The real gap

If there is any grading gap it is between socially-skilled students and non-socially-skilled students. A good student will know how to pretend to be everything that the professor wants him to be, which often has a political tilt. This is a necessary and important skill to have for life. Students from good families know this coming in.

What I think is sick is that students feel the need to inject their politics into everything. Even if one disagrees with a professor, they can, quite easily figure out the way that he is thinking and give him what he wants.

Larry, at 6:50 am EST on March 30, 2006

What about 30-1 faculty ratios?

As a political independent, I’ve personally watched how academia moved from the post-WWII Eisenhower era to today’s totally lop-sided political bias to the other side of the political spectrum by soft-side academia. This is a problem so severe that, until it is addressed, requires shut-off of government funding to higher education. Shutting off the money-train is the only way to get Socialists, Communists, and the “hate America” crowd to listen.

Today’s soft-side faculty view of the U.S.? A quote from Stephen Zelnick, a senior member of Temple University’s English faculty and former vice-provost: “I rarely heard a kind word for the United States, for the riches of our marketplace, for the vast economic and creative opportunities made available for energetic and creative people (that is, for our students); for family life, for marriage, for love, or for religion.”

As to the small locally-focused study of U-Nev. students in auditorium-sized classes about alleged political bias — why didn’t the researchers pattern their study around issues raised in sites like this —

http://www.studentsforacademicfreedom.org/

The best thing about this debate is that it has made clear, soft-side academic fields such as education, ethnic studies, social work, and sociology are so one-sided and biased, anyone who is a non-liberal should avoid them like a plague.

It is just a huge waste of time and money.

R.A. Shaw, at 7:00 am EST on March 30, 2006

To R.A.:

We are still waiting on the latest Chinese tea exchange prices. Please contact us when you have that information, ideally from Chinese tea traders instead of from Starbucks executives.

Andrew Purvis, at 7:40 am EST on March 30, 2006

Not the Horowitz fixation again

“And, Bad English, you are making the same kinds of poor claims that people like Horowitz made.”

Is it really a “poor claim” to state that once someone contracts to teach a specific subject, that person must not replace those contractual responsibilities with personal political rants in class?

Really?

I, for one, have vastly more respect for my students and their intellectual well-being than to capriciously substitute essential literacy training for two-bit political indoctrination in class.

And by the way, things have very, very seriously deterioriated if everything that anyone says about colleges that is not slavishly complimentary is reflexively thought to relate to David Horowitz. The Horowitz fixation here is all-telling. It betrays intelligence and studiously ignores problems crippling college students to merely scream “HOROWITZ!” any time someone voices even mild criticism of political abuse of college classrooms.

Bad English, at 8:35 am EST on March 30, 2006

Stop the funding!!

Brilliant! We should stop all the funding. Then, since only the truly wealthy could attend college (maybe even high school), we would have plenty of Americans ready for those jobs that supposedly only illegal immigrants will take. The wealthy can then return to their proper class and station without any competition from the capable, but uneducated masses. We could rid ourselves of that pesky middle class, stop the trade imbalance with China (there would be no more money to send over there), and start answering the phones for companies in India.

I think the bias argument has clearly swung the other way here.

mdg, at 8:45 am EST on March 30, 2006

Pride

Dear Colleagues: Without professionalism and civility we are no better than the talking heads on television and radio. It is great fun to write an e-mail nakedly expressing one’s views, but a bit rash to actually click the “submit” button. When I am unsure of how to respond in certain situations, I often ask myself what behavior I would be proud to have my students emulate. I know you are better than the above colloquy would indicate.

Tad Handley, President at ICHM, at 9:15 am EST on March 30, 2006

The wrong teaching model

“Idle hands are the Devil’s workshop.” Political meanderings in the classroom are the direct result of faculty under-employment — that is the crux of this argument. It is the scholar-practitioner model that actually brings something to the table for students and for faculty. If you are a “womb to tomb” academic, you may as well join a monastery. Ideology takes the place of active problem-solving. Too much wine and not enough cheese leads to heady debates of little substance. I would want a philosophy instructor who had actually spent of portion of his or her life trying to apply that philosophy — even if it was communism. It is no wonder that “hard science” teachers are generally more content and optimistic — they can actually do things.

Sillyone, at 9:25 am EST on March 30, 2006

Grading students

The so called “study” cited in this article is so riddled with non-objective “data” as to render it meaningless.

feudi pandola, at 10:20 am EST on March 30, 2006

Are professors more hostile to conservative students

There are two dimensions to the question and only one, degrees of bias or not, have been addressed here. The second is that there has been a change towards a more liberal professorate in the last generation or so. On this, I suspect that the professorate is somewhat more liberal but not because they have changed, but because what it means to be conservative has changed. 40 years ago it was economics, foreign policy, and, generally, non-interference by government in citizen lives that were keystones of conservatism. Today, it is much more heavily weighted to fundamentalism and more interference by government in the lives of citizens in the interests of religious and non-religious fundamentist beliefs. As such those people will be uncomfortable in an environment of debate and expectation that issues are decided by reference to facts coherent theory and not to prior preferences and beliefs and where diversity of views and backgrounds is a value.

John Wilson, at 11:00 am EST on March 30, 2006

Who has changed?

John Wilson suggests that conservatism has changed. In the statement below from WSJ, Todd Gitlin, not part of the vast right wing conspiracy, seems to disagree. Students of all political stripes often sense the voluntary estrangement of their professors of which Gitlin speaks.

“Todd Gitlin, a Columbia professor of journalism and sociology, showed up at Yale yesterday where he offered some advice to his fellow lefties, the Yale Daily News reports:

He elaborated on his feeling of frustration concerning what he views as liberals’ voluntary estrangement from the rest of the nation, citing their alleged rejection of patriotism as an example of this alienation.

‘I think that the upshot is that patriotism is experienced by many people on the left as something of an embarrassment,’ Gitlin said.

Gitlin said he thinks left-leaning individuals are now rejecting patriotism because they believe it forces them to identify with a larger group of Americans with whom they disagree and contradicts the spirit of cosmopolitanism that they espouse.

‘The left sees itself as standing outside a country that does bad,’ Gitlin said. ‘However, it is strategically disastrous to take this position as outsiders, since it is a concession to people who are not entitled to be the spokespersons of patriotism. It is a move against public life, public domain, public virtue and public-mindedness.’”

Chicken Little, at 11:50 am EST on March 30, 2006

Objective data

feudi pandola,Show me any grading that does not use non-objective “data.

Quantification does not making grading objective. Grading is an extension of evaluation. At the root of evaluation is judgements about value. Values are not objective.

Even standardized, psychometrically rigorous tests like the SAT are not “objective” just reliable. 99.9% of professors do not have the psychometric knowledge or the resources to make psychometrically rigorous tests. So their tests are neither objective or, except by luck, reliable or valid. When’s the last time a prof. piloted an exam?

Whatever the failings of this study, your comments about grading are surely meaningless for you clearly have little knowledge of psychometrics. Which puts you in the same group as virtually all professors.

Almost all professors are not trained to teach or to design tests and grade. So, you get a bunch of amatuer educators incorrectly applying the paradigms of their disciplines to teaching, learning and in this case, evaluation. Teaching is not math. Teaching math isn’t even math. And designing and grading math tests that are valid is not math.

Spearman, at 12:21 pm EST on March 30, 2006

As a consumer...

As a consumer of the product of higher education today — I am much more interested in the issues of grade inflation and work ethics. I hire college graduates and find that my job searches take longer and longer as many of recent graduates lack basic skill sets. I work at a Fortune 500 financial services corporation and this whole debate seems contrived. My other frustration with this debate is that it supports the viewpoint that everything is negotiable — grades, who the professor is, how a course is taught, the content of the course and what is expected to achieve a grade. This bleeds over into the work environment where I have experienced recent grads having this idea that certain job functions are negotiable. Or, if they don’t “like” a coworker, they don’t have to figure out a way to work with them. That may be the case in academia but not here. Academia does students a disservice with this practice. My purpose of sharing this viewpoint is to remind you that those of us not in academia rely on you to produce the highest quality graduates. Facing a little adversity or being challenged on a point of view prior to entering the work world should be expected and appreciated. Those same experiences await them here and there isn’t going to be a debate around the “political bias” of their supervisor before their employment is terminated. (My apologies for any grammar and spelling issues in this post)

BD Banker, at 1:00 pm EST on March 30, 2006

BD, you are just not looking hard enough

BD Banker, Guess what? Everything is negotiable if you have social skills and can convince people to think the way that you do. People who do it well don’t even let the target know that they are being convinced. The problem is that anyone who is identified as being politically-minded is really an amateur.

And, if you want some horn-tooting, I have worked for the largest law firms in the world, which obviously have Fortune 500 companies as clients.

Larry, at 1:10 pm EST on March 30, 2006

One of the basic confused perceptions underlying debates on subjects such as this is revealed in “Just teach what you contracted to teach. . . **they [students] don’t need your politics in the classroom.** The same blogger says in a subsequent post: “Is it really a “poor claim” to state that once someone contracts to teach a specific subject, that person must not replace those contractual responsibilities with personal political rants in class?”

Who is to say that an instructor who is offering a liberal viewpoint is necessarily injecting her or his own personal ideological viewpoint? As Geoff notes, one of education’s primary purposes is to broaden students’ knowledge and understanding, which often involves “challenging the assumptions of students.”

Herein is the problem: so many consider the status quo (and the status quo is usually more conservative—save what is—than not) to be “TRUTH.” When the assumption that, as Alexander Pope had proclaimed “Whatever is, is right” is challenged, suddenly accusations of “politics,” “ideology” (as opposed to the truth” and “indoctrination” are hurled.When change is advocated, often that suggestion or call for claim is seen as “political” or “ideological” in contrast to the “truth” of the current situation—the way things are (or used to be).

So now, where are we if we try to claim that academic subjects are supposed to void of any current context? Who gets to decide exactly what is the “truth” regarding what ARE the subjects that faculty are contracted to teach? The example given of a math teacher who instead of teaching one’s “proper” subject spends their time “using students as political punching bags” is extreme not at all substantiated by data (if it is, why didn’t the claimant offer the support for this claim? Or because that blogger said it, it is the truth and to be just accepted at face value?)

When any comments may have been made by faculty about Clinton’s sexual shenanigans—perhaps accompanied by calls for change, were any charges of ideological bullying made against them?

We need to about the problematic underlying assumptions by which so many of our actions are blindly controlled.

CJO, at 3:35 pm EST on March 30, 2006

Personal attacks

I am fine using a little humor to go after the argument, but I cannot stoop to the level of suggesting another’s incompetence in the classroom. Those who know me are well aware of my record, and I am more than comfortable with that.

I am still waiting for a study that shows widespread bias. And while I agree with the very core of what Bad English writes in the first comment, it is couched in terms that are, at this time, unsupported.

If you want a more academic discussion, fine. Consider the key warrant of that claim: There is a problem of political bias in higher education classrooms. Note that last word. Further, the implication of Bad English’s claim is that this bias is so great that up to 69% of students are not being served. Sadly, neither element of this case is presented with any objective evidence. This is at least two removes from a sound argument.

If you want to ask where the problems come, consider grade inflation, turning a blind eye to plagiarism, and (mostly for-profit) diploma factories.

Anrdrew Purvis, at 5:25 pm EST on March 30, 2006

A Sad Time for the USA

This academic freedom crap is a another way the efficient GOP can get more power to enrich themselves at our country’s peril.This is not the country I grew up in anymore. It is sad to witness the death of freedom and progressive ideas.

Bob Smith, at 8:35 pm EST on March 30, 2006

Personal attacks

The difference here is that I am questioning the nature of the arguments, NOT the person. When my ability to teach is called into question by someone who hasn’t the first clue of how well I serve my students, that is a personal attack and does nothing to advance the argument.

Do not try holding Phoenix up as an example. I had opted not to use the name, though it was the first place I had in mind. I worked for them. The school pressures its professors to pass students with A’s and B’s because it allows free re-takes until the students pass.

Once more, R. A. Shaw has failed to recognize the problem here. It is irrelevant what party anyone selects. What matters is whether or not that affiliation plays an improper role in the classroom. Talk about the issue at hand, please.

I am not disputing the 31% graduate literacy rate, but I have yet to see anyone demonstrate a link between this issue (improper use of political views in the classroom) to that figure.

I am not opposed to someone’s investigating such a connection, but recognize that it is, until such an investigation is completed, nothing more than a non sequitur to claim that instructors’ or professors’ political views have created that shameful figure.

I have commented here based upon my politics. I have not commented about someone else’s politics. My interest is in finding and implementing good policies that are founded on reason and evidence while avoiding those that are based on politics and dogma.

Andrew Purvis, at 10:15 pm EST on March 30, 2006

Thankfully, there are 3,000 collleges in U.S.

” .. But (sigh) I’m just too centrist to make his hit list list. My conservative students keep taking my courses ..”

Well, if the burden is too great — there are 3,000 colleges in the U.S. Your students could go elsewhere, especially if their government subsidy for higher education were made portable. Then you wouldn’t have such a heavy burden.

In fact, if you quit now, within a year, very few would remember who you were. No need to carry such a heavy burden. Go do something worthwile, like helping unemployed Maine workers find jobs.

L.L. Barry, at 6:00 am EST on March 31, 2006

Solving Non-Problems

If anyone is interested in fact, rather than ideological screeching, Kemmelmeier’s study suggests, as so often is the case, that ‘conventional wisdom’ is as about as accurate as a New England weather forecast.

The whole Horowitz/campuses-are-too-liberal screed is a tempest in a teapot. Only a handful of students claim this, many of whom go to places like Madison or Amherst and wonder why they are so isolated. This is like vegans going into Ponderosa Steakhouse and complaining there’s nothing they can eat. Google “conservative colleges” and you’ll find a better menu, darlings.

Maybe we ought to reverse the Horowitz formula and demand that the military academies teach peace studies,that Libery College establish a feminist theory major, or that SMU institute an endowed chair in evolutionary biology.

The *only* part of any of this I bother to take seriously is the claim that some profs use the lectern to espouse ideology. (In my experience, the right does this at aleast as often as the left.) How pathetic that any adult would seek validatation of their views from undergrads. Of course, the really pathetic thing is that this is *precisely* what Horowitz wants to do, except he’d silence lefties so his own born-again conservatism had open highway.

Rob, at 12:05 pm EST on March 31, 2006

Shaw’s failures

Mr. Shaw, Not being an arch-conservative or whatever you wish to consider yourself (I shall, unlike you have done with me, let you choose to apply your own label) does not make you right. Indeed, it is people who can build arguments, not people who can argue, who need to be allowed to graduate. The kinds of comments you are leaving here would be flunked in any course that demanded logical rigor. Your attacks are dogmatic and personal. They are founded on a void of evidence. They approach most closely, in form, the most strident political speeches of the 20th century, all of which were made by people opposed by this nation (Castro’s speeches are a good example, since you have brought him up)

I do not suffer from an invincible ignorance, and neither do other readers here who roll their eyes at your comments or ignore them. Some may say my choice to engage you in this is poor. I prefer to hope that you might learn something (Robert Wrigley, a year ago, warned my that my idealism would fade, but so far it holds fast).

English is not about “deconstructing and critiquing endlessly,” as any student getting through one of my classes can tell you. Even if we limit your comment to literature, English is very similar to politics: Many possible, even promising, paths appear to lead to a solution, and we must discuss their merits and defects until we settle upon one path to take. We will not reach cooncensus. Then again, neither shall politicians, especially those who believe in one pointof view only.

Finally, I wish to warn against claiming to be an independent and then arguing that independents are part of the problem. Anyone googling “r. a. shaw” within this domain can have a rather amusing time reading rants that contradict one another.

Mr. Shaw, I am now choosing tocast you off. I wish you well in your studies and hope you one day learn the differences between argument and arguing, between critique and criticism, and between black and white (that there are many shades in between).

Andrew Purvis, at 3:15 pm EST on March 31, 2006

Financial aid question, private colleges

About this — ” .. and Mr. Shaw, I’m so happy you can regurgitate ..”

Does this mean your ilk are going to pay the $5,000 in financial aid that I borrowed to pay the left-wing clap-trap that I got suckered into? Thanks!!

As to this — ” .. maybe we ought to reverse the Horowitz formula and demand that the military academies teach peace studies ..”

Anyone who has spent a day at West Point or Annapolis knows (a) they are Ivy-level and (b) the great philosophers (King, Chavez, Socrates, Gandhi) are studied and taught, as opposed to the psuedo-intellectual crap posed by Churchill, Shortell, Furr, et al.

” .. that Libery College establish a feminist theory major, or that SMU institute an endowed chair in evolutionary biology ..”

Private colleges, baby Einstein. Not public. Not taking taxpayer money. Can’t be forced to do anything that they don’t want to, no matter what Hiliary and Mr. Teresa Heinz want.

R.A.S., at 4:45 pm EST on March 31, 2006

Thanks, Lar, ol’ bud, ol’ counselor

“RAS, I am trying to understand your point about the service academies ..”

Dude — original question about USMA, USNA, et al.

” .. Ward Churchill is not a professor of philosophy (he teaches “ethnic studies”) ..”

I could yip/yap about ES being multi-field, but it’s Friday ..

” .. Next, I don’t see how you equate service academies with a given political persuasion.”

I didn’t. I just pointed out, contrary to negative stereotype about the USMA, et al., the military academies are 1000x lot more broad-minded than their closed-minded critics.

” .. And what does Hillary Clinton have to do with any of this?”

She is Mr. Horowitz’s favorites — right?

” .. Also, do you have something against the Coast Guard and Air Force?”

Their academies are Ivy-level, too.

” .. You really seem to be living in a world where everything is political. It just isn’t.”

You’ve spent too much time in D.C. Try spending a few years in Moo U, best noted by Jane Smiley’s book, “Moo.”

” .. Indeed, for an academic, most of your declarations about the world seem to be lifted from talk-radio ..”

Lar, ol’ bud, when you have personally seen tens of millions of public and private dollars wasted by the Invincibly Ignorant — who demand academic freedom for themselves but no one else — you want to get to the point, quickly. It’s like judicial economy, in the courtroom.

” .. Finally, Mr. Purvis’ comment was 352 words. Not 500.”

I rounded up to the nearest half-thousand. It’s Friday.

R.A.S., at 9:45 pm EST on March 31, 2006

RAS, Since I generally don’t vote, I don’t really have the background to go into any real political discussions the way most people do. I was just curious as to how you draw your connections.

Lots of people love to mock academe. In fact, it is fun. Of course, when it comes down to it, “prestigious” universities are favored over non-prestigious ones. So, you can mock the liberal arts all you want, but people don’t really want to send their kids to schools without “good” reputations. I realize all these terms are subjective, but so is just about everything that guides humans to achieve what they consider to be the “best.”

The service academies, are not “Ivies.” The “Ivies” are a finite set of schools, which, for various reasons have been associated with a “quality” education. There are many places where an individual can get the same or better education, and I happen to think that undergraduate education at the ivies is lacking, but that doesn’t make the service academies better. They have a specific mission and constraints that other schools do not have, and to that end, in many areas they suffer. But, on the other hand, they have some benefits that other schools can’t have. I don’t think you really care about the specifics, because the rest of your post was so politically tinged. Whether they are “broad-minded” is anyone’s guess. They certainly are not admitting former members of the Taliban. Whether they are accepting of fields of inquiry that have fallen out of favor, I don’t know. Most of the faculty teaching non-military subjects at the academies might just as easy be teaching anywhere else. So, I don’t know where you get your “broad-minded” assertion from. Perhaps if you could show me how there is a certain diversity of publication or research from a service academy that is not found at, say, Harvard, you might have a point. But, in looking at the scholarship from professors at ivies, and comparing it, to professors at service academies, there just doesn’t seem to be the breadth.

I can’t really respond to the rest of your post which tells me that I should move.

Larry, at 12:05 pm EDT on April 2, 2006

Kemmelmeier Study

Just to add a point of clarification, what I am saying is that correlation is not necessarily the best measure of potential bias in this context because the biases of professors is likely to interact with the students’ selection of classes. This kind fo interactivity is a well-known source of bias in social science research and it is surprising that it is not mentioned in the article.

One important measure of bias would be the ratio of the variability of political belief in the “hard” versus the “socially oriented” courses. If there is more variability of political belief in the socially oriented courses (as measured by the ratios of the variances in the belief measures) then that would suggest more bias in the liberal courses because of greater interactivity of course selection with political viewpoint. Professor Kemmelmeier, ought to report F statistics concerning the ratios of variances in his belief measures in conservative and liberal courses.

Mitchell Langbert, Associate Professor of Business at Brooklyn College, at 10:05 pm EDT on April 24, 2006