2 columns re: liberal v Conservative in Academia

[nosmokes]

original

Students' minds under Siege: Have college professors gone from teaching to political preaching?

By Sharon Schuman
For The Register-Guard
Published: Sunday, November 6, 2005


We are in the midst of a war. I refer not to Iraq or terror, but a war on the academy.
The symptoms are not invasions of foreign lands, where leaders are accused of gassing their citizens. They are attacks on universities, such as the recent columns by John Tierney in The Register-Guard, in which liberal professors are accused of bullying conservative students in class. These professors are now seen as dangerous enough to do something about.
Don't get me wrong: Most of the university students who replied to my recent informal e-mail survey, asking whether professors are "too liberal" or "too political" in the classroom, seem to like the education they are getting.
Ingrid Loesch, a senior at Humboldt State University, explains that professors have changed her life - the "best ones let you know their opinions and are willing to discuss alternate opinions as well."
Josh Kennedy of the University of Oregon Law School says, "I appreciate hearing a professor's thoughts, whether their views are conservative or liberal. Sometimes I agree, other times I don't. Either way, talking gets people thinking."
Kimberly Parzuchowski, a UO graduate student in philosophy, adds, "My professors seem respectful of students' views."
Yet there is an undercurrent of discontent. One UO student complains, "We face indoctrination from the left on a daily basis, and being conservative has turned into a dirty word."
UO senior Anthony Warren spells it out: "Professors nowadays are too liberal and cross the line from teaching to political preaching in the classroom."
Part of the problem seems to stem from recruitment. Maurice Holland, emeritus dean of the UO Law School, laments, "We hardly ever see a candidate who is politically conservative, even moderately so." If you get professors speaking off the record, many will admit that they know of colleagues who are too political in the classroom.
Legislators in 20 states have decided to fix this. They are discussing bills that call for faculty in public universities to grade students on merit, not according to their political or religious beliefs. They are also calling for hiring and promoting professors on the basis of their expertise, not their beliefs, and for establishing reading lists to "provide students with dissenting sources and viewpoints."
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original

'Liberal' and 'conservative' misunderstood

By C.A. Bowers
For The Register-Guard
Published: Sunday, November 6, 2005


The current debate about whether university faculty indoctrinate students with liberal ideas suggests that the faculties' real failure is being overlooked. A basic misunderstanding about what the terms "conservatism" and "liberalism" stand for, both historically and in today's context, is shared by students who label themselves as conservatives, as well as by the faculty who identify themselves as either conservatives or liberals.
This misunderstanding also underlies self-identified liberal think tanks (which journalists and the general public misidentify as conservative) and organizations that are funding the current attack on higher education, as well as the pundits and journalists who are, in their reporting, passing on the misconceptions they acquired during their years in university classrooms.
Labeling Vice President Dick Cheney as a conservative and, in one newspaper account, as a "market-liberal conservative" are among many examples that could be cited.
Words have a history - especially the words that make up our political vocabulary.
Words such as "conservative" and "liberal" carry forward in a highly condensed manner the ideas, values, and silences that emerged from earlier complex debates and writings.
When they are used in a formulaic manner, as is the case today, they carry forward both earlier and current misunderstandings. Students who now label themselves as conservative and charge that they are being indoctrinated in the classroom might have a better understanding that they are really in the liberal tradition of thinking if they had been asked to read and reflect on the writings of such conservative thinkers as Edmund Burke, Samuel Coleridge, T.S. Eliot, Michael Oakeshott, James Madison and Clinton Rossiter. They would then have a basis for recognizing that they share few, if any, of the ideas and values of these conservatives.
These students should also be asked to read environmental conservatives such as Wendell Berry, Aldo Leopold and Vandana Shiva on the importance of conserving of species, habitats and the world's diverse cultural and environmental commons.
In addition, if students had been asked to read the writings of classical liberal thinkers such as John Locke, Adam Smith and John S. Mill - as well as the writings of Herbert Spencer, who used social Darwinism to explain the significance of winners in a free-market system - they would be able to recognize that the real tension between themselves and their liberal professors is the tension between the values of market liberalism and the social justice liberalism of their professors.
Widely shared knowledge of what separates the tradition of conservatism from the tradition of liberalism that so many professors identify with and promote in their classes (e.g., the assumption that the individual is the basic social unit, that change is progressive, that the Western way of thinking is the most culturally advanced, etc.), might lead more faculty to be aware of the mixed messages they convey to their students.
While their liberalism is based on many of the same cultural assumptions that underlie the excesses of the industrial culture they criticize, they also communicate to their students their concerns about the current efforts to overturn the traditions that genuine conservatives have historically viewed as essential to the civil rights of current and future generations.
The undermining of the separation of church and state, an independent judiciary and key provisions of the Constitution - as well as the efforts to reverse the gains in the areas of civil rights and the labor movement, economic support for marginalized social groups, the legal protections won by environmentalists, and what remains of civilian control of the military - are sources of deep concern on the part of many faculty who identify themselves as liberals.
Because the word "conservative" has been appropriated by the market liberals who support the policies of President George W. Bush, many of these professors use the language of liberalism to argue for conserving what is now under threat from powerful political groups who call themselves conservatives but are working to bring more aspects of daily life under the control of market forces - even as these market forces have led to outsourcing jobs and cutting back and even eliminating pensions and health benefits.
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[HockeyMom]

1. My college student daughter

Yes, she goes to a "Liberal" college - SUNY. However, she came to that school coming from a mostly LIBERAL HOME. Why do they assume that PARENTS are Conservative? I cannot tell you the number of times my daughter has gotten up in class or on the college radio station and challenged both a professor OR the Young College Republicans. She sends me, AND her REPUBLICAN Dad, articles on the Bush Administration's agenda. Sorry, Conservative Republicans, this is NOT from her Professors. I hope it is coming from my influence as her mother and HER using the power of her BRAIN.

When I went back to college when she was in HS, I used to tell her how I used to stand up in class and challenge some of the Conservative professors' views on the world. I hope I planted a seed in her way back then.

[Fairlyunbalanced]

2. While much of what he says is true

and there is definately a "liberal bias" in colleges, it's not caused by the professors expressing their political views.

I called myself a repuke before I went to college, because I barely knew what that meant, or knew anything about history. Knowledge set me free.

The repukelicans aught to stop whining about this, all they're doing is pointing out the fact that educated people tend not to be taken in by their lies and evil machinations.

[applegrove]

4. Liberal bias - my ***! Liberalism is about the best information getting

to the top and not stopped by conservatives who want to control it.

All the west and most of the democracies in the world are based on LIBERAL DEMOCRACIES and MIXED MARKET ECONOMIES (where you choose a variety of policy options depending on how well they work to meet democratic goals.. be they socialist or capitalist in nature).

Even today - the USA is a LIBERAL DEMOCRATIC MIXED MARKET ECONOMY.

So - yes - the universities are filled with liberals.

Because the whole world is liberal!

Liberalism is the enlightenment (science) and getting information out of the hands of cabals, royalty & religious elites who snuff out markets with their desire for control & privilege.

So by saying that universities are liberal simply implies they teach science and the scientific method.. you know..where the establishment does not control thought - where thought is freed up and trained in younguns..so they too can scientifically go forth and free up the world with ideas and help create new norms. You know..so society doesn't rot from within and "progresses".

The problem neocons have with "higer education" and "liberalism" is that information is given "freely" and passed on. And nobody is charged for it. And it makes everyone better off with more "choice".

And what does a corporation hate more than "choice" and "knowledge is power" in the people they market to.

I mean - suicide seeds! Your dam right they hate universities - not just the liberal arts departments. They obviously hate the "agricultural departments" too. Because they provide information on blights, and getting a new season of seeds out of what was harvested. And if this information - created by god or evolution and taken over by humans about 15,000 years ago - well they don't like information like that that they 1) do not control 2) cannot charge for.

Like I said - MY *** colleges are unfairly balanced against conservatives. They are doing the job they are supposed to be doing and passing on information to as many as possible to make the world a better place.

[boobooday]

3. I am a teacher and PhD student

I think the most insulting thing about this whole right-wing campaign is their assumption that education = indoctrination.

It is reflective of their view of education. I believe in teaching students to THINK, not in teaching them what I THINK.

My son had a rabid right wing social studies teacher in high school. I had no problem with that. My son would tell me what he said, and I would refute it.

These people are obviously not very confident in the power of their own ideas.