I'm a liberal professor, and my liberal students terrify me (xpost from Good Reads)

[KamaAina]

http://www.vox.com/2015/6/3/8706323/college-professor-afraid

I'm a professor at a midsize state school. I have been teaching college classes for nine years now. I have won (minor) teaching awards, studied pedagogy extensively, and almost always score highly on my student evaluations. I am not a world-class teacher by any means, but I am conscientious; I attempt to put teaching ahead of research, and I take a healthy emotional stake in the well-being and growth of my students.

Things have changed since I started teaching. The vibe is different. I wish there were a less blunt way to put this, but my students sometimes scare me — particularly the liberal ones....

"What about Fannie and Freddie?" he asked. "Government kept giving homes to black people, to help out black people, white people didn't get anything, and then they couldn't pay for them. What about that?"...

The next week, I got called into my director's office. I was shown an email, sender name redacted, alleging that I "possessed communistical (sic) sympathies and refused to tell more than one side of the story." The story in question wasn't described, but I suspect it had do to with whether or not the economic collapse was caused by poor black people.

[Romeo.lima333]

1. how does he know which of his students are liberals. sender's name redacted and would any liberal

use the word "communistical"

[alcibiades_mystery]

13. That's the contrast case. He's not saying THAT student was liberal

He's saying "Six years ago, I'd get reported by students for ideological differences, like this conservative student who called me 'communistical' because I refused to entertain his nonsensical argument about African-Americans causing the financial crisis. NOW, however, the complaints come from liberal students who have had their feelings hurt and report teachers for presenting 'upsetting' oir 'triggering' material."

[Romeo.lima333]

17. oh ok thanks for the clarification

[rogerashton]

37. The OP is confusing on that. eom

[ellie]

2. Communistical

What a moron student.

[Maedhros]

3. Many "liberals" terrify me as well.

For example, the ones who cheered when Libya was destroyed.

[leveymg]

5. Those aren't liberals - they're neo-conservatives who don't understand the difference

[Maedhros]

8. They certainly insist they're liberals,

and they keep telling me I'm either a "Rand-loving libertarian" or an "extreme left purist" for objecting to our spreading misery to the third world.

[merrily]

79. You haven't been called a socialist yet? Or a left libertarian?

Me? I just keep hoping my pony grows a horn in the middle of his head.

[Vattel]

81. Has "left libertarian" become an insult? If only there were more left libertarians.

Left libertarianism keeps all the good stuff in libertarianism and adds economic justice and even redistribution of wealth. So the economic craziness of a Rand Paul is eliminated.

[merrily]

82. The goal seems to be to associate DU's left with "the other,"

thereby also making liars of the members of DU's left who insist they are simply Democrats. Of course, in a pinch, Democrats who are purists or who are not pragmatic will do as a canard.

[Vattel]

83. I see. Well I think we should reclaim the word "purist" and turn it into a compliment.

I am a purist with respect to doing the right thing.

I am a purist in opposing injustice.

I am a purist in opposing immoral wars.

Etc. See? Being a purist is a good thing.

[merrily]

84. Good luck with that. "Even "principle" is apparently a negative word.

[Vattel]

85. God forbid anyone should have principles. It might make them

do something crazy like vote no on the Iraq War Resolution.

[merrily]

88. Having principles is apparently an ugly thing. Close relative of purist.

Unprincipled and impure, on the other hand, are wonderful.

Or so it would seem if you read DU on some days.

They do, after all, help get "reform" litigation passed. Like "reform" of banking regulation, aka repeal of Glass Steagall, and reform of welfare "as we know it." with a little luck, we'll soon reform Social Security, one of the few remaining large New Deal programs that pragmatic bipartisans haven't managed to reform yet.

[MindPilot]

23. Me too

Like the liberals who think that splayed legs on public transportation should be a jail-able offense or that arresting someone for failing to display the proper level of decorum at a graduation is appropriate.

The degree to which authoritarianism and punitiveness is now embraced by liberals has driven me away not only from the Party, but from even bothering to vote.

[Maedhros]

29. "We came, we saw, he died."

And people cheer it.

[arcane1]

4. Editing due to all the correcting :)

Last edited Wed Jun 3, 2015, 08:38 PM - Edit history (1)

[el_bryanto]

6. I was wondering the same thing

Doesn't sound liberal to me.

Bryant

[MindPilot]

9. Yeah, that really didn't make a whole lot of sense.

[alcibiades_mystery]

14. He doesn't...read the article

[Comrade Grumpy]

18. II suggest actually reading the article and not just the excerpts.

[arcane1]

19. Yeah, he seems to be worried about hypothetical liberals acting like assholes.

[GoneOffShore]

39. No so hypothetical. We see this happen on DU all the time.

"My feelings are hurt. WaaaH! Now I'm going to alert on your post and get my friends to alert as well."

[TexasMommaWithAHat]

67. No, he didn't say that student was liberal.

He is saying that is the kind of complaints profs usually get - right-wingers who have ideological differences, but now liberals are complaining because their feelings are hurt.

One was an ideological discussion or difference of opinion, but he is now saying that he can't argue with someone who's feelings are hurt. What is he supposed to say? Apologize for every "micro aggression?"

[Sheepshank]

7. Maybe the professor didn't "Liberal" in the political sense....

...maybe he meant those in the Liberal Arts or some other set of studies?

[moondust]

10. "communistical" = not college material.

Grade school level?

[jwirr]

11. So he got called into the office because he taught that the economic collapse was caused by poor

black people. Reminds me of the sixties when all the long haired dirty hippies were to blame. I took my kids out of the school they were in when one of the teachers told them that. Teacher was fired because I wasn't the only long haired dirty hippie in the community.

[arcane1]

12. It's the opposite: he was teaching that is WASN'T caused by poor black people:

"I gave a quick response about how most experts would disagree with that assumption, that it was actually an oversimplification, and pretty dishonest, and isn't it good that someone made the video we just watched to try to clear things up? And, hey, let's talk about whether that was effective, okay? If you don't think it was, how could it have been?"

Apparently this "liberal" student thought he was being dishonest by dismissing the "poor black theory".

Because that's what liberals do. Or something.

[alcibiades_mystery]

16. That's not what he's saying

The first example is of a conservative student objecting to something on ideological grounds. Those are the kinds of reports you ONCE got, he claims.

NOW, on the other hand, reports are from liberal students who feel that course materials have hurt their feelings, triggered them, or caused some kind of trauma.

He's drawing a contrast.

[arcane1]

20. Got it.

Though he seems more concerned with maybe's, I can see where he's coming from.

[alcibiades_mystery]

22. This is the big issue in some areas of academe right now

AAUP just issued a statement on trigger warnings, here: http://www.aaup.org/report/trigger-warnings

The big story in Academic Freedom lately has been on the Laura Kipnis affair at Northwestern:
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/thoughts-on-the-kipnis-clown-show-and-the-drama-of-university-life

That's the context in which the OP cited article was published.

[arcane1]

24. Thanks for the links! I think I need to read up and get some context here.

[Prism]

33. The Laura Kipnis situation is totally unreal

I mean, talk about eating your own.

The mattresses were a nice touch.

[Ms. Toad]

45. I was about to link to the second story you linked to.

Unfortunately, the fear is not so hypothetical - particularly when higher education is pressed for money and everyone without tenure is at risk for termination.

[jwirr]

25. I missed that - Sorry.

[arcane1]

26. Worry not, I missed a good two-thirds of the articles points

[Mnpaul]

97. I would be mad at the teacher as well

The teacher is obviously poorly informed and shouldn't be teaching it if they don't know the facts.

1. Freddie/Fannie wrote zero subprime mortgages. They are in the secondary mortgage market.

2. The majority of the subprime mortgages were written by mortgage companies to people who had credit scores high enough to qualify for conventional mortgages.

3. Freddie/Fannies exposure was due to investment of profits in fraudulent mortgage backed securities. They were sold as mortgage back securities backed by prime mortgages

4. Freddie/Fannie returned to profitability when the government forced the banks to take their fraudulent securities back. They paid their bailout money back earlier this year and also put 41 billion in profits into the treasury.

The teacher needs to STFU until they get a clue.

[Cleita]

15. I hear Heritage Foundation regurgitated talking points from

among my fellow Democrats all the time. They may not watch Fox News TV or listen to the radio (all we get here is RW BS), but they talk to people who do and believe what they hear from them. Goebbel's propaganda method, which we have been subjected to since the Reagan regime, has been very successful in brainwashing the average citizen, especially the younger ones who have never known anything different.

[seabeckind]

21. As I posted in the other thread on this topic

Any time I see a post start with "I'm a liberal or I'm a democrat or I'm a ..."

my bullshit detector goes off. Because I find that the content of the post will tend to contradict the first statement.

This guy is complaining about political correctness and is a reiteration of the usual rightwing talking point:

But what about MY feelings? Don't they count? Why do I have to be careful what I say?

[Downwinder]

27. Blaming the students for management problems?

[raouldukelives]

28. Children of the third way corn. nt

[HornBuckler]

57. I like it and offer up Close Encounters of the Third Way Kind or maybe,

Close Encounters of the Turd Kind.

[Prism]

30. The people who need to read this won't

This has been a bugaboo of mine for a few years now. I'm a pretty liberal guy, especially in areas of social justice, but for the past five years I've felt increasingly alienated from the online politics of social justice. (Notice, I said online. Offline, a lot of this doesn't get absorbed in the actual work. And I promise you, most of the people involved online are doing fuck all offline to make any difference).

Feelings and identity have now trumped arguments in our debate. You literally cannot say anything at all without being accused of an ism. And it's worrisome that academia, where we pay tens of thousands of dollars precisely to have our children challenged, is now becoming an enclave where the preformed thoughts of adolescents are being accommodated and surrendered to.

Just say Social Justice Warrior on DU, and you'll get "What are you, some kind of MRA?!!!!!!1111 BLARGHKJHDzfkjdhfkzjdhf!!!!"

Which really illustrates the point. It's emotional invective, not intellectual discourse.

I was actually going to post this article, but didn't. Because I can only imagine the flurry of reactions. "MRA! Poor white men! Male tears! Right-wing!" etc. etc. etc. Is there an argument against? Nope. Just label and consider that argument enough. Hell, just yesterday, we got fantasies of burning male genitals with nary a thought or blink. Because men!

I think left-leaning social justice politics online has gone profoundly stupid. It's a vomiting of some kind of collective, insecure id.

Ugly stuff, and it's suffocating our intellectual and social development. This shit does not sell to people outside of tumblrville and the protected halls of an academia terrorized into compliance. But, the effects of the echo chamber are strong, and it's probably got another couple years in it before the backlash comes.

And guess who will be the victims of that backlash? Who will pay the price? Minorities. Bank on it.

[jeff47]

41. Tip: If you have to protect your post with "I'm a liberal", you aren't.

Your policies can stand on their own. You don't need to label them, or yourself.

If you feel the need to say "I'm a liberal, but", then you aren't.

[Prism]

43. Actually, people do need to preface it now

Because any expression of an idea outside of the acceptable crowdthink is immediately labeled as right-wing in some way. In that article, the author links to a leading feminist thinker who's now being accused of being some kind of rape apologist! It's ridiculous.

My history stands for itself. I actually use, "I'm a liberal, but . . ." when prefacing comments where I feel disconnected from portions of liberalism where either it or myself have drifted apart from one another. In the case of social justice goofiness, I feel less and less liberal over time. Not that my positions have changed, but my identifying with that aspect of left-leaning politics grows weaker. I still think I'm a liberal person, and I espouse and physically promote those ideals in my work. But in online debate, I feel like some kind of right-leaning centrist sometimes. Certainly on DU, where sometimes the fury of what the author is speaking about comes flaming down.

Take that for what you will.

[jeff47]

44. Again, policies don't need protection by labels.

"I'm a liberal, but" is an attempt to hide behind the label. "Don't challenge my position because I claim to be one of you".

Own your policy. Your label will take care of itself.

[romanic]

87. I think you mean "opinion" not "policy"

And jeff makes a great point; you have to preface your opinion with a label that strays (even slightly) to what a majority think even if it's still in agreeance.

[jeff47]

92. Social Security is a policy. "I like Social Security" is an opinion. (nt)

[Comrade Grumpy]

60. I agree with you.

[romanic]

75. Excellent post.

Liberalism online and social justice circles are being hijacked by these overly reactive fringe "liberals" that bring nothing but discourse into discussions that discourages different viewpoints needed to solve social issues.

Were seeing in it academia with radical activities and professors trying to indoctrinate others into believing their cause. But it only turns people and allies away, leaving the radicals to turn on each other while the social issues they sought to solve continue to oppress marginalized groups.

I do see a backlash though as evidenced by the reactions towards people like Bahar Mustafa and the like; the bubble bursting on college campuses and student loans will finish these authoritarians and special snowflakes off.

[Oktober]

31. A generation of special snowflakes raised on participation ribbons

What do you expect?

[Township75]

66. Now that is a keeper!

"A generation of special snowflakes raised on participation ribbons"

LOVE IT!

[ananda]

32. My bs meter just pinged.

No real liberal would do that.

This whole scenario is very suspect.

[Orsino]

34. Nope. NCLB and the conservative war on education budgets are what is terrifying this lecturer. n/t

[tkmorris]

35. This part right here got my attention

"This new understanding of social justice politics resembles what University of Pennsylvania political science professor Adolph Reed Jr. calls a politics of personal testimony, in which the feelings of individuals are the primary or even exclusive means through which social issues are understood and discussed. Reed derides this sort of political approach as essentially being a non-politics, a discourse that "is focused much more on taxonomy than politics [which] emphasizes the names by which we should call some strains of inequality [ ... ] over specifying the mechanisms that produce them or even the steps that can be taken to combat them." Under such a conception, people become more concerned with signaling goodness, usually through semantics and empty gestures, than with actually working to effect change."

Say what you will about the rest of the piece but I couldn't agree more with the point being argued in that paragraph. I see this phenomena all the time of late, not least of all right here at DU.

[GoneOffShore]

38. Nailed it.

Thank you.

My time at DU of late has been lessened because of this very thing.

The Sisters and Brothers of the Church of the Easily and Perpetually Offended are legion on DU.

I'm tempted to change my sig line to:Trigger Warning - You do not have a right to not be offended.

Or starting each response that way.

[romanic]

74. Definitely

Of course the usual suspects will just blissfully ignore it and continue with the empty gestures snd semantics instead of actually tackling an issue.

[whatchamacallit]

36. Uh huh...

[DemocraticWing]

40. So he's saying the students hurt his feelings?

Why is it that people like this and David Brooks can't tell the difference between the one-in-a-billion moron on Tumblr who takes things too far, and legitimately social justice activists? This dude's probably not getting fired for teaching Upton Sinclair, but these right-wingers always use these extreme cases to talk about the tyranny of not being able to say transphobic things in class or whatever.

[GoneOffShore]

42. Did you actually read the article or are you just taking your stance from the excerpt?

He didn't read like a right wing guy to me.

And you possibly should read the Laura Kipnis link above.

The Sisters and Brothers of the Church of the Easily and Perpetually Offended are legion on DU.

I'm tempted to change my sig line to:Trigger Warning - You do not have a right to not be offended.

Or starting each response that way.

[DemocraticWing]

93. I've read the article and the similar ones.

These people freak out when LGBT people, feminists, and people of color call them out for their privilege, so they make noises about "PC tyrants" and "thugs" coming to take their free speech. It's all blathering nonsense meant to smear the Left and marginalized groups.

[F4lconF16]

98. +1

Very much agree. Annnd I'm outta this thread.

[GoneOffShore]

99. That's a cherry picking observation

And it just caused my BS meter to go off.

The whole PoMo approach is attempting to stifle free expression on many levels.

"Oh, everybody has a right to their opinion. We must protect ourselves from anything that gives offense and those who might be offended!"

No, no and no again. You do not have the right to not be offended.

Christopher Hitchens, Philip Gourevitch and Signe Wilkinson say it far better than I can in this debate (More like a floor mopping) against Daisy Khan, David Cesarani and Mari Matsuda.

[DemocraticWing]

100. You seem to be very paranoid about the motives of certain peoples.

I'm a firm believer in the right to offend. But I also believe that when you say something stupid and offensive, you should grow some thick skin of your own to take the backlash.

Everybody from the Duck Dynasty idiot to cowardly anonymous professors seem to think their free speech means they should be free from criticism. That's not what free speech means.

[GoneOffShore]

103. I really have difficulty in believing that you read and comprehended the article.

Or the Kipnis article. Or the AAUP article.

[DemocraticWing]

104. I read the "Schlosser" article even before it was posted here...

I've also read the recent articles in the Times by David Brooks and Judith Shulevitz that advance similar arguments. I've had these discussion in academic settings, and been in front of classrooms where I broached controversial topics with my students. I might be afraid that students (either liberal, conservative, or anything else) will complain, mostly because administration is willing to dispose of employees in the new free-for-all of academia. I am not afraid of liberal SJWs coming to strike me down, because this is not a problem of only the Left.

Kipnis was not fired or removed and will face no repercussion for her actions, other than loss of respect from those who think her argument was bad and wrong. My understanding is that most people just wanted to make sure that her opinions about professors fucking their students did not affect Northwestern's policies. Personally I think the Title IX complaint was frivolous, and so did all the relevant authorities since it was summarily dismissed. Is this the great example of liberal tyranny?

Is this why "Edward Schlosser" doesn't teach controversial materials in his classes? "Schlosser" has not proved that there is any credible threat to his job from liberal students, as none of them have complained about anything he said in class; his one complaint was from a conservative. He suggests that his liberal students leave him alone because he adjusts his teaching style, but he's doing this based on hearsay and incidents like Kipnis' where professors made much more controversial arguments than what he seems to be eliminating from his curricula. Either he's imagining the threat to standard academic discussions, or he's wanting to advance arguments in class that are much more troubling.

Or perhaps he's just using an anonymous username to complain about how his liberalism isn't like the kids these days.

[GoneOffShore]

105. I would argue that the threat is real.

And it exists in the dis-invitations to controversial commencement speakers, the removal and banning of books in school libraries and the quiet intimidation of teachers.

People are afraid to hear things that might rock their boats or possibly change their opinions.

[Ms. Toad]

46. You might want to choose a different excerpt.

The excerpt you selected has nothing to do with the title. People who read the title, expecting the excerpt to support the theme of the title, are not getting the point.

[Springslips]

47. Maybe, just maybe. . .

There is more variance in ideology than just a binary liberal/conservative. Maybe?

Well there is. This binary is just an effect from our two party system. I mean seriously, you can't really think that billions of people fit in only two categories. A professor should know that!

[AngryAmish]

48. Someone needs to find out who this asshole is and get his silly ass fired

What a load of horseshit.

[Comrade Grumpy]

61. Please elaborate. Why should he be fired?

[AngryAmish]

63. He is creating an unsafe enviroment on his campus.

He is a threat to every person on his campus.

[Comrade Grumpy]

64. Oh, you were joking. I hope you're not serious.

[AZ Progressive]

49. If hurting someone's feelings is material injury, then the Republicans can accuse gay people...

of hurting them emotionally, because "your hurting my sense of how I feel the world should be" and "Your kissing of each other in public is offensive and disturbing and hurting me emotionally. I've been traumatized by seeing you do such things. " See where this goes...


From the article:

As Northwestern University professor Laura Kipnis writes, "Emotional discomfort is [now] regarded as equivalent to material injury, and all injuries have to be remediated." Hurting a student's feelings, even in the course of instruction that is absolutely appropriate and respectful, can now get a teacher into serious trouble.

[hifiguy]

65. I have seen that very argument, in every detail

made here on DU. The absurdity of it defies description.

[kiva]

50. I'm bookmarking this to post when people ask

why tenure is important.

I show a video called Dear America in my classes - it's about the Vietnam War, a non-scripted, non-reenacted, real view of the war. The film has a lot of gunfire and helicopter sounds and I always mention this to the class before I show it since the school is near a military base and PTSD is a real issue for some students. Last semester a female student told me afterward that she had skipped that class because wars and stuff like that made her sad.

I've asked questions about the evolution and economic impact of slavery and had students write that they really think slavery was bad.

I have had students ask for an exemption from reading an article because it contained sex or violence and that was 'against their beliefs'.

Luckily they are a small minority, but these are the students who will complain to department chairs and dean and can get adjuncts fired and tenure derailed.

[Warpy]

52. That's what it was about, all right.

Tenure just isn't being granted these days, universities want all the power on their side.

Everyone is at the mercy of cranks, including word jumping outrage trolls, even in the classroom.

[MosheFeingold]

55. I was never a "real" professor

But I taught legislative drafting on-and-off at several prominent law schools because I was a Congressional staffer and more-or-less drafted legislation for a living. Unsexy stuff, but bad drafting can be a disaster and these law schools tended to send people to government.

As part of this, the class would look at various historical laws and how courts would interpret said laws and how the bureaucracy would apply such laws.

The best teaching material would be really foul/controversial laws (e.g., Jim Crow laws, abortion, draft) because those are laws that people fought about and there was a lot of court cases/rules/regs/follow up laws so you could see how the process worked in the meat grinder that is Congress.

Over the course of 30 years various of the students gradually got pretty egg-shelled (or so distracted by the politics that they couldn't deal with the legal issues --- which would be their JOBS), so you couldn't even have a discussion of the relevant legal issues.

I often wondered how they hoped to cope in an antagonistic legal setting.

[Marr]

51. That does seem to have become more prominent in the last few years, I agree.

I don't know what to put it down to. But yeah, we do have our own segment of language police and people who seem to think they can control other peoples' language and thought. I mean, the "PC Police" have been around for decades, of course, but his is a bit different.

[DisgustipatedinCA]

53. Those questions didn't come from liberal students.

"Fannie & Freddie only help black people" is the calling card of tea-baggers. I don't care what they may call themselves; they're not liberal.

[Oilwellian]

54. Yes, there's a touch of ignorance to that statement

One would think that's a typical republican belief. I've never heard a liberal say something like that. They're far more informed.

[Ex Lurker]

56. Read the whole article NT

[DisgustipatedinCA]

58. Thanks. I had only read the excerpt. Now I've read the article.

I agree with the professor's points.

[Skittles]

80. yup

it was a Fox News meme

[6000eliot]

59. This is horseshit. I've been teaching for 26 years.

I make my political views known from the beginning of every class I teach. I've never had a complaint. Students do not scare me in the least. BTW, I just taught my students Todd Gitlin's essay "You Are Here to be Disturbed" from the Chronicle of Higher Education, and we discussed all of this. If some students seem overly squeamish about certain topics, then why isn't that worthy of discussion as well?

[Starry Messenger]

62. I stopped reading at Jonathan Chait

If this guy feels like his administration is hanging him and other faculty out to dry, than why is he blaming the students?

Maybe what Prof is feeling that students with different experiences are not taking shit anymore from people who ignore the lived cultural experiences of their students.

[kiva]

69. Cultural experiences?

"No, don't tell me anything that makes me uncomfortable/points out my privilege/challenges my world view." Those cultural experiences?

[Starry Messenger]

70. No.

[boston bean]

86. Exactly.

He doesn't like it that people aren't going to put up with it any longer.

Why would people who haven't lived the experience get to control the conversation. It can be extremely insulting.

Why does one have to sit in a room with bunch of righteous, ignorant, buffoons and take their ridiculous opinion so serious that their rights begin to overrule and dominate discussion on things they haven't got a fucking clue about.

[kiva]

94. Did you read this article?

Because it really doesn't say what you think it says.

[boston bean]

96. Yes, I read the entire article. Wasted 10 minutes of my time in doing so.

He's upset that he got a written complaint. And then uses that complaint by some right winger to attack liberals, he thinks is making him curtail his syllabus.

He is a whining cry baby.

[PowerToThePeople]

68. Those remarks do not appear to come from liberals.

I think this is a bullshit right wing think tank propaganda piece.

[TexasMommaWithAHat]

71. You didn't read the whole article. Did you?

nt

[PowerToThePeople]

72. I did. n/t

[KamaAina]

73. I don't think Vox is a right wing think tank propaganda site.

I've found lots of good articles there.

[Bonobo]

76. That's the thing with these polls that talk about "liberals" this and "liberals" that.

"Hillary has a 95% (or whatever) approval rating among liberals!" they say...

The problem is, that over 30 years into our neo-liberal experiment in the Democratic Party, I don't think a lot of people have any idea anymore what liberal means.

[merrily]

77. Bullshit. Weird definition of "liberal" this alleged prof has.

[CBGLuthier]

78. Thank you for posting this. Many of the replies are illustrative of what he is saying

just delicious to read. Some days I fear liberals almost as much as I do conservatives. And I am indeed a fucking liberal. But I am not insane and think the world revolves around me and my sensibilities need to be protected from other viewpoints.

[kcr]

89. I've read the whole article. Now that I've got that out of the way.

This article is ridiculous. He takes an incident from the past and claims that the same incident would not play out the same way today, but offers no evidence of this. He doesn't explain how a similar incident happened to him with different results. Just a typical rant smearing liberals, with the added older generation smearing the younger one.

I have to add that the younger generation really is damned if they do and damned if they don't. How come they never get off their asses and protest like the older one did? But when they actually do? Oh, did their precious feelings get hurt? Shut up! Stop being a social justice warrior!

[sendero]

90. These folks aren't "liberal"..

... they are idiots.

[LWolf]

91. I had to read the whole article

to find something about liberal students; it comes in the last few paragraphs.

I know he has a point about teachers at EVERY level being silenced.

He makes a point about liberal extremism, as well, that I've seen happen myself, even been part of. Agree or disagree with his premise, you can find the extremism he is talking about right here at DU every day. I understand it.

All in all, I thought it was worth the read.

[hifiguy]

95. This is the left-wing version of

"I don't want little Johnny being taught about dinosaurs because it offends our belief system" and nothing more. Different beef but EXACTLY the same horseshit "justification."

Once you subscribe/buy into to a stifling orthodoxy that cannot be questioned wholeheartedly you are intellectually dead, whether your politics are left or right. This is fucking horrifying.

And it never would have dawned on me to complain about a professor making a comment in class unless that comment where so obviously and clearly out of line in some way - and I mean SERIOUSLY out of line, not something I happened to disagree with - when I was in college or grad school.

Goddamn kids today thing that the world revolves around them and that they should never be challenged. Solipsistic, narcissistic bullshit.

No academic should have to put up with this kind of crap and censor themselves to avoid "offending" a student, especially at the college level. is this society coming to????

[DemocraticWing]

101. Let me say something as one of those solipsistic, narcisstic, bullshit spewing goddamn kids today.

Occasionally people on both sides make ill-based complaints, but this is very rare and usually ignored. But these issues are being used to smear people who make complaints about things that are "SERIOUSLY out of line, not something I happened to disagree with." The difference is that some of us goddamn kids today think that racism, homophobia, transphobia, etc. are out of line and don't just happen to be opposing opinions. I think that's most of where this debate lies.

[Scootaloo]

102. And the rebuttal...

I was a liberal adjunct professor. My liberal students didn’t scare me at all.

I was a liberal adjunct professor at a large university until 2013, and my liberal students never scared me at all.

I covered sensitive topics in my courses, including rape, capital punishment, female genital mutilation, and disputed accounts of mass atrocities. Our classroom debates were contentious, and forced students to examine their own biases. I kept an "on-call" list that pressured students to participate actively in those discussions. I did not use trigger warnings.

I never had any complaints.

I bring up my own experiences as a reminder that if the plural of anecdote isn't data, the singular of it sure as hell isn't, either. The fact that I enjoyed my time teaching doesn't tell you anything about the state of education in America — and neither does the fact that the pseudonymous author of this Vox article is a liberal professor who is terrified of his liberal students.

And yet the response to his article, which as of this writing has now been shared more than 190,000 times on Facebook, shows it has struck a nerve. This is something people are genuinely concerned about — enough that the thoughts of an unidentified man from the Midwest feel like a revelation, as if some secret truth everyone suspected has finally been exposed.

In other words, it's truthy: it offers a conclusion that feels as if it should be true, even though it isn't accompanied by much in the way of actual evidence. In this case, that truthy conclusion is that the rise of identity politics is doing real harm — that this new kind of discourse, whether you call it "identity politics" or "call-out culture" or "political correctness," is not just annoying or upsetting to the people it targets, but a danger to academic freedom and therefore an actual substantive problem to be addressed.

You're a professor. Why are you scared of students?

http://www.vox.com/2015/6/5/8736591/liberal-professor-identity