Spring Break
Letter: Liberal intellectuals annoying
Issue date: 2/6/03 Section: Commentary
One of the dumbest trends I've seen resulting from the fallout of Sept. 11th, when the so-called liberal intellectual elite started speaking out against rash warmongering, is the idea conservatives are somehow being discriminated against from within the university system. Don't people stop to think about why most professors might want to align themselves with liberal ideals? Is it because they're educated, and therefore smarter? That could be it, but I don't think that's digging quite deep enough.
A common thread among professors of all types is the ideat there's more to learn about any given subject, and in order to learn more, one must embrace many different disciplines. As a result, the majority of professors have education experience in areas outside their fields of expertise. We can make the assumption that these varying experiences have exposed them to many different, even opposing, ideas. Therefore, we can say that most professors are aware of the concept of objective thought. They learn a series of ideas and are able to isolate those ideas from their own personal views when in the process of analysis.
Objective thought seems to be more apparent in liberals than in conservatives. Take Sept. 11th for example. Many liberals were able to look outside the situation after the initial shock and decide for themselves that yes, this was a bad thing that happened, but no, we can't afford to make rash decisions about war without withdrawing ourselves from the situation. However, the conservatives in power rallied us to war in Afghanistan, calling any dissent for the war, for any reason, "un-American."This doesn't mean that conservatives aren't smart or that they don't have any place in the intellectual world; it just seems that they aren't quite suited for it, unless you're talking about business or economics, on which they seem more than inclined to speak their piece. Is it surprising that Sociology professors tend to be left-leaning? They know what keeps poor people poor in this country, not to mention all over the world. History professors know where warmongering, for example, has gotten us in the past.
It is absolutely unfounded to assume that "liberal professors" are discriminating against conservative students simply because they're liberal. Hearsay from a frustrated political science student isn't enough to convince me of this. Regardless of what you might think, it's not illegal or even unethical for a professor to loudly state what they think in a classroom environment. We're not in high school anymore. Professors are allowed to talk about religion and politics and sex in the classroom. Discrimination happens. The most annoying part about this whole conservative victim trend is that both houses of Congress are dominated by Republicans and we have a Republican in the White House. Maybe I'm missing something, but I can't piece together how this is a representation of liberal bias in the U. S.
-Max Althoff
A common thread among professors of all types is the ideat there's more to learn about any given subject, and in order to learn more, one must embrace many different disciplines. As a result, the majority of professors have education experience in areas outside their fields of expertise. We can make the assumption that these varying experiences have exposed them to many different, even opposing, ideas. Therefore, we can say that most professors are aware of the concept of objective thought. They learn a series of ideas and are able to isolate those ideas from their own personal views when in the process of analysis.
Objective thought seems to be more apparent in liberals than in conservatives. Take Sept. 11th for example. Many liberals were able to look outside the situation after the initial shock and decide for themselves that yes, this was a bad thing that happened, but no, we can't afford to make rash decisions about war without withdrawing ourselves from the situation. However, the conservatives in power rallied us to war in Afghanistan, calling any dissent for the war, for any reason, "un-American."This doesn't mean that conservatives aren't smart or that they don't have any place in the intellectual world; it just seems that they aren't quite suited for it, unless you're talking about business or economics, on which they seem more than inclined to speak their piece. Is it surprising that Sociology professors tend to be left-leaning? They know what keeps poor people poor in this country, not to mention all over the world. History professors know where warmongering, for example, has gotten us in the past.
It is absolutely unfounded to assume that "liberal professors" are discriminating against conservative students simply because they're liberal. Hearsay from a frustrated political science student isn't enough to convince me of this. Regardless of what you might think, it's not illegal or even unethical for a professor to loudly state what they think in a classroom environment. We're not in high school anymore. Professors are allowed to talk about religion and politics and sex in the classroom. Discrimination happens. The most annoying part about this whole conservative victim trend is that both houses of Congress are dominated by Republicans and we have a Republican in the White House. Maybe I'm missing something, but I can't piece together how this is a representation of liberal bias in the U. S.
-Max Althoff