What would make you happy, darling?

“.. “It’s hard to conceive of a practice more unlikely to obtain accurate, useful, reliable information about what happens in a classroom than having to pay students for the information.” .. “

Facts at hand:

(1) several complaints, with empirical studies dating back three years, made about alleged, obvious faculty bias towards one political party;

(2) no empirical studies disputing (1) from aforementioned faculty, which are well-funded via several sources;

At bottom: when is the Howard Dean/Teddy Kennedy/Hiliary Clinton crowd going to reply with their own empirical studies, rather than verbage?

Do they think of themselves as “above the fray?”

Or do they expect their opponents to provide their work for them?

To paraphrase the poet Madonna L.V. Ciccione: “we’re waiting.”

BTW: is there someone with the technical/media expertise who can explain how a 15-second news video-clip involving violent offenders is appropriate — but not a 50-minute audio-clip from a UCLA classroom? (Are “oxen being gored” involved?)

R.A.S., Also has academic freedom at Private College, at 10:57 am EST on January 18, 2006

Brownshirts in our classes

Great, now students who spy on us can put this on their resumes and get jobs at the NSA spying on us once they graduate.

Archie Andrews, at 10:57 am EST on January 18, 2006

Well here we are.Big brother and friends.The students should study the notes before the bounty collect.Who knows,next year bounty could be larger.We know how expensive an education is not to mention partying.

Jesse, at 10:57 am EST on January 18, 2006

Good

This is a step in the right direction. No more will extremists be able to object that their remarks never happened, or were taken out of context when there is a video of the whole lecture. Perhaps it will be a step towards accountability for their actions.

Kevin, Undergraduate, at 10:57 am EST on January 18, 2006

A joke?

I had to look at my calendar this morning to make sure it wasn’t April 1. If this desperate action on the part of conservatives was not so repugnant, I would have been laughing out loud at the early April Fool’s Day joke on the part of IHE. Accusing these people of McCarthyism is being too generous to them.

Don, Associate Professor and Senior Research Associate at Penn State University, at 10:57 am EST on January 18, 2006

RAS, While I generally agree with you, I find any empirical student of sympathy with one political “party” to be suspect since political parties in the US are rather diffuse (as compared to other countries) and quite frequently, individuals defect from their own party and support another on policy issues. In short: I don’t think that such a study is really possible. However, I don’t see what Howard Dean and Ted Kennedy have to do with UCLA. (But then again I don’t vote, and I don’t see the need to run around screaming about conspiracies and politics.)

Mr. Ide, Are you on crack? First of all, a students’ recording of a class, while perhaps volatile of a professor’s intellectual property rights is not unconstitutional. Why? First, it is not state action. No state action, nothing unconstitutional about it. Second, it is done openly and out in the open. Third, the professors are broadcasting their views for all to hear, so they have no expectation of privacy in such views. (The intellectual property issues are quite murky at the moment, but I should note that these people can argue that even if the professor retains the rights to the property, by recording the lecture they are making “fair use” of it, provided that they don’t redistribute it in whole, and they use it to simply argue that these professors – that work for a public institution should be fired or whatever. This is akin to arguing that road crews have no expectation of privacy, and can be photographed slacking off.)

Ex-Prof, Why don’t you show me the laws of one state that prevent the recording of speeches, lectures, and other conversations. Even in the most restrictive states (so-called “two party” states) the restrictions on wiretapping only kick in 1) on the telephone or in some communication device; where 2) one party expects not to be recorded.

Joker, I agree with you completely. $100 is not enough. At a minium, they should pay the cost of the credit-hours. The students that do this will be politically-motivated anyway, and would do it for free. Most other students don’t go to class enough to generate a full set of tapes, anyway.

Larry, at 11:32 am EST on January 18, 2006

Nothing illegal about it — cite statutes, please

Ms. Valada, Since we are both attorneys let’s settle this. Show me what statute you are referring to. As I read the Cal. Penal Code. Sec. 632©, the bar on eavesdropping only applies to private conversations. Are you really saying that a lecture to a class is “private”? In fact, counselor, the statute goes on to specifically exclude “communication[s] made in a public gathering or in any legislative, judicial, executive or administrative proceeding open to the public, or in any other circumstance in which the parties to the communication may reasonably expect that the communication may be overheard or recorded.”

In addition, there may be a statutory public records exception (which I am not familiar with), and even if you can still say that the statute applies, these wingnuts might have a 1st amendment right to record the views of others.

Larry, at 11:52 am EST on January 18, 2006

Come on folks, let’s at lest see it for what it is: a bunch of people that are involved in politics want to make a recording of some incidents of state-sponsored education to further their political goals. Since the competence of professors is a matter of public concern, it is pretty hard to argue that somehow there can be an absolute bar on recording these sessions.

By the same token, if a “liberal” group wanted to do the same, and, for example, argue to a court or a legislature that a biology teacher was teaching intelligent design (a very likely possibility, I might add) are you folks still against the recording.

During my not-so-spectacular teaching career, I recorded everything. In part to avoid claims of bias, and in part to improve my method. There is nothing wrong with requiring people to generate a record of their work. Judges do it. Lawyers do it. In fact, most professions have to create some form of contemporaneous record of their work.

Larry, at 12:24 pm EST on January 18, 2006

Standard Practice at Med Schools

While the motivation for the taping of classes seems odd to me, the actual act of taping should be utterly non-controversial. In Medical Schools, it is standard practice for students to tape lectures, transcribe them, and sell them afterwards (it is referred to as a ‘note service’ and is, at least at my wife’s school, organized and aided by the school itself. Students either take turns taping and transcribing, or are actually paid to do more than their fair share). So, you may not like the people doing the taping, you may not like the uses to which the tapes may be used, but the physical act of taping (or even paying for taping) seems utterly non-controversial.

Steve

Steve, at 1:39 pm EST on January 18, 2006

1. It’s not quite the same thing, but one thinks of this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astroturfing

2. There’s the universal problem of paid informants: they have an incentive to make their reports as lurid as possible.

3. The best solution is sunlight. As long as one doesn’t create a situation in which students are afraid to speak in class for fear of publicity, I say make courses as public as possible. Put syllabi and handouts online.

B, at 2:52 pm EST on January 18, 2006

BJ, Just be glad that I agree with you on your point about recording. There are constitutional and public policy reasons (in addition to specific statutory exclusions that I mentioned earlier) as to why there is nothing wrong with it. As to whether there is actual bias – and whether anyone is hurt by it – I seriously doubt it. But, as you indicate, a transcript might be the first way to shine some sunshine in here.

Larry, at 4:49 pm EST on January 18, 2006

You are being recorded

Hey, what’s all the fuss about? After all, it is a crime to say Liberal Things in a classroom, right? Well then.

Ophelia Benson, Editor at Butterflies and Wheels, at 10:28 pm EST on January 18, 2006

The sad thing is...

To be honest, I never looked at their website. Then someone sent me a link to Volokh’s “review” of them, and they are even nuttier than previously thought. Essentially, they fault a lot of professors for their outside-of-school political activity, consider being “anti-Bush” or anti-war “radical", and think that school alums have a moral obligation to support a judicial nominee that is also an alum.

http://volokh.com/archives/archiv...06_01_15-2006_01_21.shtml#1137632116

I am disappointed, because I really wish that these wingnuts would have actually cared about educational quality, not just firing people who voted for the wrong guy.

Larry, at 7:47 am EST on January 19, 2006

A Question of Maturity

Anyone who’s visited the website in question can see that there’s nothing even-handed, objective, or moderate about this group’s “review” of the faculty that they’ve targeted. It’s either a scornful and mocking dismissal of the faculty’s intellectual, social, or political stances (without serious analysis), or it’s a long-winded political rant affirming their own radical right-wing agenda. In other words, it performs exactly the same function that they’re accusing left-wing academics of performing: a biased indoctrination into an extremist ideology.

As is the case with Horowitz’s mob, the SAF, and Campus Watch, there’s very little interest among these folks in actually improving, “reforming,” or moderating higher education. Their goals are quite the reverse—to root out what they see as the last bastions of liberalism and political dissent in this country (academia, the media, etc.), and to move the culture as a whole towards a conservative homogeneity. They see the current social and political swing towards the right (tenuous as it is) as the perfect opportunity to take out their paranoid hostility and resentment over the success of liberalism in America (since the 1960s, if not earlier).

The fact that the site primarily targets those who study racial and gender issues, social justice, affirmative action, gay and lesbian studies, etc. makes the reactionary nature of their project pretty clear. These are the areas of scholarship that have been most successful in exposing the inequalities and injustices of “traditional American values,” and calling into question the hegemony of white, middle-class, conservative America.

Legal and ethical questions aside, their actions reveal a deep hostility and aversion to the basic principles of scholarly and political participation—the freedom to think, speak, write, and teach, according to one’s own conscience and experience, the discipline that you’ve devoted your life (not just a few grudging hours in a “boring” classroom) to studying. If you really want to have a say in what gets taught in the classroom, earn your own degree(s), find a suitable venue, and behave like an adult with a valid opinion, rather than an adolescent with a grudge.

John Edward Martin, at 10:58 am EST on January 19, 2006

John

Your aggressive and biased rhetoric is not helpful. In fact, it underscores the problem the UCLA alum are trying to address. People worried about improper classroom conduct are not a de facto “mob,” and rather the point of the concerns here is that people with political perspectives that dissent from academic orthodoxies are NOT allowed by universities to “find a suitable venue” in which to express their concerns. If the universities themselves brutally suppress dissent, that dissent will naturally and inevitably find a voice outside the campus.

Whatever legitimate concerns one might have about the UCLA alumni project, your post only dramatizes the immediate aggressive response anyone asking questions about bad classroom conduct will receive. Students are unlikely to be able to stand up to such a response, which makes outside intervention necessary.

Bad English, at 2:03 pm EST on January 19, 2006

Targeting of Groups

I think targeting of groups in any form is very much like 1984 and McCarthyism. A look at “See it Now", the new movie about Murrow vs McCarthy might be in order for some younger readers to get some perspective on all this. I still think that recording lectures with out permission is somehow illegal, or should be. This whole climate of spying on people is no reflection of what the founding fathers made sure we were guarenteed in the Bill of Rights. Who are these conservative groups afraid of? and why? Think about the deeper meaning of all this for a moment, And remember, Napolean and Hitler burned books and clamped down on free speech as soon as they came to power.."I may not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”

Ken, educator, at 2:12 pm EST on January 19, 2006

Further evidence

The fact that I’m being assailed by people with pseudonyms and initials for names only emphasizes my point: that those outside of academia who are seeking to “monitor” the classroom aren’t really accountable to any code of professional conduct or ethical standards themselves. They purport to “know” about the coercive activities of liberal academics on the basis of the complaints of students and alumni like those who have organized these sites—ignoring the fact that these sites are as outrageous and irresponsible in their claims as the worst imagined academic offender. And there’s no one to hold them accountable for their misstatements, exaggerations, and outright lies. “Freedom of speech” guarantees that they can pander to the worst anxieties and biases of conservative America, while denying liberal academics the right to voice their own intellectual and political stances, formally and responsibly, in an environment devoted to free inquiry.

Conservatives have never been denied a voice in academia—either among the student or faculty ranks. Their failure to utilize that voice isn’t a result of liberal bias or oppression—rather, it’s a result of their own choices and unwarranted suspicions. Students who expect to hear their own opinions rehearsed in the classroom, to never have to adequately argue or defend their perspectives, or to receive grades commensurate with their own estimation of their abilities (rather than that of an experienced professional), have only themselves to blame for being “voiceless.” Your voice is yours to use, and no professor that I’ve ever encountered has used political positions to determine grades.

I, myself, have had students of every conceivable social and political persuasion, and have never graded on any criteria but those stated in the course syllabus. What possible purpose would it serve to do otherwise? A student’s politics has no bearing whatsoever on the work that I do or the opinions that I hold, or the causes that I espouse, so why persecute them? Out of spite? In the false hope that my 15 weeks of discussion will outweigh 18 years of “indoctrination” at the hands of their parents, churches, and the larger political environment? That’s not even realistic, and it’s not why I, or the vast majority of academics, chose teaching as a profession. It’s the paranoid fantasy of a handful of conservative activists—not a realistic examination of what goes on in classrooms.

John Edward Martin, at 5:09 pm EST on January 19, 2006

Hmm...anyone else see the contradiction here?

> people with political perspectives that dissent from academic > orthodoxies are NOT allowed by universities to “find a suitable venue” > in which to express their concerns. If the universities themselves> brutally suppress dissent, that dissent will naturally and inevitably find a voice outside the campus.

> I have taught at universities for decades...We are not outsiders here.

Apparently, Mr. “English” is both an insider and an outsider—one with decades of experience in his profession despite being “brutally suppressed.” Either he’s passively swallowed the orthodoxy despite his obvious distaste for it (why?), or his dissent hasn’t been quite as policed as he pretends. Which is it people? Either you’re an oppressed minority or a silent majority...or just a vocal extremity! In any case, it’s not the fault of liberals. Plenty of us live, work, go to school, and participate in environments that don’t reflect our political views without whining about unfair treatment. As a matter of fact, I do all of the above in a country that doesn’t currently reflect many of my values or political beliefs. But since I choose to be here, I do what I can, learn what I can, say what I think, vote my conscience, and act on my principles regardless of how others “evaluate” me. That’s what college students should be learning how to do, regardless of who stands in front of their classroom. These aren’t “children” by any definition of the word, and if they’re intimidated in a place where nothing’s at stake but the difference between an “A” and a “B” (and please don’t pretend it’s any more than that), then wait until they get out in the real world!

Nate Grey, at 7:34 pm EST on January 19, 2006

Welcome to the bunker folks...

>How is it that you think I know about this anyway? I survived professionally only because no one around me has any idea what I am.

...this is where the kind of “dissent” we’re talking about is coming from! Supposed scholars and free-thinkers hiding in the shadows, using pseudonyms and guerilla propaganda to bad-mouth their colleagues and overthrow the evil liberal empire! What a bunch of nonsense! Anyone with a decades-long career in academia surely has tenure or at least a pretty secure senior position from which to speak openly and honestly about any perceived problems in the profession. If you can’t, then it’s likely because your views are as extreme and unsupportable as they appear.

Nate Grey, at 9:08 pm EST on January 19, 2006

there is more talk than walk

Robin, First of all, these people are relatively fly-by-night and are not paying enough to actually make it worthwhile. Second of all, as stated above, it is hardly spying to record something that is open to the public and sponsored by the government.

As a practical matter, I think everyone should let these bozos have their fun. They will get bored when they find they have to find real jobs.

Larry, at 7:03 am EST on January 20, 2006

“Safe Spaces”

You must teach in a very strange, dangerous school if classrooms there have been declared “safe spaces.” All colleges in their entirely should be “safe spaces.”

In any event, obviously, the last thing students with dissenting viewpoints are in many classrooms is “safe” to take risks. That is what this debate is about. Some of us are trying to make sure that students can express dissent safely, without retribution from instructors with opposing political viewpoints.

Bad English, at 7:28 am EST on January 21, 2006

The hypocrisy of it all

I cannot believe the thin-skinned whinings from so many professors who imagine that they should be paid by the taxpayers and never called to task for their classroom activities, when it involves overt political indoctrination.

There would not have been workers’ unions if there wasn’t a need for them. There would not be these outlandish inquiries into professors’ classroom antics if there wasn’t a need for them either.

The pathetic howls of leftist protest are another indication of the universities run amock and the sooner these social reformers are called to explain their ideological dogmatism the better.

M.L. Dawkins, Grad Student at UC/Davis, at 9:20 am EST on January 22, 2006

Skills, please, not sensibilities

This conservative alumni group is basically baiting the professoriate like we’re all in seventh-grade gym class. As faculty we should deal with it the way that we deal with comments on Rate-My-Professor (the smart ones among us anyway): ignore it.

I’m more concerned with the fact that so few college graduates can read well or write correctly. As an alumnus I would worry more about the value of my diploma sinking as so many unqualified students graduate through four years of cheating, manipulation, and litigious grade inflation. My best advice to professors worried about this is to assign extremely rigorous reading and keep the students busy with a workload that challenges them. I wrote a piece about this for Buffalo Report at http://buffaloreport.com/2005/051229.lopez.reading.html.

I have voted both Republican and Democratic in my life. I do object to the unanimity of the faculty on some political issues, but I am much more critical of my profession for caving into students’ demands so often and making it easy for kids to get a BA without ever reading a book. That’s the truly “offensive” part of college education, not these irrelevant political annoyances.

Robert Oscar LopezCanisius College

Robert Oscar Lopez, Professor of English at Canisius College, at 8:37 pm EST on January 22, 2006