Posts with the tag free exchange

David Horowitz at UCSB

Tanya Paperny — Wed, 14 May 2008 16:58:59 EDT

Ahh, David Horowitz, former radical Marxist, and now right wing talking head, responsible for such gems as Islamofascism Awareness Week, and the book about dangerous academics. I was thrilled to hear he’d be speaking at my alma mater, UCSB.

"Conservatives Will Take Over Campuses." Really?

Zach Marks — Mon, 30 Jul 2007 00:09:09 EDT

Guess what, freshman conservative college student? In a couple of weeks you’re going to have your liberal campus and its professors shove more crap down your throat than Rosie does her gullet during Chili’s Monday Night Nacho Monster Blowout Special, that’s what.

In his weekly column over at Townhall.com, Doug Giles lists ten tips for young conservatives to survive college, “the Liberal’s madrasah” where “purveyors of the anti-American propaganda” deliver “the liberal Kool-Aid crunch” in every classroom. Giles warns:

Your values, for the next four years, will be violated much like Linsday Lohan’s nose, liver, Mercedes and panties have been for the last five years.

Interesting imagery Giles uses to make his point.

Ward Churchill Fired

pdelatorre — Wed, 25 Jul 2007 16:58:47 EDT

Churchill, an author and University of Colorado professor, got in some serious trouble a few years ago when he called victims of September 11th “little Eichmanns.” Many called for him to be fired from his position at the University of Colorado, and the conservative “academic freedom” movement used him as an example of everything they thought was wrong with academia. He was given the pink slip yesterday because a review of his academic work seems to show falsification and plagiarism.

Our friends at Free Exchange on Campus just put up a blog post about the controversy that sums it up nicely:

ACTA [*] and others claim that Ward Churchill is just one of many dangerous academics, and a sign that academics are so out of line that the only thing to be done is to start imposing academic diversity in the classroom and limiting the number of tenured faculty positions created to let these overly-politicized professors run amok. […]

But contrary to popular belief, he's not the norm, and using him as a rallying point to make academia an even more difficult field to work and learn in than it already is won't help form the independent critical thinkers and good citizens they want to be made at the university.

The picture they paint of various "Ward Churchills" is bleak, but it's not the picture of academics I have had painted for me, and it's certainly not the picture that inspired me to go for grad school.