Taking the cause of the academic rights of the right (scary stuff

happening in our Universities!! Horowitz again!!



http://www.sptimes.com/2005/05/29/Worldandnation/Taking_the_cause_of_t.shtml

Taking the cause of the academic rights of the right

The Students for Academic Freedom aim to make it more comfortable for conservative college students to thrive in a liberal arts atmosphere.

By ANITA KUMAR, Times Staff Writer
Published May 29, 2005

WASHINGTON - Across the nation, liberal professors are being accused of abusing their conservative students by humiliating them in classes, lowering their grades, forcing them to listen to radical leftist views.

Some lawmakers want to even the score. They want to forbid professors from bashing President Bush, mandate that they teach creationism alongside evolution and require them to explain in history class that some doubt the Holocaust existed.

In California, legislators considered an academic bill of rights, an eight-point credo designed to increase political diversity in the classroom. The same declaration was debated in Maine. And in Florida and 12 other states. Congress also is considering something similar.

The proposals are alike because a single group is behind the national effort: Students for Academic Freedom. .........

especially the provision against criticising bush. censordhip in the classroom.



we'll NEVER get our country back.

Conservatives scream the Doctrine killed diversity on the air waves.

"Ma'am, what kind of music do you normally have here?"
'Oh, we have both kinds. We have country AND western!"
--Waitress at Bob's Country Bunker in The Blues Brothers

A good freeper will tell you: a truly diverse selection of political points of view includes Pigboy (a Reagan-loving conservative who wasn't registered to vote until 1988), Neal Boortz (a Libertarian) and Sean Hannity (I'm still not sure exactly what he is, but am fairly certain it ain't liberal).

"...require them to explain in history class that some doubt the Holocaust existed"

When my daughters were younger and in elementary school, Holocaust victims came to the school to speak before them. They showed them their ID numbers.

I once took care of an elderly woman who also had that tattoo branded on her arm. She never talked about it, but as soon as I saw those numbers on her arm, I immediately knew. I guess I must have been seeing things (sic).

And the eyewitness accounts, the ovens and all the documents the Germans kept must have been fake too. I don't understand Holocaust deniers. They must be delusional to say it never happened.

liberated prisoners in concentration camps. When Eisenhower first saw the Ohrdruf camp, he said, "We are told that the American soldier does not know what he is fighting for. Now, at least, he will know what he is fighting against."

Six towers, 4,000,000 serial numbers.

to have the tats

The mother of my friends from elementary and high school was a concentration camp survivor. She has an ID number tattoo. She usually wore long sleeves, winter and summer, to keep it out of sight. One day however I was over Barbara's house and her mom came into the playroom with snacks for all of us and her sleeve rode up. I saw her tattoo. It has been 38 or 40 years but I can still remember the feeling in my gut - like I had been punched. I was a strange little girl, interested in the history of World War II. I loved to watch the old movies on Sunday afternoons, like Destination Tokyo and Run Silent, Run Deep and to read histories of the period, so I knew what I was looking at. It made the whole Holocaust real and vivid and immediate. I loath the deniers.

(just had to add)

the liberal arts are. :grr:

POS presidunce wants them to.

And how can one avoid bashing the POS? When they talk about the demise of the planet and the US, no one else deserves as much blame.

Scary indeed.

--Some lawmakers want to even the score. They want to forbid professors from bashing President Bush, mandate that they teach creationism alongside evolution and require them to explain in history class that some doubt the Holocaust existed.--

>The group's motto is: "You can't get a good education if they are only telling you half the story."<

So, the whole 'story' is

Bush is good.
He can do no wrong.
Bush is good.
He can do no wrong.
Bush is god.
He can do no wrong.

Think I need to go back to bed and hope to wake up somewhere other than this parallel universe.

Is there anything there about Clinton-bashing being forbidden?

Oh, wait. It's probably mandatory.

That is some serious revisionism. But then again, so is ignoring science.

Onward Christian Soldiers! To the 18th century!

People then were questioning things, were fomenting revolutions against the monarchical status quo.

These "christian" soldiers are aiming much further, something like hte 13th century. Feudalism, repression, theocracy, illiteracy, blind faith, crusades against the unbelievers and infidels (including non-orthodox "christians"), all that good shit. They want to do away with the Reformation, the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, the Constitution -- and just keep the Bible.

Coincidence?

On the other hand, dumbasses with loads of inherited and stolen money, cruelty, lying, cheating.....


Wonder if I'm onto something here?

Obviously a slanted story. Give me a break! :eyes:

from his daddy's "commie" past...

Very clever- call the Left "radical" and morans ass-u-me that the Right is "normal".

That's to say, every sane American.

A thief thinks everybody else is a thief; a liar thinks everybody else is a liar; and a radical right-wing fascist thinks everybody else is radical.

John Kerry and George Bush can be co-presidents, while John Edwards and Dick Cheney can be co-vice presidents.

I don't see the repubs jumping all over THAT idea.

Gee some belive the Easter bunny exists and Santa Claus also. Some believe we never landed on the moon.

"the Holocaust" never existed? Is it just racism or what? What are the political implications of such an assertion? Thanks in advance.

Nazi apologists fall into two main camps: the honest ones who merely regret that Hitler failed the mission, and the dishonest ones who would like to rewrite history and pretend that there was no final solution and that the nazis were simply misunderstood (and of course that the evil jews are behind the propaganda campaign to portray the nazis as mass murderers.)

On the warm and fuzzy side of the american fascist movement you have folks who have quibbled about the accuracy of the history of the holocaust, that perhaps the size and magnitude of the crime is misstated, or that there were technical reasons why it would have been impossible for so many to have been killed.

fit into the Conservative Movement? What are the US political implications for advancing such theories....and how do such theories jive with the pro-Israel forces in the Conservative Movement? I want to understand where such beliefs fit in?

Traditionally the conservative movement in the us has always had an anti-semitic side along with a nationalist/corporatist fascist tendency. Holocaust denial fits in very nicely with these folks. For example Pat Buchanan has a history of alarming statements and strange associates w.r.t. what the nazis were up to in europe in ww2.

The neoclowns, on the other hand, represent a relatively new rightwing intellectual movement, many of whose founders are jewish, some of whom made the 'Long March' from left wing extremism to right wing extremism. They trace their roots to liberal cold war hawks who, in the turmoil of the 60's and 70's, ended up all the way over on the right cozying up with folks who weren't too sure Hitler didn't have the right idea. Odd isn't it?

To make things even odder, the neoclown pro-israel agenda fits right in with the american taliban's 'end time' theology. And of course the corporate greedheads are fine with all of the nonsense as long as the oil keep flowing, the graft and corruption keeps lining their pockets, and the world is kept safe for their aristocratic lifestyles.

THX

There are so many seeming inconsistencies within the far-right movement, that I wonder how they all reconcile the conflicting ideologies??? Their reconciliation has to be for the "common good" of the "movement?" (Let's capture the country and thrash out the details later.)

I hope Dems begin framing this movement, and it is an actual movement that has been in the making for a long time, as "cultish" in nature. Cults scare the bejesus out of the American public, so the more we can emphasize the cultish nature of the movement, the better.

that either the neoclowns will overreach with a military adventure so obviously deranged and bungled that no amount of lying by the MSM can cover up the mess; or that the american taliban will overreach with acts of such outright idiocy that even complacent suburbia will choke; or that the corruption in washington, the looting of the treasury for the benefit of the corporate aristocracy, will reach such levels that even the rural religious folks will wake up.

But then again we have the fraudulent disaster in iraq, we have 'embryo adoption', and we have tax cuts for billionaires and pension cuts for grandma, and 50% of the public that even knows this much is going on don't seem too upset.

now it's "Hollywood" and "lawyers," with the white-supremacist secondary meaning of "Jews." They've also demonized Muslims and Arabs (themselves Semitic) as the Devil himself; I'm just waiting for FOX to say that they desecrated consecrated Hosts and that they killed Christian boys and put their blood into halal food.

Because I would deliberately ignore idiotic regulations such as these, and then my ass would get fired.

I mean, christ. There's a reason it's called a liberal arts education.

get discouraged....we need "liberal-types" out there, now more than ever. I have always tried to encourage investigation and free/independent thinking to all of my students-- in all situations--and it works. See post #16....we have to counter the dumbing-down effort.

figure out when the government is lying to them. Too busy trusting in God and a great leader to see the lives of many being controlled and ultimately destroyed for the benefit a few. Unlike say, the old Soviet Union or Nazi Germany. Soon we will reach the stage of group think and everyone will drink the koolaid. Let's all just get really dumb as fast as we can. Then our kids can destroy even more countries with ignorance and spread our hate at a faster clip then ever before.

See how quickly the law that mandates professors can't "bash" the president gets reversed.

This legislation just glorifies ignorance. How embarrassing it must be to belong to the far right...

I love how the ruling party and ideology in this country still victimize themselves.
People pay a ton of money to go to college to learn about subjects they are not taught in public schools. I would be outraged if my college professor was forced to change his/her curriculum to teach creationism, and how great Reagan was.
I always said the country would get real dumb with Bush as president.

http://www.dumdumgoestothecircus.com/

They are not being disciminated against. I am willing to bet that none of those things actually happened. The right is a bunch of whiny crybabies. They want everything. The reason a lot of college professors are liberal (and not all of them are anyway) is because they are better educated. I think of conservatism as being basically closed-minded. Conservatives cannot stand to have their little worldview challenged and that is what happens in college.

do you get the SPTimes? What did you think of the God and Wal-Mart article.

I was going to post that one - but I would have to link to a different site, it is not up at St. Pete times online.

In re: the Students for Academic Freedom article - I thought Republicans were opposed to quotas??!

"Run by Horowitz, 66, and three other people - none of them students - Students for Academic Freedom has encountered fierce opposition from faculty and administrators, who accuse outsiders of trying to dictate the number of Republican and Democratic professors on campus."
-nuff said.

David just wants to be in charge of the revolution, any revolution. He is a jew aligned with holocaust deniers. He is an 'intellectual' aligned with anti-intellectual creationists. He is one sick twisted fuck.

Hey David: we know you, we remember you, you ain't fooling anybody.

Conservatives (read whackjobs) won't be satisfied with anything regarding the education community. They want control, not freedom to speak or hold opinions.

One of the methods I used in teaching High School current history to upper-middle class kids was to have the libs debate the cons. The community divided itself pretty neatly into about 20 % libs, 30% cons, and 50% uncommitted. The uncommitted kids usually served as the judges/audience.

Kids - and a few parents - objected because the libs generally made the cons look stupid.

Biiiig debate every year about using the A-bomb on Japan. Libs (using the bomb was unnecessary and cruel and for political purposes only) beat the A-bombers every time.

The debates about the Kent State shootings always turned into a non-debate. The kids (lib and con) could never figure out why innocents were killed and nobody was prosecuted.

If conservative ideas are so damn good, why not subject them to the intellectual process and see how they hold up.

If conservative ideas are so damn good, why not subject them to the intellectual process and see how they hold up.

This, of course, is the real agenda.

When your ideas are all based on crappy pseudo-science, propaganda, and mis-readings of the ancient texts of a bronze-age goatherding society, the last thing you need is to have your ideas debated in a fair, open discussion. Fair debate/competition of ideas is a BAD thing when your ideas are utterly illogical and dangerous.

about how our Universities were abusing their rights as research scientists. They get Thousands of Federal dollars to do research, and when they discover some new breakthrough, they get a patent and start up a private company for themselves, while still staying on the faculty. Some don't go quite that far, but do consulting for business on the side, giving away the very research results the Gov't is paying them to do as a science professor.

It was staggering information!

With the "claim" that conservative students are punished, and the stealing of research data, it sounds like the who system needs changed!

over and over, and want to remain ignorant, then why are they going to a school of higher learning?

They should start their own schools of higher stupidity. Of course, no one will hire them laterf on because everything they will "know" will make them functionally illiterate.

Get your degree from Bullshit University now!

Require professors to explain in history class that some doubt the Holocaust existed?

Should professors also be allowed to explain in history class that some people believe in the Easter Bunny, too?

diversity.

To the right the conservative untruths should have just as much weight as a fact. Their real aim is fascist propaganda masquerading as truth.

you can spread lies but not have opinions? this is freedom?
no, this is way fucked up.

If they want to talk about political bias in an institution, let's talk about the rise of the religious right over a thirty-year period. If they're going to whine about the left-wing takeover of our universities, then they'd better be willing to examine the right-wing takeover of our churches, in particular the Southern Baptist Convention.

The religious left in this country has a long and noble history; it helped end slavery and criticized the flawed and harmful doctrine of Social Darwinism; it led to the better treatment of the mentally and physically ill and of those in prison; and it led to a great many of the social programs whose legacies are still helping to bring about the American dream.

But now, the idea of a religious left is completely alien to many. Now, it is virtually impossible in the minds of many to be both a Christian and a Democrat, even though many philosophies espoused by us fit snugly with the words and actions of Jesus. Now, preachers with a clear political agenda have managed to infect this country with the disease of division, making every effort to blur the line between politics and religion. Now, leaders on the right are twisting the meaning of religion, in particular Christianity, to serve their own interests, at the expense of the legitimacy of their faith and the unity of the faithful. This is where the real problem of unquestioned political bias can be found, and where it most needs to be rooted out. After all, when was the last time that you heard of a group of high-ranking, successful college students being expelled because they refused to vote for John Kerry and/or refused to endorse such an expulsion?

It's high time a group of left-wing Christians got together and demanded fairness and equality of perspective in our religious institutions (I say "Christians" because, while I appreciate and value the contributions of all religions, the Christian religion has suffered the worst of the radical right-wing hijacking, and thus needs the most attention to remedy the situation, in my opinion), and it's high time that the groups that I know are working toward that end get the same amount of media attention a bunch of snarky college kids are getting.

I believe even in the rightwing churches you'll find people peppered through it that affirm the following...

Footprints of the Spirit: An Alternative Community

Where the Spirit walks she leaves signs for us to follow. Christian renewal communities through time have been marked with some particular signs and beliefs that we continue to follow today. They offer alternative visions to the values of our world and the accommodated patterns of the institutional church.

We believe in Jesus as the Living Christ, God made flesh among us, whom we seek to follow with our whole lives; in his announcement and demonstration of the new order called the reign of God, and his proclamation of it in the Sermon on the Mount; in his saving power and grace, and in what he taught and showed us through his life, death, and resurrection.

We believe in the power of the Word of God and the authority of the scriptures in our lives; in the kind of biblical faith that is centered in and around God's Word so that it might be made incarnate and become real in the world.

We believe commitment to be centrally important - to God, to one another, to our sisters and brothers on this planet, and to the Earth itself.

We believe in binding up the divisions that the world often creates, especially those based on race, class, gender, or culture. We are called to combat racism in all its forms and to build a more just and pluralistic society where diversity is respected, freedom is secured, and power is shared. We refuse to accept structures and assumptions that normalize poverty and segregate the world by class. We are committed to resisting sexism in all its forms and affirming the integrity and equality of women and men both in the church and in the world.

We believe that gospel faith transforms our economics, gives us the power to share our bread and resources, welcomes all to the table of God's provision, and provides a vision for social revolution.

We believe our destiny is tied to the poor and disenfranchised of the world, and that in their struggle we will find the hidden face of God.

We believe our lives to be an integral part of God's creation, to be lived responsibly and in harmony with the rest of God's creatures and with the Earth.

We believe that Jesus' way of nonviolent transformation and peacemaking is not a Utopian dream but a necessary path. Violence and war will not resolve the inevitable conflicts between people and nations. We believe that peace must begin with our own lives and our willingness to make sacrifices -and even suffer -for justice.

We believe that our obedience to the state or any other institution must be conditioned, tempered, and sometimes rendered impossible because of our higher loyalty to the reign of God.

We believe in the absolute necessity of spiritual formation and prayer to counter the assault of the world's dominant values on our hearts and minds and to center our lives and rest our souls in God.

We believe that living in peace with sisters and brothers in community is a continual challenge; that it is rooted in the direct and honest communication that Jesus instructed; and that it is made possible by the saving work of the cross, which breaks down all barriers, laying a foundation for justice, equality, reconciliation, and love.

We believe that authority in community grows out of shared life and faith, and that leadership comes from the free expression and affirmation of the rich variety of gifts and calls God has given to the body of Christ.

We believe that the Holy Spirit dwells in and empowers both the local integrity and international reality of the Christian community and that the Spirit binds us together across any national, cultural, or political boundaries.

Alternative communities bear the small, yet highly combustible, seeds of God's imagination. They must carry forward the ability to "speak truth to power," as Paul says. In so doing, they generate visions of God's reign in the world and challenge the structures and systems to measure up. That vision, rooted in profound hope, will transform some of those structures, reveal that others are woefully inadequate and suggest the need for new ones.

If people of faith are to stay true to this mission in the work we must be in constant dialogue with the Word of God. We must place the Word in the most intimate and tender center of our lives. We must always touch the face of God before we stretch out our hands to the work of the world, and we must reach back to God again and again. In this way is the passionate, consuming imagination of God borne forward.

Source: www.sojo.net/index.cfm?action=about_us.community

Having shared what I hope appears to be a beacon of hope, I also have to say that I have some experience with charismatic churches (that of course fall in the rightwing camp) and the political ignorance and blind nationalism that runs rampant in them is truly disheartening.

It is time for the vast leftward diaspora in the Christian Church (in all its denominations) to rise up and make their voices heard. The only way to loosen this unholy grip of nationalism-militarism-imperialism-selfishism is to pry Satan's talons from the hearts of those who endeavor to walk with God. We on the Left should appeal to the basic values of Jesus Christ and call out from the Church those who are good and just and compassionate albeit marooned and exploited by leadership grounded in baser political values.

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.
-- President Dwight D. Eisenhower, April 16, 1953

He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetuate it.
-- Martin Luther King Jr

You're not to be so blind with patriotism that you can't face reality. Wrong is wrong, no matter who does it or says it.
-- Malcolm X

If you assume that there's no hope, you guarantee that there will be no hope. If you assume that there is an instinct for freedom, there are opportunities to change things, there's a chance you may contribute to making a better world. That's your choice.
-- Noam Chomsky

You must be the change you want to see in the world.
-- Mohandas K Ghandi

Now. Or never.
-- Henry David Thoreau

And from a listserver I used to use: "Get off the internet, I'll see you in the streets."

the mind.

These people are Troglodytes!


from article:
"...They want to forbid professors from bashing President Bush..."

"Dissent is the highest form of patriotism" - Thomas Jefferson

http://www.indybay.org/print.php?id=1719333 this is one of the steps #11

....that asswipe never stops, does he? What a sicko control freak.

The fuck it can't.

OK, class, after you finish "The Demon-Haunted World", here's your next assignment.
Read Sinclair Lewis' "It Can't Happen HERE!" and tell me the "other side" didn't read it first.

"Some lawmakers want to even the score. They want to forbid professors from bashing President Bush, mandate that they teach creationism alongside evolution and require them to explain in history class that some doubt the Holocaust existed."

I've said it before, and I'll say it again, the days of having EDUCATED people representing us in Washington are over. It's "Thug Rule" now, with the seats going to the biggest and wealthiest businessmen in the district, never mind that they barely finished High School.

"Higher Education" is a forkin' JOKE anymore anyway. It's not a "University Experience", it's a gawd-damn FOUR YEAR 2-Year Technical School. All you do is study only that which is germain to getting your "License to Make Money", formerly known as a BS, BA, MS, MA or PhD degree. You think a MBA or XMBA candidate takes any Art courses? Hah! Only so he won't get ripped off when he makes his first Megabuck and starts buying Renoirs....

Yeah, we still have Liberal Arts Majors on campus. Damned if I know what they're planning on doing when their money runs out...I guess they provide entertainment for the Frat Boys.

schools and they can fill each other full of all the shit they want.

My liberal arts school changed my life. coming from a small town I needed to be at a big school with challenging professors, different beliefs, and different cultures. I do not know what I would be without the discourse I was exposed to. I hope this does not discourage current and future professors. we need you now more that ever!

Some of these folks are very busy creating their future, I believe.

"academic freedom"?

And these people want Holocaust denial, Judeo-Christian creation myth and unquestioning endorsement of George Bush added to the curriculum? Absurd.

Point the first: the Holocaust is a fact as well-documented as Stalin's purges and gulags; there are documents, there are survivors, there are the death camps themselves; anyone who could argue that there's doubt that it occurred is insane or stupid (and probably both).

Point the second: Creationism has no place being taught alongside evolution in any college course. Anyone who is already inclined to believe in the creationist myth does not need to hear it again; anyone who is not can take a course in religion/theology/mythology and learn it there.

Point the third: part of the purpose of a college education is to develop critical thinking skills; in the fields of political science and history, current events are viewed through a lens of five millenia of human history and preceding events, which is the only way one can get any sense of whatr the meaning of the present is and what the future may be. Within that tradition, critical analysis rather than unquestioning acceptance of George Bush and his administration's policies is to be expected and should even be encouraged. Again, anyone who has a problem with it is encouraged to attend some unaccredited right-wing indoctrination centre like Bob Jones University.

The idea that any of this falls under the rubric of "academic freedom" is idiocy; the obfuscation of science in favour of myth and legend, the distortion of history by Nazi apologists, and the elimination of open and honest debate on current political issues, all serve to curtail academic freedom in order to advance a particular ideological agenda. And the idea that lawmakers know better than educators what students ought to learn is one that's been voiced before; in China, Nazi Germany, Soviet Russia, and countless other totalitarian societies. It has no place here.

Who introduced it?

It would make a banner publicity--we could really hang it on the Rethugs.

"According to critic Graham Larkin, the Ohio legislature bill based on Horowitz’s ABOR (introduced by State Senator Larry Mumper) prohibits instructors from "persistently" discussing controversial subjects. Mumper’s examples of controversial subjects? "Religion and politics."


http://www.thebluerepublic.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=40&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0|Read the article>

but because of what they might mean, and the writer doesn't bother to follow up sufficiently.

"Some lawmakers want to even the score. They want to forbid professors from bashing President Bush, mandate that they teach creationism alongside evolution and require them to explain in history class that some doubt the Holocaust existed."

"Some" could be 3 or 200. "Lawmakers" could be on a schoolboard, or in the Senate. "They" may be a single set possessing the attributes that follow, or a set that those attributes quantify over. In other words, do all the lawmakers under consideration want the Holocaust provision, or just a subset, possibly even just one. Sensationalist, it plays into fears and suspicions, but it says far less than people (want to) believe it does.

"In California, legislators considered an academic bill of rights, an eight-point credo designed to increase political diversity in the classroom. The same declaration was debated in Maine. And in Florida and 12 other states. Congress also is considering something similar."

There is no stated connection between the set of lawmakers in the first paragraph I quoted and the "California" legislators, or between the earlier things some lawmakers wanted and the "academic bill of rights." It's called parataxis, where you put together things and let the listener to supply the connections. If they draw the wrong conclusions, you didn't lie, even if the conclusion is completely predictable. But it's certainly a sucker's game for a reader to accept such an article at face value, esp. if the writer doesn't have the intellectual courage to be explicit.

I accept the facts that were cited. But I don't accept the implicatures. Little to see here except possibly manipulation.

(on edit: dagned typos. Oops. Make that 'danged typos'.)