Sherry Chandler » How did we get to this point?
How did we get to this point?
How did we get to the point where this sort of thing is tolerated at all?
LOS ANGELES, California (Reuters) — 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.
The Web site of the Bruin Alumni Association also includes a “Dirty Thirty” list of professors considered by the group to be the most extreme left-wing members of the UCLA faculty, as well as profiles on their political activities and writings.
I heard a report about this on Morning Edition yesterday morning. The last several years have given me much to be outraged about, but this kind of thought policing is both outrageous and frightening. In the NPR report, they interviewed one student who said her women’s studies professor had said she had to be careful, now, what she said for fear of being blacklisted.
Think about that.
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3 Comments
1. Terry replies at 21st January 2006, 12:41 pm :
This seems to be a scary outgrowth of ratemyteachers.com and ratemyprofessors.com, which compile yea and nay lists of teachers by students. Your class “too tough?” Get a low rating. Nasty stuff.
2. MW replies at 23rd January 2006, 12:46 am :
This seems like a rather nasty extension of the “liberals are evil” slop that some people want to push now. When I heard of this, I immediately thought of some of the best professors I had in college. I don’t know that they were radical liberals, but likely the simple fact that they weren’t shy about speaking their minds about U.S foreign policy would get them on the list. But they were good at what they did, and when the gave their political opinions it had a purpose. Not that this matters anymore, I suppose.
Of course, as the article points out, no one is allowed to tape a lecture without the professors permission. So much for ethics.
3. poppysmatus replies at 23rd January 2006, 12:48 pm :
Turkish court proceedings against Orhan Pamuk have just been dismissed. He is the novelist who was charged with defaming the character of Turkey by chatting up a Swedish newspaper about that genocide of a million or so Armenians in the early 20th Century. He also mentioned the current Kurdish revolt in Turkey. There are new laws in Turkey which make this kind of national defamation a crime, but the Turks want to join the Euopean Union and have become sensitive about appearing to suppress the freedom of speech. Similar cases against less famous defendents have yet to be dismissed, and the prosecutor is appealing the dismissal of Pamuk’s case. I recall that one of the charges against Socrates related to subverting the values of young Athenians– bet patriotism was at the center of said values. Of course, Athens had just lost the Peloponnesian War, and Socrates must have forgotten that everyone still needed to watch what they said, watch what they did.
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