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.
Maybe it worked, I haven't seen the harpie in a while. Now she'll probably be on tonight.
I agree that many educators think they are brilliantly subversive, and that all this PC crap is wonderful. They are so blind. I haven't been a kid in a while, but I remember when I was and this kind of garbage creates nothing but contempt in the students. They LAUGH at PC. They call it GAY! Hahahaha. Kids act stupid but they have great BS detectors.
They still need to be stopped. The net effect is of a country that isn't as well educated as it should be, and that believes more liberal claptrap than it should.
I'm a junior at University of Alaska Anchorage and I have had a suprisingly good experience. Although I believe a majority of my professors are liberal, I feel most of them try to keep the leftist propaganda to a minimum. This might be because a large persentage of the student body is military or the spouses of military personell. I have also found a few conservative professors who keep their politics out of the classroom.
This is my second degree and I wish the other colleges I attended were the same as UAA but unfortunately they were liberal fortresses unwilling to be challenged.
I don't see anything wrong with taping lectures. Why would a professor want to hide what is said in class. Unless it is a fabrication being presented as fact there should be nothing to fear.
Um, this is tax payer money. It is not incumbent on the student to be forced fed trash, to be belittled and threatened with bad grades or possible failure if they don't toe the leftist orthodoxy enforced with the academic jackboot. Furthermore, many of these classes are required and specific to the area of study for these students - how is that serving the tax payer, the student, or the school? I know people who have won lawsuits against universities for such bias.
I know a woman who had to go to court and win a case against a major university for their efforts to sabotage her teaching career because of her conservative views. I personally was purged from a required class because I refused to write a paper on Anne Richards instead of my chosen topic, Margaret Thatcher. See the professor did'nt like that idea at all, even though it was my choice.
Furthermore, everybody is accountable for what they say. If I were to say something rascist or worse at work I would be held accoutable. But apparently you believe that liberals on campus are immune from saying hate or bigoted speech.
Part of me wants to give you the benefit of the doubt, but the other half smells a troll.
students have been taping professors for decades in order take better notes for study.
The comments of professors are not "private" they are PAID for.
The students pay for the class, but not the right to tape the professor's comments. As I mentioned before, I have not problem with students taping my lectures as it is done for note service. I also have nothing to 'hide'...
Nevertheless from a University perspective I think that they would side with the professor should he/she not want students to tape their lectures.
We are very tough on newbies. Sorry for the baptism by fire.
And plus I don't think its a big conspiracy every time. Thats all the time what cry baby liberals say oh its a big conspiracy of the right. I think if it was facts then the college would do some thing or you could get a lawyer and sue there butt off. There I go with an opinion again and here comes the people telling me I'm a troll again!!!!
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