Posted on 01/20/2006 11:31:22 AM PST by flixxx
Censoring Liberal Professors Susan Estrich Friday, Jan. 20, 2006 It is one of the worst ideas to hit academia: paying students to tape their professors, in the hopes of discouraging their expression of views that one side considers to be "radical."
Most alumni associations aim to improve their alma maters. But the Bruin Alumni Association – an unofficial group, not to be confused with the official UCLA Alumni Association – seems determined to do just the opposite. If it has its way, the classroom will no longer be a place where students and faculty can discuss ideas freely. Shame on them.
The Bruin Alumni Association's new project offers students $100 to tape-record the classes of certain professors who have been designated by the organization. While the organization claims to be concerned about radicals of any stripe, its "Dirty 30" consists entirely of liberals who have signed petitions that are "anti-Bush, anti-Israel, antiwar" or against Bush's judicial appointees.
The program, according to UCLA, violates the official university rules, which bar taping classroom lectures without a professor's permission. But that is the least of it. It violates not only the professor's academic freedom but also that of every student in the classroom. Imagine asking a question, or expressing a point of view, knowing that a fellow student is taking detailed notes and taping the class for purposes of monitoring the slant of everything that is said – in the name of political correctness.
Are there more liberals than conservatives teaching in America's top universities? Probably.
Are there more conservatives than liberals running America's top companies? Probably.
Is there room at UCLA for an organization to provide mentoring and support for Republican students? Certainly. Could such an organization help conservative students organize campus activities, bring speakers to campus, even provide backup for students so they feel more comfortable speaking up in class? Why not?
But the Bruin Alumni Association doesn't stop there. Its Web site comes complete with the very sort of diatribes it would be the first to condemn if posted by others. It aims to engage in the very sort of content-based review of lecture notes that would violate not only the rules of academic freedom but also the mandates of the First Amendment if posted by any official university group. It would have students restricting the private political activity of faculty members, also in violation of the First Amendment, again in the name of the free exchange of ideas.
Jim Rogan, the former congressman, Clinton prosecutor and UCLA alum, in resigning from the organization in protest, pointed out that he didn't need a Web site to tell him there were plenty of liberals on the UCLA faculty. But he didn't sign up to silence them, either. Hear, hear.
I've been teaching for 25 years, the last 15 at the University of Southern California. In my classrooms, I have only three hard and fast rules. No political correctness. Every point of view is not only welcome but also essential to a full discussion. Nothing said in the classroom leaves the classroom. If you don't agree with something, you argue the other side. I've never had a complaint in 25 years.
I suppose I should be pleased at the self-destructiveness of our competitors down the road. But it pleases me not at all to see freedom threatened from any direction, conservative or liberal.
Balance is not the issue here. Freedom and open discussion are. Professors who can't keep their politics out of the classroom need to be addressed by the administration, not by student and alumni censors. As for alums, those who love their school and care about its students should find a better way of showing it.
COPYRIGHT 2006 CREATORS SYNDICATE INC.
I argued my liberal economics professor into a corner. He finally called me a Fox News watching toad and ended the debate.
It was easy too... I pointed out that his take on the free market directly contradicted the text book.
I voted for Reagan my senior year in high school. I voted for him again in my senior year in college. I recognized at the time my professors were seasoning their lectures and dialogue with students. I played along. I doubt the impact these prosessors have on student's political beliefs is as significant as some would like to believe. Having said that, the more hysterical a professor gets politically, the less credible they become. Just my .02.
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/ARticles/000/000/006/120xbklj.asp
If your grade depends on `parroting' back what your screw-ball professor wants to hear, you `parrot' it back. If your appointment to ass't professor requires the same, you do the same.
In 20 or 30 years, you're a flaming liberal full professor demanding the same answers you gave.
It's not that these professors are out there it's that their courses are required and there is no other options available. You think your job is to produce "well rounded individuals" as opposed to well educated graduates.
We're all for reform, just as long as all power remains in the hands of the Party.
(c) It shall NOT be unlawful under this chapter for a person acting under color of law to intercept a wire, oral, or electronic communication, where such person is a party to the communication or one of the parties to the communication has given prior consent to such interception.
So long as theuse of the taped conversation is for legal purposes, a student is one of the parties to the conversation and taping the classroom discussions for lawful purposes by a party of the conversation is fully legal. In a public institution, everything a professor says is fair game. Private colleges can do whatever they want to not allow it.
Said an ape as he swung by his tail,
To his offspring both female and male:
'From *your* offspring, my dears,
In a couple of years,
May evolve a professor at Yale.'
If he is in a big lecture hall sneek in and tape the pig
Classic demonstration of the old phrase: Those who can, do; those who can't, teach.
Probably HELL! Undoubtedly!
Are there more conservatives than liberals running America's top companies? Probably.
Two words for you, Susan. Mike Eisner. But oh, wait. Disney figured out that he was running them into the ground and got rid of him.
Bottom line is, the politics of most CEO's don't really matter in the overall scheme of things. The politics of college professors do. They're supposed to teach our youth facts and critical not propaganda and Marxist dogma.
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
Where does it say you have a right to be free from the consequences the individual recipients of your message decide to impose?
Estrich--how is recording their "lectures" silencing them? One would assume they teach lessons that have some credibility--besides, is it not a good way to take notes?
If this "threat" censors anybody, it's because they are spewing garbage (they are).
Ms. Estrich seems to understand that all sides of an argument are valid for classroom discussions. Would that the other liberal professors feel that way, there would not be a need for the group she thinks is wrong. I don't care if you're a lib, but I do if you use my being conservative against me. If you do, then woe be unto you, Susan! I would take great pains to nail your a$$ to the wall for that one.
The consumer should be the ultimate determiner of whether they are getting what they paid for. That's the problem with a lot of professions -- the supplier becomes the sole determiner of what is fair to the consumer, and the consumer must listen to and accept that judgment -- and student should stay in their proper place and not question these lifetime, self-appointed authorities.
The people in the media, schools and universities largely, seem to equate freedom of speech as the right to remain anonymous and secretive -- which is something else entirely. Liberals furthermore, seem to think the categorical imperative as the right to privacy over even the right to life. And so they defend a terrorist's right to kill, as a legitimate First Amendment freedom of expression -- trumping even another's right to live.
True scientists and scholars welcome the widest exposures and scrutiny of their ideas to every challenge -- confident in knowing what they are talking bout as legitimate authorities. The many con-artists of the world, disproportionately drawn to the media, education and communication professions, require the cloak of secrecy and anonymity to get away with their perpetrations -- aided and abetted by lawyers such as herself.
Not everybody is a crook like everybody she knows personally and is related to.
Just censoring? They should be shot for treaon.
Just censoring? They should be shot for treason.
I went to law school at UNC-Chapel Hill. There was a small pocket of us conservatives there, but it was small. All but one or two professors were flaming libs. We just referred to most classes as liberal bloodbaths and went on. The extreme liberalism taught at UNC and most other schools doesn't end up recruiting many who wouldn't otherwise have been willing libs anyway. Those classes do little to assist libs with their reasoning skills, so let 'em be.
Somebody get a skip loader, please, the mire from liberal, leftist, taxpayer subsidized propaganda is so deep at UCLA that the spires of the tallest buildings are obscured - along with the whole truth. Somebody get a skip loader, the stench of leftist, commie/socialist, taxpayer subsidized, indoctrination reeks to high heaven.
Please get behind the efforts of this guy. The fate of California, and possibly the nation, hinges on efforts to confront the vile commie/socialist leftist agenda being peddled at taxpayer expense at colleges and universities like UCLA.
To those of you who have been away from school for a long time, I can honestly say that you cannot imagine how far left the faculty on most campuses are, even in red states.
I like the idea. They are supposed to be teaching not brainwashing, eh???
"Ditto" PS I like your tag line.
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