State Legislator Confronts 'liberal College Campuses'

[Judi Lynn]

Saturday, November 29, 2003

State Legislator Confronts 'liberal College Campuses'
Colorado senator claims liberal takeover began in 1960s

Los Angeles Times


DENVER -- Worried that left-wing professors are using college classrooms to bully those who don't toe the liberal line, a Colorado politician says it might be time to pass a law protecting students who hold more conservative or religious views.

Republican state senate president John Andrews recently sent a letter to Colorado's 29 public colleges and universities, asking them to explain how they handle cases of ideological discrimination and how they promote diverse points of view. Their answers are due by Monday. If he's unhappy with what he hears, Andrews vowed, he'll sponsor legislation to "ensure academic freedom."

Exactly how the bill would do that has not been worked out yet.

"To say college campuses are liberal is like saying water is wet," Andrews said. "I have heard that a conservative viewpoint is decidedly unwelcome."

Students have complained of being forced to attend abortion-rights rallies, of being required to write essays critical of the Bush administration and of having a strident anti-religion agenda pushed on them. (snip/...)

http://www.santafenewmexican.com/main.asp?SectionID=2&SubSectionID=8&ArticleID=36358

[NJCher]

1. setups

The right wing is setting it up for such incidents to be misrepresented via these student action groups such as Students for Academic Freedom. Now professors will, as Ari Fleischer warned, "have to watch what they say."

I'm a professor at a university and I have a hard time imagining my colleagues doing anything like the examples reported in htis article.




Cher

[Mikimouse]

14. An example of what is happening at my university

and probably many others. I am a lecturer at a university in the south. It is known for being sexist, homophobic, and extreme RW. Since I teach in a discipline which is generally marginalized by those on the right, the students not happy about having to take at least an introductory course, and their exam and paper scores reflect their animosity. It has long been my practice to allow for extra credit points (not many, but enough to save the borderline students), but those points can only be earned through participation in activities sponsored by the Women's Center (with which I am actively affiliated, having a gender specialty). The activities can vary, from attending the brown bag lunches, to participation in our domestic violence oriented clothesline projects, or Take Back the Night marches, rallies, and memorials. Two years ago, a group of the fine upstanding young men in my class tried to file a complaint with the associate provost, alleging that I was forcing them to participate in activities that they felt were supportive of left-wing activism (haha). The associate provost listened, took notes, and then politely told them that I was completely within my rights to limit the nature of extra credit, and further, that I was not under any obligation to offer extra credit in the first place. He then dismissed them and I have heard nothing about it since.

[Big_Mike]

34. I was attending a Technical University

in Colorado in '92. As an Engineering major at a Technical College, there aren't a lot of "soft" discipline courses offered, just those that the state mandated in order for the school to be accredited by the Western Region.

Anyway, they had an Intro to Art and Music class, taught by this real "spark plug" of a teacher. The lady got a classroom full of engineers and physicists and made them enjoy Art and Music.

You know, I have to go back to the reference books all the time for formula's and processes, but having had to view Dadaism once has burned it forever into my forebrain.

Who would have imagined?

I suppose my main point is that teachers must be allowed the space necessary to teach in their preferred manner. Something regarding the Socratic Method, yes? As an engineer, I didn't pay too much attention to the whining fringe on either side, as at that time I was paying my own way through school, and literally couldn't afford to lose focus. How has it changed today, with everyone being so much more vociferous on both sides?

[Dr Fate]

2. Where were all these outspoken Liberals when I was in college???

He said this has been going on since the 60's- I never had any professor make me write anti-GOP papers, or attend any rallies what so ever- sounds like BS to me...

[whirlygigspin]

3. I hear they even force them to do community service

and PAY TAXES!

those commie bastards

[girl gone mad]

4. No kidding..

Sounds like a good way to blackmail professors into giving you the grade you want.

I had several nutty right wing professors in college, so I'm wondering where all these liberal profs are. My gov. professor gave more than one lengthy lecture on his distrust of Peter Jennings. One of my other profs would listen to Rush on a walkman while we were taking quizzes and exams and he would get very excited and say things out loud in agreement with oxyboy.

Also, we had a lot of religious groups around campus trying to recruit students with free food and sodas. I didn't go to a conservative college, either. Too bad I didn't think of threatening to complain to legislators when I didn't like my grades.

[burr]

18. students aren't forced to do anything!

there are just as many conservative professors as liberal professors...take classes from the ones you wish. I preferred classes taught by professionals, you know...the vast majority of professors who leave you clueless on what their personal beliefs are. I have heard of required internships...but sending students to manditory pro-choice rallies sounds like something you would expect of Bob Jones University. Sorry but public universities and colleges don't do this!

I have heard of getting extra-credit for attending political events, both liberal and conservative. But this wasn't manditory. I have known professors to ask students to write about the Presidential Primaries, and to size up the Presidential candidates. But this isn't anymore anti-bush than it was anti-Clinton when they required the same thing of students in 1996. I have heard of classes on Astronomy and bio-diversity in which evolution and the Big Bang are central concepts, but this is hardly "anti-God."

If Colorado passes such legislation, then it better ensure that students in public schools and universities are no longer subjected to one-sided lectures on patriotism or pledges of allegiance to American idols and false Gods.

[mbperrin]

21. Hell, two of my economics professors at A&M in the early 70s

were Phil and Wendy Gramm!

nee US Senate and FTC, nee ENRON.

Not too liberal, eh?

[cpa]

36. College

I went to college from 1968 to 1972 and I do not recall having any professors who indicated their political leanings one way or the other. I don't know what this legislator is talking about.

[Ferretherder]

5. Look, I'm usually the court jester here at DU, but,...

...this stuff ain't funny, dude. THIS shit is starting to scare the Hell outta' me! If ANYONE - ANYONE - doubts that the extreme right is not only tryimg to take over the entire governing apparatus of this country, but, to also turn EVERYONE in this nation into a mindless, lock-step follower of their socially perverted beliefs, well,........read it and weep, folks. Read it and weep.

I'll say it again - this shit is getting SCARY!

[Endangered Specie]

27. I agree

Next thing you know, theyll start the burning.

Some of this reminds me of a certain foreign political party of the 1930's.

[Flubadubya]

6. If conservatives could only think for themselves...

they wouldn't find the liberal viewpoint so threatening. That's all there is to it. I certainly had some liberal professors in college, but all they ever asked was for us to think critically and openly.

This, of course, is more than a conservative can handle.

For Mr. Andrews, the solution to this so-called "problem" is to sponsor legislation to "ensure academic freedom". Welcome to our modern-day Orwellian society where enforced ignorance IS academic freedom. :puke:

[Ferretherder]

7. Think for myself? Now why didn't Rush tell me to do that?

That's the problem with Rush, sometimes he don't tell us everthang we need to be doin'.

[ClintonTyree]

8. Yet another attempt..............

to sway public opinion in their favor. Let's see, they have the White House, the Senate, the House, the SCOTUS, most of the media, practically all of big business.........YES, THEY'RE BEING TREATED SOOOOOO UNFAIRLY! These assholes won't be happy until total mind control over every American is achieved and the word Liberal is reduced to an arcane reference in history books.

I haven't seen anything close to what this moron is quacking about on ANY College campus. These are truly delusional people we're dealing with here. It's hard to argue against a sick mind.

[DivinBreuvage]

9. Conservative legislators often propose crackpot legislation

to titillate the angry moron element of their constituency, and they've been doing it for years and years and years. That doesn't mean the bill is going to pass. Think back to the Schoolhouse Rock song "I'm Just a Bill".

Still, it is depressing to hear things like this. There is a decidely anti-intellectual, anti-science streak in America, although again this is nothing new: think back to the "Scopes Monkey Trial" of 1925. That streak is naturally going to assert itself more strongly when the political party that breeds and nourishes it is in control.

I've often wished I were a Republican legislator so I could openly make outrageous statements revealing what some of these people actually stand for. At a time like this I think I'd call for public book burnings and the expulsion from the universities of practitioners of Jewish physics (though I guess I'd have to say "liberal physics" nowadays).

I know I could get the book burning going, at least with a handful of people.

Francoise

[CaptAhab]

11. Great post

Francoise, you kick ass! Thank you for expressing my thoughts on anti-intellectualism in America. We should always remember how Hitler destroyed the centuries-old German university tradition by expelling the brightest and most gifted scientists because of their being Jewish or having Communist sympathies.

[DivinBreuvage]

32. Thank you, sun6302! Book larnin' is nothing but a "Jewish world-bluff".

That's how the Nazis dismissed the theory of relativity. For anyone interested, here's a quick link about how the purging of "politically incorrect" academics wrecked the University of Gottingen, one of the three places in the world that focused on atomic research. All those German scientists ended up going to Britain or America. Oops!

http://www.childrenofthemanhattanproject.org/HISTORY/H-02b.htm

Francoise

[BiggJawn]

38. "I'm Just A Bill...Diss me, and you Diss MURKA!"

Is how this is being played out. "Schoolhouse Rock" showed us how things are supposed to progress, not how they do.
F'instance, did you see Bill's sponsor twisting arms and threatening Senators? I didn't either.

You are dead-on about them playing to their "Moron Block" back home, those people who approach the Senator during campaign stops and regurgitate the latest Oxy-Boy mumbling point. Either they think they represent a district full of mouth-breathers, or they don't strain their noses much, either...

I work at a moderate-sized (38,000 enrollment) Big-Ten University. The LTTE column in the campus rag is full of young skulls full of mush telling the Editors to "go to Iraq, yu Commys", 90% of our student workers in my section are proffessed ReTHUGlicans (sons of wealthy doctors and lawyers, go figure)and the climate is definitely Wing-nut.

[DivinBreuvage]

39. This post is both funny and sad, BiggJawn

Funny because of your comments on the Schoolhouse Rock song. When I referred to it I simply meant to remind people how hard it is for a bill to make its way into law, but, you're very right, there's an awful lot of important truth that got left out of those political and historical songs. I'm not sure they even play "Elbow Room", the bouncy paean to Manifest Destiny, any more.

I think it would be a great idea if Robert Smigel did a "Schoolhouse Rock" cartoon on corporate influence, the covert war in Colombia, christian extremism in the federal government, or something else along that line. Maybe he already has and I missed it.

I've been out of college for about 10 years now (and the school had a "liberal" reputation, and still does), so it was somewhat disturbing to me to hear about the situation in your school. I suppose your case isn't necessarily representative, but perhaps it is, and the fact that it could be that bad anywhere outside of Bob Jones University is genuinely depressing -- and scary.

Francoise

[Blue Gardener]

10. There are plenty of Christian Colleges

Why don't the wingnuts attend those if they don't want to listen to any of the scary liberals? I'm sure they would be welcomed with open arms.

[SheilaT]

12. And there are plenty of colleges

with a largely conservative student body and point of view, especially in much of the south.

The real problem as I see it is that college age kids are often very intolerant of divergent points of view and will try to shut them down. There are too many stories out there of students taking it upon themselves to grab and destroy all copies of a school newspaper because of one particular story or ad, or of shutting down someone's talk on campus.

The whole point of college ought to be to getting an education that broadens one's point of view, not merely prepare one for a trade or profession.

That said, I'm going to try to get my current high school junior to enroll in the most politically liberal college I can find for him.

[alarimer]

31. yes

My university was, and presumably still is, very conservative. It is a public university in deep south Alabama that was still very segregated, at least in how people gathered with each other. My RA in the dorm suggested that I ask specifically for a white roommate (I am white) and was dumbfounded when I said I didn't care. I wonder what would happen if the roommate selection process was truly colorblind? If people were put together at random regardless of race, maybe it would help. I swear I have never been to a more polarized institution. It was not something I had ever experienced before. I had lived in Puerto Rico for a while ad went to school with people from various backgrounds. Anyway I think being at that university really opened my eyes to how far we still have to go.

But I digress- this was supposed to be about conseervatives, not race relations. I noticed at my university that there was a young republicans club but no young democrats. I wonder if one could even have been started. I guess I would have been the only member!

[Rose Siding]

13. "ideological discrimination"

It's the new "reverse racism" Coming to a clear channel near you.

[paulk]

15. living in Colorado

I have to say there's not a politician around, including the pack in the White House, that I despise more than John Andrews. He's on talk radio a lot, he's on local public t.v. all the time, he's risen to the rank of Senate President, this guy has power in the state. He's an Independence Institute bigshot, with a lot of money behind him.

This could happen, I can see the right wing getting this done. Colorado has swung so much farther to the right in the last ten years, and people like John Andrews are largely responsible.

[goforit]

16. OK....Now where is the response from the OTHER legislators?????

STEP UP COUCH POTATOEs!!!!

[Democat]

22. Democrats don't like to be confrontational

Let's just agree with everything the right says and maybe they'll be nice to us.

Most elected Dems are cowards.

[yankeedem]

17. Try these rebuttals on for size

Some counter arguments for the David Horowitz crowd:

"Conservatives don't want to be professors"

"Conservatives don't have the... necessities to be college professors. It all has to do with how they are bred."

"Having conservative professors on campus would threaten the fabric of all other professorial arrangements, even of the institution of a university itself".

"We think professors should be there on merit, not on a quota system"

"Why should we create special rights for treatment of conservative viewpoints?"

[madfloridian]

19. Daniel Pipes is behind a lot of this with his Campus Watch

http://www.campus-watch.org/

Very interesting. I know some professors who are getting bit by this conservative bug, and they are not happy.

[Flubadubya]

20. Learn from history....

When far-right wing juntas wrest sole control of a government, one of the first things they always want to do is to exterminate the intellectuals. Look at what happened when the Nazis took control in Germany, just look at history. Could it all happening again? It damned sure looks like it!

[anarchy1999]

37. Thinking the same thing

Why don't we allow the provision with the caveat that the "special" students wear a black armband, with a splashy red logo, for us all to see who's who.

[CO Liberal]

23. If You Look Up The Word "Idiot" in The Dictionary....

...you'll see John Andrews' picture. He's a sorry excuse for a human being.

:-)

[Trek234]

24. I support this

If the legislation will protect people from having to write papers crticial of Bush, attend abortion rights rallys, etc then it is proper.

[Flubadubya]

28. Really smart people don't have to be made...

to write papers critical of *Bush... they just do! Look at Paul Krugman, David Corn, Molly Ivins... and the list goes on.

[American Renaissance]

25. Ohh Please...

Back in college I had only two professors I would have called liberal, and only one of them was really out there.

I had a political science prof who spent a whole class talking about the flat tax, and this was long before anyone even knew what the term ment. I had an economics professor who wouldn't shut up about how great Margaret Thatcher was, I had a history professor who made us read some book that was pro-slavery. I had an english prof who said girls didn't belong in universities and I had a whole lot of instructors who didn't seem to be at all political, but then again, how do you politicize how a jet engine works?

[TankLV]

29. Charles Moore was one at Yale. A complete bigot.

He was my sister's architecture professor - stated flatly that he didn't believe women should be or were qualified to be architects - that only men were good or great architects, and that he would never graduate a woman architecture student. A pig thru & thru.

She graduated with honors and is a successful architect to this day - we both are.

[Endangered Specie]

26. I hate to break it to them

but most people who hold the degrees (the ones that count, mind you) have moderate to liberal views. Dare I say that educated people are more liberal? Or that more liberal people are more educated?
Afterall, you dont see republicains going after the liberal Nascar dad vote, now do ya? Most western countries (eg: W Europe, Canada, Japan) have superior education systems, and generally have a more educated public; and at the same time, they are much more liberal than this country (or shall we say, we are far more conservative).


I would like to quote my parents (who have Ph.D's too) "Republicans and conservatives deep down don't want real education in this country, because they know that if their was good education, where the truth was taught, there wouldn't be any Republicains, their message is dependent on ignorance".

[Liberator_Rev]

30. I was shocked by stupidity of Yalie Conservatives.

When I went to a gay marriage debate at Yale recently, I was embarrassed for the Catholic/Conservative debaters who were such simpletons that they couldn't even grasp the concept of Catholic politicians being able and required to keep their personal religious views separated from his public responsibilities. I expect that much from high schoolers, and I'm not surprised when middle-schoolers grasp it.

[Rex]

33. We all know what repukes really mean when they use the word 'freedom'

it's code for 'enslavement'.

[regnaD kciN]

35. I hope Andrews is remembered...

...next weekend, when it's time to draw up the next Top 10 Conservative Idiots list.

(By the way, did you notice that one example of liberal bias is being "told...no true scientist could not believe in evolution." That right there should tell you where these wingnuts are coming from. Why, the next thing you know, they'll be indoctrinating our children with the liberal idea that the world isn't flat!)

:eyes:

[pfitz59]

40. Andrews is associated with THESE WINGNUTS!

http://www.isi.org/
ISI is John Birch run to campus! Cold War relic given new lfe by the War on Terra!