7 Comments »

1. 1 Chris

   July 3, 2008 @ 10:13 pm CEST

   All three of my kids (two graduated and one a junior) commented on their frustration with strongly-liberal biased profs. Not all of them were ready for retirement.

   This quote gets me:
   “Schools in the United States promise equal opportunity. They have not kept that promise. In this course, we will try to find out why.”

   You don’t introduce your “bias”/conclusion at the beginning of the course. Wouldn’t it be better to say “…In this course we will try to find out if schools have kept their promise” By the very nature of the teacher/pupil relationship, the more powerful position of the teacher will “encourage” students to “see it their way”

2. 2 Chuck Norton

   July 3, 2008 @ 10:45 pm CEST

   My upcoming book is on this very subject. Thanks for your input.

3. 3 Connor

   July 3, 2008 @ 11:28 pm CEST

   Doesn’t seem that crazy to suggest that some schools suck and others do quite well.

   But I do agree with you about the bias.  But I think the effect is caused more by the structure of universities rather than the faculty.  When you emphasize "free inquiry" without any sort of moral or religious guidance, and then add a great number of idealistic (and often hedonistic) young people, it almost inevitably results in liberalism.

   At least that’s my impression; unlike most of my classmates I had  been a Marine before going to college and thus had a slightly different view of things.

4. 4 Chris

   July 4, 2008 @ 12:36 am CEST

   “a great number of idealistic (and often hedonistic) young people, it almost inevitably results in liberalism”

   If my kids are at all indicative then this would not quite apply since they found their liberal profs (and not all were liberal) MORE liberal than they were.

5. 5 Connor

   July 4, 2008 @ 2:56 am CEST

   I’m sure there are moderate and even conservative professors out there, but what I’m arguing is that it’s the system that you find in universities which promotes liberalism.

6. 6 Bill W Stl

   July 4, 2008 @ 4:04 am CEST

   Not sure I understand - somehow because the old liberal college professors are retiring that they have not been hiring in their image for the last 35 years? One thing that is not diverse about colleges is ideology of the staff.

7. 7 Lucrèce

   July 4, 2008 @ 3:08 pm CEST

   This means that the old liberal guard, who has dominated education in the US and in the rest of the Western world for decades, may lose its influence.
   Do you think really that prominent American scholars of 1970’s-1980’s like Bernard Lewis, Lucy S. Dawidowicz and Raul Hilberg were dangerous liberal activists? Or, that, since 1970’s, Prof. Lewy is a leftist?

   I’ve noticed this at my own university; where the old guard realizes that there are those who can seriously disagree with their views, the new bunch seems to assume that every well educated person is highly progressive, agrees that the United States and Israel are forces for evil, are convinced that capitalism is the most evil system ever created by mankind, and so on.
   And they eat children during their breakfeast, probably?

   Sorry, mister van der Galiën, but this superficially done attack against progressive academics could not leave me indifferent, for reasons that you believe. I do not recognize, in this bar-room philosophizing, the Michael van der Galiën who challenge the Armenian lies.

RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URL

Leave a comment

PoliGazette Comments Policy

PoliGazette encourages comments from all viewpoints, especially those that disagree. Comments submitted must, however, adhere to the following standards. Comments that violate these standards may be edited or deleted without notice at the sole discretion of the editors. Commenters who repeatedly or egregiously violate these standards or who attempt to argue publicly with editors regarding the comments policy may be banned from commenting further.

(1) Comments should address the substantive content of the post. Comments that repeatedly or blatantly misrepresent the content of the post or of others' comments are not welcome. Comments that respond to something other than which the contributor or commenter may have said are irrelevant and should not be posted.

(2) Comments should avoid vulgarity as well as racial, ethnic, religious, or sexual bigotry.

(3) Comments should not personally attack the character, personal integrity, or professional reputation of any PoliGazette contributor or of other commenters.

(4) Comments should reflect the contributions of the commenters themselves and should not include extensive cut-and-paste reproductions of others' words except insofar as necessary to supplement the commenter's own arguments. Link spam, trackback spam, and propaganda spam will be instantly deleted.

(5) Public figures are considered open to all substantive criticism of their policies and statements. Comments that present objectively false factual information about public figures (i.e. "Obama is a Muslim") or that attack public figures by attacking their families are not welcome. Comments that merely repeat slogans for or against a candidate without engaging in substantive comment are not welcome.

Questions or challenges to these policies or their application should be directed to the editors by email only.