Campus Conservatives Should Toughen Up and Act Like Real Conservatives
A UCLA alumni group has been documenting the liberal outbursts of UCLA professors and then posting the professors’ names and profiles on a website. Apparently this is so the whole world can know what a bunch of radical lefties UCLA employs.
Clearly this group has a right to do this, even if there is something a little McCarthy-ist about the whole thing. But I’m much more interested in the greater cultural implications here. This alumni group is just part of a growing number of conservatives who believe our universities are hurting America by indoctrinating young minds into the liberal ideology while suppressing conservative beliefs.
Well, God knows that academia has its share of wild-eyed leftist loonies. And I certainly think any professor who doesn’t allow open discourse in his or her classroom should be reprimanded by university administrators. But the idea that there’s some sort of leftist indoctrination going on is just partisan politics played out in the world of academia. College students can think for themselves and it's pretty insulting to say that one or two professors, no matter how opinionated, are going to turn students into America-hating, Bush-bashing tree huggers.
If conservatives have such a problem with the preponderance of liberals on university faculties, I suggest they get their PhDs instead of their MBAs and go teach. And this idea that conservatives are being harassed might be anecdotally true, but it’s not a serious issue. And even if it were serious, aren’t conservatives the ones always telling other “victims” to toughen up and stop seeking special rights?
According to the UCLA alumni group, after reading their exposes on liberal professors, “[t]he need for an academic freedom movement that respects both the professor and the student should become clear.” So what they want is respect? Apparently the poor conservatives are getting their feelings hurt.
My suggestion: toughen up and be a real conservative that doesn’t back down and doesn’t whine when the world is unfair. Either that, or create a college course called “The Victimization of Campus Conservatives: A Comparative Study in Oppression.” That’ll show those liberals.
Thanks to Ann Althouse for alerting me to this story.
Clearly this group has a right to do this, even if there is something a little McCarthy-ist about the whole thing. But I’m much more interested in the greater cultural implications here. This alumni group is just part of a growing number of conservatives who believe our universities are hurting America by indoctrinating young minds into the liberal ideology while suppressing conservative beliefs.
Well, God knows that academia has its share of wild-eyed leftist loonies. And I certainly think any professor who doesn’t allow open discourse in his or her classroom should be reprimanded by university administrators. But the idea that there’s some sort of leftist indoctrination going on is just partisan politics played out in the world of academia. College students can think for themselves and it's pretty insulting to say that one or two professors, no matter how opinionated, are going to turn students into America-hating, Bush-bashing tree huggers.
If conservatives have such a problem with the preponderance of liberals on university faculties, I suggest they get their PhDs instead of their MBAs and go teach. And this idea that conservatives are being harassed might be anecdotally true, but it’s not a serious issue. And even if it were serious, aren’t conservatives the ones always telling other “victims” to toughen up and stop seeking special rights?
According to the UCLA alumni group, after reading their exposes on liberal professors, “[t]he need for an academic freedom movement that respects both the professor and the student should become clear.” So what they want is respect? Apparently the poor conservatives are getting their feelings hurt.
My suggestion: toughen up and be a real conservative that doesn’t back down and doesn’t whine when the world is unfair. Either that, or create a college course called “The Victimization of Campus Conservatives: A Comparative Study in Oppression.” That’ll show those liberals.
Thanks to Ann Althouse for alerting me to this story.
posted by Alan Stewart Carl at 3:02 PM
1 Comments:
'Tis amusing that this whole approach was pioneered by ex-lefty David Horowitz.
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