February 18, 2004 by s.z.

More Conservative Crushing On Campus Andrew Sullivan today shares a letter from a closeted conservative professor at the University of Michigan.  Here's part of it: Last year, I came up for tenure, and I realized then how thoroughly I self-censor. I was in the car with a close long-time friend and fellow academic (at another institution), and I told her how difficult it was for me to overcome this compulsion not to speak. I then spent half an hour telling her what I'd bottled up for thirteen years - that I voted for Bush, that I watch Fox News, etc. At the end of it, she said, "I am an undercover officer with the Liberal Enforcement Administration, and you are under arrest for violation of section 123 of the U.S. Institutional Code: Watching Fox News while purporting to be intelligent."  I was taken to a gulag, where for two years I was forced to work on an assembly line making 'Hillary Clinton--Theresa Heinz Kerry in 2008' buttons, while listening to NPR.  I learned the hard way that society is brutally intolerant of those of us who were born, through no fault of our own, with a gene that makes us vote for George Bush. Okay, I actually made up that second paragraph, but Andrew DID say this about his correspondent's tale of repression and self-loathing: I hear very similar stories from many academics when I'm on lecture tours of colleges. It just strikes me as a terrible shame that at universities of all places, people are censoring themselves from expressing their actual opinions. It's not healthy for anyone.  Meaning, "It's a terrible shame for conservatives to have to repress their actual opinions, but if liberals share their actual opinions, they're indoctrinating their students and should be reported to No Indoctrination.com: NoIndoctrination.org provides a forum for college students to report courses and programs that in their opinion contain severe bias or amount to indoctrination.  If you believe you have experienced courses or orientation programs that advance one-sided social or political ideologies, denigrate alternative views, or create an intimidating atmosphere for expressing diverse opinions, please post your experiences here (and, if possible, send corroborating material). The information we gather will help us in our mission to promote open inquiry in academia. So let's hear from some of those college students who have reported being indoctrinated.  (Since the students get anonymity, I've given it to the profs too, even though said profs are suspected liberals, and actually deserve no fairness.) First, there's the student at UCLA who took an elective class in "Agitational Communication," which you'd expect to be kind of, well, agitational.  But apparently the Prof took the title too much to heart, doing things like: . . .He complained that the primary and secondary educational systems are not biased enough to the left, and called many important American historical figures "racist" and "sexist", even though their ideas are responsible for the environment that fostered his own success. ... He directly referred to conservatives as "weird", and called the national anthem "stupid". ... Called Ann Coulter a "piece of work -- I would use more colorful language [implied the "b" word], but I'll do that in private." ... Called George W. Bush "an example of someone who talks about it [sex] a lot more than he does it" in the context of defending the hippies whom he claimed didn't have much sex. Shocking!  Imagine a professor mentioning Ann Coulter -- and not in an approving way!  Clearly this professor is a disgrace to the field of Agitational Communication! And then there's the student at University of Texas at San Antonio who took a class on Texas History, and was sadly disappointed at what went on there. Professor [R.-J.] discussed the connection between oil and politics in Texas in the 1930s. However, she then said that this still occurs today in Texas and American politics and said: "Hint, Hint" and looked around the room, implying to many in the classroom that President Bush and others in the government are acting on oil-interests rather than American interests. . . . In terms of tax dollars and my tuition money, I didn't learn anything except that Texas is about oil, greed, death, etc.  Which is a foul lie, since everybody knows that Texas is about FOOTBALL, oil, greed, death, etc. And reflect on this report from a student at Western Kentucky University who took Sociology 101:    Dr. [M's] class was so biased it was almost comical. The first day of class he attacked free traders: Adam Smith and Milton Friedman.   He attacked big business. He said that George Bush was hurting all the poor people by giving tax cuts.  Most lectures consisted of Dr. [M's] own ideologies being forced upon the class. He seemed to push a Marxist agenda.  Examples of some of the topics in his lectures included: CEO of corporations are paid too much, taxes should be raised so everyone can receive "free health care," in 20 years only rich people will be able to afford water because of environmental degradation and global warming, conservative virtues are evil, and how everyone should be a feminist, and that everyone should be a vegetarian because killing animals is cruel. The professor in question submitted a rebuttal to the student's statements: . . . I never claimed Americans were murderers because they eat meat. I'm not even a vegetarian myself!  But some people, like the millions of PETA members, do.  (One class was indeed on 'environmental issues' like deforestation etc. and many people did not leave during this class at all).  Part of any sociology class in college is being exposed to a wide variety of different ideas, thoughts and perspectives you've never heard of before, and you may not agree with.  Yes, including Marxism, as Marx was one of the founding fathers of sociology.  So the exam did include ONE question on Marx.  But also on Max Weber, Durkheim, Adam Smith, David Ricardo etc. and of the course the 3 req. textbooks. . . . Rest assured, it is very doubtful that outside of college you will ever again be exposed to such critical thinking or rethinking of the world as it currently exists, or have to wonder about the existence of a variety of social problems.  Now that must be a relief to you.   Well, that's all well and good, but why should we accept the statements of a proven Marxist over that of a true-blooded, young American patriot? Anyway, the scandalous way that conservatives are forced to endure hearing opinions and ideas with which they don't agree is such a national disgrace that I think the press should immediately stop whatever they're doing (whether it it be looking at those TANG records which show that in 1972 a young George W. Bush took time off for the Guard to do court-mandated community service for his cocaine trafficking conviction, or making up lies about the White House's statements on job projections) and focus on these civil rights violations on our nations campuses. We plan to set an example by revealing the thoroughly-documented, scrupulously true stories of some persecuted conservative W o'C readers in our next post.  4:33:28 PM

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The Crushing of Conservatives on American Campuses! That's been an ongoing theme with Glenn Reynolds for some time now -- he links to some unconfirmed story by some whining associate professor telling how the liberal college administration violated his first ammendment rights by refusing to let him teach a course on "Why White People are Better Than Everybody Else."  Or the account of some high school student who patterns himself on Michael Savage, who published an unauthorized newsletter calling the teachers "traitors," the Hispanic students "thieving webacks," the female students "feminst dykes," the Muslim students "terrorists," and the debate club "jerks" -- and then complained to Bill O'Reilly how nobody likes him just because he's a conservative. Andrew Sullivan has posted several stories from unidentified readers who tell of how they once had a professor say something like, "Isn't it great that we're all liberals here and think that Karl Marx was the coolest guy ever?", or "America was mean to the native Americans." A couple of days ago, Glenn linked to one of Andrew's story hours and proclaimed that it was "Like the second coming of Joe McCarthy!"  Let me share one of those searing McCarthyesque experiences with you (one which Andrew labels "pure misandry"):  From 1983-1987 I was a graduate student in European History at the Univ. of Mass. I was, very nearly, the lone 'conservative' and witnessed then and afterwards dozens of instances of left wing bias both in teaching and in the hiring of teachers for the Academy. The one that stands out, I suppose for humorous reasons, is the following: I had a good friend who was taking a class in the Women's History department on advertising and women. I sat in quietly during one of the classes and noticed that it was a fairly well-attended class of around 25 women and one man (not including me.) It was about 2/3rds of the way through the semester and they were thick in the process of presenting to the class their research projects for the semester. The teacher was scheduling these for the next few sessions and she would call on each student by name and schedule their day to present. Eventually, she got to the lone male in the class at which point she asked ... 'What is your name again?'" A professor failed to remember a student's name (or pretended not to)!  That IS just like the second coming of Joe McCarthy! And of course, Mike Adams uses his weekly TownHall column to tell of the trials and persecution he experiences as the lone conservative professor at UNC-Wilmington (and possibly the only one on the entire American continent).  Jesse at Pandagon discusses Mike's latest column (it involves publishing someone else's email in order to make the point that liberals violate other people's freedom of speech when they insist on having rules for decourous discourse in their classrooms). Anway, here's my plan: tell me your most heartwrending stories of how the liberals crushed you on campus, and I will post the best ones.  And then maybe Glenn will be happy. 2:04:51 AM