Occupying Academia
By Tim Donner | Monday, February 13th, 2012 | Catch-All, Culture, PoliticsSo now universities are seeing fit to incorporate the occupy movement into their curricula.
Professors from Brown University, the most leftist of all the left-wing Ivy League schools, along with the likes of NYU and UC-San Diego, are adding such courses as The Occupy Movement in Historical Context, Occupy Everywhere and Wealthy White Males to their deconstructionist indoctrination of unsuspecting students. This, for a movement that began just a few months ago, and now flounders amid widespread reports of unspeakable filth, public indecency and all manner of crimes.
As it becomes increasingly clear that this movement was incited by leftists intent on framing the class warfare argument for the 2012 elections, rather than the organic uprising claimed by its champions, this all begs one simple question: how many universities are offering objective courses about the truly organic, law-abiding movement that had an historic impact on the face of congress just a year after its inception, the tea party movement?
UPDATE 2/15
Consider this course description from Princeton University: “Students will colonize and temporarily domesticate the New South Lawn on Princeton’s campus to create an evolving laboratory/stage/lounge/platform/headquarters for the presentation and performance of fundamental human activities such as cooking, composting, dancing, eating, exercising, gathering, gardening, meeting, moving, napping, performing, recycling, socializing, stretching, talking, walking, washing.”
If I was paying tens of thousands a year for my kid to go to Princeton, it sure would make me feel good to know he was being instructed in these skills.
Tags:
Contribute for Conservatism!
Share this post
About the author
Too radical for the establishment and too establishment for the radicals, Tim is a former candidate for the US Senate and longtime entrepreneur, conservative public policy advocate and broadcast journalist. He founded One Generation Away, an educational and public policy organization, and Horizons Television, which specializes in documentary, educational and promotional video production.
Comments
11 Responses to "Occupying Academia"
Tim,
First, it is called academic freedom. You need to give students more credit. They know who the liberals are and who the conservatives are on the faculty and they certainly know when they are getting a biased viewpoint fed to them.
Second, many higher learning institutions are offering courses, seminars, etc in various formats on the Tea Party Movement. Brown University, for example, launched one last summer.
Curious and thoughtful students explore many ideas and concepts without being manipulated by the subject matter or the fashion in which it is presented. I did a paper on the Chinese economy when I was in graduate school. That didn’t make me a Communist.
I’m sure the Brown University treatment of the tea party is entirely objective and unbiased. Academic freedom has largely been replaced by indoctrination at universities far and wide which celebrate every form of diversity except intellectual diversity.
Tim,
I have good friends and family members who are presently in the academy. They would take great exception to your characterization of the loss of academic freedom at the major universities where they are on faculty, including Columbia and George Washington.
Now, if you want to see an example of where academic freedom has been crushed in favor of a political point of view, you need to look no further than Patrick Henry College in Loudoun County and its history of mass resignations by faculty members over a lack of academic freedom imposed by Michael Farris.
It’s interesting that none of these faculty occupiers seem willing to balk at the exorbitant salaries some University presidents are making.
http://chronicle.com/article/What-Private-College/129979/
Brian,
Believe me, they do very much resent the salary differentials between faculty and administration. It is one of the major sources of contention between the Faculty Senate and senior administrators, but I’m sure that you knew that from you time at GWU. And it is why whenever the Faculty Senate catches a senior administrator with his hands in the cookie jar, they gleefully roast them with no-confidence votes until the Board of Trustees fires the culprit, as was the case at American University a few years ago when the Faculty Senate got the university president fired for lavish entertainment expenses.
The problem is that for every tenure-track professor there are literally hundreds of other qualified Ph.D’s willing to take their place for the same salary. As a union man, you know how hard it is to negotiate by withholding your labor when there are a thousand “scabs” out there for every striker.
Imagine that, university presidents earning hundreds of times the income of students working shifts in the cafeteria. We can’t have students working their way through college in the face of such inequality. It’s not fair.
LBF,
Actually, the salary of a university president is greatly determined by how much money he can raise. These high-dollar guys might be getting a huge salary, but they are typically bringing in 10 to 20 times their salary (or more) in contributions to the university every year. There is a compensation feature for faculty who bring in 10 to 20 times their salary in research grants. It is called tenure and promotion. As for students working in the cafeteria, perhaps if they had studied harder in high school they might be on a scholarship instead of a work-study grant. Our country is a meritocracy after all.
With all due respect, anyone who claims that academic bias does not exist within the academy writ large has his/her head buried in the sand. Just look at any of the many studies conducted in colleges across the land which reveal a ridiculously high percentage of tenured faculty who are Democrats and precious few who are Republican.
Tim,
With all due respect, you are citing these studies out of context. Casual does not equal causal. Just because because there are more professors who are Democrats than Republicans doesn’t mean that most professors lecture with a liberal bias. People who are more interested in furthering a political agenda than fostering honest inquiry and learning typically go into politics, not the academy. A professor who attempts to impose their political bias would rarely make tenure. Student evaluations would indicate the bias and the failure to support academic freedom among the students (for example, grading liberals higher than conservatives) would be just cause for denying tenure. And tenure reviews are an on-going, 360 degree continuous review, not a one-time scrutiny when a like-minded department head can “cover” the malfeasance of the tenure candidate. In my experience, the political bias of fellow students is a far greater danger to academic freedom than any faculty member. Certainly, there are campuses where a liberal mindset is more celebrated. UC, Berkley immediately comes to mind. However, even that cesspool of socialism did not stop two Berkley economics professors from publishing the landmark study two years ago that concluded that Roosevelt’s New Deal actually prolonged the Great Depression rather than ending it.
MD Russ, I was being facetious. I totally support hard work and the meritocracy, having worked all through junior high, high school, college and law school myself. The thought that there was some disincentive or crippling unfairness because someone had established his or herself and was doing well that, never, ever occured to me. You can’t control the other guy, but by putting your nose to grindstone, never giving up no matter how many times you get knocked down along the way, you can achieve almost anything in a free and prosperous America.
LBF,
My sincere apologies. I missed the sarcasm of your post. Reading it again, it makes a much better point than my reply. I worked all through high school and college as well, despite having a full scholarship my last two years. Graduate school was easier–I only had to work a full time job in the Army while attending a cooperative degree program at night and on weekends. I guess I have an exposed nerve when it comes to “gimme college degrees.”
Peace.
Leave your response
The comments section is for meaningful discussion. Readers are reminded to post comments that are germane to the article and write in a common language that steers clear of personal attacks and/or vulgarities.
Please take a moment to review our comment policy.