Posted on 12/11/2004, 5:49:36 PM by Tumbleweed_Connection
Many students at top schools, like the University say that not only are they exposed to liberal viewpoints during lectures, but also that they must agree with their professors’ political views to succeed in classes, according to a new study.
Forty-six percent of students at the top 50 universities and liberal arts colleges say professors use the classroom to present their political views, and 62 percent reported that professors praised John Kerry during the presidential campaign, according to a survey released Nov. 30 by the Washington-based American Council of Trustees and Alumni. The University is ranked 22nd on this list.
In the study released last month by the nonprofit organization, nearly one-third of randomly-selected respondents also said they felt they had to agree with the professor’s political views to get a good grade in the course, and about 42 percent said reading assignments consistently provide only one side of a controversial issue.
Such bias deprives students of a fair and objective education, said Carl Cohen, a philosophy professor who was a vocal opponent of the University’s race-conscious admissions policies.
“It is not a good thing for any university if its faculty is largely populated by persons of any single political persuasion,” he said in an e-mail.
But many faculty use their wallets in addition to their lectures to support liberal views, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, a Washington-based think tank. The center reports that members of the University community ranked 20th on a list of the largest financial contributors nationwide to Kerry. The University of California and Harvard University were the top two contributors to Kerry.
In a similar list of the top 20 Bush contributors, no universities were present amidst the many large corporations.
Monika Chaudhry, an LSA freshman from Ohio, describes herself as very conservative. Even though she is taking English literature classes, she said most of her professors have liberal political views.
“I came to Michigan knowing that it was a very liberal school, so I was prepared to not take offense,” said Chaudhry.
But she said what tipped her off to the liberal bias was when her professors, who had been vocal about the presidential election all year, suddenly lost their voice when President Bush won last month’s election.
“This silence,” she said, “revealed a lot about their political views.”
John Campbell, a professor of political science with avowedly liberal views, said the liberal tilt in the social science faculty is only natural.
Those people attracted to teaching are usually those who are interested in current events, he said. And those who keep up with current events by reading the newspaper and watching the news are more likely than not going to be left-leaning, he added. “The liberal position just makes more sense.”
Pure, un-adulterated Bravo Sierra.
/john
No, the liberal position does not make more sense. What an arrogant snot.
Hey Prof. Campbell why don't you tattoo that on your forehead, or just "Idiot" would be shorter and cheaper. But I guess your students already know that.
Go to a school like the Univ. of Michigan only to study something specific, like engineering, art, or--as I did--music. Go there for a general liberal arts education at the risk of your soul!!
I loved taking classes for moonbat professors (of either orientation). It's so easy to get an A by pretending to agree with them.
Oh how I wish I could afford to go back to college full time. I'd have a ball arguing with these liberal idiots!
Yeah, that's why the least-educated voters went heavily for Kerry. They spend their days in cafes reading Le Monde and Sartre, and their evenings reading a broad spectrum of opinion from around the world on the internet. Only a professor could be so far from reality and still hold a decent-paying job.
I also know how the democrats ran Detroit 25 miles east of your city and how Republicans have ran my county.
Besides arrogant, completely deceptive.
Most of those attracted to teaching are those who hide like cowards in the cubicles of academia. They display their hypocritical aggressive leftism on the backs of the working taxpayers who foot most of the bills! Many of them are former radicals or wannabe radicals who will do anything before they croak to propagandize students. I know becuase I teach with many of them and I hear the complaints from students.
The worst thing is that they replicate themselves in the hiring process.
Here's an outrageous story for you.
I have a friend who is a high school teacher in Arkansas. A group of her students told her that the school librarian said "minorities in America and migrant workers here have it just as bad as the Jews had it during the Holocaust."
My friend has set the record straight by educating them about the Holocaust, but it's extremely sickening to realize the crap some people in education get away with, unchecked.
>The worst thing is that they replicate themselves in the hiring process.
You're right, that's a major problem. The left-liberal cliques just propagate themselves ad infinitum, and there's no end in sight. As a university lecturer I know how bad this problem is, and how biased teachers are against students who don't share their point of view. I always start my classes by emphasising the fact that it's not which argument you make but how you make it, and I personally enjoy it when students disagree with something I say - it makes the classes interesting. Too bad this is a minority approach in the academy.
That's no lie. I graduated with a lib. arts degree in English, and content counted more than structure in a lot of my classes. I wrote some of the most outrageous stuff for my wacko professors simply because I was "playing the game" (and I did so very well).
College today, in my opinion, is 20% effort and 80% head bobbling.
I was fortunate enough to have two conservative English professors (One had a "GOP Safe Zone" sticker on his door, an obvious parody of the "GLBT Safe Zone" stickers that were on most other doors) and one of my professors said in class, and I am serious, that she listened to Rush Limbaugh and thought he was "a hoot".
On the other side of the spectrum, however, I had to listen to how white males were "a**holes" and (in more than one class) that the US was the source of the whole world's problems. Of course, I even heard that the US deserved 9/11.
Sure, I hated some of my classes with a passion. Others were pretty good. Sometimes I wrote papers so obtuse that the profs didn't get what I was saying and gave me an "A" regardless (including the rhetorical affects of the Madrid bombings and a short story about a young woman living with Joseph Stalin that both allegorically blasted the values both profs held dear as revealed in class).
College now is a game. I thought it was a breeze (I returned to college at 28 and I didn't have the youthful distractions that my peers had, but still...) and graduated with a nice 3.9 GPA. Not too bad for a conservative stranger in a liberal strange land...
APf
No, those people attracted to teaching are usually unable to succeed in the sciences, research, or most broad fields of creativity and are fundamentally lazy.
>I wrote some of the most outrageous stuff for my wacko professors simply because I was "playing the game"
That's a really sad inditement of the education system today. When I lecture _all_ my students - from far right to far left - get their say. And if someone writes in a paper that what I say is a load of rubbish, if they put forward the evidence that's fine with me. Strange times we live in.
Good point. As illustrated in the article, professors of this ilk get to exercise their tyrannical tendencies in their little fiefdom called "the classroom".
Funny, but most the liberals with whom I have the misfortune of speaking tell me such gems of "sense" as "I don't read the news (or listen to the news) because it is so right-wing and it depresses me" (or something of equal IR-rationale). That 'splains why they're "liberals". They live in a world with subjective "truths"; i.e. make 'em up as you go along. Of course your idiot friends can't rebut you as they're as uninformed as you are. Telling the left "to get out and vote" is like telling a blind man to "get out and drive".
Amen
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