Yeah, there are little pockets of us leftist hanging out in humanities departments, and social science or geography or environmentally-influenced disciplines--but even within these departments there is a conservative impulse.
To make it more clear though--think of the disciplines that command the most funding/grants.... business, engineering, hard sciences, medicine... these are dominated by conservatives and their politics rule universities (no matter how much fuss we crazy leftists cause ;)
Yahoo Report That Continues This Silly Controversy
Abby Normal supplies this extra report:
An alumni group dedicated to "exposing the most radical professors" at the University of California at Los Angeles is offering to pay students $100 to record classroom lectures of suspect faculty.
Which is ridiculous because they are professors--just go read what they write and you will have plenty of ammo ... and they call us "politically correct" paranoids?
6 comments:
As a recovering academic, I can't recall how many times I had people throw at me the lament that universities were bastions of leftism.
What sheer...I dunno...poppycock. Everytime I heard this, I would always offer my solution: enforce ideological rigidity across disciplines. Go ahead. Wouldn't be the way I would handle things, but, yes, do that.
So gut the humanities of a few of the leftists. Sure, no problem. This was perfectly fine reasoning until said enforcer of academic 'balance' started to think about what you'd have to do with the business schools or the 'hard' sciences.
Then I'd usually get the 'oh.' And that'd be the end of the conversation...
Could you imagine enforcing my Pagan-Gaia spirtuality as being a viable master thesis in the business marketing department... in other words, to each what they need, share and share alike, and so on... or perhpas forcing them to accept my socialist politics as a viable alternative to capitalism (in the form of an approved master's thesis)?
well, you're next if these bozos get their way:
http://www.cnn.com/2006/EDUCATION/01/19/ucla.radicals.reut/index.html
ABBY
Most political science departments I have interacted with were conservative (a happy exception was the political science department of Illinois State University--one of the more radical departments on that campus)... I want conservatives on my campus, even the fanatical ones that believe I shouldn't be able to say/write (think?) what I do. I want as many diverse peoples, beliefs, politics, etc as possible so that we can build a strong learning environment.
I want to call out dogmatists (fanatics) of all stripes who believe they have all the answers, and that there is only one way, or that all you other people are going to burn for your errors in thought.
I know that education's mission is rarely to build strong, aware, critical, proactive, questioning citizens, but this is what I want to do. This is considered to be radical or leftist. This is what they fear--how the hell can you have unthinking workers, credit card indebted wage slaves, happy to make a buck laborers, and fodder for imperialism, if they can think for themselves?
Thanks Bill, Abby and Ricia
Where is this alternate universe where you all have had these experiences?
Dear anonymous:
It must be the same one in which people expect serious responses to sarcastic anonymous comments.
Feel free to tell what color the sky is in your world, but please help me to understand the context of that strange world ;)
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