Free Speech and an Orthodoxy of Dissent [Why a backlash now exists against U.S. college professors]

The Chronicle of Higher Education ^ | October 26, 2001 | Stanley Kurtz

[summer]

FYI -- The author of this editorial, Stanley Kurtz, is:

"a fellow at the Hudson Institute and a contributing editor to National Review Online."

I was quite surprised to read anything by someone with his bio in this particular publication, as The Chronicle of Higher Education is known to be quite liberal.

[summer]

FYI.

[AMERIKA]

Bummer. Drtruthsayer had his thread pulled before I could tell him what I thought of him.

[summer]

FYI. Comments?

[summer]

Thought you might be interested in this editorial. :)

[madprof98]

Left-leaning faculty members at many universities are finding that large numbers of students are now actively sympathetic to outside critics of the academy and hostile to their professors.

If that is true on a wide scale, then I say, "Thank God!" Since the Vietnam era the faculty elite have managed to brainwash their charges with all manner of leftish nonsense, and when the kids end up agreeing with them--as most at least halfway do--they claim to have "opened their minds" and "helped them think for themselves." The sooner that's over, the better.

[gusopol3]

exactly right--they've already taken the hit below the water line, and they know it. When socialist liberal congressmen scurry to the steps of the Capitol to sing "God Bless America," anyone can see their consistent aggression against traditional values leaves them bankrupt.

[FITZ]

A professor at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst who called the American flag a "symbol of terrorism and death and fear and destruction and oppression" was deluged with harassing calls and e-mails after critics published her home and e-mail addresses on the Internet.

What a bunch of cry-babies. They want their "free-speech" but they don't want anyone else to have "free-speech".

[summer]

Thought you might be interested in reading this editorial. :)

[FITZ]

We need to look at how many of these professors have never held a real job in the working world. Some of them went to college and never left the campus and have no clue about the real world. They think no one should contradict them or challenge them in anyway because they are nothing but spoiled tenured brats.

[hsszionist]

We can be hopeful that the responce to the sociobabel of the universities isn't just knee jerk reaction to 9-11, but informed reaction. Don't get me wrong, any general negative comments that will tweek their enlightened fellings is beneficial to the republic, I would just prefer reasoned.

[summer]

AmishDude, I leave it to you to respond to post #10 from FITZ! :)

[farmfriend]

Nice post.

Klamath break.

[summer]

Thanks. And, glad you took a well-deserved break from that.

[livius]

Yes, it is truly amazing that this appeared in the dread Chronicle of Higher Education! Frankly, I think that the leftist professoriate has been so successful in suppressing dissent on their campuses that they are not even familiar with what it feels like to be opposed. I'm not defending death threats, of course. But it seems to me that they often take any negative response to their left-wing ravings as an attempt to stifle them. They're not used to give and take, and they don't realize that ideas have consequences.

[hsszionist]

It would appear the shoe of the moderator reacts rapidly to cockroachs.

[Bernard Marx]

Bump for later reading.

[Little Bill]

Those evil things that live under rocks flee fron the light. I is about time that people started looking at these maggots that corrupt our children.

[RANGERAIRBORNE]

This is an excellent article- but I doubt that it will make any impression on the intended target audience.

After all, when you KNOW that you are perfectly, undoubtedly, unimpeachably correct at all times and on every subject, why would you bother to tolerate any dissenters?

By the way, this tendency is not limited to girly-men college liberal arts professors- I see it at work on FR fairly often- too bad.

[Betty Jane]

Bump for later reading.