Horowitz thinks that there is not just liberal bias in academia, but an enormous bias, large enough to be a serious problem. Still he isn't calling for liberals to be systematically kicked out, only isolated extremists. One can reasonably oppose Horowitz on this, and think the effort would do more harm than good, without think Horowitz is a fascist like Ahmadinejad, who would use the power of government (not just complaints and arguments) to impose a serious purge of professors (not just getting a few extremists and frauds like Ward Churchill fired). Even if he is in fact that authoritarian (and I don't think he is) that is more a reflection on him personally than on the wider campaign to kick out people like Ward Churchill, or the still wider set of people who complain about how academia is to tilted to the left.
I had a more extensive discussion about this on another thread starting here
Message 22787498
My main point was
"I don't think there is any good comparison. Ranting about biased professors isn't exactly the same as having the government take over the university and fire them."
Message 22787591
If you don't want to read the whole conversation but are interested enough to read part of it, the highlights are
Lane3 - "Yes, I consider it serious. I don't think the professors should be teaching anything in the classroom but the strait stuff they're paid to teach, whatever that might be. If they want to have causes outside the classroom, that's OK, but they have to play it straight in the classroom. I don't think they should be hired or fired based on their politics. Doing so is a serious breach of public trust, seems to me."
Message 22790178
"I think in many cases the problem is that the politics is brought in to the classroom, and not just as an aside expressing their personal preference but in a way that really distorts the class."
Message 22790200
"I think some subset of the complainers would, just a similar subset of the left would use such powers.
If Lane3 meant that all of those who complain against such professors or even all of those who call for the professors to be fired, or even a majority of those who call for the professors to be fired would use the coercive power of government to take over the universities and enforce their ideology than I have to disagree with her.
OTOH if she is merely saying that some would than I agree, but than I would also find the statement far less significant. Such a tiny subset is unlikely to be a real danger unless they become violent, and ranting is hardly terrorism.
And if you are talking about the tiny subset, than your words could be taken (or even intended) to negatively reflect on the larger group unless you clearly make the distinction."
Message 22791062
I agree that there are some people with strong authoritarian streaks out there, and that that likely does overlap with the set of people who have a thing about liberal professors. But I doubt the overlap is large enough to tell us much about the "anti-liberal professor group". The set of people with authoritarian streaks overlaps with a lot of other sets.
I think I might agree with you more than I disagree here, but Message 22787570 implies an overlap of some significance IMO, and I don't think the overlap is that big.
Message 22791202
All quotes are the entire posts, so if the conversation doesn't look even slightly interesting there is no need to follow the links.
All quotes were I did not specify the poster where my posts. |
