"No Indoctrination" website attacks left-wing "bias" in academia

[Rich Hunt]

I saw a reference to this website:

http://noindoctrination.org

in an article in today's Chicago Tribune.

I remember the "indoctrination" issue in the late 80s - when Accuracy in Academia tried to recruit students to "monitor" professors for "bias" (always left-wing).

These people never explain just what "indoctrination" is and how someone becomes "indoctrinated" or "brainwashed" by being exposed to views that differ from their own.

Notice how the "No Indoctrination" site does not allow for open discussion in the form of a bulletin board or guestbook.

Any conservative student could charge "indoctrination", write his or her little report on this site, and there is really no way for students from those same classes to challenge the conservative students' stories. We have no way of knowing what is really going on in those classrooms, so it is simply McCarthyism and it is nothing new on college campuses.

[JHB]

1. They're really complaining about...

...anything that doesn't support their own brand of indoctrination.

[MattNC]

2. i agree

most college professors are very liberal, but all of mine do a very good job of leaving their politics at the classroom door. They slip up on occasion, but we have so much material to cover that there's usually never time for discussing personal political beliefs too much.

[Iris]

3. interesting that you say that

I was a liberal arts major and now that I think about it, I don't remember any of my professors making any openly political comments that weren't in context. (and I could probably count the number of times that happened on one hand).

No, the real danger is that college exposes you to a lot of different ideas, not all having to do with politics. It can change the way you look at things. You start not taking things at face value.

And that's the real danger in the minds of conservatives. They want a workforce that cannot and/or will not think for themselves. If they had their way, colleges would be nothing more that vocational schools for corporate drone jobs.

[absolutezero]

8. same here

I go to a very liberal campus (NJIT) with alarge minority population in both the student body and the faculty, but the only time I've ever heard a lengthy discussion about politics was in a history class, where it was appropriate.

Although my chem professor told us that only rednecks and the braindead pronounce "nuclear" as "nu-q-ler"....about a week after bush was refering to the axis of oil and it's nu-q-ler capabilities (since found to be bullshit)

[wellstone_democrat]

13. if most of my colleagues were liberal

I would not need a "username" (or have changed it once). I would also not have to hear endless songs of praise to the Boy King and I would have in four universities in 11 years had to be careful not to be known as anything more than a "tepid" liberal at best.

The myth of the liberal prof is almost as overblown as that of the liberal media. Many of the vaguely hippie-looking old guys left the ideals behind long ago and enjoy the beard and longish hair along with a few vaguely "liberal" platitudes on various subjects. Trust me, you don't want to hear them in a closed faculty meeting. They are anything but "liberal". And, two of my four U's were "known" as liberal havens far and wide---as is my particular discipline---ain't so.

BTW, "liberal" has come to mean the strangest things on those sites. A lot of them are really complaining about the failure of instructors to provide a comforting triumphant narrative all the time or, horror of horrors, requiring THOUGHT.

[leftyandproud]

18. mine don't!

My sociology professor was a socialist.
My economics professor said marxism could still work.
My history teacher believes its time for a working class revolution.


I don't think we can deny there is a bias, but I aint complaining!;)

[JohnKleeb]

19. maybe thats just you

but neat
Well maybe most professors are mostly leftys but its for a reason because they are educated smart people who let their experience and knowledge help them think not Fox news. William Pierce notrious anti semite was a physics professor and the idiotic young republicans head at my school was a physics teacher and no he was not the FCLA head actually I know the teacher who does that. Nice guy very religious hes protestant I am Catholic and he didnt have any problems with me and vice versa just a different view and he made fun of Bush sometimes too.

[markses]

4. When I taught in the university

I NEVER left my politics at the classroom door (in fact, nobody EVER does). I always argued strongly for my own position. If a conservative student made a conservative point, I disputed it, and allowed other students to dispute it. And we discovered different modes of argumentation in this manner (it was a course in rhetoric - or, as Aristotle would say, the capacity for finding the available means of persuasion in) any situation).

Of course, I also openly encouraged the conservative students to dispute any of my assertions, and encouraged them to dispute the assertions of other students in the class. We had very good sessions, and all (including me!0 learned a great deal about how different arguments work. In fact, "liberal" arguments and "conservative" arguments often work much differently in terms of their warrants, reasons, support and basic structure.

Here's the point: I told my students where I was coming from politically, and I challenged them (all) on each of their points. We were all (conservative, liberal, and leftist) better able to assert our positions and more liable to change our positions at the end of the day. None of this has anything to do with either "indoctrination" on the one hand, or "leaving politics at the classroom door" (an impossibility) on the other. Both those pedagogies SUCK - the first because it is coercive, the second because it is dishonest.

[fairfaxvadem]

5. what a bunch of junk....

Which is why I think I WON'T read Shadow University....

I was a gov't major and not all professors were liberal, that much I can confirm. But for the most part, I didn't have any that pursued an "agenda" nor did I have any that would slug it out with a student with an opposing view. My Public Policy professor said on the first day of class, "If by the end of the semester you still can't tell where I am on the political spectrum then I will feel I have done my job teaching you." I'd say that went for almost all of my professors.

PS: the most outspoken professor I had was in Geology of all things, who clearly thought Bush was an idiot on the evolution business and of course, the drilling in ANWR.

[Tandalayo_Scheisskopf]

6. whois

$ whois noindoctrination.org

Found referral to whois.networksolutions.com.



Registrant:
Wright, Luann (NOINDOCTRINATION-DOM)
P.O. Box 2783
La Mesa, CA 91943-2783
US

Domain Name: NOINDOCTRINATION.ORG

Administrative Contact, Technical Contact:
Wright, Luann (UTOIISPNNI) administrator@noindoctrination.o rg
P.O. Box 2783
La Mesa, CA 91943-2783
US
619-248-9551

Record expires on 14-Dec-2003.
Record created on 14-Dec-2001.
Database last updated on 25-Jul-2003 12:41:35 EDT.

Domain servers in listed order:

NS.MEDIA3.NET 208.249.122.250
NS2.MEDIA3.NET 206.67.48.250



More importanly, whois Ms. Wright and who are her "masters" who are paying for this site? What organisations?

Oh...This is all public record stuff, sports fans. As easy to get as typing "whois noindoctrination.org" in a terminal on Linux. No subterfuge or unethical behaviour necessary to get this info.

[Az]

7. Definition of what they think is left wing bias

Tolerance and an attempt to understand other views. The dividing line between the hard right and left principals is over the embracement of relativistic morality. The hard right wants absolute morality defined by their set of rules. They have until recently been sidelines by our societies position of tolerance. They have learned to turn the vary nature of this position against itself. They have redefined themself as an oppressed group and blame liberal bias when they are not able to promote their bias.

[Philosophy]

9. The smartest people tend to be liberals

No amount of whining is going to change that. Only stupid people can be "indoctrinated" and "brainwashed". Conservatives don't realize this, because they know indocrination worked on them and so they assume it must work on everyone, instead of the reality that they are just stupid. They have an inflated misperception of their own relative intelligence.

Conservatives consider it a point of pride that they unquestioningly believe everything that their parents/leaders teach them. They also suffer from an inability to distinguish what they want to be reality from actual reality.

[WonderTwins]

10. The Right hates the Academy

David Horowitz, the old race-baiter, also hammers away at alleged indoctrination at American universities. The real rationale behind these attacks is that professors introduce their students to new ways of thinking about the world around them (that's, uh, what higher education is supposed to be all about), and very few of those professors are right-wingers. Essentially, colleges and universities are quiet but influential shapers of public opinion and discourse, and they are almost entirely not under the control of the VRWC. So the Right wants to neutralize that.

[scisyhp]

11. So-called "right wing conservatism" is anti-intellectual in its

essence. It is based on principles incapable of withstanding the
slightest encounter with critical thinking. Therefore critical
thinking and any kind of inellectual pursuite are its mortal
enemies. It doesn't really matter whether academia is left-wing
or not (it probably is for the reason mentioned above), for
"conservatives" anything defying their understanding is "leftist"
by definition. I am not talking about Straussian intellectuals here.
Those can appreciate a power of knowledge and hate academia for being
too democratic in bringing that power to the masses, which, they
believe, are better kept dark and ignorant.

[SoCalDem]

12. "indoctrination" = congnitive thinking, reason, iintellect

in reality.. That's what the fundies fear most.. They spend 18 years preaching and brainwashing their little Stepfords and then when they go off to college, they are suddenly exposed to ALL kinds of people with ALL kinds of ideas.. THAT'S what college is FOR.. College expands your mind and spirit.. Fuyndies fear this like vampires fear garlic...

I can imagine the Thanksgiving dinner tables when the "kiddies" come home for the first time after being away at college..

Mom & Dad are still living the "Leave it to Beaver" life and the kids have moved on to "The Osbournes".. :evilgrin:

Anything they fear, they want abolished...vanquished..

Normal people face their fears and adapt to or overcome them.. Fundies run from theirs.. You can find them hiding in their basements with their martinis,guns,bibles & black & white tvs, waiting for the Beav to come on...

The world has moved on and they are desperately trying to pull it back...

[m_h_lovecraft]

14. News we knew

We are all indoctrinated somehow. Its how we continue to live as social creatures. Even the homeschooled Freepers are indoctrinated, only in a different direction. Such a bullshit strawman.

[Redleg]

15. Bring 'em on!

This liberal college professor will whup their sorry right-wing, black-listing asses!

[greekspeak]

16. Load of Conservative Garbage

Where does one begin with this line of crap? Indoctrination, the conservatives moan. Revisionist History. Evolution. They are all conservative buzzwords. "Indoctrination" is just a fancy name for "presenting alternate viewpoints. Revisionist history? That is what the conseratives call history where white anglo-saxon protestant history do not come out smelling like a rose garden. And evolution. God. Science classes teach science, and evolution is science. Creation is a religious doctrine. Go to a theology department if you want this. Stay clear of the "religious studies" department in a state university though. They might "indoctrinate" you by offering up different religious viewpoints. EEK!

What a lot of this boils down to is that conservatives hate education and thinking because it muddies up the waters. They like nice clear placid water, where they have "clensed" and "purified" their message so it is easily digestible. What it all boils down to is this: conservatives are public education's greatest enemy. Not because their ideas are presented in the classroom; they should be presented, in a non-biased way. However, conservatives want to "clense" academia of all ideas but their own. Hell, if nothing else, their hystrionics force everyone else to hone their own ideas into new and better ones.

[EAMcClure]

17. Screw that

The right wing has been funding colleges since the aftermath of WWII.

What articles like this emphasize is the removal of Professors who do not tow the line. The actual administration of most college campuses have already been made reactionary. Regents and vice-regents have long since gone conservative. The last bastion of University progressivism lies with those who teach, and there is a large and moneyed constituency who seek to undermine teachers.

The solution the reactionary right seek is to handpick every Professor based on think-tank. Body snatcher shit. FUCK THAT.

Eric