The Academic Bill of Rights

Maybe in your Orwellian double-speak it does, but it's obvious to any disinterested observer that this bill stifles the freedom of the classroom and chills any discussion of anything that a professor might suspect conflicts with the opinion of any one particular student.Which is naturally why you're in favor of it. Like most social conservatives the idea that someone might enjoy their freedom in ways you don't particularly like terrifies you. Oh, well. Eventually you'll grow up, I think. Look, let's not be ridiculous, ok?

If that claim is factual, why should it be suppressed just because someone erroneously believes it to be false?

ZOWIE. This quote ought to be enshrined in some kind of museum of mental rigidity / total inability to see anybody else's point of view / absolute hidebound bigotry.Actually there are not words adequate.

You don't believe that there is an objective measure by which we might assess who is a war criminal and who is not? Or you believe that George Bush, by anointment of God, is above being set against any such measure?I don't find anything subjective about the term "war criminal", thus, I see the question of whether or not Bush is one as a matter of legal fact, not of political opinion.Not everything is politics or religion, Faith. And that was exactly my point. Your side claims it has a religious/political right to disagree with the facts and, ludicrously, have that disagreement be set on equal footing with the truth. Lies and truth are all the same to your ilk because there's absolutely nothing any of you take seriously.

No one has yet responded to one point I made in the previous thread.
Is not this whole Bill of Rights an insult to the students themselves? It seems to subsume they are all maleable little robots prime for indoctination and, consequently, in need of protection from nefarious professors with a political agenda to program them with leftist ideas. However, those of us actually involved in academia seem to readily recognize that it is the proponents of this bill who have the political agenda. Yet another instance of the tried-and-true neo-con ploy - accuse the other side of what you are in fact doing yourself.This message has been edited by EZscience, 06-10-2005 07:08 AM

Every word you put out belongs pointed back at yourself. What amazing depressing pig-headedness, absolute inability to respect a political view other than your own, to treat other human beings as having a right to their opinions, or even AS human beings, period, to appreciate DIVERSITY of opinion, Other Points of View, to give the Benefit of the Doubt, etc etc etc etc etc etc. To call Bush a war criminal is so beyond all reason that EVERYBODY should be rebuking you for it, but the problem is that this is merely Leftist propaganda in a particularly pure form, the hatred of everything good that has been pumped into university students for the last four decades. No wonder you all hate the idea of the FREEDOM OF THOUGHT AND SPEECH that the Academic Bill of Rights aims to provide. You're scared to death of true freedom, diversity of opinion, the freedom the American founders tried to give us. The hatred that comes from the Left against honest ordinary Americans is just astonishing, tragic, actually so evil it is almost impossible to grasp that it is as real as it is. How can you??? What on earth possesses you to say such things?

Get real. Professors GRADE students. Students HAVE TO LISTEN to professors, have to PASS THEIR TESTS. Professors have POWER, the power to RUIN a student who doesn't toe their line if they so desire.

You're speaking to crashfrog here aren't you? I'm trying to find where he called Bush a war criminal. All I can find is where he offered a conditional statement which, to me, said "We shouldn't suppress facts". I'm sure you agree with that statement, or am I missing something here?

Yes, and we are still waiting for some evidence of unfair grading practices linked, I might add, to conflicting political or religious beliefs. No, they don't. They have ample time to judge the professor and drop the class before they get graded on it. I have dropped courses, as many students do, based on an early evaluation of a professor and the quality of the curriculum. The student is paying for his/her education and has some degree of control over what courses to take in order to satisfy degree requirements. Come on Faith. No professor would do that. It just doesn't happen. You can get just as good marks on an essay taking either of two opposing viewpoints. Grades are much more based on 'how' you argue your case, 'how' you access and utilize available resources and literature, than on 'what' particular viewpoint you take. The emphasis is always on teaching a process of reasoning and critical thinking, *not* on teaching a point of view. That would be dogmatic and run counter to what virtually everyone's concept of higher education is.Let's not confuse the stating or revealing of personal opinions with 'intimidation', indoctrination' and all these other irresponsible terms that Horowitz has been throwing around. He doesn't give enough credit to the students themselves. They are not impressionable little babes. College campuses have always been the hotbeds of political dissent - and this is usually more a function of student opposition to the status quo than it is any kind of faculty movement.(added in edit) Actually, in the vein of "Bush, the war criminal", this reminds me of the overt protests against the start of the Iraq war on KSU campus. The signs put up by activist students opposing the war were much bigger and more prominent than any political cartoon on a professor's door.This message has been edited by EZscience, 06-10-2005 08:38 AM

This relates back to a reported complaint about a 'left-wing' professor who assigned an exam question purportedly asking students to explain why Bush is a war criminal.

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Kerry's... phony purple hearts, his betrayal of his nation that really should have been prosecuted....

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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.--

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You wouldn't think it out of place if in a poli sci course an assignment was to write an essay defending Bush's reasons for going into Iraq and how his critics are just leftists trumping up false objections, or how the UN is a corrupt institution that the sovereign United States should not obey? How about if they denounced the Palestinians for supporting terrorism and defended Israel as acting in self defense?

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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.--

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You would not be concerned if the faculty of the vast majority of the universities in the nation had from oh 85% to 98% Bush-Reagan-Nixon conservatives as tenured professors?

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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.

If anything, I find that students can be quite stubborn when it comes to their opinions. I know that I and my friends were.

I know where it comes from initially - but Faith seemed to be directing the comments at Crashfrog (she used 'you' an awful lot).

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By their ridicule of and absolute refusal to give any credence to the other side of an issue.

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So, a History professor who ridicules and absolutely refuses to give any credence to the "other side" of the "Holocaust issue" is "intimidating students", not "demanding critical thinking and challenging opinions"?Is it wrong for this History professor to ridicule Holocaust denial?

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The problem is that the system does not challenge leftist beliefs, only conservative ones.

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Care to show evidence of this claim?