Thanks to Sample for making my point even better than I did.
Well, I’d put it this way; certainly not all liberals are postmodernists (I’m liberal on a number of issues), but nearly all of the postmodernists are liberal.
Added to that you have the knee-jerk unwillingness of the professoriat to protect their own: “Well, I wouldn’t go so far as to say that Western Civilization is blight on the human race, but I don’t think that should prevent us from considering professor X, who does, as chair of the History department.” I’m not saying that makes the conflation of the two necessarily right, just inevitable. Ditto the backlash.
Oh, it’s already happening. A number of leading lights (Stanley Fish, for Og’s sake) are saying that theory has played itself out. But as you observed, there is a lot of inertia involved, and the postmodernists will be in power until they die off. By then the damage will be done.
Correction: I just read on the CSPC’s website that Horowitz is one of the founders – so I guess this “Academic Bill of Rights” is really his baby, whatever organizations are pushing it.
From the Students for Academic Freedom website (http://www.studentsforacademicfreedom.org/), these are the eight points of the “Academic Bill of Rights” proposed by Students for Academic Freedom:
According to point 7, Bill O’Reilly’s campaign to stop Ward Churchill from speaking at Hamilton College could not have been “tolerated.”
On the whole, the ABoR cited above by Brain Glutton seems pointless, since these principles are generally accepted. However, #s 4 and 8 seem to me wide open to abuse.
First I don’t buy that “all human knowledge in [the humanities, the social sciences, and the arts]” is “[uncertain] and unsettled”.
And what exactly are these viewpoints other than my own findings and perspectives that I should be presenting to my students? If my research indicates that there is a definitive known answer to a question (e.g., Was the Holocaust an organized effort by the Nazi regime to exterminate groups of undesirables?) am I obligated to present alternative theories anyway, and present them on a par with my findings?
As for “a posture of organizational neutrality with respect to the substantive disagreements that divide researchers on questions within, or outside, their fields of inquiry,” I foresee attempts to use such language to force teachers to present bogus theories espoused by “researchers” supported by politicians but generally discredited by respected researchers in the field.
There will certainly be some who will argue that no one would really interpret this ABoR in the ways I describe. But given the idiocy I see spewed from the floor of the capitol these days, I don’t share that confidence.
Remember, I live in a state where there is strong support among people at all levels of government for the teaching of creationism.
I think you are misreading that article. It appears that Horowitz’ group said things about the hearing which were not true, but as I read it the article does not claim that the hearing did not occur, that the Washington Times coverage of it (which is what I cited, not any Horowitz’ allegations about the hearing) was not accurate or that the testimony which the Times referred to in its article was not accurate.
I think you’re misreading the misreading of the misreading of . . . well, anyway, here’s an update on the story: http://mediamatters.org/items/200503180008#5 Horowitz is dodging and weaving every which way to try to deny his lies ever happened, but it’s not flying.
No, I understand that part. I offer no defense of Horowitz – I know exactly jack about that and my give-a-crap-o-meter registers low enough not to care. But I believe that the Washington Times article, which I cited, stands unchallenged.
Well, the Washington Times covered the hearing and the testimony. That doesn’t mean the testimony was all credible.
I don’t know what that Pierce kid was doing there, because his professor taped the very lecture he was complaining about. She had a history of clashes with conservative students, especially outside the classroom (her politics are pretty, shall we say, out there, and she had already been cited as biased professort). So, given the difficult climate, she started taping her lectures. Pierce sat in the class for one day, decided to drop the class after hearing the first lecture (for the reasons he gave) and issued a grievance. The professor handed over the tape. As I understand it, the tape was reviewed and the statements he attributed to her were never said. Why Pierce persisted, and why he was invited to speak before the Joint Assembly while the incident was being disputed and was still being investigated, remains a mystery. Perhaps the Times reporter didn’t know the backstory on him; it had, admittedly, just started.
Apologies for the bump. But does anyone remember, way back here, when I asked how long until some nut decides a student’s rights are being infringed if they don’t learn about creationism in Biology 101?
There you have it. The author of this bill thinks postsecondary students should have the means to sue if their biology profs don’t talk about Intelligent Design. If this bill passes, it will be a knife in the gut to Florida’s public postsecondary system: potential faculty members who don’t want to have their curricula vetted by teams of lawyers or else get sued by any Scientologist nut who thinks the prof has dissed the Thetans will avoid jobs in Florida like the plague.
Someone explain to me how this is a good idea again?
The Socratic method is the method by which someone (the professor, in this case) asks a series of questions to the student, and in devising the answers the student is forced to clarify and expand their own thinking. So this legislation, then, lets students sue if they get asked any question, in other words. And since the legislation also makes it illegal to state an opinion without providing room for all contrary opinions, and anything can be an opinion and there are always an infinite number of contrary opinions. So a professor, if this passes, would be banned from offering statements or question, and any sentence is a statement or a question. I guess what Republicans want is for a class to consist of the professor standing silently at the front for 75 minutes, making no attempt to communicate with the students.
Ah, conservatives, they would be such a great source of comic relief, if not for the fact that they run the country.
While I strenuously object to the blanket condemnation of “conservatives” and “Republicans” above… In case anyone thought post #146 was fantasy, here we have it.
A quick reminder:
Note that the article cited above mentions holocaust denyers as well as creationists.
(Emphasis mine)
So now you see how this bill will be used. A legislator already admits it’s a Creationist wedge. :mad:
You know, supposing that the legislature did take leave of its senses long enough to pass this thing, and the courts did decide that the first amendment doesn’t apply on college campuses, I think I know how the law would really be applied. “So Professor Jones, you gave me an F, but I’m going to make up some nonsense about you pushing political beliefs unless you give me a passing grade.”