Posted on 02/23/2009 4:41:33 AM PST by Kaslin
Down through the years, there have been a great many movies in which school teachers have been portrayed as decent and hard-working, even heroic. Just a handful that come to mind are “Goodbye, Mr. Chips,” “Holland’s Opus,” “This Land is Mine,” “Up the Down Staircase,” “Good Morning, Miss Dove,” “Cheers for Miss Bishop,” “The School of Rock,” “Dangerous Minds,” “Blackboard Jungle,” “Stand and Deliver” and “Dead Poet’s Society.
But when it comes to college and university professors, they tend to be portrayed either as comical buffoons (“The Nutty Professor,” “Monkey Business,” “Son of Flubber,” “The Absent Minded Professor,” “It Happens Every Spring,” “Horse Feathers”) or as petty, demented and, often as not, alcoholics (“Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf,” “People Will Talk,” “The Squid and the Whale”). In fact, the last time I recall a movie about a professor that any normal person would wish to spend time with was the 1948 release, “Apartment for Peggy,” and even in that one, Edmund Gwenn spent most of his time planning to commit suicide.
Feeling, as I do, that most professors, aside from those teaching science or math, are over-paid, under-worked, left-wing narcissists infatuated with the sound of their own voices, it makes perfect sense that it would be nearly impossible to make a movie about them that wasn’t a slapstick comedy.
One of the things that makes them particularly offensive is their hypocrisy. Although everyone of them would insist that tenure is essential -- not because it guarantees them a secure livelihood just so long as they don’t burn down a dormitory or give a star athlete a failing grade -- but because it ensures them the right to voice unpopular, even unpatriotic, opinions. The truth, however, is that, more often than not, they’re the bullies censoring free speech and punishing with low marks those students with the gumption to speak their own minds.
Just the other day, I read about a student here in L.A. whose professor called him a “fascist bastard” and refused to allow him to conclude his remarks in opposition to same-sex marriages. Although I am aware that this betrayal of the First Amendment occurs regularly in classrooms and lecture halls all across America, the reason I’m aware of this particular case is because the student, Jonathan Lopez, is suing. When Lopez, a devout Christian, asked his professor what grade he was getting for his speech, he was told to go ask God!
So, on college campuses, it’s okay to ridicule a student’s religious convictions, but not to voice an objection to homosexual marriages.
I find it fascinating that academics see no need to be honest, tolerant or even logical. My friend, Larry Purdy, a Minnesota-based lawyer who worked on the University of Michigan cases regarding racial preferences, has written a book, “Getting Under the Skin of ‘Diversity’: Searching for the Color-Blind Ideal,” that makes mincemeat of the Supreme Court’s fatuous decisions, while reminding many of us why we celebrated Sandra Day O’Connor’s departure from the bench.
In 1998, Derek Bok, former president of Harvard, and William Bowen, former president of Princeton, collaborated on a book, “The Shape of the River,” which greatly influenced O’Connor and a majority of her associates.
The entire purpose of the book was to prove that racial preferences (aka affirmative action) were beneficial for the elite schools and for society at large. For openers, Purdy proves that Bok and Bowen were deceptive, to say the least, because they never released the data that allegedly made their case. Instead, we’re all simply expected to take their word for it even though, as clearly spelled out in Brown vs. Board of Education, the government is prohibited from treating citizens differently because of their race. According to Bok and Bowen, the benefits of racial diversity on elite college campuses, no matter how it’s achieved, simply outweighs all other considerations.
The fact is, they admit that they don’t have any idea how many of the minority students they claim to have studied made it to the university on their own merits and not simply because a bunch of elitist pinheads decided that leapfrogging them over more deserving white and Asian students was the American way.
Something else that Bok and Bowen didn’t bother mentioning was the large numbers of minority students who graduated from historically black colleges and universities and went on to achieve a reasonable amount of fame and fortune in spite of not attending Ivy League schools.
As much as I’d like to, I can’t deny that Ivy League graduates tend to go on to greater success than most people. But that has far less to do with the quality of education than with the fact that the students so often come from families that are already wealthy and powerful because their ancestors owned railroads, banks and oil companies, and they therefore have dibs on Senate seats and the Oval Office.
Ah, ya forgot “Marriage-Go-Round.” Two professors there, happily married. James Mason and Susan Hayward starred. The self-evidently eugenic Julie Newmar comes along and says to him, “I want you to be the father of my baby.” Great entertainment, watching the brilliant prof run this by his wife.
My husband kept his political opinions pretty much under wraps until he got tenure. This is someone who loves a good argument, too! He couldn't wait until he felt he could safely voice his opinion on some things. Even now, the conservatives in the department meet and talk to each other as if their conversations must be somewhat covert. He called their lunchtime conversations "The Seminar" the other day. It sounds like those of like mind are quietly finding each other.
I believe it was a decision involving affirmative action hiring at universities that I first heard the awful phrase, "Compelling governmental interest."
I suppose it sounds better than "I'll substitute my feelings for the law."
I, on the other hand, am an over-paid, under-worked, right-wing narcissist, infatuated with the sound of my own voice.
Being a university system prof with tenure has got to be the closest thing the civilian world has to being the captain of a small navy frigate circa 1800. On the other hand, unlike some of my liberal ethics-challenged colleagues, I leave my politics at the building door.
From what I see and hear, being a law prof is like a regular prof x10.
Class envy is no prettier when it comes from the right.
It’s not class envy to note that the prestige of the Ivy Leagues is no longer built upon academic excellence, but on the self-perpetuating social networking that occurs there
I think Burt is oversimplifying the student bodies of many Ivy Leagues. While the population of ‘legacy’ students is surely large, now, if you aren’t PC or have some challenging life story, you often aren’t even considered for entry as part of the rest of the student body.
A wealthy Indonesian friend (Cahtolic) had a difficult time getting his daughter into an Ivy League school despite her excellent grades and SAT scores. If the family had been poor Muslims, she probably would have gotten a scholarship.
A wealthy Catholic is playing with fire sending his daughter to an Ivy to begin with, although you make it sound like he ultimately succeeded in getting her in somewhere—Dartmouth, maybe?
What’s happening is that the Ivies are essentially closed to those who don’t further the Ivies’ vision for social change. Mere academic excellence alone will not gain admission without accompanying evidence of either a shared commitment to the Ivies’ social engineering vision or of sufficient social capital to advance their goals through other means—and here we’re talking the sort of donations to the capital fund that build new buildings.
Lke many outside our country who do not read about the bias of the American media and the liberal tilt of academia, my friend has bought into the myth of the Ivies and other elite schools (his daughter ultimately went to Johns Hopkins).
Personally, I can’t understand why most of the family is still in Indonesia (considering they’re not only Christian but ethnically Chinese as well - two strikes against them right there).
I wouldn’t mention this to your friend, but Johns Hopkins is not an Ivy in the fullest sense of the term. It’s one of the technocratic alternatives to the Ivies established in the late 19th century (along with Stanford and the University of Chicago) in an attempt to break the social networks between the Ivies and the ruling class.
As such, they have a less fully realised social programme and marginally more room for the conservative worldview.
We should throw MIT and Caltech in with the other technocratic schools.
But the social networking point remains the same: we’re not likely to elect a President from any of those schools in the short or medium term. Stanford is the sole exception; for all intents it has become the West Coast Ivy—and has the ruling class alumni to prove it.
My friend felt JH was plenty good enough (and expensive enough) considering he went to Case Western and University of Illinois. His daughter eventually went on to University of Chicago GSB, or as it is now called, Booth GSB.
Johns Hopkins is an EXCELLENT school.
It’s just not where the ruling class sends its children—except those who want to be doctors.
Someone was watching TCM's College Festival.
As educators, Dr. Jones and Professor Elsa Schneider were an interesting pair.
Quite a Study Abroad semester in Europe.
Although she did have that rather unfortunate Thule Society misadventure with
the Ahnenerbe in the Middle East.
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