Silencing the truth about UCLA

College students looking to score some extra dough to pay for textbooks at UCLA lost a potential source of income this week when the head of the Bruin Alumni Association, Andrew Jones, announced he was putting a halt to the group's offer of $100 for documentation of leftist bias by UCLA professors. Too bad, for Jones' actions galvanized international media scrutiny on an issue that needs addressing: the incessant advocacy of liberal dogma in the classroom by college professors. Jones and his Bruin Alumni Association figured it was about time that someone documented just how revolting the push for leftist political thought in America's taxpayer-funded universities had gotten.

And the Bruin Alumni Association wisely realized the best way to share their findings with the world was to publish them online. To stir the pot a bit more, Jones made the decision to offer up to $100 to students at UCLA for material proof of improper conduct by their professors. Bravo!

The motivation and motives of Jones and the Bruin Alumni Association is pure genius that should be celebrated by America's conservative leaders. Instead, some of my fellow travelers in the conservative movement have been less than kind to Mr. Jones, et. al because of the unfavorable coverage of this story from some of the more liberal bastions of the news media. Former Congressman Jim Rogan, a man who I count not just as a respected conservative, but also a personal friend, angrily resigned from the Advisery Board of the alumni association saying he was "uncomfortable to say the least with this tactic." Los Angeles-based radio talker, Al Rantel, who is another friend and fellow conservative working for the same radio network as I do, also resigned, saying that, "it looks like a bunch of crazies who were trying to go after innocent professors, which certainly wasn't what I supported."

With all due respect to my good friends and fellow conservatives, they've missed the boat on this one and done a great disservice to the Bruin Alumni Association. For decades, conservatives have mashed their hands together in never-ending frustration over the fact that such a liberal faculty dominated America's publicly funded colleges and universities. We've whined and moaned about the fact that it was an offense to the taxpayers of America that they were forced to pay the bill for what has essentially become the recruiting campus of the Democrat National Committee and liberal political action groups like MoveOn.org. And yet, despite all of our complaining, there hasn't been much "the Right" has done about it.

While parents took the initiative to start the homeschool movement to counter liberalism in K-12 education, the best rebuttal we've offered at the university level was Hillsdale College in Michigan. While a great school, Hillsdale alone isn't enough to educate all of America's undergrads. And so that takes us back to Andrew Jones and the Bruin Alumni Association.

Their website has collected a treasure trove of information that ought to be made public, so parents know what kind of professors are employed at the schools they contemplate sending their children to. Like UCLA, "Philosophy of Education" professor, Douglas Kellner, who as a member of the "University of Texas Progressive Faculty" group, co-hosted a cable access program that made allegations of wrongdoing by President George Bush. They included warped fantasies involving subversive activities with the CIA and the Mafia, and up-until-now secret ties between the Bush family and the Nazi party of Germany. That must make for one interesting family reunion at the Bush residence given Michael Moore's assertion that the Bush family is secretly in cahoots with Osama bin Laden's clan as well.

The UCLAProfs.com website also includes a profile on Chicano Studies Professor Juan Gomez-Quinones, who co-wrote a thesis on the proper role of Hispanics in America today. According to Gomez-Quinones, a Hispanic living in the United States who assimilates as an American instead of identifying with their Mexican heritage "is a person who lacks self-respect and pride in one's ethnic and cultural background." He insists that, "students must constantly remind the Chicano administrators and faculty where their loyalty and allegiance lie." Apparently, that loyalty and allegiance is not to the United States of America.

The list of offensive professors and their history of egregious behavior goes on and on, and its all documented at the UCLAProfs website - and it should be. Parents have a right to know what they are paying for - and so does the American taxpayer. If these college professors are so uncomfortable with the light of public scrutiny, then this should serve as a signal to them that they know deep down inside that their attempts to use public universities as political recruiting tools for the American Left is shameful, improper and inappropriate.

The focal point of this entire episode should be on the shameful conduct and actions of a large segment of academia today. Blaming the college students who document such behavior is simply shooting the messenger. And unfortunately that is what conservatives like Congressman Rogan and talk-show host Al Rantel have done. They've helped the liberal media to silence the few people who had the nerve to step up and speak out and take the heat for doing something to correct a problem. And that's a horrible message to send to a group that is finally taking action to raise debate over an issue that the conservative movement has not satisfactorily addressed despite decades of abuse.

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The Dumbing-Down and Neutering of America Continues

Post lifted from The Autonomist

About one month ago, I attended a speech by David Horowitz that was held at the University of Rhode Island. At the end of his talk, Horowitz held a question and answer session with the audience.

The students who participated in the Q&A session were mostly antagonistic towards Horowitz, and they asked him a variety of questions on topics ranging from reparations for slavery to the War on Islamist Terror.

I was amazed at, and depressed by, the level of deep ignorance exhibited by almost every student who rose to ask Horowitz a question. The lack of rhetorical skills displayed by most of the students, coupled with what appeared to be their near-total inability to think critically and logically, was embarrassing to behold.

What the students excelled at though, was the spouting of leftwing claptrap that had evidently been poured into their brains by some of their quasi-Marxist professors. Click the picture below to view a good example of the muddled type of "thinking" that leftwing indoctrination in America's high schools and colleges results in.


URI student fires a mindless tirade at David Horowitz

Now, an editorial in the Waterbury Republican-American succinctly describes how incompetent and uneducated millions of incipient American college graduates actually are:

"More than half of college students nearing graduation lack the capacity to perform complex but common tasks, such as computing the cost per ounce of food, grasping the arguments of newspaper editorials, summarizing results of surveys and understanding credit-card offers.

'It is kind of disturbing that a lot of folks are graduating with a degree and they're not going to be able to do those things,' said Stephane Baldi, who directed a study for the American Institutes for Research. Kind of disturbing? That millions of soon-to-be graduates lack the capacity to perform basic real-world functions is the product of a cruel scam perpetrated by the higher-education elite.

This study adds credence to what Derek Bok, a former Harvard University president, found while researching his new book, 'Our Underachieving Colleges.' Summarizing his work for The Boston Globe, Mr. Bok said undergraduates increasingly are intellectually underdeveloped when it comes to 'critical thinking, moral reasoning, quantitative literacy and other vital skills.' But fewer than 10 percent of professors pay even passing attention to research critical of their teaching methods and performance, he said, and instead spend hours in intramural debates on curricular minutiae.'

Consequently, colleges don't help students improve their competence in writing or quantitative methods. Most leave college "still inclined to approach unstructured 'real life' problems with a form of primitive relativism, believing that there are no firm grounds for preferring one conclusion over another.' " (Emphasis added)

An accurate statement, to be sure, and one that dovetails nicely into a recent observation made by blogger, "Vanderleun," at The American Digest.

While listening to Hugh Hewitt's recent evisceration of anti-troop, LA Times columnist Joel Stein, Vanderleun heard something strange, but familiar, in Stein's voice: "... Above all, it is a sexless voice. Not, I hasten to add, a "gay" voice. Not that at all. It is neither that gentle nor that musical. Nor is it that old shabby lisping stereotype best consigned to the dustbin of popular culture. No, this is a new old voice of a generation of ostensible men and women who have been educated and acculturated out of, or say rather, to the far side of any gender at all. It is, as I have indicated above, the voice of the neutered. And in this I mean that of the transitive verb: To castrate or spay. The voice and the kids that carry it is the triumphant achievement of our halls of secondary and higher education. These children did not speak this way naturally, they were taught. And like good children seeking only to please their teachers and then their employers, they learned.' "(Emphasis added)

I've heard this odd manner of speech many times, usually from the young people who attend the expensive universities that dot my surroundings. I view it as subtle evidence of the success that the postmodern Left has had in affecting the "de-balling" of America - the men speak in a faux-gentle, effete, halting sort of way - there's little "manliness" in their voices. The women possess a lilting syntax with a slight rise at the end of almost every sentence. The prominent qualities present in the speech patterns of both the males and the females I describe are: near absence of conviction, a subtle malaise and an ever-present whiff of arrogance.

Vanderleun has a name for this vocal flaccidity: "the voice of the neuter"

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For greatest efficiency, lowest cost and maximum choice, ALL schools should be privately owned and run -- with government-paid vouchers for the poor and minimal regulation.

The NEA and similar unions worldwide believe that children should be thoroughly indoctrinated with Green/Left, feminist/homosexual ideology but the "3 R's" are something that kids should just be allowed to "discover"

Comments? Email me here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site (viewable even in China!) here

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