RKMBs Forums .::Important::. Politics and Current Events How Liberal Profs Harass Conservatives

BERKELEY, California - The latest elections show a country divided half and half between red and blue, but you would not know it to look at today's public universities. They have become a haven for 1960s-style radicals. So when University of Colorado professor Ward Churchill said the Americans killed on 9-11 deserved it, his words did not seem all that shocking on many campuses.

Churchhill is not the only radical Left professor who spews anti-American statements on campus these days. In fact, Dan Flynn says nearly every public university in the U.S. is dominated by the Left and an overwhelming number of liberals on the faculties. Flynn keeps an eye on such professors through the Conservative Leadership Institute and wrote about them in his book, "Intellectual Morons."

A new study Flynn is just releasing shows how lopsidedly they donated cash to Sen. John Kerry (D-MA). He remarked, "At Harvard, for instance, for every 32 dollars that went to John Kerry, one went to George W. Bush. At MIT just down the road, it was 43 to one. At Princeton, it was about 300 dollars for Kerry for every one dollar to Bush."

Almost half of the students recently surveyed for the American Council of Trustees and Alumni at the nation's top 50 universities say their professors, most of them Left-leaning, comment often on politics in their classrooms, even if the course they are teaching has nothing to do with politics.

Bucknell University's Allison Kasic told us about a chemistry class held the day after the election.

Kasic said, "Basically, half the class of an hour-and-a-half class was just spent complaining about the election and saying how dumb the country is. And how does that help you learn anything about chemistry?"

In the same survey, nearly a third of students said they feel they have to agree with their professors' political or social views in order to get a good grade.

ACTA (Association of College Trustees and Alumni) President Anne Neal said, "We were really quite shocked that there was such a great degree of evidence of political pressure in the classroom."

Amaury Gallais, Vanessa Wiseman and Andrea Irvin all hold offices in Berkeley’s Club of the College Republicans, and all have seen the intimidation and prejudice against all things conservative at their famously radical university.

Irvin said, "If the professor has a Leftist opinion in class, students feel very fearful of making a comment to counter that."

At Foothill College, south of San Francisco, one conservative Kuwaiti student on a visa was ordered to get a mental checkup because of his pro-American views.

Denis Hiller had a friend who dared write a paper defending capitalism. "The professor gave him an F. On the paper, he wrote a long essay of his own saying explaining why socialism is better. My friend handed in a paper using basically the teacher's talking points, toeing the party line, and got an A."

Flynn said, "There's a college in Florida that has banned a student group from showing 'The Passion of the Christ' because ostensibly it's R-rated. Now the interesting thing about that is very recently before that, there was an X-rated play about Jesus Christ that was staged on the campus, but they had no problem with that."

....whole runs of a conservative campus newspaper have been stolen.

"Any flyer that promoted anything pro-American, pro-Israel, anything that challenged the dogma of this campus, it would be taken down."

...."In the 2000 election, I wanted to register, and they asked what my party affiliation was. I said, 'Republican.' They said, 'We don't register Republicans here.'"

Former Leftist-radical-turned-conservative firebrand David Horowitz is dedicated to trying to get states and their universities to end all these political shenanigans on-campus and return to offering an objective education.

Horowitz said, "A law professor opened his class by saying, 'You all know what the R in Republican stands for? It stands for Racist.' A student objected, and the professor slapped the student down, saying 'We have too many Nazis like you on the campus.'"


Stanford's Bob Sensenbrenner heads up his chapter of College Republicans.

Sensenbrenner remarked, "I'm always embattled here. We have the administrators approving class, the Stanford Democrats using classrooms to call voters for John Kerry, but if I'm trying to hold a meeting, I get hassled by Meeting Services and get told that I have to leave till they can go back and check their records."

Flynn said, "When it is almost unanimous for one candidate, it suggests there's something really, really wrong with higher education."

Yaron stated, "I know of a professor that assigned a paper for students to describe how President Bush is a war criminal."

Neal said, "If this had been a case of sexual harassment, I dare say that it would have prompted a great deal of attention. It should equally draw attention now, because clearly it's almost a political harassment in the classroom where they're not being allowed to hear both sides of the issue."

Diversity is all the rage on campus these days -- racial, sexual, cultural diversity -- but maybe in the area where it matters the most, diversity of thought, well, there seems to be less and less tolerance for that.

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rex said:
Fucking commies.

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What bugs me is that no one thinks any of this anti-Conservative bent is any fault of the Conservatives.

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Jim Jackson said:

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rex said:
Fucking commies.

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What bugs me is that no one thinks any of this anti-Conservative bent is any fault of the Conservatives.

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This November, three academics--Daniel Klein (an economist at Santa Clara University), Andrew Western (a student at the same institution), and Charlotta Stern (a professor at Stockholm University)--published two carefully constructed academic studies of party registration and ideology among academics at a range of institutions.

The full results, downloadable at NAS.org, will eventually be published in Academic Questions, the journal of the National Association of Scholars.

"The data indicate that the one-party character of academia is quite uniform across campus," summarize Klein and Western.

The mono-mindedness on campus is actually deeper than even these data indicate, Klein and Western suggest, and likely to deteriorate in the future. Why? Because the few Republicans who do exist on campus are mostly older faculty. Among full professors at Berkeley and Stanford, the ratio of Democrats to Republicans is 7:1. But among younger untenured assistant and associate profes-sors it's a ridiculous 31:1. Among the rising generation of professors, in other words, Republicans are almost extinct.

This, Klein and Western comment, "strongly suggests the problem has gotten worse over the past decades, and suggests that selection mechanisms have been working in ways that eliminate Republicans.... The situation will get worse before it gets better, because the full professors, where Republicans are to be found, are the ones who will exit the population soonest."

College campuses today, the authors conclude forcefully, are way out of whack politically. The dominant orthodoxy "amounts to a one-party system. That is no longer a matter of conjecture. It is established fact."

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the G-man said:
The problem with arguing that "conservative profs will do it too" is that there are very, very, few conservative professors out there

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Jim Jackson said:Professors historically tend to be liberal. Again, this is nothing new.

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If faculties are full of Liberal professors and yet there are more and more Conservative students...I respond...tough shit. I thought part of going out into the "real world" means learning to adapt. So, Conservative students, adapt. Or don't. But stop fucking whining about it. If you have a Conservative argument to make, then make it in a scholarly fashion or don't. But don't whine that the Big Bad Old Liberal Professor doesn't like me and won't pass me because I'm a Conservative.

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the G-man said:
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So...discrimination of thought and intellectual stagnation is A-OK as long as the "censors" are liberals?

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the G-man said:

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Jim Jackson said:Professors historically tend to be liberal. Again, this is nothing new.

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Actually, I believe it didn't start to this point until the 1960s, when many people stayed in academia to avoid the draft.

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the G-man said:
So...discrimination of thought and intellectual stagnation is A-OK as long as the "censors" are liberals?

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the G-man said:
College campuses today, the authors conclude forcefully, are way out of whack politically. The dominant orthodoxy "amounts to a one-party system. That is no longer a matter of conjecture. It is established fact."

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the G-man said:
The first thing I would suggest as a whole is a real acknowledgement of the problem so that we, as a society, can discuss solutions.

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In the short term, I think professors who engage in the type of behaviors described above should be fired, tenure or no tenure.

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the G-man said:
Among full professors at Berkeley and Stanford, the ratio of Democrats to Republicans is 7:1. But among younger untenured assistant and associate profes-sors it's a ridiculous 31:1. Among the rising generation of professors, in other words, Republicans are almost extinct.

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The dominant orthodoxy "amounts to a one-party system. That is no longer a matter of conjecture. It is established fact.

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PaulWellr said:
Am I the only person who fails to understand why conservatives see liberal majorities in Universities as vindication of their allegations of some anti-conservative bias? After all, all this show is that some of the best-educated, most-informed people America overwhelmingly reject the GOP. Why is this seen as an indictment of academia, rather than as an indictment of the Republican Party?

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PaulWellr said:
I don't, however, see much evidence outside the article to back this up. Mostly, the assumption here is that the leftward tilt is prima facie evidence of anti-conservative discrimination.

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Jim Jackson said:

I also do not feel it's a problem that Universities in general are havens for Liberalism. As I've said, this has LONG been the case. I think it's also the general case that educated people (people with advanced degrees) tend to be Liberal. And Universities are full of educated people LOL.

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According to Woolcock, he never "threatened" al-Qloushi's visa status or "threatened" him "into seeking regular psychological treatment," as al-Qloushi claimed. Woolcock also noted that al-Qloushi had "failed to write the mid-term assignment" and had turned down offers of assistance before turning in his final term paper:


When I read the paper, it became clear to me that it did not respond to the question. In late November, after grading all final papers, I asked Mr. al-Qloushi to come and discuss with me the grade. ... [H]e expressed in great detail, concerns and feelings of high anxiety he was having about certain developments which had occurred over ten years ago in his country. Some aspects of his concerns were similar to certain concerns expressed in his paper.

Based on the nature of the concerns and the feelings of high anxiety which he expressed, I encouraged him to visit one of the college counselors. I neither forced nor ordered Mr. al-Qloushi to see a counselor; I have no authority to do so. My suggestion to him was a recommendation he freely chose to accept and which he acknowledged in an e-mail message to me on December 1, 2004.

Foothill College counselors are competent and highly respected professionals capable of providing professional services to students, and faculty members are always encouraged by the college administration to make such referrals to college counselors as the need may arise.

In my conversation with Mr. al-Qloushi, I did not make any reference, explicitly or implicity [sic], to the Dean of International Students or to any other Dean. In my conversation with Mr. al-Qloushi, I did not make any reference, explicit or implicit, to Mr. al-Qloushi's status as an international student. At the time of our conversation, Mr. al-Qloushi was still enrolled in my class, but after he met with the counselor, he never returned to the class.

I deny unequivocally all the allegations Mr. al-Qloushi has attributed to me regarding my suggestion to him that it might be helpful for him to discuss his long-standing concerns with a college counselor, as I have described here. All the other allegations made are false and have no basis whatsoever in fact.

Al-Qloushi's essay, which is posted on Horowitz's Students for Academic Freedom website, has been described by conservative blogger and political science professor James Joyner as "an incredibly poorly written, error-ridden, pabulum-filled [sic], essay that essentially ignores the question put forth by the instructor." Another conservative blogger, political science professor Steven Taylor, concluded: "I can see how this essay resulted in a failing grade."

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klinton said:
I was not disagreeing with you, or questioning your conclusion. Just be prepared for idiot fucktards (like...um...Rex...) to reply with an 'all knowing' vengence.

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I'm used to the abuse.

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Jim Jackson said:
What's your point?

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Jim Jackson said:
I'm not a Consitiution scholar. I can't answer whether or not the student's response is a *scholarly* work. You need another Constitution scholar to evaluate the work to see if it's a scholarly response.

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Jim Jackson said:
And what year of college is this guy in?

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Jim Jackson said:
What grade did this response get?

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klinton said:

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Jim Jackson said:

I also do not feel it's a problem that Universities in general are havens for Liberalism. As I've said, this has LONG been the case. I think it's also the general case that educated people (people with advanced degrees) tend to be Liberal. And Universities are full of educated people LOL.

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Are you really prepared for the shitstorm this statement is going to cause?

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I think the main causes of the partisan disparity on campus have little to do with anything so nefarious as discrimination (or with Republicans not being that smart ). First, Republicans don't particularly want to be professors. To go into academia — a highly competitive field that does not offer great riches — you have to believe that living the life of the mind is more valuable than making a Wall Street salary. On most issues that offer a choice between having more money in your pocket and having something else — a cleaner environment, universal health insurance, etc. — conservatives tend to prefer the money and liberals tend to prefer the something else. It's not so surprising that the same thinking would extend to career choices.