Jim Stone has been telling us about the anti-conservative culture on university campuses. Here’s a news story about some students who are trying to do something about it.
http://www.cnn.com/2004/EDUCATION/01/21/students.website.ap/index.html
Best wishes,
Jerry
Conservative kids at Boulder? You’re kidding.
I think shutting up conservative faculty is one thing. Students who arrive at college with one view or another and no willingness to question it or be exposed to other views should be discriminated against. And given bad marks.
The only possible reason they signed up at Boulder was so that they can whine about “liberal bias” and cause trouble.
A brain is like a parachute.. it only works if its open. These close minded little <e.d.> are wasting faculty time, and university resources.
You have to be kidding. CU is a fine school with many programs not available at other Colorado state schools. Both my brother and sister were in programs at CU available nowhere else in Colorado. I agree the students knew it was a liberal stronghold, as is most of Boulder, but to say the only reason a conservative would go there is to whine is a gross exaggeration.
As far as CU being liberally biased, it’s been known as Berkeley East as long as I can remember, and I went to high school in Colorado in the seventies.
EDITED: Unfortunately my high school didn’t teach me to proof-read.
A lot of college is in fact blatant “liberal indoctrination” (take my multicultural lit course, it’s nothing but a mouthpiece for the instructor to tell us that we’re evil if we don’t adhere to socialist ideals) but unless you’re a mindless sheep you should have the brains to recognize it. Nobody said you had to agree with your professors, just nod your head and bullsh*t your paper and whine a bit to your pals and forget it.
Well, what else is new anyhow? People aren’t happy unless they have a wall to bang their head against. A few kids complaining about the liberal education system isn’t going to make it any more less biased. If anything, it’ll just make life worse for the non-liberal lot involved.
Some kids at a local high school have started a conservative club. It is drawing considerable negative press and attention. An indication that they have struck a sensitive nerve???
TS, some of the things you mention are reasons I have not been able to finish my two year degree. Silly, eh? I just cannot justify kissing a teachers wazoo or jump through their hoops (liberal or otherwise). Getting marked down because answers did not parrot the teachers views close enough is more than this person can tolerate. When that happens I say “See ya!”
Yo, Rando, cool avatar!!
YAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRHHH!!!
I got my doctorate at CU Boulder, and taught there
as a grad student. As far as I can tell, the faculty
isn’t different from other places (they came to
boulder because they got a job there, not
because they’re liberal or counter-culture),
which means that there’s the regular left wing
bias, as at most universities. Most of the
undergrads are there to ski. There are lots
of fraternities and sororities. The University
isn’t really Boulder, in a way.
Student groups tend not to last. Best
well, NorCal, I’m really sorry that the PC brigade has chased you out of an education, but the fact of the matter is (and if I’ve learned only one useful thing at this university thus far, this is it), sometimes you just have to suck it up and jump through the bloody hoops to get what you want. All last semester I was thinking to myself “I’m sick of jumping through hoops” in those exact terms, but guess what? I jumped through them and got straight A’s for my trouble. And I’ll get my degree and leave this dump in a couple years and likely never see any of the jerk professors who gave me hell again. I guess it just boils down to how much it’s worth it to you.
This College Republican stands in full support of those students’ actions. Raising awareness of the left-leaning bias in schools is a good idea.
Ah, Bloomfield. Once again we find ourselves in disagreement. First let me add some facts to this discussion. The conservative paper at my school (which I work for) conducted a study last year where they looked up the political affiliations (a matter of public record) of the professors in the Political Science department. And wonder of wonders, there wasn’t a single Republican in the mix. From the stir this caused, the official campus paper expanded the study to the Economics department and some other departments along those lines. Final answer? A ratio of 45 to 2. Dems to Republicans. It cannot be denied, therefore, that there exists some bias in the hiring/tenuring process.
I can safely speak for most of my colleagues in the College Republicans in that we listen to what is said in class, we disagree, and we can back up why we disagree. Giving grades based on political opinions is a big injustice.
As for me, I went into Engineering. There they are more concerned with whether I can do a double integral than what I think about the correct role of the U.N. Which is as it should be. I did catch some flack from professors in my Humanities and Social Science requirements, but fortunately they are completely irrelevant to my major.
Respectfully yours,
ants
Ah, Bloomfield. Once again we find ourselves in disagreement. First let me add some facts to this discussion. The conservative paper at my school (which I work for) conducted a study last year where they looked up the political affiliations (a matter of public record) of the professors in the Political Science department. And wonder of wonders, there wasn’t a single Republican in the mix. From the stir this caused, the official campus paper expanded the study to the Economics department and some other departments along those lines. Final answer? A ratio of 45 to 2. Dems to Republicans. It cannot be denied, therefore, that there exists some bias in the hiring/tenuring process.
Doesn’t follow. The applicants may well have been almost
all Dems; hardly surprising. Also one’s political affiliiations
typically aren’t brought up in the hiring process and a fair
number of non-leftwingers keep their views
secret until they’re tenured. Just smile politely
when your colleagues Bush-bash, etc.
I’m curious how was
the info gathered? Records of voter registration? Best
could it also be that instead of being poli-sci teachers the republicans are getting real jobs instead?
One does sometimes wonder what disciplines
like political science and sociology amount to,
really. The political science department at
my university was next to the philosophy
department, so I saw a lot of these
people. They seemed to have no grasp
of political process; everything they said
was liberal ideology; it was hard not to be
struck by the fact that they were less realistic,
and often more mistaken in their predictions
about who would win what election, than were
the janitors. There was one conservative in
the department and things so deteriorated
that he and his colleagues sued each other.
Also the department sued one of its
grad students.
There was a lot of quantitative work going on,
about voter demographics. Perhaps that had
some value.
Sociology, also close by,
seemed mostly a matter of Marxism
and feminist ideology. My colleagues
in sociology were talking wistfully of
a violent revolution, which is what would
be necessary to address poverty in
the USA, they said. It’s really rather
hard to believe how zany many of these
people are.
Ideology doesn’t
an academic discipline make. These
disciplines emerged only a century or
so ago, from philosophy, and I suppose
there’s nothing terribly the matter with
doubting their credibility. But I haven’t
read the literature, so I don’t know.
There’s also the converse, “I keep an open mind, but not so open that my brains fall out.” (I first heard Harry Anderson say it, but I suspect it had been said before.)
Mmmmh… Strikes me that if most university staff members are “liberal”, perhaps it is because they are people who think?.. 
Anyway, the media is also supposed to be liberal, right? Another myth conservatives like to perpetuate.
I regularly teach courses in environmental ethics and bioethics without giving a hoot what my students think so long as they argue well for their views. I can say with complete certainty that if any of my pholosophical colleagues were failing students for not agreeing with them we would regard that as seriously unprofessional and deal with it accordingly. I’ve heard allegations of personal bias levelled against colleagues (very rarely) but not accusations of political bias. I suspect that ideological bias plays a role in some subjects in the humanities since some students show an anxiety to find out my views out of all proportion to the zero importance I place on those views in my teaching.
I wonder what examples of bias people have in mind. I would find it hard, although not impossible, to teach environmental ethics to someone who didn’t think there was at least a good case for thinking we have an environmental crisis on our hands. Here, of course, I would still mark the arguments not the conclusions. I’ve almost decided to completely drop racism as a topic from applied ethics subjects, although I think it is very important, simply because I can’t think of any good arguments for racism. Sometimes it is very hard to teach a subject without appearing biased to someone or another. Would someone who failed a history subject for holocaust denial be the victim of left wing bias? Perhaps some social science subjects are intrinsically critical.
When the question of University bias has come up before I’ve asked why nobody seems to protest the evident right wing bias in Commerce and Business faculties. Is there any school in the states churning out MBAs who are convinced socialists?
Does anyone want to talk about the liberal bias in public high schools?!?!?!
Both my daughters experience it…and regularly challenge the faulty statements spouted by the teachers. (Did I mention I tend to lean more conservatively?)
My oldest sat through a math class once where the teacher regularly wasted the entire period castigating the then president or local mayor and how we all had to stand up and vote to get him out of office. Does that sound like math?
As far as college goes, students need to enter wide-eyed. Unless one attends a conservative, religious institution, one will likely be exposed to liberal bias (not that conservative, religious insitutions can’t also be biased ).
But my tax dollars go to support the public schools which are supposed to be giving my children the tools to function in life, including thinking through ideas and wrestling with philosphical issues and their pratcial implications when implemented. Not learning mindless lemming behavior…
Most public education today (and I admittedly speak in generalities–there are exceptions) want kids to take the test well so it appears they’re teaching so they can keep their jobs and the schools can continue to receive government funding. It’s not about the kids, it’s about the money.
-Tom
Perhaps that is true, but I think that can go too far though. Just consider Politicians and Lawyers for example… :roll: Thinking is great, buy one must think about the “correct” things and be willing to put action behind the thoughts.