I think I am going to be sick...
The AP report begins:
An alumni group is offering students up to $100 per class to supply tapes and notes exposing professors who allegedly express extreme left-wing political views at the University of California, Los Angeles.
Holy Senator McCarthy Batman!
When will it be clear in the mainstream that things have gone too far? Where is the sense?
When I read this story, just a little blurb really, I felt like I was falling.
When I was little, I used to wonder how things like the rise of the Nazi party could have happened. I mean, weren't there sensible people who witnessed the build up....the book burnings, the systematic and seemingly growing isolation and persecution of various groups, you know, all that stuff we see in movies and old news reels, weren't there people who saw that and who thought "I have to DO something." ? Even if it meant risk, because the risk that is allowed by doing nothing is too great and inevitable.
Wouldn't it have seemed worth it? Otherwise, you'd do what? Sit on your ass and let this happen. Tell yourself you were too scared, too small, too unimportant, too ignorant, too anything to absolve you of your duty as a reasonable thinking human. How could anyone not be moved to action in this type of climate? I used to wonder when I was little.
Now I am watching this here. I am 34. I am horrified. I look around for the others. The sensible reaction, the one that should be so prevalent that the news stations are just filled with people's horror, outrage, demands for this to cease. And I don't fucking see it. Instead, I am witnessing how a collection of amoral intolerant bastards can use fear and blind faith to seduce an entire country into betraying a national trust and acting as one huge evil machine that can be turned on anyone....other countries, leaders of other countries, its own citizens.
There is so much more to this reaction, but that will be for later. For now, I encourage you to go read about it for yourself. And for the love of god, do something, even if all you do is find some public way to express your outrage.
Please.
6 comments:
This is exactly why, for all its faults, the tenure system is still essential in higher education.
It's true that liberal political views are dominant among university faculty, but what people don't realize is that the reason we feel the need to express them occasionally in class is that our JOB is to play devil's advocate to ALL THE CONSERVATIVE STUDENTS we encounter every day. Someone needs to throw out another perspective for them to ponder if they are to graduate fully educated. If all of my students were liberal, I'd throw out the conservative point of view for the same reason. It just so happens that, since they were all born when Reagan was prez, they tend to be much more conservative than, say, my college contemporaries were, being born in the '60s. So when I teach my class on mass media and children and ask about the ethics of advertising to kids, I am met with the following attitude: "Why on earth should marketers have to change? You want them to be RESPONSIBLE? It's a free market. They should be able to sell whatever they want to whomever they want. Anything else would be, like, COMMUNIST."
I'd actually love to see what Reaganized 20-year-olds end up recording as "extreme left-wing" political views. "Oh my god, my professor actually SAID she wished universal health care were available in the U.S. What a left-wing NUT!" I hope UCLA faculty (the tenured ones) respond to this by making a game out of it. I certainly would.
"We're just trying to get people back on a professional level of things," Jones told The Los Angeles Times.
OK, first of all, this person can't even SPEAK properly. Second, since when does paying people to spy on others and report back constitute "a professional level of things?" Third, I am happy to see that the basic thrust of the article is about the educated, respectable members of this group who found the group's conduct so heinous they resigned.
Is Freedom of speech a left-wing right, I wonder?
"Most parents assume students get a square education at a public university, when in fact, there is no real intellectual diversity," Steel said.
Well, hallelujah and praise the lord that the Bruin Alumni Association is here to make sure intellectual diversity and professionalism are maintained.
I see they learned their best practices from the president.
wwkpd: What Would Klansmen 'Publicans Do?
Oh Reagan babies....blech. I recently saw a clip of him speaking and it freaked, really. I forgot how scary he was. (the clip was in Enron: The smartest guys in the room, btw, which I thought was pretty well done, at least from my outsider perspective).
I like the idea of a game from this. I think the sting of a brilliantly executed satire would be a good and possibly very effective response. The notion of this still bothers me, that there is a larger cultural climate in which this is can even be contemplated as serious, as anything but the extension of a selfish desire to go through life unchallenged, as anything not extremely silly.
And yeah, I really felt the boys from the 'publican alumni association were in some ways their own best lampoon.
The students I teach aren't "Reaganized" they are "Bush-ized" because think about it, since they have been aware of politics at all (age 14 or so) he has been their President. Think about that for awhile.
Then cry.
That's what I do.
Kate,
I think the proper term for your students is "Bushwhacked".
;p
Hey Kate,
You sound like you might be feeling better. How's everyone doing?
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