Posted on 01/20/2006 7:43:08 PM PST by Born Conservative
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - A conservative alumni group dedicated to "exposing the most radical professors" at the University of California at Los Angeles is offering to pay students $100 to record classroom lectures of suspect faculty.
The Web site of the Bruin Alumni Association also includes a "Dirty Thirty" list of professors considered by the group to be the most extreme left-wing members of the UCLA faculty, as well as profiles on their political activities and writings.
UCLA Chancellor Albert Carnesale on Thursday denounced the campaign as "reprehensible," and school officials warned that selling or distributing recordings of classroom lectures without an instructor's consent violates university policy.
News of the campaign prompted former Republican congressman James Rogan, who helped lead impeachment proceedings against former President Bill Clinton in the U.S. House of Representatives, to resign from the group's advisory board.
"I am uncomfortable to say the least with this tactic," Rogan, now a lawyer in private practice in California, said in an e-mail resignation made public by the Los Angeles Times. "It places students in jeopardy of violating myriad regulations and laws."
At least two other members of the group's advisory board, which consists of more than 20 individuals, also have quit over the group's efforts to have students record their professors.
The group, which is not affiliated with UCLA or its official alumni association, is the creation of Andrew Jones, a 2003 UCLA graduate who said he runs the organization mostly on his own with $22,000 in private donations.
Jones told Reuters he is out to "restore an atmosphere of respectful political discourse on campus" and says his efforts are aimed at academics who proselytize students from either side of the ideological spectrum, conservative or liberal.
"We are concerned solely with indoctrination, one-sided presentation of ideological controversies and unprofessional classroom behavior," Jones said on his Web site.
Jones' site describes his campaign as "dedicated to exposing UCLA's most radical professors" and his list of the university's "worst of the worst" singles out only professors he says hold left-wing views.
Jones said he would only accept recordings from students whose professors consented in writing to have their lectures taped. And students would only be paid $100 if they furnished complete recordings of every class session, as well as detailed lecture notes and all other teaching materials from the class.
Jones, who also is offering to pay $50 for notes and materials only, said one student has signed up to participate and two others have expressed interest so far.
UCLA spokesman Phil Hampton said the university planned to send Jones a letter warning him that faculty hold copyrights to all their course materials and that his campaign encouraged students to violate school policy.
Rats scurrying at the light of day.
IIRC, in 1532 one Jean of Cahors [?], a professor of Toulouse University, was exposed as a heretic by his students and then given the customary thermal treatment. In comparison with that, UCLA campaign cannot be called "reprehensible" by any stretch of imagination.
The left always finds it reprehensible when they are exposed. It violates some vague but undefined right. One of those penumbras.
Can somebody inform the professors at UCSD that they are next?
Jones' site describes his campaign as "dedicated to exposing UCLA's most radical professors" and his list of the university's "worst of the worst" singles out only professors he says hold left-wing views.
Just because it feels good, doesn't make it right. On the other hand, pumping impressionable youth full of bile in class is worse, but two wrongs don't make a right.
I would think profs would be flattered to have their words made public. It's no secret; it's public, what they say.
I teach, and I haved great fun making fun of political correctness, questioning global warming with opposing facts and viewpoints, and slammo-dunking the idiocy of communism every chance I get. I would like nothing better than to have someone secretly taping me, so the words could be played to a larger audience (and I would be given the chance to defend them -- in the press, or otherwise).
Oops! "haved" = "have had"
Don't most students tape classes anyway at this university? If you have 700 students in your auditorium, I would think you might want to tape the lecture to digest later?! It's a public university; therefore, public info. No?
Yes -- they say it in public, they get paid to say it to YOUR kids. But they don't want to be held responsible for what they say. Hmmm, cannot have it both ways. What if a student were recording a lecture for study purposes? Often they do.
I think as long as students don't sell the tapes, I don't think it is a problem. Many students tape the lectures because professors speak very quickly, the material is can be dense and sometimes the professor has an accent that makes it hard to understand with the first listen. I believe the students have paid for the information with their tuition and they can dispose of it at their discretion.
They're attempting to claim that it's a violation of the professors' intellectual property rights. I've also heard of attempts being made to make students sign NDAs, or at least seen it talked about (not sure how "real" that one is).
These tactics are purely an attempt to hide the real issue, which is the extreme political bent many professors bring to the classroom, often in inappropriate ways (massive attempts at "feminism" indoctrination in Freshman English Comp & Lit classes, that sort of thing).
With the venom these professors force their students to listen to, you would expect the students to offer the tapes of their class "free" to the alumni group, in the hopes that indoctrination might be eliminated at UCLA.
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