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Member (Idle past 3942 days) Posts: 2657 From: A Better America Joined: |
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Author | Topic: The Academic Bill of Rights | |||||||||||||||||||
Chiroptera Inactive Member |
quote: I would.
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Chiroptera Inactive Member |
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.
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Chiroptera Inactive Member |
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.
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Chiroptera Inactive Member |
quote: These are the only two statements that are false -- the rest of your statements are true, so why would I object? Seriously, though, if a professor was making political rants during class time that was not relevant to the subject at hand, and if the students did not have an opportunity to respond then the students would have a basis for complaint. They should complain to the head of the department -- if that doesn't result in any remedy, they should complain to the dean of academic affairs. If no remedy is provided, students can drop the course and warn other students from taking the course. --
quote: It sounds like a legitimate assignment to me; these are controversial topics and any student that didn't agree with these positions would benefit from looking at the subject from the other view point. Again, any student that objected to having to do this could drop the course or not take it to begin with. --
quote: I would be concerned, but not to the point of advocating "quotas" or preferrential hiring for "leftists". I would have enough confidence in the academic traditions of scholarship that this would get sorted out somehow -- after all, the work of conservatives and leftists are public record and can be examined. If there were deliberate policies to exclude leftists from academic positions then I might agree to a public campaign to shame the particular university into changing its policies. But I would not support implementing some kind of "quota" system that would mandate a particular mix of opinion.
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Chiroptera Inactive Member |
If anything, I find that students can be quite stubborn when it comes to their opinions. I know that I and my friends were.
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Chiroptera Inactive Member |
Faith has asked what the left would do if there was conservative bias in the universities. Let me point out what the left has done.
It is the opinion of those on the left that the mainstream media shows a consistent conservative bias. People who disagree with this may take part in the ongoing topics on this or start a new thread; I merely state as a fact that we on the left consider the media to be biased toward conservative opinion. But we on the left (at least most of us) do not call for legislative remedies for precisely the same reason we are against legislative remedies to combat "liberal bias" in academia: the promotion of opinion and analyse cannot be "legislated" to perform fairly -- "fairness" can only come about by the reasoned analyses by those prepared to carefully examine the facts and arguments, not by determining whether this many editors hold this view or whether this person feels that her opinion was disrespected. So what do the "liberals" do? We organize and form groups to examine the content of the mainstream media, to point out consistent errors in fact, and to provided details and opinions that are consistently neglected. These organizations also compile statistical data to demonstrate how consistent the bias is. We form our own media, establishing magazines and journals that go from merely liberal to more radical to the avowedly Marxist. We also create our own broadcasting services. The only legislative remedies we call for do not call for any oversight of content. We call for antitrust laws to prevent too many media outlets from accumulating into too few hands; we want a publicly funded broadcasting service that will be independent of the market place; and we want looser regulations to allow low power radio stations to become more common. Now the conservatives seem to be able to do provide these same remedies in the case of higher education. Faith has already posted one website for watchdog group to combat "liberal bias" in the universities. There are many small, fully accredited Christian colleges located in very conservative communities -- I should know, because I was on a job search last year. Some of these colleges require the applicant to state how they would contribute the Christian mission of the school. I suspect that many of these colleges are not guilty of any liberal bias. Furthermore, relatively recently Jerry Falwell started Liberty University, a fully accredited university, specifically to combat "rampant liberal bias" in the university system. It even has an accredited law school whose avowed mission is to remedy what the Christian right feels are defects in the "liberal" legal system. Furthermore, there is a variety of conservative think tanks and conservative foundations that give money to conservative causes. There is, therefore, opportunity for conservative scholars to engage in research and have their results published. My first point is that I think it is clear that the left has already demonstrated that they would not automatically go marching to the legistlatures if there were conservative bias in the universities. My second point is that there is opportunity in the "market place of ideas" to combat any liberal bias in the universities, and that the conservatives have already shown that they are able to take part in this without using a legal sledge hammer.
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Chiroptera Inactive Member |
Another benefit of the propaganda campaign: to "poison the well" and pre-emptively discredit actual scientific research that goes against the wishes and opinions of the right, from evolution to global warming.
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Chiroptera Inactive Member |
Just to clarify the point of this sub-topic before someone charges in with a response:
The issue is not to debate whether or not the current US president should be considered a war criminal. The issue is whether it is legitimate to require a student to explore and discuss the question.
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Chiroptera Inactive Member |
Hello, crashfrog.
That post wasn't aimed at you. I was trying to keep the thread from being high-jacked into a flame war about the Bush or the war in Iraq. As you say, the term war criminal has a definite legal definition, and it is definitely reasonable to decide whether the actions of the Bush administration fit into that definition. The question for the conservatives who brought this point up is: why is it inappropriate to ask that specific question in a classroom if it is germane to the content of the course?
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Chiroptera Inactive Member |
There are some who are calling for universities and colleges to make a deliberate effort to hire more conservative professors in order to provide more balance. You are correct, though, that this is a different issue than is being discussed here.
Edited to add:At any rate, the purpose of my post was to answer Faith's question about the reaction of "leftists" if there were allegations of conservative bias in the universities. This message has been edited by Chiroptera, 11-Jun-2005 03:26 AM
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Chiroptera Inactive Member |
A suitable topic for a new thread -- out of place here. Or are you just desperate to get the last word every time?
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Chiroptera Inactive Member |
quote: That comment was unwarranted, and I apologize for it.
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Chiroptera Inactive Member |
quote: Actually, "classical liberalism" is closer to what we call libertarians today.
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