Students Being Paid by Rightwing Group to Report on UCLA Faculty

[kpete]

Students Being Paid by Rightwing Group to Report on UCLA Faculty
by MissLaura
Tue Jan 17, 2006 at 04:45:23 PM PDT

Not naming names, but some people around here like to talk about how they're not "PC" (usually right after they've said something maybe kinda sexist/homophobic/take your pick). This is said like it's some brave rebellion against the status quo. And colleges are pointed to as a place PC reigns supreme. In the mean time, who is actually being attacked on campus for their politics?

From an email that was just forwarded to me (still can't do block quotes):


UCLA Students:
Do you have a professor who just can't stop talking about President Bush, about the war in Iraq, about the Republican Party, or any other ideological issue that has nothing to do with the class subject matter? It doesn't matter whether this is a past class, or your class for this coming winter quarter.

If you help UCLAProfs.com expose the professor, we'll pay you for your work.



That's right. Students are being paid to report on their teachers' political views.

more at:

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2006/1/17/184523/391

[proud2BlibKansan]

1. How horrible

Does the concept of 'teacher shortage' mean anything to these idiots?

[stoneisland]

44. There is no...

There is no teacher shortage at California's premier institutions of higher education. People would kill to get these tenure track jobs. Just so you know.

[PurpleChez]

2. Yeah. And they still have nancy fits when we call them nazis.

[HysteryDiagnosis]

3. It's FASCISM NOW.... no need to ask anymore.... kicked and

nominated.

[BrotherBuzz]

4. Sounds ripe for a disinformation campaign. These asswipes are hungry and..

will strike at anything. You know what I mean, Vern?

[slor]

5. Hitlerjugend 2006...

these people are just pathetic.

[IChing]

6. AND WE WERE TOLD HERE AT DU NOT TO USE THE WORD NAZI

To describe this behavior,
Intellectuals beware, I'm looking at teaching jobs in
Europe as of this past summer. (waiting for 2006)

We will lose our intellectuals which are in general
are leftist to this 1930s group think mentality of "turning wrong-think people into room 101

Don't forget what any totalitarian regime has done through history with it's intelligencia,
it is not ----without strategy on control of the masses.

[mom cat]

8. Good luck.

[jonnyblitz]

7. without clicking on the link I bet David Horowitz of "frontpagemag"

has something to do with it if not directly, indirectly.

[DIKB]

9. Report your neighbors!!!

Report your parents!!! Report your teachers!!!

If they speak out, they are enemies of the GLORIOUS REICH!!!

Ein Reich! Ein Volk! Ein Fuhrer!!!

[brook]

10. Bloodchilling.

As an expat kid, I had a friend who'd lived under Peron in Argentina. She had many horror stories -
including 'disappeared' teachers.

I sent the link to KO. Hope he covers it.

[The Backlash Cometh]

11. Character Assassination? Defamation of Character?

Stalking? Conspiracy? Tortuous Interference?

It's time to sue. If they don't want a broad-minded education, they should go to Texas A&M or Georgia Tech.

[Catherine Vincent]

12. America is no longer.

Sigh! :-(

[hunter]

13. If I was a UCLA prof, I'd be tempted to report myself...

You could make a huge game of it, starting out slowly at first with enticing little morsels of misinformation, accounts of your dinners with Barbara Boxer, etc., and then gradually work your way up to something utterly and absurdly outrageous, such as screaming from the tower of Royce Hall:

"I WAS FIDEL CASTRO'S TRANSVESTITE DOMINATRIX IN A THREESOME WITH THE POPE!"

The problem is the morans would probably believe it.

[IChing]

14. So you know about my sex life agent Mike? LOL

The pope did that Hitler Youth Dance for us trying to relive his past glories before he found his next Jesus.
It was the bomb.

[hunter]

20. IChing, there you are.

It's been a long time since we posted on the same thread.



This is a picture of a typical UCLA professor.

[Occulus]

21. That's exactly what those profs should do

plant disinformation among their detractors. Get them believeing and committing to print such outrageous bullshit that their, the students', credibility is ruined for their duration on campus.

It's worked before. Maybe not in this context, but..... it has.

[FreedomAngel82]

24. How would disinformation help anybody?

It wouldn't do a damn thing but make things worse for them. They should always tell the truth. Look where lying has gotten us today. How shameful you would encourage such acts.

[hunter]

25. But the fantasy is nice

A taste of their own toxic brew...

[intheflow]

15. This is some scary shit.

K&R'd.

[Nikki Stone 1]

16. This is very chilling

My fear is that this will shut down speech by making profs more paranoid than they need be.

[Doctor_J]

17. This is going on across the country

Lynn Cheney and David Horowitz both have organizations that terrorize professors that don't worship Smirk.

[Occulus]

18. Sign up!

Get their membership.

Publish THAT list around campus.

[Initech]

19. Couldnt the students in charge of this be suspended?

This is downright fascism.

[FreedomAngel82]

22. I wonder if this goes for a history teacher too

who is talking about HISTORY. I still remember sometime last year the reports of conservative students who would go around their campuses and put Nazi stickers on professores doors who they even thought were "left." There's also some pure rightwing video out called "Brainwashing 101" in which a few students claim they were being harassed at college for being conservative with no proof whatsoever. Just their claims and they have one "democrat" to "back them up."

[rodeodance]

30. terrible behavior on part of students.

[Doctor_J]

32. It goes on in every type of class

Having an anti-Smirk bumper sticker on a car can get a professor on Lynn Cheney's list.

[libnnc]

23. It's happening. It's really fucking happening.

Everybody try to rent the movie "The Mortal Storm" (MGM 1940)

I just got a flashback to this film about Vienna during the Nazi beer hall putsch. A very sweet and beloved professor, played by Henry Morgan, gets outed by his Nazi students (Robert Young and Robert Stack)...

[rodeodance]

26. look at some of the board of directors for this group (below)

......The site is sponsored by the Bruin Alumni Association, itself a group with the apparently sole purpose of exposing and combatting an "exploding crisis of political radicalism on campus. It's endangering the very core of UCLA - the undergraduate experience."

So what exactly is the Bruin Alumni Association? It sounds pretty official, doesn't it? Well, its president and founder is a 2003 UCLA graduate. Its advisory board includes former Bush Labor Secretary nominee Linda Chavez, former House Manager in the Clinton impeachment Jim Rogan, notoriously ethical and rigorous gun-control researcher John Lott, and occasional Rush Limbaugh show guest host Dr. Walter Williams. And they're paying current undergrads to be Big Brother's watchful eye on the UCLA faculty.

(The payment schedule is "Full, detailed lecture notes, all professor-distributed materials, and full tape recordings of every class session, for one class: $100"; "Full, detailed lecture notes and all professor-distributed materials, for one class: $50"; "Advisory and all professor-distributed materials: $10")

And what is this exploding crisis of political radicalism?

[janx]

33. And they pay the students by enabling them to DITCH CLASS?

"(The payment schedule is "Full, detailed lecture notes, all professor-distributed materials, and full tape recordings of every class session, for one class: $100"; "Full, detailed lecture notes and all professor-distributed materials, for one class: $50"; "Advisory and all professor-distributed materials: $10")"

Am I reading this correctly?

[VOX]

48. Once again, a right-wing initiative calls itself **WHAT IT IS NOT**...

"Bruin Alumni Association?" BS!! It's more like "Fascists UCLA Grads Who Make Lists of Those They Deem to be Undesireables."

"Clear Skies Initiative" = Free Pass on Polluting
"No Child Left Behind" = All Children Left Behind
"Swift Boat Vets for Truth" = Right-Wing Vets Who Lie Like Hell"

And so on. :puke:

[rodeodance]

27. thanks for the post. Nominated

[rodeodance]

28. UCLA Student Conduct code PROHIBITS the sale of notes ....

..UPDATE I didn't really have ideas of what to do with this, just wanted to bring it to your attention. People in the comments have a couple of ideas. Quixote and AmberJane are UCLA alums who have contacted the school's _real_ alumni association to complain about this group trying to look like it's officially connected to the school. That's a good way to go. illinifan17 suggests that people should look into the honor codes of their schools to see if taping classes for non-academic purposes is legitimate, and further says, "I plan to submit a proposal to the committee that oversees the honor code that would specifically prohibit 'recording or duplicating class material for purposes other than enhancing student performance in the course.'" This sounds like a great move to at least defend against these creeps.

UPDATE #2 In comments, JLFinch gives the following piece of invaluable information: Section 102.23(a) of the UCLA Student Conduct code PROHIBITS the sale of notes or recordings:

102.23a: Selling Course Notes

Selling, preparing, or distributing for any commercial purpose course lecture notes or video or audio recordings of any course unless authorized by the University in advance and explicitly permitted by the course instructor in writing. The unauthorized sale or commercial distribution of course notes or recordings by a student is a violation of the UCLA Code whether or not it was the student or someone else who prepared the notes or recordings. This policy is applicable to any recording in any medium, including handwritten or typed notes. ......

[rodeodance]

29. there is an address to contact the Dean at the website.

[tishaLA]

51. But if a student asks an instructor,

the instructor will reflexively agree because we believe, stupidly enough, that students want to record class sessions for learing purposes, not to sell them to RW nut jobs.

[Lerkfish]

31. oh, loverly.

why not? ok, when does it become ok to draw parallels between now and Nazi germany?

[janx]

34. Freepers were into this a week ago...

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1556448/posts#4

[Initech]

39. They're being outed on a RADIO show? This is scary.

OK, I think at this point, it's safe to start calling them the gestapo.

[janx]

45. It's just some 24-year-old kid.

There are other organizations along the same lines that are worse.

[BiggJawn]

35. Just like in "It Can't Happen Here!"

In that story, Professors at first found themselves fired and later in the story imprisoned for "criticizing the Military".

My head hurts when I read shit like this. I work for a large university in a non-academic capacity, but this MYTH of our schools being "hotbeds of radical Liberalism" is bullshit. "Hotbed and Incubator of Neo-Conservatism" is more like it.

BTW, our College ReTHUGlicans are bringing Ann-Thrax Coulter in for a fund-raiser. Hope they keep the books better this time than they did when Ollie came to visit.

[janx]

36. Another national group I just found:

http://www.thefire.org

[janx]

37. LA Times article

being discussed inn LBN

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=364x168251

[gratuitous]

38. That which we call McCarthyism

Would stink just as badly.

[janx]

41. It's even worse,

because they are intimidating professors with the hope that they can stifle speech in the classroom. That affects a lot of professors, and by extension, students.

[gratuitous]

46. That's just what the Red Scare was all about

By labeling someone as a Red or a Commie or even being "Pink" (that is, tending toward Red), a person's life, livelihood, career and family could all be ruined. It didn't even have to be a credible or current charge, either. Mere association with a group (go to a meeting, read a periodical, participate in a march) was enough to land a lot of people in big trouble during the 1940s, 1950s and even into the 1960s.

A really good dramatization of the situation is the movie "The Front," starring Woody Allen and Zero Mostel. A lot of people who worked on that movie were blacklisted in Hollywood during the 1950s and 1960s, unable to work (as actors) or take credit for their work (writers, directors and others) at one time during their careers, including Mostel. Watching his character, a TV anthology show host named Hecky Brown, try to work with and reason with the network censor is absolutely heart-breaking. He's sorry, very sorry, he did whatever he's accused of doing, he's a foursquare patriot standing shoulder-to-shoulder with all good Americans against the Red Menace. But he can't remember anyone else who was at the handful of meetings he attended 15 or 20 years ago -- he went because he was interested in this girl with a big ass.

Not good enough. Hecky loses his job, can't get work even outside television, and can't make it right without naming fellow travelers. And it's coming back in vogue now, as if we've forgotten what it was all about. Know-nothing twits like Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh get the odious idea into print and on the air that McCarthy and the tactics of the Red Scare, when fear was all in all, is the best defense against the scary terrorists and liberals today.

Well, I'm a grown-up and not a lemur. I refuse to join the whiny ass titty babies curled up under the table, whining about how scared they are and how scared I should be. If they want to crawl, then I'll let them crawl. I hope UCLA has hired grown-ups to be their professors, and I hope UCLA is run by grown-ups, and this nonsense ceases tout de suite.

[phusion]

40. UCLAprofs.com says you can make TAX DEDUCTIBLE donations?

How can such a biased political group take tax deductible donations?

[janx]

43. By hiding under the "free speech" angle--

when what they're doing is the opposite.

[spuddonna]

42. Do they get a free brownshirt each time they get paid as informants? n/t

[VOX]

47. What is it about right-wingers and their goddamned LISTS of NAMES?

They are so fuc*ing twisted! They think that they can control their little brownshirted world by organizing "the enemy" into lists: Most Liberal Hollywood Actors, Most Liberal Professors, Nixon's White House Enemies List, etc., etc. Yawn.

Anytime this kind of "otherizing" is done -- i.e., "we good right-wingers here" and "those others over there" a division is made, targets are set up, and it becomes a de facto open season on those named.

This an elementary facist tactic -- "create" an enemy where there is none. :grr:

[Lisa]

49. if I were at UCLA, I would report myself! Cut out the middleman, you know

I'm a sessional lecturer, and I really need the money!

[tishaLA]

50. I know people on this site

I'm finishing my PhD at UCLA and some of my favorite colleagues are on this site. As a grad student, I also teach undergrads, so I feel compelled to remain anonymous and I'm careful not to reveal too much about myself when I'm on here.

This has put a real chill on the campus. One of the professors I know said that they did some amazing work tracking her...beginning in grad school and throughout her professional career. They even discuss one faculty member's father as "evidence" of the faculty's liberalism.

Their focus, weirdly enough, seems to be on the Arts and Sciences and the Law School. I wonder why they don't go after the heretics in the "hard sciences" who refuse to discuss intelligent design or those at the Anderson School who believe in limiting capitalism....

[greiner3]

52. I think they are going for more prize than outing a few profs;

This may bring about some sort of hiring questions re political concerns. I base this on the fact that they, at least PR-wise, want more righties teacching at public schools. I'm in the local Comm Coll and I'd say of the ones that made any note, there are 3 or 4 to 1 in favor of Dems. One guy is a socialist from his statements. Go Prof!

[Lisa]

53. ... another bonus would be intimidating profs into self-censorship ...

Lecturers who don't have tenure may be concerned that complaints will end up on their employment records, and unconsciously start "watching what they say", to use a phrase from this White House.

I have seen how academic departments function, and instructors who don't have job security do get dragged into the chair's office for some rather bizarre reasons. One of my colleagues actually was given a talking-to because 2 students had complained that his ties were too garish. (Sometimes he would wear a really hard-colored tie just as an in-joke for his classes, and a couple of people put this on the evaluation forms as a gag ... they didn't realize that if a lecturer gets more than 2 complaints in a single semester, school policy is that the chair must hold a meeting!)

And I had to talk to the college Dean because a parent had called me up to complain that on several occasions during the term I had let the students out of class 20 minutes early! I explained to the Dean that Scheduling had insisted on packing 50 people into a windowless room designed for 30 (with very poor ventilation, and so noisy when the fan was working that students complained of headaches regardless!). The Dean wasn't told that I sent the students off with reading lists and "outside of class" homework -- I had to show my lecture outlines and handouts to him, before he was satisfied that I wasn't slacking off. An extra irony was that I was accused of "not being qualified in geography", when I was faithfully following the chapters in the book which the department had selected -- plus I have a doctorate in that field, and a decade of teaching experience. The Dean threw out the complaint, but not after the department spent a lot of time and effort looking into it. Meanwhile, they could have been addressing course development, overcrowding, or the plight of students who were having a difficult time finishing their degrees because of work or family commitments.

So if it's possible for biased parties to create that much disruption based on a technicality, I can only imagine what could happen if it's an ideological argument.