THE Actual Campus Thought Police

From the Chronicle of Higher Education:

The chancellor of the University of Colorado at Boulder hopes to raise $9-million to endow a faculty chair for a professor of conservative thought and policy.

According to an article in today’s Wall Street Journal, the chancellor, G.P. (Bud) Peterson, believes the new chair would help create “intellectual diversity” on the campus.

Activists like David Horowitz have been pushing that concept for years, amid complaints that the professoriate is full of liberals. But, in the article, Mr. Horowitz is quoted as saying that creating such an endowed chair might simply establish a place on the campus for a token right-winger. And as Mr. Peterson notes, the professor might not even be a genuine conservative, just a scholar of the movement.

This all seems like an effort to appease the nut-wing religious and idocratic right.  And, of course it sounds like that because it is a project of the political right since Goldwater (which certainly gathered greater steam under Reagan). 

This is clearly a well organized effort by the administration of University of Colorado to pander directly to those faux “fair and balanced” neoconservatives.  The neoconservative movement has made reshaping education a goal.  And neocons do not really care for balance.  They simply want their side presented as the unvarnished and absolute truth -- true dialogue is not required here.  Remember this is the same university that fired Ward Churchill for being so-called too liberal.

The vast majority or academics -- at any institution -- are not extreme flaming liberals nor mean-spirited heartless conservatives.  These teachers and researchers are professional people who work hard on their teaching, research and service in a difficult industry that is often misunderstood.  Most of these professors are poorly paid and teach out of care for their students. Yes, they have ideas and opinions and yes again they are expressed in the classroom from time to time. In truth most teachers have the integrity to evaluate students fairly regardless of the students’ opinions, ideas, and political ideologies. 

Furthermore, few if any of these teachers indoctrinate, and that at best is a small few.  Most of these professionals are engaged in a learning experience not a cloning experiment.  If people like David Horowitz really spent time with real, regular faculty members at universities and schools across the country, he would see that fact for himself.

But it always easier to accuse without knowing what you are really talking about.