The New PC: Crybaby Conservatives (attacking university professors)

[atommom]

This is a very good ... and disturbing ... read.

Today's accusations against subversive professors differ from those of the past in several respects. In a sign of the times, the test for disloyalty has shifted far toward the center. Once an unreliable professor meant an anarchist or communist; now it includes Democrats. Soon it will be anyone to the left of Attila the Hun. Second, the charges do not (so far) come from government committees investigating un-American activities but from conservative commentators and their student minions. A series of groups such as Campus Watch, Academic Bias and Students for Academic Freedom enlist students to monitor and publicize professorial conduct. Third, the new charges are advanced not against but in the name of academic freedom or a variant of it; and, in the final twist, the new conservative critics seem driven by an ethos that they have adopted from liberalism: affirmative action and a sense of victimhood, which they officially detest.

Conservatives complain relentlessly that they do not get a fair shake in the university, and they want parity--that is, more conservatives on faculties. Conservatives are lonely on American campuses as well as beleaguered and misunderstood. News that tenured poets vote Democratic or that Kerry received far more money from professors than Bush pains them. They want America's faculties to reflect America's political composition. Of course, they do not address such imbalances in the police force, Pentagon, FBI, CIA and other government outfits where the stakes seem far higher and where, presumably, followers of Michael Moore are in short supply. If life were a big game of Monopoly, one might suggest a trade to these conservatives: You give us one Pentagon, one Department of State, Justice and Education, plus throw in the Supreme Court, and we will give you every damned English department you want.

Conservatives claim that studies show an outrageous number of liberals on university faculties and increasing political indoctrination or harassment of conservative students. In fact, only a very few studies have been made, and each is transparently limited or flawed. The most publicized investigations amateurishly correlate faculty departmental directories with local voter registration lists to show a heavy preponderance of Democrats. What this demonstrates about campus life and politics is unclear. Yet these findings are endlessly cited and cross-referenced as if by now they confirm a tiresome truth: leftist domination of the universities. A column by George Will affects a world-weariness in commenting on a recent report. "The great secret is out: Liberals dominate campuses. Coming soon: 'Moon Implicated in Tides, Studies Find.'"
<snip>
In the name of intellectual diversity and students' rights, many courses could be challenged. A course on Freud would have to include anti-Freudians; a course on religion, atheists; a course on mysticism, the rationalists. The academic bill of rights seeks to impose some limits by restricting diversity to "significant scholarly viewpoints." Yet this is a porous shield. Once the right to decide the content of courses is extended to students, the Holocaust deniers, creationists and conspiracy addicts will come knocking at the door--and indeed they already have.

http://www.thenation.com/docprint.mhtml?i=20050404&s=jacoby

[ComerPerro]

1. I wrote a shitty essay full of sycophantic nonsense that I turned in late

and my professor gave me an F because I am conservative.

[July]

2. Ah, yes, indoctrination.

Liberal professors, gays, and who else is "indoctrinating" poor, unsuspecting conservatives with their big, bad agendas.

Hilarious coming from the rule-bound crowd that wants to convert Muslims, criminalize women who have abortions, and force the ten commandments onto public property.

[applegrove]

3. We need a law to regulate the number of conservatives in corporations.

[annabanana]

4. "beleaguered and misunderstood"

"Conservatives complain relentlessly that they do not get a fair shake in the university, and they want parity--that is, more conservatives on faculties. Conservatives are lonely on American campuses as well as beleaguered and misunderstood."

The problem is not that they are "misunderstood".. The problem is that they are understood too well......

by people with some understanding of the tenants of rigorous academic discipline.

[gratuitous]

5. The ominous point . . .

The complaints do not (as yet) come from government bodies, but just from the crackpot right. Watching the Schiavo circus, it's not that far-fetched to think of a time when Congress will lend a sympathetic ear to any crybaby conservative who got a bad grade for poor scholarship, and demand discipline for the offending professor.

[zbdent]

6. Imagine that, a bunch of people wanting to expand their knowledge base

as opposed to those who think that "The only book I need to read is the Bible".

[atommom]

7. I know. They must surely be heathens!