[Buddha-l] Re: Greetings from Oviedo

[Jim Peavler]

On Oct 5, 2005, at 4:39 PM, Richard P. Hayes wrote:
>  The background
> of it is that there is a well-known right-wing talk show host in the 
> USA
> named Sean Hannity who has encouraged students to report professors who
> are too liberal, and he has said on the air that students should record
> what their overly liberal professors are saying so that they can use it
> as evidence of their professor's liberal bias.
>
> Also there is a website called www.studentsforacademicfreedom.org that
> is advocating a Students Bill of Rights, which would guarantee that
> every student be allowed to hear what they call "dissenting views". The
> subtext is the claim that the overwhelming majority of professors are
> social and political liberals, that liberals are intolerant of any kind
> of disagreement with their positions and that students who hold
> conservative views are in serious danger of failing their classes if
> they dare to state their real opinions about things.

This is a big deal in Colorado and in Missouri and in Illinois, where I 
still have friends professing. A question one naturally asks is: How 
many serious conservatives decide to take low paying jobs teaching 
philosophy, literature, linguistics, sociology, science, music, art, 
languages, etc.? The answer is "damned few". Colorado University found 
it could not find a "fair" number of even conservative political 
science professors if they went out looking for them.

The whole movement, while extremely dangerous, particularly when added 
to the religious right's attack on the materialist- or 
enlightenment-based "elite", is a cynical sham. In my opinion they know 
damned well what they are doing and will manipulate any incident they 
can discover that could be in the slightest degree construed to be 
"liberal". Sadly most politically oriented programs on radio or TV are 
strongly behind their position. The so-called "liberal press" is 
another of their fictions.