UCLA Alumni Group Is Tracking 'Radical' Faculty - Los Angeles Times

Link: UCLA Alumni Group Is Tracking 'Radical' Faculty - Los Angeles Times.

A fledgling alumni group headed by a former campus Republican leader is offering students payments of up to $100 per class to provide information on instructors who are "abusive, one-sided or off-topic" in advocating political ideologies.

The year-old Bruin Alumni Assn. says its "Exposing UCLA's Radical Professors" initiative takes aim at faculty "actively proselytizing their extreme views in the classroom, whether or not the commentary is relevant to the class topic." Although the group says it is concerned about radical professors of any political stripe, it has named an initial "Dirty 30" of teachers it identifies with left-wing or liberal causes.

Some of the instructors mentioned accuse the association of conducting a witch hunt that threatens to harm the teaching atmosphere, and at least one of the group's advisory board members has resigned because he considers the bounty offers inappropriate. The university said it will warn the association that selling copies of professors' lectures would violate campus rules and raise copyright issues.

Comments

[rwilson]

Sounds like a great idea. The payment seems a bit ridiculous, but its time that there is a structure of checks and balances in today's world of academics. I have no problem with liberal professors, in fact I as I have mentioned to several of my former professors I believe that their teachings strengthened my education because I was constantly trying find an argument against them. What needs to stop are personal attacks aimed to make students look silly or misguided for their beliefs. There is no place in any classroom for such behavior.

[Alain]

I have never been so frightened of the political environment in all my life. God help us.

[Jodi]

Alain, I agree.

Ryan, first, there are checks--student evaluations and the tenure process. Also, my experience has been that students go to the Dean's when they have a problem with a professor, again, another check. Also, the UCLA matter is not simply about 'stopping personal attacks' (because as far as I can gather no one has complained of being personally attacked) and it is not about personal attacks in general (from anyone to anyone). Rather, it is a politically motivated witchhunt designed to intimidate and silence left wing faculty.

It must be that the right think that left ideas are dangerous and that students shouldn't be exposed to them.

[rwilson]

I'm on the right and I feel that people should be exposed to all ideas including the far left. In fact I am far more scared of far right ideology than that of the far left. It shocks me that you would find the current system of evaluations and tenure review productive. I find it a wildly flawed system mostly because I feel as though the students that write reviews only do so if they had an incredible experience or a horrible one. Thus in the end the battle becomes one of who has the fewest enemies or the most friends. As far as the deans are concerned, their response is typically drop the class if it is causing a problem and we will bring it up in their review.
From my personal experience at Hobart I loved the liberal discourse. Yeah I did my fair share of complaining, but there was no one forcing me to be a double major or take your classes (in fact almost everyone I asked told me not to do either). In the end it was a great decision (yes including taking modern political theory) that has already had an impact on my post-college life. What I feel needs to be addressed is the fact that the current system is flawed in the matter that the reviews are far too infrequent and can have too harsh of a penalty if they are not deemed successes.

[Jodi]

If the problem is that students are filling out the evaluation forms, then paying students to tape professors (UCLA) is not the solution.

When I was Department chair and students complained to the Deans, the matter was not simply 'drop the class.' Rather, the Deans contacted me about the faculty member, I met with them, with the member, etc, etc...at times the provost becomes involved.

Do I think there are better ways to evaluate faculty? Yes. But forming black lists and hiring student spies isn't one of them. Do I think that the process can be unfair to faculty. Yes. But, again the UCLA thing isn't about being fair to faculty.

[Rodkong]

"It must be that the right think that left ideas are dangerous and that students shouldn't be exposed to them."

...or vice versa.

I have no problem with a left-wing faculty when they are confined to the political science department, but when left-wing politics enter into English class or departments where they don't belong, then I have a problem...This is not simply a witch when there are clear cut examples of intolerance among the faculty..(i.e. Israeli students being chastized by professor Said at NYU) A student should be awarded the right to have a competing opinion without the fear of censorship ( or making the student feel like he or she is an idiot)...New ideas (progress) are spawned by competition. Students need to be challenged with a multitude of ideologies, not indoctrinated by a single belief. Yes, maybe the political science department includes Burke/Strauss in their curriculum, but is Burke taught in an objective where the student can decide if he/she accepts or rejects his doctrine?

[Jodi]

Indoctrination? Please. Students take more than one course. They are also exposed to more than what is offered by college syllabi. There is such a thing as reading beyond what is required, learning for oneself, seeking what one wants to know about. For example, I started reading the Frankfurt School and Foucault completely on my own. These texts were assigned in classes I was taking.

Students are not being censored. And if they feel stupid (when they don't know everything), well, to me that means that they are learning, just like good old Socrates would say.

[rwilson]

Jodi, if we agree (this might be a moment) that the current method and the method being employed at UCLA are both unproductive why don't you write a piece displaying the gray area that exists rather than writing about an extremist group "witch hunting"? If we both agree that there is gray area between letting profs do whatever and a witch hunt then wouldn't that lead you to believe that the vast majority would feel the same way? These are the exact type of examples that I was used to hearing at Hobart, obscure radical right wing views thrown out by my college professors making the impressionable students believe that all right wingers believe this type of crap. It just isn't the truth.

[Rodkong]

...yes, students should take it upon themselves to think outside the box by exploring outside the classroom. No professor ever told me about the National Review or the Atlantic Monthly, publications that Iva told me were too Christian. I sought them out because I was interested. The majority of students are apathetic towards critical thinking and are, therefore, subject to taking a professor at their word rather than taking the time to gain a deeper understanding, which is not free market ideology, but the idea that there is no right answer. This is not the professor's fault, but you must admit that there are those among the faculty who have capitalized on student's ignorance. But like I said in my last post, Left-Wing politics should be reserved for the poli-sci department, not the English department.

....I agree that the UCLA case is far fetched, but there is an overwhelming leftist bias within academia that breeds intolerance to conservative beliefs (conservatives are not white bigots or abortion clinic bombers who want tax cuts so they can shit on the poor) Don't you get tired of the same old speakers telling you what you want to hear?

[hysterical blackness]

I heard this on NPR this morning. Have you checked out the site and the black power salutes that rank the profs?

[Jodi]

My heart just breaks when I hear about oppressed conservatives. It's a real pity that no one will give free market ideology the time of day and that conservative Christians have no role in US government.

[Jodi]

Ryan, I don't see what you are trying to say. In terms of the procedures for faculty review, that's the sort of thing I take up at department meetings and on the committees on which I serve at HWS. In terms of what UCLA is doing, that's news that I find important, important for free speech and important as an indication of what happens in this country. Now, I need to find the link HB mentions.

[s0metim3s]

Speaking at some distance from UCLA, it's the monetary incentive I find fascinating. If I were an UCLA student, I'd be thinking of ways to make some money by arguing that those who suggested that English Departments were not in fact already-political were advocating extreme views.

[Marc Lombardo]

Who has the right to say whether English departments have the right to be political or not? Isn't such a decision itself inherently political, or at the least does it not presuppose a certain ideological position of what politics is or is not? How would such a position justify itself except politically?

[Jodi]

Sometimes and Marc,

Do you mean to suggest that there is something political in the project of establishing and maintaining a natural literature, setting boundaries for what can be recognized as literary, for what counts as proper use of language, for what is artful and edifying? As if there were a politics involved in literatures that deny or acknowledge slavery? that present narratives based on assumptions about families and desire? that carry out explicit class projects for the production of 'citizens' and 'workers'?

[Craig]

Carl Schmitt, of course, tells us that it is the perogative of the sovereign to make the decision on the boundaries of the political and the apolitical. He's quite explicit that this dividing pratice is, itself, political.

For all this whining about "radical left wing" whatever taking over classes... Well, I'm not American and have never gone to an American school, but my fourth year, two semester course on contemporary political theory was, essentially: Hegel, Kojeve, Strauss, Voegelin, Schmitt (first semester) and then Fukuyama, Huntingon, more Schmitt, Ellul, Nietzsche, and Heidegger, and the instructor's terrible book. Constance reference to his "nihilist marxoid 'colleagues'" and the "feminazis" who ran the world.

It's never occurred to me that he should be out a job because I think he is nuts.

[Marc Lombardo]

The first problem I have with the demarcation of "literature" from politics is simply the idea that this is somehow natural or true or obvious a priori. Before there is the idea of literature (and at the very least concomitant with any such idea) there is necessarily a conception of literacy--that is to say, what it means to be a literate person in a given lifeworld. Literacy itself is something which never exists before a truth procedure, or as a definitively established category, but rather it is the (by no means final) result of a series of bona fides tests. If the attempt to remove "the political" from this process was successful (and as this removal could never be successful, those who argue for such a thing do so in bad faith stricto sensu) then would not the result be a notion of politics which is, to say the least, illiterate?

[John Reeve]

Marc,

as someone in the midst of teaching a literature class (at Texas Tech in Lubbock, TX), I just want to say thanks for the last sentence of that last post:

"If the attempt to remove "the political" from this process was successful [...] then would not the result be a notion of politics which is, to say the least, illiterate?"

To be quite lax in my political vocabulary, teaching is inherently political and those who wish to deny this are simply fully within an ideology that cannot recognize a difference between legitimate political disagreement and propaganda.

[Matt]

What Marc said.

[Rodkong]

Maybe you misunderstood my point, left-wing politics should be left to the political science department. I used the English department as an alternative because it as subject that does not mandate or require political discussion, unless it happens to be contained within the specific text. If the class were reading Flannery O’Conner than the subject would turn to religion, if the class were reading Orwell then focus would be political.
I’m not advocating the censorship of professors, but they should not interject their ideology, left or right, if it does not fit within the context of the class. I could have included Science or History in my initial postings because both are fields that require an unbiased approach for maximum understanding. A historian could view the French Revolution from the Marxist interpretation, but then they would not get the entire picture, they would be limiting their scope. In order to get a broader understanding of history, the historian must be willing to include various interpretations that would allow him/her to see the bigger picture…to paraphrase John Shovlin.

Religion is inherently political. Why not teach religion in public schools (all religion, not just Christianity)?

[Kate Marie]

My heart just breaks at the spectacle of a group of mostly tenured professors, who have the kind of job security that the underclass they purport to speak for can only dream about, cowering in their offices at the "intimidation" of a group that has no official authority and very little power to damage them professionally.

The group itself is stupid, stupid, stupid. And I'll repeat --stupid. But the hysterical overreaction to the group is also, well, ... kind of silly. This brouhaha is another example of the way in which the accusation of McCarthyism has become the new McCarthyism. Yes, that's probably too glib, but isn't there some glibness in your analysis as well?

Let me ask you this. Do you think that people outside the UCLA administration -- alumni, parents, taxpayers, etc. -- should be able to view syllabi (at UCLA, they're already online), see class materials, and hear lectures of the professors who teach there? I'm not asking whether they should be able to do so in an official capacity -- that is, with the power to affect a professor's job. But should they be able to do so at all?

[Rodkong]

amen

[Kate Marie]

Here's Eugene Volokh's take on the issue of intimidation. [Please note that elsewhere in that post and in other posts, he is quite critical of the UCLA group itself.]

"Nonetheless, I do think we need to put all this in perspective. My colleagues and I are public servants. We have a certain degree of influence over public affairs, both through our public commentary and through our teaching. Others disagree with us, and think we're doing a public disservice rather than a public service. They're entitled to criticize us, and to monitor our public performance of our duties to see whether that performance is, in their view, lacking. I try to imagine what I would think if someone from the Left set up a site to criticize Prof. Bainbridge, me, and my (rather few) conservative colleagues, and to solicit concrete evidence of our supposed misdeeds; I would like to think that I would recognize that this was their right, both legally and ethically.

Now it's true that this may have a 'chilling effect' in the sense of deterring some people from saying controversial things, in class or outside it. But all criticism has such an effect; much criticism is intended to have such an effect. It's even good when criticism has such a deterrent effect, for instance when it deters us from saying foolish or unsound things. If you criticize my posts, my articles, or my lectures, and I recognize that your criticism is apt — that my lectures were too partisan, or that my arguments were unsound — then I may well change what I say. That's criticism performing its proper function.

And if I think your criticism is unsound, my duty is to remain undeterred. It's not always an easy duty to fulfill. But look: Most of my colleagues have tenure. Even our untenured colleagues have the protection of being reviewed by their peers, and peers who are generally unlikely to much sympathize with what the UCLAProfs.com site says. We're in a much better position than other public servants, who routinely have to deal with criticism. If we're not robust enough to resist unsound criticisms — if we're deterred from saying certain things even when we think they should be said — what's the point of all the employment protections we have?

If people are criticizing us unfairly, we should fault them for that. (Stephen Bainbridge does so, for instance.) But labeling this (as one professor quoted here did) "a reactionary form of McCarthyism" strikes me as no more sound or effective than the pejoratives that UCLAProfs.com sometimes uses itself. As Prof. Bainbridge points out, 'If you can't tell the difference between the abuse of position by a United States Senator backed by the coercive power of the state and the exercise of free speech by a bunch of disgruntled alumni, well....'

Here's the link to the whole post: http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2006_01_15-2006_01_21.shtml#1137628916

[Jodi]

Another way to approach the UCLA matter is to commend those who resigned from the alumni group in question because they disagree with its tactics.

[Scott Eric Kaufman]

I'm with the conservatives on this one. The UCLA English Department, at least, is a hotbed of radical leftist thought. Proof? You want proof? Here's proof:

http://tinyurl.com/afoz8

Anyone who says otherwise is blind to the realities of the oppressed conservative minority in America today.

[Virgil Johnson]

This is a good forum Jodi, I appreciate you opening up the subject. It is important that what we see taking place on campus in this instance, is a mere extension of the general suppressive atmosphere that strangles the public in this country in general.

In essence, ladies and gentlemen, you have entered adulthood when you become a student at a given campus of higher education (which is supposed to be assumed). For years you have been held in the confines/strictures of education since tender childhood. You have been taught to tow the line, and to respect authority for the mere matter of it's existence. Every critical (and revolutionary) bone in your body has been removed by design - that is, critical in the sense of questioning the powers that be. If anyone tells you that public education from your tender years into adulthood is just to learn the "three R's", they are either lying, or hopelessly naive. You were "indoctrinated" to become docile citizens, to contribute in a non-descript nor disruptive form - like a colony of mindless clones. You were given a stilted view, so that you can not see beyond your nations boarders - period.

Now, when you enter the halls of the institutions of higher learning, you are exposed to worldviews - say goodbye to your sheltered existence. Some of your professors are very wise, they know that at times they must strike at the core of your delusions. Truth is both a salve and a sword, it both wounds but to cure. You must be shaken, and you must see the viabilty of other worldviews - where you end up is your own business. You are in a crucible, and you must be challenged because without it you you neither grow nor succeed in life (in any true sense).

Now this leviathan, this government, which is growing day by day wishs to silence any dissent. They want to turn the market place of idea's into conformity. Do not kid yourself, there is a national and concerted effort to silence any effective opposition in education. It wants to remove tenure, which used to be a protective measure to insure position so that a professor did not feel threatened if they voiced dissent. Just type in the name "Horowitz" into Google, and you will find this funded group that wants to quash a free forum of idea's. Even if what is happening at UCLA is a small group of obscure students, eventually it will be picked up by the movement of this intolerance in education.

My suggestion for those who do not want to be challenged, who want to cower beneath the shadow of the status quo - go to Bob Jones University, or some other related campus. Personally, you could join a Patriotic (using the term loosely) Monastery of some sort some place. Truth must be preserved, it must reign - vapid slogans must give way to learned discourse, humanity must be valued above inert comodities, and compassion needs to lie down with personal peace and comfort. All of this can only grow in the fertile soil of unchecked and uncensored institutions of higher learning - without a knowledgable people (in the true sense of the word) we are doomed to tyranny and destruction. mark my words, this is the truth.

You begin to understand that it is not "my country, either love it or leave it" pell mell. That patriotism is not merely marching in form mindlessly to an unknown destination - but that it means to question. That all authority is not merely correct because it exists, and that certain demands are levied. You learn that just because a nation is know for it's internal freedoms, that it does not represent what it does to other countries. You learn that there is much more to maintaining the opulence in this country than merely an entrepreneurial spirit - but that it involves suppression and exploitation both at home and abroad (including war, subversion, death and destruction). The key is to do something about it - but if you deny it's existence, or are purposefully sheilded from it, there is no remedy.

[Kate Marie]

Virgil says:

"For years you have been held in the confines/strictures of education since tender childhood. You have been taught to tow [sic] the line, and to respect authority for the mere matter of it's [sic]existence. Every critical (and revolutionary) bone in your body has been removed by design - that is, critical in the sense of questioning the powers that be. If anyone tells you that public education from your tender years into adulthood is just to learn the 'three R's', they are either lying, or hopelessly naive. You were 'indoctrinated' to become docile citizens, to contribute in a non-descript nor disruptive form - like a colony of mindless clones. You were given a stilted view, so that you can not see beyond your nations boarders [sic] - period."

-- I'm guessing you ain't from 'round these parts, son. Have you every actually *been* to an American high school? Your amusing idea that they are factories churning out "docile citizens" suggests that you *haven't* been to an American high school. On the other hand, your misspellings and clumsy prose suggest that perhaps you *have* been to an American high school. [Yes, it's a cheap shot, but anyone portraying himself as the patron saint of non-conformity and "critical" thinking is kind of asking for it.]

I'm interested in your insistence that universities are the places where the mindless automatons of global fascist capital -- those who refuse to question "the powers that be" -- must be pierced with the sword of TRUTH. Seems to me you're merely asking them to replace their own form of putative deference to the "powers that be" with yours.

As I read the last part of your comment, I thought I heard shouts of "Amen!" and "Alleluia!" resounding through this comments section. Is your little sermon a sample of the "critical thinking" they're teaching you in the Temple of Truth? Very impressive.

By the way, you might want to ask one of the Knights of Faith at whose feet you lap up the nectar of Critical Thinking to teach you the difference between "it's" and "its."

Scott Eric Kaufmann has the right idea here. Why not laugh at the fools? But I'm guessing the idea of laughing at fools makes some around here uncomfortable. After all, the Other isn't *always* a fool, and the fool isn't *always* the Other.

Can I get an "Amen"?

[Jodi]

Thanks, Virgil. My kids are in elementary school. They learn about Martin Luther King, Jr. but not Malcolm X. The first couple of years after 9/11 school performances included the kids singing a country-western style song, "God Bless the USA." It's rare that the kids here criticisms of past presidents. They do learn that slavery is wrong (something that tended to be glossed over in the public schools I tended in Mississippi and Alabama in the 1970s where the dominant view was still that integration was wrong and that forced integration violated states' rights).

In fifth grade social studies, my son's class were divided into entrepreneurial teams that would compete with each other on setting prices for goods. They were told that the goods were made from raw materials. But there wasn't any attention to the making of the goods, or anything beyond setting the best price. Much of my second grader's math work involves money and paying for things.

I think it makes sense for my kids to know how to use money. I don't think it makes sense that so much of their elementary education involves money and the 'naturalness' of market exchanges.
Because money and the market are the background assumptions on which learning math is based, it becomes difficult, I think, to consider alternatives to the so-called free market, to see the unfreedom in it, and to consider what the use of money might hide.
To my mind, indoctrination is well understood in terms of the background assumptions on which other knowledge is built.

Other assumptions play a role in my the curriculum at my kids' school, however, assumptions that I agree with. So, they learn about the different immigrant cultures that have come into the US; they are taught to value diversity and to respect different traditions. Some people disagree with this kind of indoctrination. I think they should be opposed.

[Jodi]

Kate Marie,
Your cheap shots, as you rightly name them, are bitchy and inappropriate. Your position would have come across much better had you refrained from nasty remarks about typos and the little mistakes that occur when people are typing quickly.

[Virgil]

Kate, I was not trying to write in some sterile, albeit correct form - I have no time nor desire to seek academic perfection as sport, if that bothers you there is nothing I can do (will do). Those who practice cheap shots usually have little else to contribute.

Critical thinking fails when when it can not morally discern right from wrong - it becomes the mental exercise of fools. Mindless allegiance to a system of death and destruction does not make you noble. So I am content (being a "patron saint") to suffer as a martyr by your pedantic pen - but I am satisfied with nothing less than the destruction of wrong presuppositional foundations.

[Kate Marie]

Wait a minute, Jodi ... are you intervening on Virgil's behalf against my "thuggishness"? Funny how silent you stayed -- in the days when I *wasn't* making cheap shots -- about *another* commenter's "cheap shots" and preference for "bitchiness" over argument.

Virgil -- Amen, dude!

[Jodi]

I'm not staying silent now. If you want to comment, then refrain from cheap shots.

[Kate Marie]

Is the change of heart meant for me alone or is it a general policy?

[pebird]

Michael Bérubé has an appropriate perspective:

http://www.michaelberube.com/index.php/weblog/mister_answer_man_special_ucla_edition/

[Rodkong]

Virgil

"My suggestion for those who do not want to be challenged, who want to cower beneath the shadow of the status quo - go to Bob Jones University, or some other related campus."

...According to this logic, you must be a supporter of states' rights, a tenet of American conservatism. (go live in an area of the country that fits your values.)This comment also indicates that you have both regional and racial prejudices. (what if you said, all blacks should go to Howard University?) Are you only tolerant of those who share your views? That doesn't sound very challenging to me.

[Rodkong]

"Other assumptions play a role in my the curriculum at my kids' school, however, assumptions that I agree with. So, they learn about the different immigrant cultures that have come into the US; they are taught to value diversity and to respect different traditions. Some people disagree with this kind of indoctrination. I think they should be opposed."

...I think it's unfair to make a correlation between capitalism and the lack of public school curriculums that teach the value of diversity. Nationalistic propaganda is not the product of capitalism, but the product of bureaucracy. I'm guessing the Russians teach their students
about Stalin's forced collectivization, pogroms, and the extinction of the kulaks.