MSU professor William Penn pulled from classroom after attack on Republicans

[ishii]

I went to college and I never had some wacko Liberal as a professor. People in college are usually voting age. If a professor is influencing them as easily as so many think, then they shouldn’t be voting anyway. Some Republicans make it seem like no one says anything bad about Democrats. Politics is a game and both teams have it out for the other. I’m not going to get all up in arms because some professor made rude comments. He is out of the classroom this semester and the university doesn’t know what they are going to do with him next semester. This isn’t a middle school classroom that he was teaching, he was teaching adults. If college-aged people don’t have a backbone and can’t form an opinion on their own so sad for them, it isn’t some professor that they see 3 hours a week fault.

Where did you go to college?

I agree that college students don’t perhaps think as critically as they should - and they probably take their professors words without really challenging them. But don’t you think it would be better if there was more intellectual diversity on college campuses instead of mainly the left/liberal point of view? And also, this is not really about Republicans vs. Democrats. The bias I am talking about in academia - and it does exist - is more Left vs right or far left vs. mainstream American/conservative. Furthermore, the leftists in academia hate the traditional institutions of America - one of them being free speech. They talk about “diversity” and “inclusiveness” but they are basically all in lockstep: conservative teachers are very few in number on college campuses.

In the late 80’s when I attended college, I had a professor who was a communist. She gave only the left wing point of view - and would invite other leftists to speak at class. When I pressed her on this bias she responded that we all received the official American conservative/capitalist point of view on the network news! That is how far left she was: she considered CBS/NBC/ABC to be conservative. This was a “catholic” Jesuit run university, btw.

Ishii

 

[KendraDZ1902]

I would not be surprised to find out that this “liberal professor” boogeyman was, in fact, yet another conservative dog whistle like “liberal media,” “Kenyan anti-colonialist” etc., etc. that has no basis in reality but fires conservatives up. Any time one professor hits the news, it brings the whole issue up again .

 

[robwar]

I went to college and I never had some wacko Liberal as a professor. People in college are usually voting age. If a professor is influencing them as easily as so many think, then they shouldn’t be voting anyway. Some Republicans make it seem like no one says anything bad about Democrats. Politics is a game and both teams have it out for the other. I’m not going to get all up in arms because some professor made rude comments. He is out of the classroom this semester and the university doesn’t know what they are going to do with him next semester. This isn’t a middle school classroom that he was teaching, he was teaching adults. If college-aged people don’t have a backbone and can’t form an opinion on their own so sad for them, it isn’t some professor that they see 3 hours a week fault.

I was a science major and with the couple of examples I gave in an earlier post, I had to put up with a couple of prof’s that were more interested in promoting their views on religion and politics than teaching what they were being paid for. This wasn’t a discussion group for critical thinking. The zoology course was a large lecture room with over 100 in it. I learned more about the 60’s peace movement from that old prof than about biochemistry and this is the 80’s. My husband was a total captive in this one REQUIRED masters level course where all the REQUIRED reading in it was articles written by angry liberals with Ronald Reagan. If my husband spoke up he would have been kicked out of the program because this particular prof was one of the heads of the departments. Unless one is in a truly conservative university like Hillsdale or a faithful religious college stories like ours are just too common. What is curious here is that MSU has hundreds of professors teaching at it and a video posted on the internet gets this guy a minor slap on the wrist. I am sure that MSU has many more like this guy but he is the stupid one to get caught and they are making a show of it.

 

[KendraDZ1902]

Where did you go to college?

I agree that college students don’t perhaps think as critically as they should - and they probably take their professors words without really challenging them. But don’t you think it would be better if there was more intellectual diversity on college campuses instead of mainly the left/liberal point of view? And also, this is not really about Republicans vs. Democrats. The bias I am talking about in academia - and it does exist - is more Left vs right or far left vs. mainstream American/conservative. Furthermore, the leftists in academia hate the traditional institutions of America - one of them being free speech. They talk about “diversity” and “inclusiveness” but they are basically all in lockstep: conservative teachers are very few in number on college campuses.

In the late 80’s when I attended college, I had a professor who was a communist. She gave only the left wing point of view - and would invite other leftists to speak at class. When I pressed her on this bias she responded that we all received the official American conservative/capitalist point of view on the network news! That is how far left she was: she considered CBS/NBC/ABC to be conservative. This was a “catholic” Jesuit run university, btw.

Ishii

I went to a state university in Alabama. We engaged in debates in class, especially in history or sociology, but the professors I had didn’t exclude certain sides of the debate. My husband studied history and political science and he had both liberal and conservative professors. I think that would be normal for the majors he had. I never heard of raging wackos on campus, though.

 

[ishii]

Honestly, I just came out of a super-liberal public undergraduate campus, and the teachers were almost entirely non-political outside of the Women & Gender Studies professors, and you knew what you were getting into if you were a W&GS major . Even the sociology programs were super-balanced, and our religion programs were awesome. There was a pro-life movement on campus, and while it created huge, and I mean HUGE turmoil on campus, the school was extremely supportive of their right to protest and write chalk messages everywhere.

Heck, we even had crazy Fundamentalists come on campus and yell at people that they weren’t agreeing with Jesus if they believed in evolution, and the campus was fine with it since they sought a permit.

I would not be surprised to find out that this “liberal professor” boogeyman was, in fact, yet another conservative dog whistle like “liberal media,” “Kenyan anti-colonialist” etc., etc. that has no basis in reality but fires conservatives up. Any time one professor hits the news, it brings the whole issue up again .

In their 2004 study on liberal/left wing bias in academia, David Horowitz and Eli Lehrer found that Democrat professors outnumbered Republican professors 10-1. In the study they looked at 32 “elite” colleges and universities. Of course - intellectually honest people would admit that our colleges and universities are hotbeds of leftism - and have been since the 60’s and earlier.

Incidentally, David Horowitz is routinely shouted down (by the open-minded leftists) when he tries to speak on college campuses that he is invited to speak at. David Horowitz, being a former leftist himself, understands the nature of the left.

studentsforacademicfreedom.org/news/1898/lackdiversity.html

Ishii

 

[ishii]

I went to a state university in Alabama. We engaged in debates in class, especially in history or sociology, but the professors I had didn’t exclude certain sides of the debate. My husband studied history and political science and he had both liberal and conservative professors. I think that would be normal for the majors he had. I never heard of raging wackos on campus, though.

Fair enough, Kendra. But not surprised that your experience is from a college in the deep south where one might expect more conservatives. Unfortunately, for the rest of the country, there isn’t such an objective presentation of the political debate.

Ishii

 

[SMGS127]

In their 2004 study on liberal/left wing bias in academia, David Horowitz and Eli Lehrer found that Democrat professors outnumbered Republican professors 10-1. In the study they looked at 32 “elite” colleges and universities. Of course - intellectually honest people would admit that our colleges and universities are hotbeds of leftism - and have been since the 60’s and earlier.

Incidentally, David Horowitz is routinely shouted down (by the open-minded leftists) when he tries to speak on college campuses that he is invited to speak at. David Horowitz, being a former leftist himself, understands the nature of the left.

studentsforacademicfreedom.org/news/1898/lackdiversity.html

Ishii

Really? Because I’m pretty sure our Political Science program had neocons, isolationists, and left-wing professors. Our Sociology professors were pretty even, and they allowed for open discussion. Our Religion professors made no political mention at all. Our Biology TA/head professor allowed people to do alternative projects on the social or political sides of stem cell research if you didn’t want to do a project on the research itself. Outside of my one W&GS course, there was literally no liberal bias I saw in any department except for a single sociology professor (out of 7), and again, conservative viewpoints were welcomed in virtually every class.

Also, your link is exactly as I predicted. They took the 32 most-well-known liberal campuses in the entire US, and tried to extrapolate it across the US. Before I read it, I called Wellesley, Smith, and Ivy League schools, and that’s a THIRD of the colleges surveyed. Nice random sample there.

In addition, almost all of them, if not all of them, are also private institutions, meaning they have more leeway in their political bias. I bet you if you do a survey of colleges including only Liberty University, Ave Maria, Augustine Institute, the JPII Institute, Catholic U, and the University of Dallas, you’d find a 20-1 Republican advantage and a 500-1 Christian advantage. Should I extrapolate that to “all universities have a huge conservative and ridiculously huge Christian bias?” Talk about intellectually dishonest…

robwar:

considering that Alabama is in the south, it would not be representative of what goes on on most universities in the east, midwest, rust belt and on the west coast. I am sure if in a southern university like Alabama, if you had raging wackos on campus and a majority of the student body being from the Bible belt of the country wouldn’t have put up with it or they were smarter and hid more of their views than places like Harvard or U of M etc. Probably on a compendium of all higher learning places, Alabama would fall more conservative being in the Bible belt and as a student there, you didn’t see it.

I went to a public school in New England. It’s not just the South. “Liberal professor” is just a dog whistle supported by fake studies that I debunked above in this post and nothing else.

 

[robwar]

I went to a state university in Alabama. We engaged in debates in class, especially in history or sociology, but the professors I had didn’t exclude certain sides of the debate. My husband studied history and political science and he had both liberal and conservative professors. I think that would be normal for the majors he had. I never heard of raging wackos on campus, though.

considering that Alabama is in the south, it would not be representative of what goes on on most universities in the east, midwest, rust belt and on the west coast. I am sure if in a southern university like Alabama, if you had raging wackos on campus and a majority of the student body being from the Bible belt of the country wouldn’t have put up with it or they were smarter and hid more of their views than places like Harvard or U of M etc. Probably on a compendium of all higher learning places, Alabama would fall more conservative being in the Bible belt and as a student there, you didn’t see it.

 

[ishii]

Really? Because I’m pretty sure our Political Science program had neocons, isolationists, and left-wing professors. Our Sociology professors were pretty even, and they allowed for open discussion. Our Religion professors made no political mention at all. Our Biology TA/head professor allowed people to do alternative projects on the social or political sides of stem cell research if you didn’t want to do a project on the research itself. Outside of my one W&GS course, there was literally no liberal bias I saw in any department except for a single sociology professor (out of 7), and again, conservative viewpoints were welcomed in virtually every class.

Also, your link is exactly as I predicted. They took the 32 most-well-known liberal campuses in the entire US, and tried to extrapolate it across the US. Before I read it, I called Wellesley, Smith, and Ivy League schools, and that’s a THIRD of the colleges surveyed. Nice random sample there.

In addition, almost all of them, if not all of them, are also private institutions, meaning they have more leeway in their political bias. I bet you if you do a survey of colleges including only Liberty University, Ave Maria, Augustine Institute, the JPII Institute, Catholic U, and the University of Dallas, you’d find a 20-1 Republican advantage and a 500-1 Christian advantage. Should I extrapolate that to “all universities have a huge conservative and ridiculously huge Christian bias?” Talk about intellectually dishonest…

Oh, Yale, Harvard, the entire Ivy League, MIT, University of California Berkeley (not a private college) are somehow remotely comparable to these small, relatively obscure traditional Catholic or Christian colleges such as Ave Maria college, JP 2 college, and Liberty University, etc?? SMGS127, let me know the *conservative or even objective universities that produce the majority of our media and elected leaders. (I won’t hold my breath).

Btw, I will put more stock in an academic study of bias by a former leftist over someone’s random anecdote that somehow proves that academia is not biased towards the left. (just sayin’). In other words, I think Horowitz’ study tells more about academia overall than your anecdote about your college in New England.

I went to a public school in New England. It’s not just the South. “Liberal professor” is just a dog whistle supported by fake studies that I debunked above in this post and nothing else.

Ha. You debunked something? (See my post above)

Ishii

 

[SaintAugustine]

Ha. You debunked something? (See my post above)

Ishii

Yeah…that’s just plain funny. One experience at one university does not a debunking make.

 

[ishii]

Yeah…that’s just plain funny. One experience at one university does not a debunking make.

Yes. I didn’t find the post to be very “intellectually honest.”

 

[SaintAugustine]

Yes. I didn’t find the post to be very “intellectually honest.”

It’s right up there with “some of my best friends are black.”

 

[KendraDZ1902]

considering that Alabama is in the south, it would not be representative of what goes on on most universities in the east, midwest, rust belt and on the west coast. I am sure if in a southern university like Alabama, if you had raging wackos on campus and a majority of the student body being from the Bible belt of the country wouldn’t have put up with it or they were smarter and hid more of their views than places like Harvard or U of M etc. Probably on a compendium of all higher learning places, Alabama would fall more conservative being in the Bible belt and as a student there, you didn’t see it.

Princeton Review ranked Auburn University, which is in Alabama, as the most Conservative school in the nation. Maybe people should find a school that fits not only what they want to major in, but also their political views. You can’t expect to attend a liberal school and not have liberal professors. That is like going to Bonnaroo and freaking out when you see hippies there.

 

[Darryl1958]

Dennis Prager speaks of the American university as a left-wing seminary.

There is a lot of truth in that.

 

[SMGS127]

Yeah…that’s just plain funny. One experience at one university does not a debunking make.

You realize I’m talking about my discussion on the merits of the study he posted, and not my own personal experience, right? As I said, I could take the 32 most-conservative schools in the US, show a 10-1 Republican advantage, and cry about it too. That doesn’t make it real.

 

[ishii]

Princeton Review ranked Auburn University, which is in Alabama, as the most Conservative school in the nation. Maybe people should find a school that fits not only what they want to major in, but also their political views. You can’t expect to attend a liberal school and not have liberal professors. That is like going to Bonnaroo and freaking out when you see hippies there.

The problem, Kendra, is that while the nation is pretty much evenly split between conservative/liberal, the colleges and universities are overwhelmingly liberal. So its not just a matter of “find a school the fits your political views.” Moreover, many Americans don’t even have developed political views upon entering college - as they may come from apolitical families, etc.

The liberal schools far outnumber the few “conservative” schools. In fact, what many call “conservative” are really just orthodox Catholic - such as Thomas Aquinas College or Ave Maria college.

Ishii

 

[ishii]

You realize I’m talking about my discussion on the merits of the study he posted, and not my own personal experience, right? As I said, I could take the 32 most-conservative schools in the US, show a 10-1 Republican advantage, and cry about it too. That doesn’t make it real.

What are the 32 most conservative schools in the US, SMGS? And how do they compare in terms of enrollment and influence on American politics? I mean, are you going to compare Columbia University with, say, Liberty University?

Please.

Ishii

 

[SMGS127]

What are the 32 most conservative schools in the US, SMGS? And how do they compare in terms of enrollment and influence on American politics? I mean, are you going to compare Columbia University with, say, Liberty University?

Please.

Ishii

I already named 6 of the most conservative. I can retrieve those for you if you would like.

“Liberty University, Ave Maria, Augustine Institute, the JPII Institute, Catholic U, and the University of Dallas”

You want to go bigger schools that are slightly less conservative but still very conservatively-biased? Fine by me!

Nebraska, Alabama, every UT school that isn’t the main campus in Austin [of which there are a ton], Auburn, Georgia, USC (South Carolina), Kansas, Oklahoma, Oklahoma State, LSU, Ole Miss, Tennessee, Louisville, Kentucky, South Dakota, North Dakota, Brigham Young, Baylor, Rice, Missouri, Arkansas, Indiana, Mississippi State, Clemson, Texas A&M, Iowa, Iowa State, Kansas State, University of North Texas, TCU, Texas Tech, West Virginia, Vanderbilt. That’s 32 not even counting the UT flagships!

Heck, you could just grab the Big 12 outside of UT, add in the SEC, and you’d be pretty golden!

 

[SaintAugustine]

You realize I’m talking about my discussion on the merits of the study he posted, and not my own personal experience, right? As I said, I could take the 32 most-conservative schools in the US, show a 10-1 Republican advantage, and cry about it too. That doesn’t make it real.

You hand-picked the most conservative schools and drew a conclusion? That’s scientific.

 

[SMGS127]

You hand-picked the most conservative schools and drew a conclusion? That’s scientific.

That’s what his study did!!! I am making a point about how horrible his supposed “study” was because they handpicked the 32 most liberal schools!