David Horowitz' Point of View...

In an effort to not be labeled as a complete Stalinist, I would like to present a discussion of what I think are some of the valid critiques that Horowitz and his promoters sponsor.

1. Academics are predominantly liberal: Yes, they are. Most of the professors that I have had, excepting some of those at my Christian undergraduate college, have been solidly Democrats.

2. Some of these liberal academics make it their personal mission to foist their opinions and views on others: Almost everyone who has attended college has had at least one professor who has spent at least part of the beginning of nearly every class ranting on how those **** Christians and their Bush are dragging everything into a collective cess pool where they will hope to rule with ruthless and totalitarian fists.

In addition to opening class rants, I have personally endured attacks on myself as an individual where I was told any or all of these things:

• No sane person would ever believe in a Christian God.
• Christianity leads directly to fascism.
• There is no room for being both Christian and progressive.
• There is no such thing as Christian feminism.
• When, in philosophy, we discuss the existence of God, we actually are talking about how historically God has been used as a support for evil things, thus we have grown beyond such childish fairytales. Therefore, the purpose of talking about ontotheology is to disprove God's existence.
• All Christians believe X,Y, and Z.
• You have no business talking about religion informing philosophy or ethics because religion always leads to a will to knowledge.
• "You kinds of students who think you can be a thinking Christian make me want to quit teaching. You are parasites on those of us who want to give you 'real' knowledge."

Needless to say that all of these not only are personally offensive, but they also show the complete lack of willingness on the part of many academics to discuss issues of faith, values, or ethics unless it is completely on their terms. You are, after all, either with us or against us.

3. Many times this sort of abuse goes unchecked and threatens a students quality of life and ability to function within the college or university system: also true. I am a big burly intelligent white male who most people would assume brimmed with advantage and self-confidence, but I have been reduced to tears many days after a particularly difficult day of classes.

Sure alcohol and nicotine can help at times, but I hardly think students should be reduced to self-medication to get through college.

Furthermore, with the appeals process at most university being nothing but a vestigial nod to students' rights, if a situation occurs where a student's grade is in question, there are few, if any, roads of accountability. At my current institution, even if a student proves that discrimination occurred and that it affected their grade, no one can force the professor to change their grade.

Something needs to be done. Some of my colleagues disagree with me, but I think that Horowitz and his supporters are not on a completely arbitrary witch-hunt. If there were not professors abusing their position as teachers in order to become evangelists, then students would not rally to his cause as readily.

Too often, I hear professors in the lounge gleefully talking about how they can't wait to fail a student who dared write a paper on why they think abortion is wrong or why their faith is important to them. Rather than carefully challenge all students to learn to critically engage with what they think and where that came from, they want their students to reject all of their past and learn to spout a new rhetoric without thought.

In the next few days, I promise, I will be posting on the types of audacious claims that make it impossible for me to ever join with Horowitz. Surprise, surprise, many of them are the same.

Until then, "May all of your sorrows be patched and your joys be quilted."

David Horowitz Hates Me...

Or at least hates my campus. Now, I know that it has been a while since I posted, but I have been super busy with the end of the semester approaching. Still, when I posted on March 30th on the upcoming presentation by David Horowitz, I could never have imagined the debacle that would result.

I must give some background in order to explain my discussion which will follow. When Mr. Horowitz came to speak, I assumed that significant opposition would result, especially from the highly political members of my department, but I have to admit that I was surprised by the vehemence of their expression of disagreement.

It all began with a vocal rally outside of the doors to the hall where he was going to speak. Members of campus liberal groups gathered and shouted at those who entered to hear the lecture. The abuse continued inside of the lecture as opposition forces booed, hissed, and generally heckled throughout Mr. Horowitz's "lecture."

Following the repeated breakdown of order and a disorganized question and answer period, Mr. Horowitz stated that BGSU was the worst place at which he had ever spoken, and I eagerly awaited his comments on his blog.

Well here they are: (http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=17594).

In his article, "Bowling Green Barbarians," Horowitz cites BGSU as the prime example of everything that is wrong with American higher education: "there seem to be no adults around to mind the playground."

In my next post, I will directly respond not only to Mr. Horowitz's accusations but also to the behavior of my opposition minded colleagues.

Academic Freedom and Me...

Well, folks! It has been over a week since I have been able to make the time to communicate with you.

This evening, my university is having David Horowitz speak, famed mentor to Students for Academic Freedom, www.studentsforacademicfreedom.org. So there has been a big push from both sides of the political spectrum to attend and voice opposition/support.

I feel that I must weigh in here for two major reasons. First, this blog is at least ostensibly about issues of intellectualism in the academy, and this might be the biggest issue at the moment on that particular table. Secondly, I co-author and sponsored a bill (click http://www.bgnews.com/vnews/display.v/ART/2005/02/21/42196b25bff71?in_archive=1 for the news reporting the bill's passage) in my school's Graduate Student Senate that expressed opposition to Ohio Senate Bill 24 ( see http://www.legislature.state.oh.us/BillText126/126_SB_24_I_Y.pdf for the exact text).

The problem as I see it is multivariate. First, many professors are in fact or in appearance taking as part of their mission as teachers the goals to inform/force students' views on political issues in such a way as to make this information tangential to the course topic and to cause students to fear reciprocity for writing on, researching, or otherwise expressing views that the professor find naive or ill-informed.

I have been in a number of classes over my twenty-year history in the education system that I have felt that the teacher presented their own personal view as the correct one without much room for discussion. At the same time, I have had numerous professors who spent a great deal of time fostering a useful and lively discussion of ideas. In some ways this might result from divergent types of professors, and in some cases there are fundamental problems with instructors.

In other cases, though, the problem lies with students who have not been taught in elementary or secondary schools how to investigate, reason, and present controversial opinions. There is next to no instruction on critical thinking, a process not assisted by "No Child Left Behind"/test-based assessments of progress. Therefore, oftentimes students reach the college level and are surprised when they are confronted by an oppositional viewpoint that a professor has had years to craft and form. The students are unarmed for intellectual combat, and the question becomes, "How do we best teach individuals how to fight mental fights?"

There seem to be two basic camps presenting solutions. Members of both the left and right inhabit both of these solutions, and each brings their own set of presuppositions and biases.

1. We challenge the students openly by questioning and interrogating their presentations of unformed viewpoints. This approach can take the form of lectures, class discussion, responses to speeches/presentations, or the grading of papers.

The problem with this is that students often feel attacked and assaulted throughout their class day. This places them on their defensive posture. Rather than drawing the student out and forcing them to fortify their ideologies with thought and research, they more often either retreat and accept the point of view in order to get a good grade or turn to outside sources for reinforcements.

2. We present the student with facts that support a variety of different perspectives and encourage them to draw from these texts in an effort to construct a personal viewpoint that is more open to considering differences. This is attempted in survey courses.

The problems with this sort of approach basically rests on time and money. In order to adaquately present the vast quantities of perspectives that exist and could come to bear on any one issue would take an equally vast class-length.

It also assumes that students have the ability and desire to truly test and research on their own. This process of self motivation and discernment would require a preknowledge of critical thought. In my experience, students prefer to be told what they need to memorize for a test and then just given a test on that material.

Furthermore, it assumes an ability of instructors to equally and deftly present viewpoints with which they might personally disagree and which does not become merely a multitude of canons from which the student must choose. This is an extremely difficult proposition and is not very easily accomplished.

What I advocate is a combination of the two. I think that the benefits of a truly Socratic style of teaching are huge, but I also know that many times professors have no real desire to hear the opinions of the students but prefer to undercut them or show them how wrong they are.

Therefore, graduate students and professors must be taught how to guide students to find the errors in their own and each other's arguments. This requires confrontation with facts and texts that force a process of questioning. It also requires an openness on behalf of the instructor to being interrogated with equal ferocity, something that causes many professors to shut down into a mentality I call "Agree OR Else" aka "Well I Have a Doctorate and Am Teaching the Class".

Fundamentally, I agree with authors such as Ellul and Levinas who advocate that society as a whole needs to shift a focus from seeking answers to seeking the right questions. I think that judgements must be made, grades must be given, but how we gauge that process might look much more different than A's= 92-100%.

Short of a complete change in society (something I am aware is utopian), all members of this discourse must become more accountable to each other and to themselves. There must be more sources of communication and feedback. There must be something like a campus ombudsman created for students to have an advocate who is not directly affiliated with any particular department or program.