This was, perhaps, the most positive conversation I’ve ever overheard while a graduate student. Otherwise, it’s a tame example of what I have to deal with multiple times a day, nearly every day.
(I was a participant in this conversation, but I did not speak during the section I’m reporting on).
Student A: Well, I don’t believe Ralph Nader stole the election from Gore. I have yet to see any evidence that people who voted for Nader would have voted for Gore if Nader hadn’t been running for office.
B: What are you – a Republican or something?
A: Hell, no. I –
C: Why did you even ask that question? How on earth was he supposed to answer?
B: What do you mean?
C: No one in this department is a Republican, and even if they were, would you expect them to admit it? If they did, you know they’d be out of the program within a semester. There are serious repercussions for holding conservative political views.
B: As there should be. But I get your drift. The only possible answer to that question is no.
C: Well, yeah. It’s not like Republicans belong in the program or anything, but if one happened to slip in, they’d have to be very quiet about it.
B: Our job as instructors is to make sure our students are radicalized anyway. They get the conservative viewpoint from every other facet of society. We’re the only ones who can give them the truth. We need to break through their idiotic conservative beliefs if we want to be effective at all. A Republican can’t do that.
A: Exactly.
Perhaps this explains why, despite not being Republican myself, I’m so darn cranky with leftists.
Where are you going to school?
that’s, frankly, disgusting.
Yeah, the left has always had more of an embarrassing herd mentality in my lifetime. That’s why control freaks like BKP are comfy being Democrats; they just can’t accept the chaotic nature of the human condition and expect everything to fit in some neat little box as if we were still in the Garden of Eden. It’s a real diservice to the country to the country too. For example, we didn’t have a real debate before going to war in Iraq, because the left just spouted nonsense like “no blood for oil” or “Cheney-Haliburton corruption”, rather than intelligent arguements of why it might be a poor use of our defense resources. The only rational arguements against the war came from marginalized players on the right like Buchanan, Andrew Sullivan and some of the Reagan and Bush 41 old gaurd, not enough to even be close to a critical mass against the prevailing wisdom of the time.
Ha, Ralph Nader was on the Bob Edwards Show (XM Radio) yesterday discussing, among other things, the Democrats’ disgust with him. I was shocked to learn about some of his experiences. Progressivism is being hijacked more and more–this kind of thinking is the very antithesis of liberalism.
Exchanges such as this were abundant during my experience in law school. On the first day of Constitutional Law, the instructor polled the class for its views on abortion. There was quite literally an audible gasp when the incredibly small minority of people who admitted to being against legalized abortion raised their hands. In Texas, of all places. And this before my classmates (I imagine the vast majority of them) had ever read Roe or Casey.
But we must know–what did you end up saying? What was the response?
1 – I’ve made no secret of where I go (you can click on the link in my name and find that out), but this post significantly raises the chances of me never, ever getting hired as a professor. So I want to avoid putting important search terms all in one place.
2 – I didn’t say anything. I usually keep my mouth shut about politics after learning most of my professors and fellow grad students weren’t interested in views they saw as evil.
3 – here are some quotes from critical race theorists:
“Whites tend not to recognize that race has little meaning without reference to the power structures that have historically supported and are currently supporting white domination. Whites see whiteness as the norm, an absence of race. Along with whiteness come privileges that are invisible to whites. Instead of seeing privilege resulting from the historical domination of whites in this country as the source of our success, whites interpret any benefits we receive as reward for individual merit and hard work.” (Ann McGinley)
And
“Too often victims of hate speech find themselves without the words to articulate what they see, feel, and know . . . they internalize the injury done to them and are rendered silent in the face of continuing injury” (Mari Matsuda)
What I find amazing about those quotes is, if all one did was switch the Whites/Minorities in society paradigm to a liberals/conservatives in the humanities paradigm, the quotes would apply just as well. There is a stifling, oppressive, hateful political atmosphere in academia, but those in power see it as normal and right, so they see nothing all that wrong with it.
And now I’m off to an academic conference in New Mexico to present a paper on Battlestar Galactica. I’ll be out of touch until late Saturday.
A paper on Battlestar Galactica? How cool.
Where’s Languatron when you need him?
I agree with your comments, Ivan. What I think maybe is not provided is the context for the conversation. As you undoubtedly know, the area your school is in is a small island of blue in an incredibly large sea of red. I wonder if professors and students feel some need to present another viewpoint to undergrads who have probably grown up in the sea of red and who haven’t bothered to see much beyond that at 18-22.
That said, I’m not sure that justifies the viewpoint discrimination apparent in the conversation by those who are supposed to be most ardently against viewpoint discrimination.
jimbob –
the real problem is that in my travels to conferences and the like, this is the attitude everywhere – even in the blue-est of the blue states.
Even though it’s a bit partisan at times, phi beta cons at National Review does a good job of tracking this stuff – and one only needs to see the actions of humanities teachers in the Duke/Nifong case to see this is a rather widespread and deeply entrenched viewpoint.
Our job as instructors is to make sure our students are radicalized anyway. They get the conservative viewpoint from every other facet of society. We’re the only ones who can give them the truth. We need to break through their idiotic conservative beliefs if we want to be effective at all. A Republican can’t do that.
So much arrogance. What a prick.
I don’t think there’s anything wrong with students or anybody else being exposed to other viewpoints. The issue is when people believe that their viewpoints are the only “correct” viewpoints and therefore try to suppress opinions with which they disagree. This was the whole point of the free speech movement in the early 1960s in the first place — to open up schools to other points of view that were not being expressed. Now, however, the existing administrations in the vast majority of universities and colleges are leftists, and they don’t want to consider or even hear the other side.
I can’t speak for Ivan, but I would have no problem with a university that truly encouraged a diversity of viewpoints. Unfortunately, that is not the case today — in most places, only a few narrow viewpoints are acceptable.
Geoff –
I wish the English departments I have been involved with were open to a diversity of viewpoints. In fact, I want Literary studies and the humanities to be THE place where this happens. Unfortunately, despite their talk of diversity, it’s just another place where certain viewpoints are acceptable and others are openly suppressed. I’ve been in workshops where teachers openly talk about how to deal with students who write papers on conservative themes and to let them know that’s not acceptable. More than once I’ve heard the phrase “I just can’t understand where they are coming from. How could anyone believe this stuff?” which shows a lack of imagination among profs.
I honestly try to present a diversity of viewpoints in my classes. This has caused some interesting effects, since the students are generally used to partisan teachers – so I basically have half the class convinced I’m a flaming liberal and the other that I’m a hardcore conservative. This is because the students, having been trained by other teachers, can’t believe someone would present a viewpoint in class without believing it as well.