Until lions have their historians ...
| By Conventionette - Apr 7th, 2006 at 12:14 pm EDT |
| Also listed in: Campus Progress Blog | Undercover at the "Academic Freedom Conference" |
It's day one of the Students for Academic freedom conference, and I'm sipping coffee while trying to wake up and focus on the speaker at the podium.
- How do you get students to consider conservative ideas, he asks the nearly empty room. I adjust my computer screen so nobody will see that my desktop is a picture from an anti-Bush demonstration in Copenhagen. The speaker is Ron Robinson from the Young America Foundation, a man who looks like he's in his sixties. Looking around the room, the vast majority here are far too old to be students. Before introducing the panel for this plenary session, he takes out a copy of The Nation's February 13th cover story on the 'new face of the campus left'. Yikes, I think, while furiously trying to take down what he's saying about the article -- am I going to be outed only ten minutes into this thing? But no. Robinson picks a few good quotes from the piece that get the audience feeling damn good about themselves. "Today's campus right is unified", he says. "Conservative activism is cooler than the left". "Conservatives have created a movement". In a brilliant illustration of how your initial bias determines what you get out of reading something, he concludes that even The Nation recognizes the great work that the right does. Time for the panel. Mason Harrison from UC Davis tells us all how he enrolled in a women's studies class on a dare from a female friend. The professor proceeded to start the class in a "no, no Arnold" chant. Mason tells us he just had to get up and leave at that point, and I catch myself right before I roll my eyes in obvious derision, and clap along with the rest of them instead.
Next up is Marlene Kowal from Temple U. She reads us a series of quotes from her classes, among others that "the only way to get rid of sweatshops is to boycott capitalism." The small crowd all groan loudly. I type. The war in Iraq was criminal, and Che Guevara was a role model. The rest of them snigger as I check the little recorder to make sure I'm getting all this.
Speaker follows speaker, and my initial torrent of notes shrinks to nothing as I tune out their complaining voices and try to think what the common denominator to all the grievances these people are listing could possibly be. The speakers get more shrill and hyperbolic as the hour wears on. Steve Miller from Duke University laments the crowd of "terrorists and communists" his school has hosted as speakers for something involving Martin Luther King day. "Harry Belafonte came!" I get more clues as the next-to-last in this series of wronged young conservatives steps up to the mike. "Maine has the second highest gun ownership in the country!" he says and the room erupts in its loudest cheers yet. I'm playing solitaire as we finally reach the last one, who gives us all a pep-talk about how fast ABOR will move in state legislature once the Republicans take power.
I feel vaguely cheated as the panel wraps up. It's as if the issues of 'academic freedom' we're allegedly gathered to discuss here are not what these people really want to talk about. No, what they really want to commiserate on is Jesus Christ, guns and pride and traditional marriage, and how it makes them feel bad -- silenced and marginalized you might even say -- when they're challenged in the single environment they don't yet control.
- Julia Gronnevet
- How do you get students to consider conservative ideas, he asks the nearly empty room. I adjust my computer screen so nobody will see that my desktop is a picture from an anti-Bush demonstration in Copenhagen. The speaker is Ron Robinson from the Young America Foundation, a man who looks like he's in his sixties. Looking around the room, the vast majority here are far too old to be students. Before introducing the panel for this plenary session, he takes out a copy of The Nation's February 13th cover story on the 'new face of the campus left'. Yikes, I think, while furiously trying to take down what he's saying about the article -- am I going to be outed only ten minutes into this thing? But no. Robinson picks a few good quotes from the piece that get the audience feeling damn good about themselves. "Today's campus right is unified", he says. "Conservative activism is cooler than the left". "Conservatives have created a movement". In a brilliant illustration of how your initial bias determines what you get out of reading something, he concludes that even The Nation recognizes the great work that the right does. Time for the panel. Mason Harrison from UC Davis tells us all how he enrolled in a women's studies class on a dare from a female friend. The professor proceeded to start the class in a "no, no Arnold" chant. Mason tells us he just had to get up and leave at that point, and I catch myself right before I roll my eyes in obvious derision, and clap along with the rest of them instead.
Next up is Marlene Kowal from Temple U. She reads us a series of quotes from her classes, among others that "the only way to get rid of sweatshops is to boycott capitalism." The small crowd all groan loudly. I type. The war in Iraq was criminal, and Che Guevara was a role model. The rest of them snigger as I check the little recorder to make sure I'm getting all this.
Speaker follows speaker, and my initial torrent of notes shrinks to nothing as I tune out their complaining voices and try to think what the common denominator to all the grievances these people are listing could possibly be. The speakers get more shrill and hyperbolic as the hour wears on. Steve Miller from Duke University laments the crowd of "terrorists and communists" his school has hosted as speakers for something involving Martin Luther King day. "Harry Belafonte came!" I get more clues as the next-to-last in this series of wronged young conservatives steps up to the mike. "Maine has the second highest gun ownership in the country!" he says and the room erupts in its loudest cheers yet. I'm playing solitaire as we finally reach the last one, who gives us all a pep-talk about how fast ABOR will move in state legislature once the Republicans take power.
I feel vaguely cheated as the panel wraps up. It's as if the issues of 'academic freedom' we're allegedly gathered to discuss here are not what these people really want to talk about. No, what they really want to commiserate on is Jesus Christ, guns and pride and traditional marriage, and how it makes them feel bad -- silenced and marginalized you might even say -- when they're challenged in the single environment they don't yet control.
- Julia Gronnevet
!
Comments are closed for this post.
Do you really think that the teacher's chant was appropriate for the classroom?