Academic Terror - Not a safe environment

JoeSettler
The Muqata
22 August '10

(Excellent!)

Way back when I was in College, I went to a relatively non-politicized university, but it was always easy to tell who was politically right, and who was politically left. Those who kept their political views to themselves were presumably right, while those on the left made it openly clear what their views were, and often enough your grades were a reflection of how closely you toed their line.

I was young and naïve at the time, and didn’t understand how significant and dangerous this was.

With one professor, a few of us decided as a joke (and an experiment) to hand to hand in a series of essays that were very similar enough in content and subject. Some reports were accurate, factual and politically neutral, while others modified the facts and conclusions to match this professor’s worldview. You can guess which reports got the A’s, and which ones didn’t.

I had another professor that regularly started spouting leftwing political nonsense in class and essentially dared anyone to disagree with her. At the beginning of the semester I started to make the mistake of raising my hand to point out her errors in economics and politics when the looks of everyone around me made it clear that silence was going to be a virtue in this class.

There are those that espouse that professors can say what they want and it’s about Academic Freedom, and creating a safe intellectual environment.

But college campuses are not safe intellectual environments. If you dare disagree with a left-wing professor in your political science or history courses, your grades might well reflect that mistake (of disagreeing with them). That was true then, and is very true now, particularly in Israel.

This is academic terror. This stifles academic freedom and intellectual honesty.

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