Why Ward Churchill Matters
Despite the misgivings of The Moderate Liberal, there is a reason that bloggers on the right are highlighting Ward Churchill.
Unlike the bloggers of the Left, who seem to think that Jeff Gannon, aka Guckert, aka gay prostitute with a press pass (easily obtained by anyone) is a big fish on the right (Jeff who????? Talon what????), we don't feel that Professor Churchill is any big fish at all. What he is, is simply an indictor of the problem with the pond.
Churchill is a not-very-rare example of the problem on college campuses, where, devoid of any real critical oversight, academians pile their political rhetoric on their students and force them to regurgitate it. I had one of my students tell me that when he wrote a paper disagreeing that reporters should be present on Special Forces raids, the class was informed that if a paper was ever received again "with theories like that, it will get a zero." This is too common, and often protected by using the students poor writing ability as an excuse (see below discussion on public education for why this is easy). However, I've never had student who wrote a glowing expose of Che Guevara get an "F".
The problem is that academia is the only place where left-wingers can force people to listen to and agree with their moonbat ideas without being in Greenwich Village, San Francisco, Hollywood, or Democratic Underground. Possibly a significant reason for this is that these people have seldom ever had a job that requires real world results. If you don't believe me, log into a univeristy website. Then go to their college of Humanities. Then go to one of the following departments: Government, History, Social Science, Sociology, or Geography. Click on the link to the faculty. Then check out some faculty resumes (also known as cirriculum vitae). More than half will basically read 'undergrad, grad school, PhD, college professor'. Some may have been a lawyer or worked for a year at a counseling clinic. However, for the most part, they've never done anything but live academia...
...which is why they remain so disconnected to the real world and real people.
If you think I'm way out of line, simply do the above exercise, find all the work, and send me the name of the school in the comments. I look forward to being wrong.
Unlike the bloggers of the Left, who seem to think that Jeff Gannon, aka Guckert, aka gay prostitute with a press pass (easily obtained by anyone) is a big fish on the right (Jeff who????? Talon what????), we don't feel that Professor Churchill is any big fish at all. What he is, is simply an indictor of the problem with the pond.
Churchill is a not-very-rare example of the problem on college campuses, where, devoid of any real critical oversight, academians pile their political rhetoric on their students and force them to regurgitate it. I had one of my students tell me that when he wrote a paper disagreeing that reporters should be present on Special Forces raids, the class was informed that if a paper was ever received again "with theories like that, it will get a zero." This is too common, and often protected by using the students poor writing ability as an excuse (see below discussion on public education for why this is easy). However, I've never had student who wrote a glowing expose of Che Guevara get an "F".
The problem is that academia is the only place where left-wingers can force people to listen to and agree with their moonbat ideas without being in Greenwich Village, San Francisco, Hollywood, or Democratic Underground. Possibly a significant reason for this is that these people have seldom ever had a job that requires real world results. If you don't believe me, log into a univeristy website. Then go to their college of Humanities. Then go to one of the following departments: Government, History, Social Science, Sociology, or Geography. Click on the link to the faculty. Then check out some faculty resumes (also known as cirriculum vitae). More than half will basically read 'undergrad, grad school, PhD, college professor'. Some may have been a lawyer or worked for a year at a counseling clinic. However, for the most part, they've never done anything but live academia...
...which is why they remain so disconnected to the real world and real people.
If you think I'm way out of line, simply do the above exercise, find all the work, and send me the name of the school in the comments. I look forward to being wrong.
posted by Hammertime at
2/24/2005 02:03:00 PM
2 Comments:
Here's some antidotal evidence you are wrong, at least partially. When my wife was in college she took a class from the "History of Consciousness" department, a department found only at UC Santa Cruz and probably the most liberal group of professors you'll ever find. (That would be the part that I agree with, btw.)
Anyway, she hated the class and was tempted to just fail the class instead of completing the final paper. I talked her into spending just one hour writing a paper however she wanted -- turning in something would be better than turning in nothing at all. In her paper she just ridiculed the class, which was largely about how science wasn't any good because it was male-centric (can you be more leftist than that?), and discuss how this was neither true nor relevant.
She received a far better grade on her final paper than any of the ones she wrote previously where she tried to just regurgitate the information back to the professor. The prof. thought her ideas were
well reasoned and supported; she got my wife to think for herself (prof's point of view) and see things through fresh eyes.
By
Anonymous, at 3/02/2005 11:05:00 AM
Hammer,
You're being too generous, you know...suggesting that the opinion of some of our professors merely reflects the fact that they don't need to produce results. I believe what you say is partly true alright...but I also know too many people who do work that have views very, very similar to those of our esteemed professors. There must be other reasons.
And too, I suppose, it could be argued that their "results" are to produce accountants, lawyers, geologists, or what have you...and if they didn't produce these to someone's satisfaction, their pupils wouldn't find jobs and pretty soon that problem take care of itself; so I guess I have to say they are expected (and do) produce results.
On top of this, if you're of an honest opinion and then you're confronted with facts that dispute that honest opinion, you're obliged to alter that opinion---if you're honest that is. How often does that happen with these birds?
By
Anonymous, at 3/02/2005 11:05:00 AM
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