Conservative Student Group Lists Professors It Considers Too Politicized

[Catt03]

Texas Conservative Organization Claims Fair Notice; Opponents Fear Academic Censorship
By Karin Brulliard
Special to The Washington Post
Monday, November 24, 2003; Page A03


AUSTIN -- Two days after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, Austin Kinghorn, then a sophomore at the University of Texas here, sat down in a journalism class and heard the professor pose the question "What is terrorism?"

The professor proceeded to "explain why America is a worse terrorist threat than the 9/11 terrorists," said Kinghorn, who calls himself a right-wing conservative. "There was no opposing view presented."

Today, Kinghorn, 21, is a senior and chairman of the Young Conservatives of Texas at UT, the nation's largest university. And the professor, Robert Jensen, tops the conservative group's "watch list."
The list, published on the group's Web site, www.yct.org, and distributed on campus, criticizes 10 professors -- nine of them liberals, in Kinghorn's view -- for using their classrooms to promote personal agendas and "indoctrinate" students. Kinghorn insists the list is a tool for students to make informed course choices. Critics call it a blacklist whose goal is to intimidate liberal professors and cramp academic freedom.

More

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A8766-2003Nov23.html

[Faygo Kid]

1. Next, the Repubs burn their books

It is so obvious what is coming - the GOP campaign in the coming year will center on the argument that dissent is treason. You can see it, feel it and smell it coming; Rove has set it up since 2000. The actual issues will fade into obscurity. Oppose Bush, and you are a traitor. That's what it will boil down to. A simple argument for simple minds indoctrinated by Limbaugh, "American Idol" and the acquiescence of the corporate media.

[Tandalayo_Scheisskopf]

2. There is a moment in every young man's life...

That is a crystalline moment, a Crossing of The Rubicon, a moment when most of life's real lessons are revealed to him.

That is the moment when the smart-assed, smart-mouthed young man gets the living snot beaten out of him for being smart-assed and smart-mouthed, far outside of what polite society calls its "norms".

I do believe that is what that young man desperately needs, so he can move into adulthood. Because right now, he is an obnoxious twerp.

[bluestateguy]

3. I could have ended up on this list

but I was spared. I know a number of the "accused" persons on this list and I can tell you that many of them have received congratulatory e-mails from random people. It seems that many people judge others by the enemies they make.

[depakid]

4. More WHORING from the Post

Let's see- David Brooks whored essentially this same piece about 6 weeks ago in the editorial section of the NY Times. Hmmm. Isn't it about time we run another "news" article on subject, just to keep the pressure on?

The Editors'(& the RNC's) strategy is simple- and increasingly effective- attack and intimidate academia just like they've done with the media. Make sure that anyone who challanges the corrupt, irrational right will be censured, denied tenure or (if an adjunct) simply fired.

The more I read out of this sorry excuse for a newspaper, the more I think Ann Coulter was right, only she had the wrong building.

[Plaid Adder]

5. Man, *I* could come up with a more comprehensive list than that.

They focus on Jensen, of course, because he was one of the earliest and most vocal critics of the war on terrorism and the Bush administration in the wake of 9/11, and because they know he's vulnerable--the president of UT himself went after Jensen in print two years ago, so they're probably hoping they can intimidate him. I think they're wrong, though. But I guarandamntee there are way more than 10 professors at UT who are spreading that insidious liberal virus they call 'critical thinking.'

I was very sad to see that no one from the English Department was on it. I guess these conservative kids probably don't take English courses. Too bad, they might have learned something.

Yes, it's ominous; but on the other hand, it's free advertising. I would think a lot of UT students would jump at the chance to take a class guaranteed to be YCT-free.

Bleagh,

The Plaid Adder

[QC]

6. These nasty little McCarthyites have a forum on their website.

Here's a thread someone started for the express purpose of ragging on them.

http://uts.cc.utexas.edu/~yct/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.pl?board=national;action=display;num=1069509769;start=0

Feel free to pay them a visit--it's always fun to watch freepers panic when they meet genuine opposition.

[dontomas]

7. Oh come on....

We have the Top Ten Conservative Idiot page...and I've seen plenty of threads here bashing people on the right(not that they don't deserve it from time to time). I think it's unfair to call them "McCrathyites."

I looked into your link and the first thread was titled "You People"

How is anything in this thread "genuine opposition?" The first poster just calls them names. It just made the first posted look like an ass and fueled their own beliefs.

You want to win an arguement? Use facts...

[QC]

8. Friends of yours?

If blacklisting people on ideological grounds is not "McCrathyite" then I can't imagine what is.

[dontomas]

9. "Friends of yours?" - Seriously?

I'm not defending their list. I'm defending their right to make such a list. I think it's hyocritical to criticize them for creating a list of people that they disagree with and then come on to this site and the first thing you see is the Top Ten Conservative Idiot list. I challenge you to tell me how the two lists are different. If you can prove to me that they're different, I'll shut up.

And I understand that you may disagree with my view, but act like an adult and argue against what I said. I hate to reiterate this but it makes you look like an ass when you use personal attacks.

And I actually agree that a classroom should not be used as a pulpit.
Debate the issuse. Don't preach them.

EDIT: Punctuation

[QC]

10. "If you can prove to me that they're different, I'll shut up." Promise?

Take a look at who's on the Top 10 Conservative Idiots list. They are typically powerful people, elected officials, media personalities, high party functionaries, and the like.

Take a look at the people on the brownshirts' list. They are teachers, many of whom do not have tenure.

So there's a definite difference in the power of the targets.

The tone of the two lists is also quite different. The list here is satire, a weapon long used against the powerful. The tone of the Texas list is that of a young bully's outrage that some people do not do as he says.

Closely related, and perhaps most important, is the purpose of the two lists. The purpose of satire is to point out the weaknesses of the powerful by holding them up to ridicule. The purpose of the Texas list is to enforce ideological conformity by silencing dissenting opinion. (The presence of one token liberal on the "honor roll" doesn't change that any more than Alan Colmes makes Fox News truly "fair and balanced.")

Few people believe in "using the classroom as a pulpit." But, if you are teaching something other than maybe calculus or accounting, your own biases and experiences do shape your teaching. I deal with that reality by admitting my own position up front and encouraging students to challenge it. (Sometimes I even make counterarguments against my own position.) The very worst thing you can do is to pretend that your own opinions are actually objective fact, a la Fox News.

As for looking like an ass, I will defer to your obvious expertise in that area.

[dontomas]

11. Was that so difficult?

First, let me say thank you for making an argument.

And I do concede that the lists are different in purpose. I will no longer talk about the lists.

I just don't see how these kids can be compared to the SA. Are these kids rounding up people and beating them to death? Just say what you need to without using rhetoric (i.e. calling them Nazis). You may not agree with them...but at least respect their right to say it.

And you know what? I may be an ass (I've never denied it) but you just keep proving my point.

[QC]

12. Are they exactly like the SA?

Well, no. No two things are ever exactly alike, of course.

But the brownshirts did more than round people up and beat them to death. Their purpose was to intimidate dissenters, and if they could do that by shouting them down, or spying on them, or burning Magnus Hirschfeld's institute, they were up to the job.

The purpose of their actions and those of the "young conservatives" down in Texas is the same, and it is part of a much larger pattern of treating dissent as treason that the right ramped up in the aftermath of 9/11, culminating in Chimpy's first commercial of the new campaign, the one that claims that "some" have attacked him for attacking the terrorists.

But if you object to Nazi analogies, I would be glad to compare them to the Spies in Orwell's 1984. That's hardly more flattering, but it's tough to come up with nice ways to describe people who "observe" and anonymously denounce those they suspect of ideological impurity.