionaires and Deaniacs turn a blind eye toward the abuses of their academic brethren. America's colleges and universities are anything but free speech zones. Contrary to their mantra of universal tolerance, Stalinist professors and administrators see intellectual diversity as a disease. Unpopular viewpoints, like a belief in absolute truth or the Republican Party, are actively discouraged.
The reality of liberal bias on campus is so overwhelming that columnists and commentators are forced to choose between countless illustrations. Whether examining the anti-Christian bent at the University of North Carolina, where one student was labeled a sexist bigot for asserting his personal belief that homosexuality is immoral and Alpha Iota Omega Christian Fraternity was derecognized as a student organization for refusing to admit non-Christians, or the age-old liberalism of Berkeley, where researchers found that conservatism is a disease shared by Hitler and Ronald Reagan, the bias is clear. Liberal professors see conservative beliefs as vermin and our universities as their own, private roach motels. Ideally, conservative minds check in, but they don't check out.
Our professors have at least four years to scare us Democrat, and they seldom waste an opportunity. Studies show that liberals hire liberals; the faculty at elite institutions like Duke and Yale fall to the Left of Hillary Clinton. More frightening, however, is the condition of our average campus. Along with the elites, most state schools are stacked with Democrats and Socialists. Perhaps conservatives are just too stupid for academia, as Dr. Robert Brandon, chairman of Duke's philosophy department, once asserted. Myself, I tend to believe that hiring committees prefer "fellow travelers." And as for self-selection, I think most Right-wingers are smart enough to see the "Conservatives Need Not Apply" sign hanging beneath the ivy.
Of course, campuses are larger than the classroom and the message of liberal professors might be drowned out by inappropriate speakers. That's why our faculty and administrators are careful to allocate the lion's share of funding to invite still more liberals. After all, if not for men like Ward Churchill, how would students come to understand the innate evil of America? A true conservative would never think to compare 9/11 victims to Nazis!
However, unfortunately for our Stalinist friends, control over class time and tuition only goes so far. Outspoken students might still convince their peers that John Kerry and Karl Marx don't have all the answers. Darn that First Amendment. It was so useful for flag burning.
Some universities try to institute campus speech codes, limiting dialogue to their understanding of political correctness. Most just lambaste conservative students. At UNC-Charlotte, the resident College Republican chapter recently hosted their third annual "affirmative action" bake sale. Treats were offered at lower prices to traditionally recognized minorities, protesting how "affirmative action universities" accept minorities with comparatively lower academic credentials. Kristen McManus, UNC-Charlotte's Associate Director for Academic Initiatives for Mentoring Students, was quick to label her students as racist. Titling the communiqué, "Racist Practice at UNCC," McManus e-mailed the press and warned them of the College Republicans' "egregious methodology." After this slur, will members of the UNC-Charlotte College Republicans remain comfortable coming to McManus for academic assistance? Would you feel safe around someone who called you a racist?
All considered, however, campus conservatives shouldn't feel too badly. The Stalinists will even cannibalize a Clintonite for speaking out of turn. When President Lawrence H. Summers of Harvard University speculated aloud that "innate differences" between the sexes might explain why fewer women succeed in careers of math and science, he was attacked by feminists and academics alike. The former treasury secretary has been threatened with a vote of no confidence by Harvard's faculty and thus far, no one is willing to let him forget his flub. I find it ironic that the presidents of Stanford, MIT and Princeton are in an uproar over their colleague's mere speculation, when none of them were offended by the Berkeley study that labeled conservatives as mentally ill.
Perhaps this sentiment is just a product of my diseased, conservative mind, but I get the feeling that academia isn't even fooling itself anymore. After all, if professors pretend that free speech rights exist on campus, someone might try to exercise them.
There's a perfect example of this going on right now at the Univ. of North Texas, with the local and state LULAC chapters calling for the Chancellor's resignation because he permitted free speech by the Young Conservatives of Texas.
LULAC's various calls for muzzling free speech are, if not reflective of the university, then indicative of perhaps a cultural unfamiliarity with the entire concept of "free speech."
Is there a web site that would list those colleges that don't practice free speech and the first amendment requires?
bump for later reading
I think its called the National Directory of Colleges.
Save Mr Summer's job. He is facing a rabidly left faculty out for his head:
Harvard University
1060 Holyoke Center
1350 Massachusetts Avenue
Cambridge, MA 02138
tel (617) 495-1585
fax (617) 495-0754
terry_murphy@harvard.edu
lawrence_summers@harvard.edu
joe_wrinn@harvard.edu
http://www.news.harvard.edu/contact/
http://www.president.harvard.edu/contact/
http://www.hno.harvard.edu/gazette/contact.html
Try this site: http://www.studentsforacademicfreedom.org/
If he is going to have a chance, you're going to have to get alot more people to email.
Also Foundation for Individual Rights in Education
http://www.thefire.org/
Liberals prefer their fantasies uncontested.
What do you suggest?
Ironically Summers is a great example of just how radical left colleges have gotten. He is a moderate Democrat. He is under attack not just for the latest sex differences controversy, but two other matters.
He had the guts to challenge a Black Studies professor, Cornell West, to meet the same academic standards of publishing that all tenured professors are subject to, and he stopped a nascent divest Israel movement on campus. He won both battles. But this one may be his undoing.
Such "traitorous" action to the radical left can not go unpunished.
That any professor would actually float such tripe says much about the state of "academia" these days. He sounds like Dan Rather - "I want to be the first to break the Memogate scandal, if there is one". Totally clueless. No bussiness educating young minds, esp in philosophy.
I went to the Naval Academy which is one of the few remaining "Conservative" schools in America. However most of the professors in the political science department are liberal. I remember one professor who used to put Anti Bush/GOP/Conservative cartoons up on his door. I guess this must have annoyed on one of the professional Naval Officers who was serving as an associate professor since he began to put up pro conservative cartoon. Thank God for men like that.
Tell a friend or two or 300. There is strength in numbers.
INTREP - education - S&T
But this may include the god apples.
I was being facetious. Probably 0.5% of colleges are not liberal.
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