Students Fight Back Introducing NoIndoctrination.org

The recent firestorm of controversy over the Campus Watch website may be only the beginning. Now a new website called NoIndoctrination.org has the potential to draw wide public attention to the abuse of fairness and trust regularly practiced in today's politically correct college classrooms. In fact, the site has already kicked up a public controversy. That's because NoIndoctrination.org invites students who believe their professors are egregiously biased or intolerant to post complaints against these professors on the Internet.

Recall that the September inauguration of Dan Pipes's Campus Watch website provoked a torrent of criticism from professors of Middle East studies, many of whom were listed on the site, along with links to their statements and publications. Pipes argued that these statements were riddled with errors, and with bias against American interests. Campus Watch also offered students an opportunity to send in reports of errors, biases, or acts of intolerance by professors of Middle East studies, for possible posting on site.

In response, the professors listed on Campus Watch charged Pipes with McCarthyism, blacklisting, and an attempt to chill the climate of free speech. Outraged scholars from a variety of disciplines, out of solidarity with their supposedly oppressed colleagues, wrote to Pipes demanding to be listed alongside the offenders on his site. (One of the outraged professors was Peter Kirstein, who recently gained fame for refusing to help a military cadet publicize a political forum, for denouncing the cadet as a cowardly baby-killer, and for calling on members of the military to resign, or disobey their orders.)

Of course, this was all nonsense. As I argued in "Balancing the Academy," if anyone has been singling out scholars with accusations of bias and political offense, it is professors of Middle East studies. In fact, the grander a radical scholar's accusations against his non-leftist colleagues, the more likely he is to get tenure.

But all this may have been only the runup to greater controversies to come. That's because a brand new website, NoIndoctrination.org, is inviting students to post reports of bias and intolerance by any professor. In other words, the very feature of Campus Watch that sparked the most outrage has now been generalized to all disciplines and given its own special site. And although I say it with some regret, I think NoIndoctrination.org is an idea whose time has come. I do not believe that the public posting of student complaints about professorial bias and intolerance is anything close to the best way to handle this problem, but I do believe that it has become a necessary remedy of last resort.

You will understand that NoIndoctrination.org is a necessary last resort when you hear the story of Luann Wright, the site's founder. Wright was a high-school science teacher, mostly in the San Diego area, for about a dozen years. Since then, she's done volunteer teaching and helped to design science curricula. But Wright got a different kind of education when her son arrived at Warren College, one of the six colleges of the University of California, San Diego.

Wright followed the progress of her son through his freshman year. Beginning with the mandatory freshman orientation (his preceptors preferred the word, "freshperson"), her son started complaining of being subjected to pressure to conform to a radical political perspective on issues of race, class, and sexual orientation. At first, Wright downplayed the problems, thinking that her son's difficulties were confined to an isolated class or program.

Then her son hit the school's required two-quarter writing course. Nearly all the readings for that composition course were heavily political in nature, haranguing, in one way or another, "the ruinous pathology of whiteness." Wright was concerned, but still believed that the course was an isolated problem. Why, she thought, shouldn't college expose kids to many points of view, even those that seem bizarre or extreme?

But when even the course's second quarter was filled with material attacking the "tyranny" of American culture, Wright sat up and took notice. Using the California Public Records Act, Wright obtained a raft of university documents relating to Warren College's writing course. She discovered that parents, students, and faculty had complained about bias in the college's required composition course for years. In fact, in 1998, a faculty-review committee was convened to look at the course and recommended that, "if controversial issues are examined, multiple and contrasting points of view should be presented." Yet the recommendations of the university's own faculty-review panel were shelved, and de facto thought reform went on, unchecked. Despite the many complaints of Wright, other parents, students, and professors, Warren College's provost, citing academic freedom, said that there was nothing he could do about the writing curriculum.

In response to ongoing complaints about its politicized composition program, UC San Diego appointed one useless faculty-review board after another. In the meantime, however, Wright began researching composition programs at other colleges of UC San Diego, and at other California universities as well. She found that the Warren College problem was in no way isolated. Required composition courses at a wide array of universities had been thoroughly politicized by professors openly committed to radicalizing their students, discouraging them from cooperating with "the system," and eliminating "U.S.-Centrism."

After seeing years of complaints from students and parents ignored, faculty-committee recommendations set aside, and after discovering that the problem went far beyond any one university, Luann Wright finally took matters into her own hands and established NoIndoctrination.org. Her hope is that, by exposing the extent of classroom politicization, she might help to make a place for genuine intellectual diversity on campus.

There have already been howls of protest over anonymous student complaints about particular professors and courses posted on the web. In a recent story in the daily Chronicle of Higher Education, professors listed on the site called NoIndoctrination.org "silly" and "cowardly" for encouraging anonymous accusation. The question is a difficult one, but by no means without precedent. Many colleges have course-evaluation guides that offer anonymous student advice about teacher competence and inclination. It is certainly a matter for concern when an anonymous student with a grievance can make statements that unfairly impugns a teacher's reputation. And it is well for all to remember that student evaluations are opinions only — often self-interested opinions. At the same time, professors hold tremendous power over a student's future, and there is a very strong case for a mechanism that alerts students to what they might be in for by choosing to study with a given professor. NoIndoctrination.org has attempted to come to grips with these competing goods in a very thoughtful and creative manner. The site allows and invites professors or administrators to post rebuttals to student complaints.

But what about the larger question of academic freedom? Is it really true that, because of academic freedom, administrators have no choice but to hand over control of their universities to professors who are committed to indoctrinating their students? No, it is not. For one thing, administrators have a say in hiring. It is their responsibility to make sure that the best representatives of a wide array of viewpoints are present at their institutions. That intellectual diversity, in and of itself, would do a lot to insure that professors with a single narrow political viewpoint cannot commandeer and entire department or curriculum.

NoIndoctrination.org also argues that the academy has been betraying its own stated standards in the matter of academic freedom. Posted on the site are the official statements on academic freedom of the American Association of University Professors and of the University of California. Both statements highlight the need to allow students to express their own opinions, and to protect them from pressure to toe a political line. The University of California's guidelines on academic freedom, for example, state that, "To convert, or to make converts, is alien and hostile" to the "dispassionate duty" of a teacher. The university "assumes the right to prevent exploitation of its prestige...by those who would use it as a platform for propaganda."

These prohibitions clearly give the university grounds for taking action against professors who place their wish to radicalize students over their obligation to expose them to contrary views, or to allow them to freely voice all views without punishment or pressure. I don't see why tenure decisions should not be influenced by a professor's willingness to allow his students freedom of thought and expression.

And when a university's required composition course is taken over by a coterie of political propagandists, it is the obligation and responsibility of administrators to restructure that program. At a minimum, college officials are liable to public exposure, censure, and loss of support for having allowed their faculty to become so unbalanced that granting academic freedom to professors means taking it away from students.

No doubt, it would have been far better had our nation's colleges and universities not allowed themselves to be hijacked by a narrow claque of tenured radicals. But hijacked they have been. Given that, it seems to me that a website like NoIndoctrination.org has become a sad but genuine necessity.

Yet students need to take the responsibility of filing a complaint very seriously. Ideally, they might consider going to the professor in question first and asking for assurance that they will not be punished or pressured for taking a different viewpoint in class from that of the professor. That may seem like naive advice, but in many cases, it may actually serve to protect a student without need for further action. In effect, it puts the professor on notice that there is a problem. But if going directly to your professor fails, or if you truly judge it too risky to try, then posting at NoIndoctrination.org may be in order. And of course, if you know that you and others have suffered from a professor's egregious ideological suppression in the past, then you might also want to post. (For examples of posts, go here.) Whatever you think about the rights and wrongs of sites like Campus Watch and NoIndoctrination.org, their advent signals a burgeoning legitimacy crisis in the academy. The problem of campus PC has been known and discussed for 15 years now, yet we do seem to be entering a new stage. I think there are two reasons why: the war, and the Internet.

The war has unquestionably brought a new level of scrutiny to our politically correct campuses. Once the initial years of the campus culture war had passed, the public decided that campus leftism was either beyond the reach of anyone who hoped to do something about it, or irrelevant. The war changed that. Now the general public has passionate, often highly informed, opinions about matters on which our Middle East "experts" declaim. People now feel they have the right to make a judgment on a Middle East scholar's failings, and they see the importance of the issue to our national security. Websites like Campus Watch are the result.

But the Internet has provided the essential catalyst. The web gives moderates and conservatives a way around the radical's grip on our mainstream journalistic and educational institutions. To put it in terms that the radicals might understand, the web has allowed oppressed mainstream students on our campuses to develop a form of "class consciousness." Marx thought that by piling up workers in factories, capitalism would bring them to awareness of their shared oppression. You might think that students would gain awareness of their collective oppression by PC professors at the campuses where they're piled up, but our campuses aren't ordinary factories. They are factories of consciousness, so to speak, run by leftist overseers. It was the advent of the Internet that gave grumbling students a place to go for an alternative to the closed intellectual shop of the universities. And with sites like CampusNonsense.com, David Horowitz's frontpagemag.com, and others, it has given them a place to gain awareness of their shared oppression. Now, NoIndoctrination.org points the way to revolutionary action in defense of student intellectual freedom. So students on the web unite! You have nothing to lose but your chains.

I got a "Forbidden" warning when trying to "View Postings." Did you have any luck?

Yes, I could see all of them, if I had the time to wait about five minutes for each one to load. It's a form the students fill out, very short, and it's apparent there are boxes to check. ..... I just went to the site and had no problem this time, maybe this morning there were too many freepers hitting the site. Here's what you will see there:

Click on the school name to view the complete posting.

University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB)

Nov. 27, 2002

Soc 108F: Studying People At First Hand (Prof.: Kumkum Bhavnani)

Lecture bias: Objectionable

Discussion bias: N/A

Readings bias: Objectionable

Required? Major/Minor

North Harris College

Nov. 12, 2002

GOVT 2301: American Government I (Prof.: Warren Anderson)

Lecture bias: Excessive

Discussion bias: Excessive

Readings bias: Excessive

Required? All Students

Tufts University

Nov. 11, 2002

ENG0059: The Continuity of American Literature (Prof.: Ronna Johnson)

Lecture bias: Excessive

Discussion bias: Excessive

Readings bias: N/A

Required? Met GE Req.

University of Kentucky (UK)

Nov. 11, 2002

PS 431: National Security Policy (Prof.: Stewart Kaufman)

Lecture bias: Excessive

Discussion bias: Excessive

Readings bias: Noticeable

Required? Major/Minor

Ohio State University (OSU)

Nov. 10, 2002

Freshman Orientation

Bias: Objectionable

Required: Yes

Cornell University

Nov. 5, 2002

GOVT 111: Introduction to American Government (Prof.: Theodore T. Lowi)

Lecture bias: Objectionable

Discussion bias: None

Readings bias: Objectionable

Required? No

University of Idaho (UI)

Nov. 5, 2002

JS 101: Introduction to the Justice System (Prof.: Loretta Capeheart)

Lecture bias: Excessive

Discussion bias: Objectionable

Readings bias: None

Required? Met GE Req.

Brown University

Nov. 5, 2002

PS0022: City Politics (Prof.: James Morone)

Lecture bias: Noticeable

Discussion bias: Objectionable

Readings bias: None

Required? Major/Minor

Brown University

Nov. 5, 2002

HI0178: Modernizing America, 1890-1930 (Prof.: John Thomas)

Lecture bias: Excessive

Discussion bias: N/A

Readings bias: Noticeable

Required? No

Bucknell University

Nov. 2, 2002

POLS 205: Comparative Politics (Prof.: John Peeler)

Lecture bias: Noticeable

Discussion bias: N/A

Readings bias: Noticeable

Required? Major/Minor

Bucknell University

Nov. 2, 2002

ECON 103: Economic Principles & Problems (Prof.: Geoffrey Schneider)

Lecture bias: Objectionable

Discussion bias: Objectionable

Readings bias: Excessive

Required? Major/Minor

University of California, San Diego (UCSD)

Oct. 26, 2002

WCWP 10B: Warren College Writing Course (Prof.: Linda Brodkey (director))

Lecture bias: N/A

Discussion bias: Excessive

Readings bias: Excessive

Required? All Students

University of Washington (UW)

Oct. 21, 2002

Soc. 271: Introduction to Deviance (Prof.: Robert Crutchfield)

Lecture bias: Objectionable

Discussion bias: Objectionable

Readings bias: Noticeable

Required? No

University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB)

Oct. 17, 2002

Political Science 7: Introduction to International Relations (Prof.: Aaron Belkin)

Lecture bias: Objectionable

Discussion bias: Noticeable

Readings bias: Objectionable

Required? Major/Minor

University of Central Oklahoma (UCO)

Oct. 14, 2002

Hist 1483: History of US to 1877 (Prof.: Jere Roberson)

Lecture bias: Excessive

Discussion bias: Excessive

Readings bias: Noticeable

Required? All Students

University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB)

Oct. 7, 2002

Black Studies 38B: Introduction to Afro-American Literature (Part II) (Prof.: Jane Duran)

Lecture bias: Excessive

Discussion bias: Noticeable

Readings bias: Noticeable

Required? Met GE Req.

University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB)

Oct. 7, 2002

Soc 1: Introduction to Sociology (Prof.: Margaret George-Cramer)

Lecture bias: Excessive

Discussion bias: N/A

Readings bias: Noticeable

Required? Major/Minor

University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB)

Oct. 7, 2002

Black Studies 50: Blacks in the Media (Prof.: Ottis Madison)

Lecture bias: Excessive

Discussion bias: Noticeable

Readings bias: Noticeable

Required? Met GE Req.

University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB)

Oct. 7, 2002

PolSci 176: Black Politics in America (Prof.: Christopher Parker)

Lecture bias: Objectionable

Discussion bias: N/A

Readings bias: Excessive

Required? Met GE Req.

University of California, San Diego (UCSD)

Oct. 6, 2002

WARR 11A: Warren Scholars Seminar (Prof.: David K. Jordan)

Lecture bias: None

Discussion bias: Objectionable

Readings bias: N/A

Required? Met GE Req.

Barnard College

Sep. 26, 2002

3011: Poverty and Income Distribution (Prof.: Cecilia Rao)

Lecture bias: Excessive

Discussion bias: Excessive

Readings bias: Noticeable

Required? Major/Minor

University of California, San Diego (UCSD)

Sep. 25, 2002

Freshman Orientation

Bias: Objectionable

Required: Yes

University of California, San Diego (UCSD)

Sep. 23, 2002

WCWP 10A: Warren College Writing Course (Prof.: Linda Brodkey)

Lecture bias: N/A

Discussion bias: Excessive

Readings bias: Excessive

Required? All Students

Here's the complete text from the first listing. This is a great service to students who are looking for good classes and good teachers. I hope there will be many many more postings.

entry #39.

University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB)

Nov. 27, 2002

http://www.ucsb.edu

Course: Soc 108F: Studying People At First Hand

Course Catalog Description: A vital aspect of modern sociology is the study of social activities in natural settings. This course explores the different methods a fieldworker can use to discover truths about society.

Professor: Kumkum Bhavnani

Required? Yes, for my major or minor

Lecture Bias: Objectionable

Comments: Sociology 108f is billed as a methods class in which students are taught methods of research in dealing with people. Among the different methods are interviews, survey etc... It seemed unlikely to me that there could be any bias in the instruction of methods of research. I was surprised to find out that there in fact is a way for such a thing to be manifested. On the first day of class professor Bhavnani explained that the primary focus of the class would be on ethnography. She then went on to explain that throughout the course she would use past research and ethnography to convey methods of research. I was not put off by this at all; however, that soon changed. The first piece of research she presented was in the form of a video called "Women of the Hezbolah". The video depicted the plight of Palestinian revolutionaries who were fighting for a free Palestine. In the video several women explained why they were fighting and what terrible subjugation they have experienced at the hand of Israel. In one scene they showed two individuals visiting their childhood home which had been decimated. The general concept of the video was to convey that something terrible had been done to Palestinians and that the hesbolah was going to make it right at any cost. Later in the video young children were shown marching with automatic weapons in a rally with hezbolah revolutionaries. In my opinion these people were terrorists and I was appalled that they would enlist their young children to fight, but I could understand that the video was attempting to offer a new perspective on a familliar subject or as Professor Bhavnani put it: Making the familliar unfamilliar by providing new insight. So it was clear to me that this video was presented from an extreme left perspective, but I accepted it expecting to see many other presentations from different perspectives. The next video she showed was called "Maria's Story," in which a group of communisit-like rebels in El Salvador were fighting their oppresive United States backed government. This video followed one particular guerrilla fighter named Maria who enlisted children to fight with her. When one of the children was shot, she was recorded screaming about what type of monster would shoot a child. I suppose the point of showing children fighting was to ensight support for a cause that was so in jeopardy that they need children in order to progress their cause. Once again I saw another piece of extreme left propaganda but I still hoped for something balancing. The next segment Bhavnani discussed with the class was her own research study of women in prison, in which she interviews prisoners in America and abroad and shows how unfair the prison system is to their needs that a mother could not be with their child. It was clear to me that the mother should have thought of that before committing crimes but that type of view was never presented or discussed. Throughout the course the same type of left oriented material was presented one after another. Although Professor Bhavnani asserted that the material was presented for the purpose of showing different methods of studying people, it became clear to me that the course title "Studying People at First Hand" was an excuse to present objectionally biased material. In my oppinion the course should have been called Studying People from a Leftist Perpective. This of course would not work however, because at no time did Professor Bhavnani admit that she was in fact pushing a leftist agenda disguised as instruction on methodology. Upon completing the class I could not help but feel that I had not really learned much about studying people from the professor herself. She gave us assignments to go observe people or to interview people in which I had to teach myself how to best complete such tasks, but her instruction on the subject was minimal at best.

Discussion Bias: N/A

Comments: Although there was no discussion section for the class, there were two Teaching Assistants of whom I had virtually no contact with, with the exception of one day in which one of the teaching assistants presented her research on the flower picking industry of South America. In the presentation she explained how capitalist enterprises were subjugating laborers in South America, etc...

Readings Bias: Objectionable

Comments: The readings were supplements to the presented material and contained the same bias that the lectures had.

General Comments: I believe that in a methods course there is no reason to present such controversial material, particularly when it is presented with no rebuttal. I believe that we could have learned the same information about studying people looking at a video of a family gathering or some other such benign event.

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