Conservatives want to ensure their viewpoint heard at colleges; (RawStory)

[Roland99]

http://rawstory.com/news/2005/Conservatives_want_to_ensuring_their_viewpoint_1004.html

Some Republicans are pushing a measure through the House of Representatives meant to ensure that students hear "dissenting viewpoints" in class and are protected from retaliation because of their politics or religion, the (paid-restricted) Wall Street Journal reports Tuesday. Colleges say the measure isn't needed, but with Congress providing billions of dollars to higher education, they are worried. Excerpts.
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The measure's chief promoter, Marxist-turned-conservative activist David Horowitz, says an academic bill of rights will protect students from possible political "hectoring" and discrimination by their professors. "We have enough institutions in America that are political. Let's keep above that fray," he adds.

But professors say Mr. Horowitz really is trying to silence liberal faculty members. "It's an invitation for the government to get involved in the internal affairs of the university," says William Scheuerman, a political scientist at the State University of New York at Oswego, and president of the state's faculty union. "We don't want Big Brother here."

As it is, the measure is a sense-of-Congress resolution that comes with no enforcement powers or funding. Although it has passed a key committee vote, it still faces a long and potentially rancorous party-line fight in the House. There is no companion bill in the Senate.

[WCGreen]

1. Okay, does that mean in econ and finance classes, I can object

to the right wing rhetoric I was subjected to there.....

[Fenris]

2. The only ideologue professor I've ever encountered

Has been a hardcore conservative.

[tainowarrior]

3. what's with this "ideological oppression" stuff?

I'm a progressive, and most of my professors were center to left liberals. I never heard any one of them force their opinions on students, but they did demand that left and right opinions from students be thoroughly defended. Maybe some of these right-wing whiners just couldn't defend their comments and felt they were being pressured by their "liberal" professors. That's not the professors' fault, that's the fault of the argument-incapable right-wing students.

I only had one conservative professors, who I disagreed with several times. He never oppressed me, though he liked to refer to me as the "resident Marxist" in the class. Yeah, he said that. So, you know, I didn't whine about it. I took the class, got my grade, and moved on.

These Republican pansies are full of shit.

[Fenris]

6. It's a plen-t-plaint...

As Tom Frank calls it. A laundry list of supposed injustices committed against hyperbolic conservatives by the nefarious forces of liberalism. Speculation, perceived oppression - and no evidence to back up the claims.

[rurallib]

12. I ran into a web site about a year ago

Horowitz had put it up as a place where conservative students could voice their bad experiences with liberal professors. You think freerepublic has incoherent writing? Compared to this student website, freerepublic is a bastion of higher intelligence.
I often get the impression that there is a large group of under-achievers that feel they can skate by on their religious belief and prayers. They never have to apply themselves. God will take care of them.

[ridgerunner]

13. Well if they don't study and flunk out

it must be god's will

[tainowarrior]

14. or not..

God does not like warmongering people, or people who spend their time thinking how to make life harder for those that are different from them.

My only solace in these trying times is knowing that God will punish those that violate his commandment to be good samaritans to others.

[ridgerunner]

16. So what you're saying is

god isn't a Repuke?

God does not like warmongering people, or people who spend their time thinking how to make life harder for those that are different from them.

[Toots]

4. Republicans want "Big Guvment" in your bedroom, your school, your library

your job and even in your travel and leisure. How do they get away with their meme of keep government out of our lives? How can Republicans in general be so damn stupid? They must just be so insecure that they demand that "Big Guvment" take care of them and make sure sex is only done in missionary position. How could America have sunk so low so quickly?

[tainowarrior]

7. with sheets on

Amish style...make a whole on the sheet, cover your wife, stick penis in hole...voila

[meganmonkey]

5. Why don't they get jobs teaching at Universities

instead of bitching about it?

Oh yeah! I know! Well-educated Conservatives like to make LOTS OF MONEY and can do better in the private sector than they can in education.

So fuck 'em.

Thank goodness for my left-wing liberal education! I am forever grateful :)

(for the sake of accuracy, one of my best professors taught social philosophy and he was a hard-core conservative - we both learned a lot from each other once we got past me being 'a socialist who will never understand this' and him being a 'grumpy old bastard')

[ck4829]

8. Mr. Scheuerman is absolutely correct

David Horowitz is a fraud and a RW hack.

He has done nothing for the Left even when he was a Leftist.

He once tried to say that there is a 'liberal' bias because a student got an F on a paper... But he really deserved that F.

But, of course, most of the nation agrees with this Fraud.

[TlalocW]

9. I can't remember any hectoring from any ideology

The worst instance would have been a biology teacher who would talk loudly with students before class about how great Rush Limbaugh was.

The only comparable liberal one was a Spanish professor who when asked by a conservative classmate if he had watched Limbaugh on tv replied, "I'm not a conservative so I wouldn't have watched." The student replied, "Well, admitting your problem is the first step to overcoming it." The professor and the rest of the class laughed.

My professors tended to actually teach the coursework. Any politics came when I would walk into a faculty office, and they would be arguing politics (mathematics was the office that did this the most).

TlalocW

[WindRavenX]

10. I have seen absolutely nothing about conservatives getting "silenced"

In fact, in the class where I had a hard core RWer, I got excellent grades on my papers.
The bottom line is, I have heard or seen NOTHING where a right wing student was MARKED DOWN in grades for his or her politics; could these people merely be harping about getting bad grades?
Has ANYONE seen what they're talking about?

[Mizmoon]

11. The truth is professors DO punish students for their opinions

When I was an undergrad we had one English professor who everyone knew had two interests - baseball and Buddhism. Write on any other topic and your peril. And you better not write anything bad about the Yankees.

I have also personally experienced having my grade lowered because the instructor didn't like my opinions and comments in class.

Sadly, Horowitz is using this reality to his own conservative ends, which sucks.

[K-W]

15. But Horowitz's argument isn't about bad professors.

Yes there are plenty of professors out there who carry biases into the classroom. But, as you explained, these are personal biases and can be politics, baseball,or anything else.

Horowitz is saying that universities are liberal institutions filled with liberals who suppress conservative opinions. Which is bullshit. Horowitz is a propagandist who wants to create a law by which young republicans could intimidate, and hurt the careers of professors they don't like.

It is an attack on the intelligentsia, plain and simple.

[MGKrebs]

17. I guess if they can't sell their ideology,

they have to try to make it law. Much like religious fundamentalists. If they can't convince the people to believe, they can make them at least act like they believe with laws.

[Boo_Radley]

18. They're just trying to use the schools . . .

. . . to teach their alternate reality. Look at the things that stand as a threat to their growing and maintaining power:

• Schools that teach *real* history and science.


• Courts that shoot down their attacks on the Constitution.


• News that reports what's really happening, rather than what they claim is happening.


• The UN that makes decisions on war democratically.


• The division of religion and government.

Each of those things interfears with their growth and maintainance of power, and each of those things is under attack. They have a bunch of young right-wingers filled up with propaganda from NewsMax and TownHall and Fox and all the other yellow news sites, and it contradicts what's being taught in school, so they want to force schools to lend them some credibility.