Florida Bill Would Allow Students To Sue Teachers

[Guest BDC]

I'm a mathematics professor. Should I have to be worried about getting sued by my students when I inform them that their answers are incorrect because they don't follow the mathematical rules I expect them to use? They could argue to a judge that they have their own system of mathematics and I should respect it, and, as crazy as it may seem, that would be LESS extreme than some of the examples already discussed, because mathematics is a synthetic subject rather than one based on fact and natural observation.

Your field isn't subjective in the slightest, so I wouldn't worry.

Actually that's not true at all. It's very hard to explain why though.

In response, I'm going to say that you're referring to some very advanced mathematics. When you get down to basic stuff, 2+2 always =4. The problem with poli sci professors ends up being that students with differing viewpoints can end up getting singled out and belittled for simply having a different viewpoint. My first college class was like that: it was a POL 101 class and the raving liberal professor decided to find out who the conservatives were. After a while, my standard response came to be "I'm glad you're putting so much time into embarassing a college freshman."

 

It's utter horseshit and it happens way too often. Ideally professors are meant to be neutral teachers. To do so with politics is difficult, but c'mon, I've written lesson plans that did it and I'm only in a masters program. Surely someone with a doctorate and a lick of motivation can pull it off.

[Hogan Made Wrestling 0]

It never happened in any class I ever took. When I took general Poli. Sci. as an undergrad my professor was about as neutral as could possibly be, other than a bit of subtle negativity towards neo-liberalism. Among the profs in my school's poly. sci. department, we had a conservative prof. (ran for office in fact) who is one of the school's most popular and won a teaching excellence award (nominated by the students), and a liberal prof. (also ran for office) whose one class (he's emeritus) was always packed and was a great place for discussion of the issues from all sides. I frequently took devil's advocate positions that contradicted with my own views, just because no one else would, and argued conservative positions, and got 100% on all of my essays.

[Jobber of the Week 0]

“Some professors say, ‘Evolution is a fact. I don’t want to hear about Intelligent Design (a creationist theory), and if you don’t like it, there’s the door,’” Baxley said, citing one example when he thought a student should sue.

 

Well over a month ago, Jobber of the Week said this about a similar attempt in Ohio:

 

I'm also a little concerned that:

 

# Require institutions to offer a broad range of opinions and viewpoints;

 

Is not specifically political, therefore it is vague enough that it may open the door to teaching creationism or "evolution is just a theory" talk in college, which is insane and should be left to the likes of Bob Jones Uni.

 

Goddamn, can I call them or what?

[Masked Man of Mystery 0]

No one's heard of the guy who runs http://instapundit.com/? He's a conservative college professor.

[Big Ol' Smitty 0]

Remember Republicans who would have mocked all the boo-hooing, and made the valid point that coddling these kids in college would come back and bite them in the ass when they had to face the real world? I miss those days.

 

These asshats want to give them the power to sue if they’re called upon to explain their opinions or if their feelings are hurt in class. Wouldn’t all of these frivolous lawsuits cost the state a lot of money?

 

The mirror has two faces, as it were. If this idea catches on, I hope that conservative profs enjoy teaching the merits of gun control, boning up on Marxist theory, etc.

 

And, for the life of me, I can’t imagine a college-level biology program that would be comfortable for a creationist--seeing as how evolution is the foundational theory of modern biology.

 

So we get a big, intrusive government spending tax money to punish their enemies. Congrats, Florida voters.

[Guest MikeSC]

It never happened in any class I ever took. When I took general Poli. Sci. as an undergrad my professor was about as neutral as could possibly be, other than a bit of subtle negativity towards neo-liberalism. Among the profs in my school's poly. sci. department, we had a conservative prof. (ran for office in fact) who is one of the school's most popular and won a teaching excellence award (nominated by the students), and a liberal prof. (also ran for office) whose one class (he's emeritus) was always packed and was a great place for discussion of the issues from all sides. I frequently took devil's advocate positions that contradicted with my own views, just because no one else would, and argued conservative positions, and got 100% on all of my essays.

I had a Women's Studies prof who informed us that the only reason men marry women with daughters is to fuck the daughter. I had poli sci profs who referred to the Republican takeover of Congress as being comparable to the Nazi takeover of the Reichstag in 1933. I had history profs who argued that the Americans provoked Japan into bombing Pearl Harbor intentionally. I had another poli sci prof who attempted to fail a major paper of mine for being hostile towards NOW, requiring me to go to the Dean of my school to fight that and get the grade I deserved. I had to go before a discipline committee for laughing at a feminist group for their claim that 1/4 of all women are raped. I also got chewed out by a professor for walking out of a presentation by our BGLA (Bisexual, Gay, and Lesbian Association) when they started going on and on about the evils of heterosexuality in my first semester.

 

Don't waste my time informing me that profs don't abuse their power because they do so, regularly.

 

I'm also completely behind the abolition of tenure.

Remember Republicans who would have mocked all the boo-hooing, and made the valid point that coddling these kids in college would come back and bite them in the ass when they had to face the real world? I miss those days.

Remember the days when college libs claimed to be supportive of "Free speech"? I miss those days far, far more.

These asshats want to give them the power to sue if they’re called upon to explain their opinions or if their feelings are hurt in class. Wouldn’t all of these frivolous lawsuits cost the state a lot of money?

 

The mirror has two faces, as it were. If this idea catches on, I hope that conservative profs enjoy teaching the merits of gun control, boning up on Marxist theory, etc.

And the odds of you finding a "conservative" in a liberal arts field is pretty damned low.

 

Seeing as how conservatives tend to be refused position in universities --- a long-standing complaint --- it's not a likelihood you'll face terribly often.

And, for the life of me, I can’t imagine a college-level biology program that would be comfortable for a creationist--seeing as how evolution is the foundational theory of modern biology.

 

So we get a big, intrusive government spending tax money to punish their enemies. Congrats, Florida voters.

Thank the profs that abuse their position over students.

-=Mike

[Edwin MacPhisto 0]

PROFESSORS ARA ALL EVIL

 

Get a life. Any stupid shit that professors do to lord power over students can be handled easily by standing your ground and going through administrative channels. If you're expecting someone to get fired every time you bring a complaint, you're expecting a retarded amount of value being placed on your own experience. This bill is brutally stupid. My state is just hitting them out of the park lately.

[Guest MikeSC]

PROFESSORS ARA ALL EVIL

 

Get a life. Any stupid shit that professors do to lord power over students can be handled easily by standing your ground and going through administrative channels.

But you shouldn't fucking have to. You can always deal with police brutality by filing lawsuits. Does that mean we should not care about police brutality?

If you're expecting someone to get fired every time you bring a complaint, you're expecting a retarded amount of value being placed on your own experience.  This bill is brutally stupid.  My state is just hitting them out of the park lately.

You have somebody who can RUIN YOUR LIFE if he/she disagrees with your views.

 

Yeah, a student should have some serious protections.

-=Mike

...BTW, tell me how you can resolve problems to a friend of mine, who was expelled for plagarism, in spite of him extensively footnoting everything he quoted...

[Edwin MacPhisto 0]

PROFESSORS ARA ALL EVIL

 

Get a life.  Any stupid shit that professors do to lord power over students can be handled easily by standing your ground and going through administrative channels.

But you shouldn't fucking have to. You can always deal with police brutality by filing lawsuits. Does that mean we should not care about police brutality?

That's not really analogous. The most common extent of a professor misusing his position of authority isn't physically beating someone. I don't know how they roll at USC, but here at UVA, if anything it's talking down to a kid in lecture who, if he really has a problem, can go to office hours or to the administration, or drop the class without penalty. If they're not dealing with your problem, it's probably because it's insignificant.

If you're expecting someone to get fired every time you bring a complaint, you're expecting a retarded amount of value being placed on your own experience.  This bill is brutally stupid.  My state is just hitting them out of the park lately.

You have somebody who can RUIN YOUR LIFE if he/she disagrees with your views.

 

Yeah, a student should have some serious protections.

And if you say "Professor Tucker said something crazy in class!" I should hope that they'll say "Sorry you disagreed" and make a small note on his record. Academic hirings and maintenance of said hirings are some of the most difficult hires to manage. Professors are not paid to agree with their students; they're paid to do research, to publish, to bring their university a higher reputation, and to instruct students in various academic and practical fields. I highly doubt that your isolated examples are symptomatic, or that you'd be dumb enough to stay in a class with someone who suggests that the US bombed Pearl Harbor every single day and makes "DID THE US BOMB PEARL HARBOR" a final exam question worth your entire grade. When a professor's not filling classrooms, the university will take notice, but they're certainly not going to make snap judgments based on a grievance, nor would I expect them to.

...BTW, tell me how you can resolve problems to a friend of mine, who was expelled for plagarism, in spite of him extensively footnoting everything he quoted...

He shouldn't have plagiarized? Again, your approach doesn't logically follow. If a professor accuses him of plagiarism, any accredited university in America is going to give him a hearing and evaluation. At the point accusations are levied it ceases to be the professor's sphere of power. Maybe there's a big conspiracy throughout the entire system of review that's working against your friend, or maybe he just fucked up. If he genuinely didn't, I wish him luck in winning his lawsuit.

[Special K 0]

I thought conservatives were AGAINST frivilous lawsuits (Go tort reform, BTW). I guess that only applies to when corporations are the sue-ees.

Here's a simple solution to the problem: don't take poli-sci and history. They're fucking worthless. Apparently the only thing they've taught us is the ability to state and re-state our opinions on an internet wrestling board.

[NoCalMike 0]

Hey, speaking of liberalism that people pretend isn't there, I was listening to NPR on Sunday afternoon because it's the only place a person can hear any jazz on the radio. So I was listening to some really good Thelonious Monk, and I was considering donating like, I don't know, $20 to public radio to keep quality music on our airwaves. Then I hear "Coming up at 3: a discussion of how the Republican Party resembles the Third Reich." Never mind.

What city do you live in, because NPR programming varies city-to-city. Out here it is the same format everyday, pick the topic, bring one guest from each side onto the show, give them equal time, and the host doesn't even comment or give his opinion whatsoever, and then some Jazz in the afternoon.

[Guest MikeSC]

PROFESSORS ARA ALL EVIL

 

Get a life.  Any stupid shit that professors do to lord power over students can be handled easily by standing your ground and going through administrative channels.

But you shouldn't fucking have to. You can always deal with police brutality by filing lawsuits. Does that mean we should not care about police brutality?

That's not really analogous. The most common extent of a professor misusing his position of authority isn't physically beating someone. I don't know how they roll at USC, but here at UVA, if anything it's talking down to a kid in lecture who, if he really has a problem, can go to office hours or to the administration, or drop the class without penalty. If they're not dealing with your problem, it's probably because it's insignificant.

 

And there are classes you HAVE to take for your major. Absolute requirements you can't drop. And if a prof does not like you, they have the power to punish you for having views that differ from their (by and large) extreme fringe left views.

If you're expecting someone to get fired every time you bring a complaint, you're expecting a retarded amount of value being placed on your own experience.  This bill is brutally stupid.  My state is just hitting them out of the park lately.

You have somebody who can RUIN YOUR LIFE if he/she disagrees with your views.

 

Yeah, a student should have some serious protections.

And if you say "Professor Tucker said something crazy in class!" I should hope that they'll say "Sorry you disagreed" and make a small note on his record.

What about my case, where I had to spend well over a month getting an undeserved "F" changed to a "B+" simply because the prof didn't like my conclusions?

 

What about then? Students should be expected to fight with numerous levels of a university bureaucracy because some burn-out wannabe hippie doesn't like their view, even if it IS well-researched and reasoned?

Academic hirings and maintenance of said hirings are some of the most difficult hires to manage.  Professors are not paid to agree with their students; they're paid to do research, to publish, to bring their university a higher reputation, and to instruct students in various academic and practical fields.

No, they, clearly, are paid to toe an extremely fringe viewpoint.

 

Again, it defies ANY logic that conservatives don't want to be professors in liberal arts fields.

I highly doubt that your isolated examples are symptomatic, or that you'd be dumb enough to stay in a class with someone who suggests that the US bombed Pearl Harbor every single day and makes "DID THE US BOMB PEARL HARBOR" a final exam question worth your entire grade.  When a professor's not filling classrooms, the university will take notice, but they're certainly not going to make snap judgments based on a grievance, nor would I expect them to.

The class was my "cultural requirement". I didn't HAVE a damned option.

...BTW, tell me how you can resolve problems to a friend of mine, who was expelled for plagarism, in spite of him extensively footnoting everything he quoted...

He shouldn't have plagiarized?

He didn't.

 

How do I know?

 

Because I helped him footnote everything because he was worried about his prof pulling off that stunt.

Again, your approach doesn't logically follow.  If a professor accuses him of plagiarism, any accredited university in America is going to give him a hearing and evaluation.

In this case, he did not.

 

How do I know?

 

Because I was with him when he spoke to the dean of his particular college and the dean informed him that going forward would be waste of time.

At the point accusations are levied it ceases to be the professor's sphere of power.  Maybe there's a big conspiracy throughout the entire system of review that's working against your friend, or maybe he just fucked up.  If he genuinely didn't, I wish him luck in winning his lawsuit.

It's been several years. He isn't filing a suit.

 

But he should have.

 

Professors have a God complex that only lawyers can match. Ironic, considering that most of them are utterly unhireable.

 

Do away with tenure!

I thought conservatives were AGAINST frivilous lawsuits (Go tort reform, BTW). I guess that only applies to when corporations are the sue-ees.

Here's a simple solution to the problem: don't take poli-sci and history. They're fucking worthless. Apparently the only thing they've taught us is the ability to state and re-state our opinions on an internet wrestling board.

Ah, so go ahead and abandon some disciplines?

 

Then do away with history and poli.sci. departments, period, if they cannot be impartial fountains of knowledge.

-=Mike

[Special K 0]

^That's what I meant. Abandoning Poli-Sci and History wouldn't make me cry. Fuck liberal arts on the college level.

[Edwin MacPhisto 0]

No, they, clearly, are paid to toe an extremely fringe viewpoint.

 

Again, it defies ANY logic that conservatives don't want to be professors in liberal arts fields.

That's all I really need to see to know that I'm not gonna bother replying to the rest of this tinfoil hat nonsense. You seriously need to come hang out at UVA for a while and bounce around in our history and politics departments.

[2GOLD 0]

Some professors are bitter they aren't further up in their career and god HELP YOU if you have a differing viewpoint and they don't get some grant they were after. It would be easier to shoot yourself in the face than even bother fighting it.

 

And lawsuits? Lots of people don't have the money to file a lawsuit against a COLLEGE, which has enough money and power to shred you. That's why every person that graduates high school and asks me what they should do in college I tell them the same thing, "pretend to think like your professor, because they don't like it when you have an opinion of your own."

 

I don't care what the viewpoint is, conservative or liberal. Forcing students into a situation where THEY are the ones being punished isn't right. The only thing I agree with is eliminate tenure and have an independent judging committee outside of the power of the college. Cause the college will protect their own like it's the mob.

[Guest Salacious Crumb]

I think this is a silly thing to even try. There are better ways to reform colleges without bringing lawsuits into the matter.

 

How about for starters stop wasting students time with side bullshit they'll never use after graduation. If I'm there for a business degree don't waste my time with health classes and other classes designed to make me a "well rounded" person. Let me take my management and accounting classes and move on.

[Guest MikeSC]

No, they, clearly, are paid to toe an extremely fringe viewpoint.

 

Again, it defies ANY logic that conservatives don't want to be professors in liberal arts fields.

That's all I really need to see to know that I'm not gonna bother replying to the rest of this tinfoil hat nonsense. You seriously need to come hang out at UVA for a while and bounce around in our history and politics departments.

Republicans Outnumbered in Academia, Studies Find

By JOHN TIERNEY

 

Published: November 18, 2004

 

BERKELEY, Calif. - At the birthplace of the free speech movement, campus radicals have a new target: the faculty that came of age in the 60's. They say their professors have been preaching multiculturalism and diversity while creating a political monoculture on campus.

 

Conservatism is becoming more visible at the University of California here, where students put out a feisty magazine called The California Patriot and have made the Berkeley Republicans one of the largest groups on campus. But here, as at schools nationwide, the professors seem to be moving in the other direction, as evidenced by their campaign contributions and two studies being published on Nov. 18.

 

One of the studies, a national survey of more than 1,000 academics, shows that Democratic professors outnumber Republicans by at least seven to one in the humanities and social sciences. That ratio is more than twice as lopsided as it was three decades ago, and it seems quite likely to keep increasing, because the younger faculty members are more consistently Democratic than the ones nearing retirement, said Daniel Klein, an associate professor of economics at Santa Clara University and a co-author of the study.

 

In a separate study of voter registration records, Professor Klein found a nine-to-one ratio of Democrats to Republicans on the faculties of Berkeley and Stanford. That study, which included professors from the hard sciences, engineering and professional schools as well as the humanities and social sciences, also found the ratio especially lopsided among the younger professors of assistant or associate rank: 183 Democrats versus 6 Republicans.

 

The political imbalance on faculties has inspired a campaign to have state legislatures and Congress approve an "academic bill of rights" protecting students and faculty members from discrimination for their political beliefs. The campaign is being led by Students for Academic Freedom, a group with chapters at Berkeley and more than 135 other campuses. It was founded last year by the leftist-turned-conservative David Horowitz, who helped start the 1960's antiwar movement while a graduate student at Berkeley.

 

"Our goal is not to have the government dictate who's hired but to take politics out of the hiring process and the classroom," said Mr. Horowitz, who called the new studies the most compelling evidence yet of hiring bias. "Right now, conservative students are discouraged from pursuing scholarly careers, because they see very clearly that their professors consider Republicans to be the enemy."

 

Academic leaders have resisted his group's legislative proposal, saying that discrimination is rare and already forbidden, and they dispute the accusations of faculty bias. Robert J. Birgeneau, the chancellor of Berkeley, said that he was not sure if the new study of his faculty accurately reflected the professors' political leanings, and that these leanings were irrelevant anyway.

 

"The essence of a great university is developing and sharing new knowledge as well as questioning old dogma," Dr. Birgeneau said. "We do this in an environment which prizes academic freedom and freedom of expression. These principles are respected by all of our faculty at U.C. Berkeley, no matter what their personal politics are."

 

Professors at Berkeley and other universities provided unprecedented financial support for the Democratic Party this election. For the first time, universities were at the top of the list of organizations ranked by their employees' contributions to a presidential candidate, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonpartisan group.

 

In first and second place, ahead of Time Warner, Goldman Sachs and Microsoft, were the University of California system and Harvard, whose employees contributed $602,000 and $340,000, respectively, to Senator John Kerry. At both universities, employees gave about $19 to the Kerry campaign for every dollar for the Bush campaign.

 

One theory for the scarcity of Republican professors is that conservatives are simply not that interested in academic careers. A Democrat on the Berkeley faculty, George P. Lakoff, who teaches linguistics and is the author of "Moral Politics: How Liberals and Conservatives Think," said that liberals choose academic fields that fit their world views. "Unlike conservatives," he said, "they believe in working for the public good and social justice, as well as knowledge and art for their own sake, which are what the humanities and social sciences are about."

 

Some non-Democrats prefer to attribute the imbalance to the structure of academia, which allows hiring decisions and research agendas to be determined by small, independent groups of scholars. These fiefs, the critics say, suffer from a problem described in The Federalist Papers: an autonomous "small republic" is prone to be dominated by a cohesive faction that uses majority voting to "outnumber and oppress the rest," in Madison's words.

 

"Our colleges have become less marketplaces of ideas than churches in which you have to be a true believer to get a seat in the pews," said Stephen H. Balch, a Republican and the president of the National Association of Scholars. "We've drifted to a secular version of 19th-century denominational colleges, in which the university's mission is to crusade against sin and make the country a morally better place."

 

Dr. Balch's organization of what he calls traditional scholars is publishing the two new faculty studies in its journal, Academic Questions (online at www.nas.org). In one study, Professor Klein and Charlotta Stern, a sociologist at the Institute for Social Research in Sweden, asked the members of scholars' professional associations which party's candidates they had mostly voted for over the previous decade.

 

The ratio of Democratic to Republican professors ranged from 3 to 1 among economists to 30 to 1 among anthropologists. The researchers found a much higher share of Republicans among the nonacademic members of the scholars' associations, which Professor Klein said belied the notion that nonleftists were uninterested in scholarly careers.

 

"Screened out, expelled or self-sorted, they tend to land outside of academia because the crucial decisions - awarding tenure and promotions, choosing which papers get published - are made by colleagues hostile to their political views," said Professor Klein, who classifies himself as a libertarian.

 

Martin Trow, an emeritus professor of public policy at Berkeley who was chairman of the faculty senate and director of the Center for Studies in Higher Education, said that professors tried not to discriminate in hiring based on politics, but that their perspective could be warped because so many colleagues shared their ideology.

 

"Their view comes to be seen not as a political preference but what decent, intelligent human beings believe," said Dr. Trow, who calls himself a conservative. "Debate is stifled, and conservatives either go in the closet or get to be seen as slightly kooky. So if a committee is trying to decide between three well-qualified candidates, it may exclude the conservative because he seems like someone who has poor judgment."

 

The students' magazine, The California Patriot, has frequently criticized Berkeley for the paucity of conservative views and for cases of what it has called discrimination against conservative students.

 

"I'm glad to get the liberal perspective, but it would be nice to get the other side, too," said Kelly Coyne, the editor of the magazine and a senior majoring in political science. "I'm really having a hard time finding courses my last year. I don't want to spend another semester listening to lectures about victims of American oppression."

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/18/educatio...3200&oref=login

Also:

http://www.campaignmoney.com/professor.asp

 

How about THIS story, about a professor who was fired from Colorado (you know, the school that STILL employs Ward Churchill): http://www.denverpost.com/Stories/0,1413,3...2748616,00.html

 

And this: http://instapundit.com/archives/014093.php

-=Mike

...Yeah, NO issue here...

[Special K 0]

Man, just as I'm getting pissed off at the libs for being ineffective, whining pussies, the conservatives are getting worse. They have two branches of the government locked down, their own little branch of media that gets far greater ratings than any show in the 'liberal media' and all you hear is:

boohoohoo- liberal judges

boohoohoo- liberal media

boohoohoo- liberal profs

boohoohoo- liberal movie stars

boohoohoo- we're so oppressed

 

 

Back to the subject at hand:

A: Liberal Arts colleg profs are often liberal because they're LIBERAL ARTS COLLEGE PROFS.

B: Tenure in general is pretty shitty, IMHO. No one else gets that kind of unfireability. [EDIT: Sorry, maybe judges.]

C: This law could SO be abused. Kids would definitely be suing over being taught evolution in a science class. Intelligent design's fine and good, but keep it in a religion class. Otherwise you're going to spend so much time pandering, you're not going to end up learning anything.

[Guest MikeSC]

Back to the subject at hand:

A: Liberal Arts colleg profs are often liberal because they're LIBERAL ARTS COLLEGE PROFS.

No, they're liberal because the faculties will not PERMIT a conservative to enter the field.

C: This law could SO be abused. Kids would definitely be suing over being taught evolution in a science class. Intelligent design's fine and good, but keep it in a religion class. Otherwise you're going to spend so much time pandering, you're not going to end up learning anything.

Yes, the law is idiotic. But this is a real problem that needs to be resolved.

 

Ending tenure would be a nice first step.

 

And, God willing, the Ward Churchill story will be the first step there.

-=Mike

...Can anybody explain how Ward got tenure when he lacks a post-graduate degree of any sort?...

[NoCalMike 0]

-=Mike

...Can anybody explain how Ward got tenure when he lacks a post-graduate degree of any sort?...

Affirmative Action of course......fake american indian is a minority group....

[Guest Salacious Crumb]

Ward used his "Indian heritage" to bully everyone else out of the department for the most part.

[SuperJerk 0]

I keep hearing all these horror stories about how leftist professors abuse their power, but I can't imagine anything like that happening at any of the schools I've gone to.

 

And, like I said before, the history department at the college I got my BS from was heavily populated with conservatives.

 

Seriously, Mike, where'd you go to college anyways? 1970s Moscow?

[Guest MikeSC]

I keep hearing all these horror stories about how leftist professors abuse their power, but I can't imagine anything like that happening at any of the schools I've gone to.

 

And, like I said before, the history department at the college I got my BS from was heavily populated with conservatives.

Well, your college, according to every poll or study on the subject, is the exception, not the rule.

Seriously, Mike, where'd you go to college anyways?  1970s Moscow?

S. Carolina, 1993-1998.

 

And we're a "conservative" college in the eyes of fringe leftist psychos.

-=Mike

[SuperJerk 0]

I keep hearing all these horror stories about how leftist professors abuse their power, but I can't imagine anything like that happening at any of the schools I've gone to.

 

And, like I said before, the history department at the college I got my BS from was heavily populated with conservatives.

Well, your college, according to every poll or study on the subject, is the exception, not the rule.

Seriously, Mike, where'd you go to college anyways?  1970s Moscow?

S. Carolina, 1993-1998.

 

And we're a "conservative" college in the eyes of fringe leftist psychos.

-=Mike

I feel your pain. I, too, have had crackpot leftists accuse me of being too conservative.

[Big Ol' Smitty 0]

All of my profs were bright enough to keep their own views out of their teaching quite well. I had a polisci prof who was quite conservative, I think. We had a class vote to watch a movie and the class voted for Fahrenheit 9/11. He wouldn't let us watch it, though.

 

No one filed suit.

[Red Baron 0]

Back to the subject at hand:

A: Liberal Arts colleg profs are often liberal because they're LIBERAL ARTS COLLEGE PROFS.

No, they're liberal because the faculties will not PERMIT a conservative to enter the field.

Wow...

 

that's probably the dumbest thing I've heard in the western civilization.

 

I mean not hiring because of his political beliefs. Because most schools would allow such thing.

[Edwin MacPhisto 0]

How about THIS story, about a professor who was fired from Colorado (you know, the school that STILL employs Ward Churchill): http://www.denverpost.com/Stories/0,1413,3...2748616,00.html

 

And this: http://instapundit.com/archives/014093.php

-=Mike

...Yeah, NO issue here...

They're not renewing his contract. That's considerably different from being fired. If you're not a tenure track professor, you're always expendable--one of the flaws of the tenure system, perhaps, but not an outrageous firing or anything resembling one.

 

I'm also well-aware of the liberal identification predominance among professors. You and those looking to create an enemy in the academic world have this tremendous belief that these people are incapable of keeping this from affecting their classrooms in a significant way.

[Guest MikeSC]

Back to the subject at hand:

A: Liberal Arts colleg profs are often liberal because they're LIBERAL ARTS COLLEGE PROFS.

No, they're liberal because the faculties will not PERMIT a conservative to enter the field.

Wow...

 

that's probably the dumbest thing I've heard in the western civilization.

 

I mean not hiring because of his political beliefs. Because most schools would allow such thing.

It's stupid, but it's the case.

 

Good luck being a conservative and shooting for a position as a liberal arts or law professor.

-=Mike

[Guest MikeSC]

How about THIS story, about a professor who was fired from Colorado (you know, the school that STILL employs Ward Churchill): http://www.denverpost.com/Stories/0,1413,3...2748616,00.html

 

And this: http://instapundit.com/archives/014093.php

      -=Mike

...Yeah, NO issue here...

They're not renewing his contract. That's considerably different from being fired. If you're not a tenure track professor, you're always expendable--one of the flaws of the tenure system, perhaps, but not an outrageous firing or anything resembling one.

 

I'm also well-aware of the liberal identification predominance among professors. You and those looking to create an enemy in the academic world have this tremendous belief that these people are incapable of keeping this from affecting their classrooms in a significant way.

They ARE incapable. They are, flat-out, incapable of doing so. Academia has become the haven for the burnt-out hippies of the 60's who have yet to have to actually mature and maintain the same idiotic beliefs they always had.

-=Mike

...Ward Churchill isn't exactly way out of the mainstream of college profs...

[Edwin MacPhisto 0]

You and those looking to create an enemy in the academic world have this tremendous belief that these people are incapable of keeping this from affecting their classrooms in a significant way.

They ARE incapable. They are, flat-out, incapable of doing so. Academia has become the haven for the burnt-out hippies of the 60's who have yet to have to actually mature and maintain the same idiotic beliefs they always had.

-=Mike

...Ward Churchill isn't exactly way out of the mainstream of college profs...

Great flip-out moment there, Mike. You hate college professors; we get it. As for Churchill, find me ten other professors in the entire country who've said the same things as him. You've turned a corner lately from staunch conservative to looney conspiracy-theory madman and it's making these threads impossible.