David Horowitz is an idiot.
Granted, anyone with any sense has known this for a good while now, but now we can prove it with SCIENCE!!! Well, political science-- Inside Higher Ed reports on a study of student political views that finds that liberal faculty make no real difference:
One of the key arguments made by David Horowitz and his supporters in recent years is that a left-wing orientation among faculty members results in a lack of curricular balance, which in turn leads to students being indoctrinated rather than educated. [...]
A study that will appear soon in the journal PS: Political Science & Politics accepts the first part of the critique of academe and says that it's true that the professoriate leans left. But the study -- notably by one Republican professor and one Democratic professor -- finds no evidence of indoctrination. Despite students being educated by liberal professors, their politics change only marginally in their undergraduate years, and that deflates the idea that cadres of tenured radicals are somehow corrupting America's youth -- or scaring them into adopting new political views.
This really isn't a surprise to anyone in education. After all, we tend to have limited success in getting students to retain anything about the subjects we're actively trying to teach them. For Horowitz's accusations to have any merit, subliminal education would need to be astonishingly effective. In Horowitz-world, I'd probably be better off spending three hours a week talking to my intro mechanics classes about politics, letting them learn Newton's Laws by osmosis.
But, as I said at the top, David Horowitz is an idiot. The study does find a tiny leftward shift of student political identification, but even with that, "college students graduate with a smaller share of people identifying as 'far left' than does the 18-24 year old cohort of the U.S. population."
Now, can we all please find something to argue about that makes sense in this universe?
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I've always wondered about Horowitz's conclusions concerning students. Frankly, the real concern I have is the correlation between political leaning and grading. I'm also concerned about the influence of political point of view on hiring decisions.
I can only speak for myself. I left a liberal east coast college after several "respected" professors reduced my grades because I disagreed with their political views. I enlisted in the USAF where I received a far better education. My oldest Daughter finished college last year and my son is currently enrolled in a local technical school. Both tell me that not much has changed. Conservative students who speak out are censored, directly or indirectly. Only liberal view points are welcome.
Concern troll alert!!
David Horowitz isn't an idiot. He's an unreconstructed Trotskyite who spent the better part of the 1960s trying unsuccessfully to convince the Black Panthers that he was black.
When he became a laughingstock among the New Left, he abruptly switched his loyalties from Marx to Hayek, but he kept all the tactics, strategies, and analytical modes of thinking he learned from Leon Trotsky.
And as conservatives have a much higher tolerance for laughingstocks than liberals, he's had much more success and respect as a Reagan Communist than he ever had as a yippie.
JimC: Did you ever consider the possibility that you're just not a very good student?
can only speak for myself. I left a liberal east coast college after several "respected" professors reduced my grades because I disagreed with their political views.
Yeah, it would have been impossible that you did not actually earn a better grade.
Let's not turn this into "everybody pile on JimC," please. While he may or may not be a concern troll, it's also entirely possible that he really was marked down for his beliefs. I know that I had a paper graded down my freshman year because my response to the question didn't agree with the professor's political views-- he said as much when asked about the grades.
What concerns me about the campus left is not the indoctrination. Most of the far-left profs I know are so off-the-wall it's unlikely they could indoctrinate even using rohypnol. What concerns me is the sheer waste of time and tuition hours spent on claptrap instead of substance, on "I am Rigoberta Menchu" instead of Shakespeare, on extempore rants against the Bush Administration instead of American history.
I teach science, and spend 100% of my time in science class teaching science. In my opinion, spending that time expressing your political views is cheating the students of their tuition.
Hmmm... thinking back on the short time that I've been teaching SCIENCE!!! as a TA, I realized that I have made snarky off-handed jokes about the Bush administration or Dick Cheney from time to time (it's just so easy). Would this kind of thing be considered out of line? It's hardly indoctrination, and I know it's probably a silly example, but I'm really curious as to the opinions of other educators in SCIENCE!!! as to where the "line" is with having your politics show.
In response to #9. . .I personally think it rather inappropriate in class (unless the topic is somehow relevant). Not because it's necessarily indoctrination per se, but rather because it's sort of annoying and distracting. To be clear, I'm no fan of the current administration, but it gets a little old to be around the grad students at my school who are continually on the, "Wow, that was a really awful seminar, but at least the speaker wasn't as bad as Bush, haw, haw. . ."
In the humanities (as in the sciences), scholarship is based on an unbroken chain ideas: papers have references to other papers, which have references to other papers, back through the centuries.
When a class presents ideas about, say, gender or economics that conservatives find unpalatable, there is a solid foundation of scholarship supporting those ideas. Simply saying, "I don't agree," is not a scholarly argument. It is entirely possible for an undergraduate to counter Keynes with Friedman, or Gramsci with Adorno, but that requires doing the research, questioning your assumptions, and making a solid case for your position. In short, it requires work.
I don't think it's unreasonable for a teacher to expect students who disagree with the teacher's politics to make their case using the tools of scholarship, not tribal loyalties and anecdotes.
"Not all conservatives are stupid people, but most stupid people are conservatives." -- John Stuart Mill.