The Academic Bill of Rights

How do we differentiate tough professors that demand critical thinking and challenge opinions and professors who are intimidating students?In my opinion putting a hard limit on higher education would be detrimental to this country.on edit: I believe this statement is clearly false. There are even specialized schools where reason and critical thinking takes a back seat to religion. I have already responded to this statement here.This message has been edited by dsv, Thursday, June 09, 2005 04:38 PM

That is a good characterization. Thank you.Somehow many dozens of posts later this is being missed. This is a meta-issue.

I haven't overlooked it, I just can barely believe you are making an issue of it. It is a nonissue. The concern is for what is happening in the universities and this is not about big government if you have any grasp whatever of what big government means. This is strictly a bill to give teeth to existing regulations that for one reason or another are ignored or toothless.

My point is that it is not the governments business to do this and a true conservative would agree with me. Real conservatism is about de-regulation, freedom, and keeping the governments nose out of American institution. Why are these extremely conservative people then playing hypocrite to their values? Please do not be snide. You know very well that my position is one of skepticism that this is actually going on at all. That is why we have been incessantly asking you for actual evidence because we are in disbelief that this occurs with any regularity. In my entire higher education experience the only something like this ever occurred the prof was severely disciplined by the systems already in place to deal with this.The issue with the lawsuits is that Conservatives should not be in support of anything that is going to cost the government more money and tie up the legal system. Fiscal and legal conservatism is being overshadowed by something for these supposed ultra-conservatives. What is that? It is by definition non-conservative legislation. See Asgara reply to you. More regulation = non conservative ideals. Here we go. This is a semi-real answer although I am not sure if you wanted to say this. What you are basically saying is that this is a personal issue rather than a product of conservatism. Real conservatives would be looking for ways to provide alternatives to state funded higher education like the waiver system for public primary education.Just because the alleged action is against conservative people does not mean that the response is a conservative one. The bill is blatantly not conservative. Therefore, why the exodus from primary conservative values? Answer, ideology. Please do not presume to think for me. Thank you I appreciate it.The point is that these folk who support this are rowing upstream of their political leaning for something that should be (and is in most cases) common sense ethics. There is no reason for them to do this unless there is motive greater then their political agenda. I can believe that a conservative would draft a perfectly egalitarian bill; this just is not an instance of that and demonstrably so. But the bill does not add freedoms it is restricting them. It is calling for general government oversight of an extremely dynamic institution. It is anti-conservative in spirit and exposes the blatant ideology and non-objectivity of its supporters.

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FOX has a pretty good system they have cooked up. 10 mil people watch the show on the network, FOX. Then 5 mil, different people, tune into FOX News to get outraged by it. I just hope that those good, God fearing people at FOX continue to battle those morally bankrupt people at FOX.
-- Lewis Black, The Daily Show

That this is even happening in any frequency to require legislation has yet to be established. Your excuse that the information is just "too hard" to reproduce in this forum does not automatically render support to your point.I will paruse your links when I am in a situation where I have a graphical rather than text based browser. So far one of the cases that your sources cite as evidence has been debunked and I expect that they will be nothing more than a laundry list of incidents with no objective perspective on the issue as it applies to higher education across the board. I could be wrong though which is why I plan on investigating your links.Until then, you do not get to declare victory on this point. You have not demonstrated objectivly that there is a need for this legislation. You have not demonstrated that this happens with any significant frequency at all.

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FOX has a pretty good system they have cooked up. 10 mil people watch the show on the network, FOX. Then 5 mil, different people, tune into FOX News to get outraged by it. I just hope that those good, God fearing people at FOX continue to battle those morally bankrupt people at FOX.
-- Lewis Black, The Daily Show

I've been thinking (and if I can also provoke an arguement, so much the better!): I'm not so sure that the primary objective is to pass this "student bill of rights". Horowitz is known to be on a crusade to demonize and discredit "liberals". If these laws pass, so much the better, but the main objective I am beginning to suspect is to further damage the credibility of the left, especially the professionals who study important issues and come to conclusions that conservatives don't like.Let's think about this. What would be so hard about believing that university professors behaving unethically is a bigger problem than we had realized? We all know how passionate people get over their political and social beliefs -- hell, we all know how we ourselves can get worked up over our own beliefs! It wouldn't be too much of a stretch to imagine a professor in a class becoming impatient with a student with contrary opinions and shutting her down.But this isn't being sold as an attempt to solve the problem of biased professors behaving unethically toward their students. I suspect that if it were, it could probably have passed in several states before anyone realized what was up. Even Faith only occassionally mentions in passing that it would also protect liberal students from conservative professors.From the very beginning these laws have been marketed to protect conservative students from abusive liberal professors. That is the tip-off for the true intention of these laws. It's not the laws themselves that are being marketed, it is the idea that leftists are in control, leftists are conspiring to eliminate conservatives, leftists are not fair, leftists cannot function in a fair and unbiased environment. It is part of an overall propaganda campaign to portray conservatives as innocent victims in an leftist conspiracy to eliminate opposition and control the American people's thoughts.

... what Falwell and Robertson have known for decades. Christian Fundamentalists are a ripe field just waiting to be harvested. LOL

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

That might be a little too conspiracy theory for me.I think the assault upon liberalism is apparent and the intent is to actually cripple an institution that makes people think.When you educate yourself all of a sudden their propaganda is not as potent. It is no secret that college campuses are pretty liberal but that is not because conservatives are being scared away. It is because students are learning about the world and deciding that facism is not what they want for their country. Most educated people I know are either liberal or classic, non-neo, good ol'e conservative. Most uneducated people I know are vast right wing nuts or bleeding heart liberals.Not to say that you cant be a neo-con fascist or a hippie AND be smart but colleges are factories for centrism and that threatens the ideological agenda of guys like Horowitz.That is also why a crazy guy in a loin cloth protests in front of the student book store on campus talking about free drugs and no war. Education is bad because once people are educated they stop blindly agreeing with your 1st grade blather.Once we get rid of all the educated people we know our political propaganda machine is better than the left and therefore our subjugation of the illiterate and uninformed can continue unabated.

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FOX has a pretty good system they have cooked up. 10 mil people watch the show on the network, FOX. Then 5 mil, different people, tune into FOX News to get outraged by it. I just hope that those good, God fearing people at FOX continue to battle those morally bankrupt people at FOX.
-- Lewis Black, The Daily Show

Hello, Jazzns.Yes, perhaps it is a bit much to claim that the "Academic Bill of Rights" is merely part of a propaganda campaign, especially since it might have obscured my main point.My main point is that if these laws were legitimate they would have, in the beginning, been sold as the means to protect innocent students from biased professors, and that the opposition to these laws is the predictable result of a profession trying to protect its privileges.Instead, it was sold from the beginning as the means to protect innocent conservative students from biased liberal professors, and the opposition is the result of liberals trying to protect their hegemony.I think it is clear that these laws are not well-intentioned attempts to correct a percieved problem; they are the ravings of a paranoid group of people.

It certainly has the added effect of propaganda though. Just look at how it is polarizing a segment of academia. I am not convinced that propaganda was the primary reason for introducing this like the constitutional ammendment against gay marriage was. This just does not seem to have the same amount of foresight involved to be any kind of intentional political seperating catalyst.That is just a fringe benefit.

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FOX has a pretty good system they have cooked up. 10 mil people watch the show on the network, FOX. Then 5 mil, different people, tune into FOX News to get outraged by it. I just hope that those good, God fearing people at FOX continue to battle those morally bankrupt people at FOX.
-- Lewis Black, The Daily Show

So, Faith, since this is not intended to interfer with legitimate teaching not based on religious or political aims what would you predict the use of this legislation will be?I think it was you who early posted 3 or 4 examples of things which it is intended for. As I recall I have no objection to action being taken on all of those.What I predict is that this will be used to try to force the inclusion of non-scientific ideas in the science lecture hall. It will be used to dispute dating in geology and evolution in biology. This will be done in spite of there being no good, scientific reasons for accepting these ideas (as evidenced by the lack of evidence presented against dating and the pattern of the fossil record here).

Let's be quite sure you both mean this now. So you would not complain about many many incidents being reported in many universities across the country of conservative professors of say literature courses or history or political science or even science courses spending class time just before the election to rant about John Kerry's lousy credentials for being President, his phony purple hearts, his betrayal of his nation that really should have been prosecuted; or when Clinton was in office how he bombed a pharmaceutical plant in Sudan to take the heat off his doings in the "Oral Office," or just general rants at any time at all against "liberals" and "leftists" say Rush Limbaugh style? How about if they regularly referred to the top Democrats as moral cretins or something of the sort?You wouldn't think it out of place if in a poli sci course an assignment was to write an essay defending Bush's reasons for going into Iraq and how his critics are just leftists trumping up false objections, or how the UN is a corrupt institution that the sovereign United States should not obey? How about if they denounced the Palestinians for supporting terrorism and defended Israel as acting in self defense?You would not be concerned if the faculty of the vast majority of the universities in the nation had from oh 85% to 98% Bush-Reagan-Nixon conservatives as tenured professors? You would not be concerned that with such numbers one would naturally think that political bias in the hiring and firing process somehow determined the numbers? You wouldn't be concerned if the few liberals on the staff were generally treated with disdain by the majority at most of these campuses?I find it hard to imagine this situation myself as conservatives as a group are fair and generous people who wouldn't treat anyone this way, but this is just to make the point.

To prevent or provide grounds for action against professors' promotion of partisan biased political and religious opinions in the classroom, which have no relation to the course curriculum, and intimidation of students who have different political and religious views. OK, but I don't remember the post. Possibly it was Canadian Steve. That would be a complete miscarriage of the intent of the bill of rights, and nothing I've seen on the subject has even touched on such a possibility.If there really is a danger of that, I would support a specific amendment to clarify that complaints about the presentation of evolutionism as a legitimate curriculum are explicitly excluded. I'm sure Horowitz and company would be happy to accommodate that, as they have no argument with evolution. But as I read it, there is no such loophole in it.Ridiculing belief in creationism, however, or grading students down for maintaining such a belief despite a demonstrated grasp of the course content, would come under its provisions. Otherwise I would assume that truly reasoned arguments against creationism could be given as part of the course content with impunity. {EDIT: Are students to be excluded from -- or subjected to ridicule for -- trying to defend creationism with reasoned arguments by the way?} It's partisan one-sided harassment and intimidation that are the aim of the action.{EDIT: I'd say a professor would be right to insist that the student treat the evolutionist reasoning as correct and be able to argue it effectively as far as grading goes, but wrong to ridicule the student's belief}This message has been edited by Faith, 06-09-2005 08:38 PM

By their ridicule of and absolute refusal to give any credence to the other side of an issue.

I googled the questioned case myself and found apparent proof that the complaint against it was correct: http://blogs.salon.com/0002874/2005/05/23.html,
then wrote to the academic rights site to say they should remove it, and got this answer back: This message has been edited by Faith, 06-10-2005 07:06 PMThis message has been edited by Faith, 06-10-2005 07:09 PM