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He told me that he had just been in a lecture, and the lecturer had required every white student there to state publicly that they were a racist.



I hope that professor got fired.

Beyond that, it has bogusly presented its unproven faith-based assertions as unchallengeable tenets that we must all agree to, and on which basis all further argument must be conducted.

This question really touches on the human nature and how we treat concepts and act upon them.

That reminds one of many different claims by many different organizations.

I might be blind to certian such claims on the liberal side, so feel free to add.

Pro-Choice: Life begins at birth.

vs.

Pro-Life: Life begins at conception.

Courts (Left): Living Constitution

vs.

Courts (Right: Literal Constitution

Christian Conservatives: This country is based by Christians on Christian basis, so Christian symbols and traditions have to be all over our country. And those not happy with it have to conform.

vs.

Liberals: This country has many different people and traditions we have to celebrate them all (Are not we up to like Christmas/Hannuka/Kwanzaa/{insert yours here}).

There are many more such cases.

In the end we pick and choose those we BELIEVE in and fight for them. Often, we set aside facts and go on faith.There are of course times when boundries are over stepped like the what the author mentions.

Are there alternatives to this?

On the contrary, as far as I can tell that was perfectly normal policy. It certainly reflects the way in which the PC faction acts over here - that their beliefs are unquestionable. I must admit that my own academic life was as far way from PC as possible, the nearest connection being that both P and C appear in the word 'Physics'. After the BSc (Hons) Physics, I did a Masters degree in Control Systems (an IT conversion course). I'm very glad that I didn't run into PC during either - there was sarcely a chance. For one thing I am as sure as I can be that I would have walked out on my degree course if lying to myself, let alone others, were the price to pay for it.

I'm trying to avoid getting drawn into conversation here, as my commitments will not allow for it; I've already cut my blogging elsewhere. By and large I'll work on the basis that anything I'm asked I'll probably get back to later in the course of other posts. That may make me a tremendous disappointment, but I have to ration myself pretty hard.

Unfortunately, the patenting and intellectual property fight is getting closer and closer for those of us in the realm of physical sciences. It different kind of PC, but it seem like it has similar properties.

I wouldn't consider myself to be a Christian Conservative in the sense that you mean (though I am a Conservative and I am a Christian), but your analysis is stunningly flawed in this statement:

Christian Conservatives: This country is based by Christians on Christian basis, so Christian symbols and traditions have to be all over our country. And those not happy with it have to conform.

vs.

Liberals: This country has many different people and traditions we have to celebrate them all (Are not we up to like Christmas/Hannuka/Kwanzaa/{insert yours here}).

I don't think you'll find much evidence of your standard 'Christian Conservative' trying to tear down menorahs or crescents so that they can put up a crucifix.  Nor do I see many liberals saying that we should merrily celebrate the rich diversity of our country by including christian symbols where we also celebrate muslim and jewish symbols.

Christian conservatives, as I see it, are trying to restore government to the neutral position: neither fostering a religion, nor preventing the free exercise or expression thereof.  Liberals, however, seem to think the infamous 'wall of separation' means that anything remotely resembling christianity is evil and must be stopped but the celebration of Islam (or environmentalism or peace or whatever religion they practice).

For the poster above you -- Read a few Supreme Court opinions involving religious free speech, note the distinction between the Scalia/Thomas/Kennedy/Rehnquist view and the Stevens/Ginsburg/usually Breyer/Souter view (O'Connor's just a loose cannon) and you'll see this.  Rosenberger for example.  UVA funds the publication of all sorts of student magazines -- including some that are quite insensitive or hateful toward religion.  The "conservatives" on the Ct hold that funding Wide Awake magazine like all the rest would not violate the Establishment Clause -- it's just a neutral funding scheme in which a religious view also happens to benefit.  The dissenters read the Establishment Clause to prevent religious groups from even benefitting from neutral programs.  

This isn't about "separation." It's about fairness and equal treatment.  I have NO desire to have my children taught to pray in school.  That's my job.  But I also don't want the school telling my children they can't share their views with their fellow students because theirs are religious.  That's the Stevens/Ginsburg view -- that the Establishment Clause has something to say about a school failing to stop an elementary school Bible club from meeting at school after hours.  The "Christian conservative" view is that the Establishment Clause has nothing to do with such private speech -- even when it happens in public.    

The story of the Chief Justice Roy Moore comes to mind. Setting up Judeo/Christian 10 Commandments in a courthouse would be an example of that.

The judge said:

"To restore morality we must first recognize the source from which all morality springs. From our earliest history in 1776 when we were declared to be the United States of America, our forefathers recognized the sovereignty of God.''

Still it was about Christian God.

The Justice did not insist on posting Yoga Sutra's, Saying of Confucious, or some Hindu religious texts along side the 10 Commandments. And

Have not see any stories about replacing Christians tearing down menorahs to put a crusifix instead.

Have not heard of any instances of putting up Muslim/Jewish, or other such signs instead of Christian ones eather.

Maybe there are.

On the other hand. Free Piglet Campaign comes to mind. Its a toy pig for crying out loud. Leave it alone.

He told me that he had just been in a lecture, and the lecturer had required every white student there to state publicly that they were a racist.

I hope that professor got fired.

I'm in general agreement with you. The article poster asked that those pushing political correctness account for their beliefs. I can't actually in good faith claim that I support full-on political correctness, however, I will offer a rather brief explanation as well as a critique following for the sake of a more full argument.

To the parent response I want to step off into completely murky philosophical waters and assert that the idea of 'human nature' is sometimes a very difficult thing to assert. This in many ways actually comes back the PC question that I will address. I'm not going to assert a totally morally relativistic world (as I'm not really sold on either absolute nor relativist, both have their downsides, upsides and horrific examples throughout history).

Life is often boiled down into binary oppositions. While some of these (seen to be) two sided arguments may or may not stand up to scrutiny, the desire to see the world in black and white terms will often hide the complexity of an issue (which may have many arguments).

Exhibit A:

Pro-Choice: Life begins at birth.

vs.

Pro-Life: Life begins at conception.

I have met plenty of pro-choice people that would say that life starts somewhere in between the first few weeks to several months, your accounting of human nature doesn't properly describe my empirical experiences. While I question this point, I still think I understand what you're saying.

A justification for political correctness:

History is full of atrocities. It is nice to think that a lot of the injustices of the past are simply the past, but, I will point out that it was only 3 generations ago that people were hunting natives for sport and only a generation ago that people were being lynched. Society doesn't change instantaneously. Since racism was an institutionalized practice, I guess that it is thought that institutionalizing non-racist behavior may undo some of this violence.

Language shapes us. In the novel 1984 in which people are controlled because they don't even have words for ideas like 'resistance' to  a facist government.

I do not read much of this way of thinking so I may mis-represent all the arguments. It is thought that since language is a carrier of perceived  meaning, we must be conscious of how we use it. I observe that you haven't referred to n***ers, negroes, c00ns and so on in your post. Whether conscious or un-conscious it seems that you at least partially agreed that language can have a negative or at least neutral effect.

I see that you worry about the actual institutionalization of this way of thinking. I don't blame you. Such an idea is a farse and almost runs counter to the original reasoning for political correctness.

A Critique of PC:

At its worst PC behavior is a set of hollow motions that help no one and partially control our thoughts. I have observed quite a number of political discussions and news paper articles in which PC thinking has completely prevented any constructive debate on the issue. As the article points out, it can actually serve to create the injustice that it seeks to correct.

Here is my example that perhaps ties the two together (which I know will be contentious ;)  ).

There are a lot of very poor black neighborhoods. Unless someone wants to go on the record and say that it is an essential genetic quality, I will assert that it is in part due to the slave/marginalized past.  

While individual people can rise above their situation (this is the american dream), often a discussion of ways to address this disparity in a active conservative way cannot be discussed.

Why can't they be discussed? If someone brings up the fact that this issue has anything to do with race, they are immediately labeled a racist. This is a prime example where political correctness actually destroys any chance of fixing a problem that politcal correctness was conceived to fix.

By suggesting that political correctness is a response to the past, I am not suggesting that we ourselves are guilty for the crimes of the past. I am putting forward the claim that we would not live the way we do if it weren't for these crimes and we should acknowledge these facts.

Part of acknowledging these facts for me is not trying not to contribute to the perpetuation of things that we don't agree with. For me this includes recognizing ways in which the negative thinking of the past is informing my day to day relations and I try to stop doing these things if I think they are harmful.

What the prof did is simply perpetuating the same problem. I am not specifically knowledgable of the ins and outs of these way of thinking / ideology, but, I have read a certain amount indirectly. Perhaps some good critiques of this post will jog my memory and the article  poster can address some of the arguments (if there are any) and good discussion can ensure (I make no promises ;) ).

I am not sold on PC thinking. I bring these points up simply for discussion I have tried to put forward a decent argument against, but, I'm probably as un-versed in arguments against as I am for.  

If some post-modernist type is reading this and swearing under their breadth please contribute  and point out my errors: as long as you aren't rude (as so many who disagree with the ideas on this site are) I'm sure the people here will be happy to logically tear your argument to pieces :), or in the outside event actually kinda agree with you!

And while passionate and (mostly) well-reasoned, I can't help thinking that the people whose minds you'd most like to change are in fact the least amenable to reasoned argument.

There is an article of faith among many highly-educated people that is so taken for granted that they look at you funny if you even hint that you believe otherwise, and that is: human life is all about power relationships. These are people who believe that human activity fundamentally involves things being done for the benefit of the actors and to the detriment of victims, innocent or otherwise. If you start from here, you get the whole panoply of crabbed post-Marxist thought and radical moral relativism that characterizes most academics, Hollywood movie stars, and all the fellow-travelers. They could no more entertain an argument from any other point of view than they could believe the sky is not blue.

I'm a businessman, and my work-life consists of persuading people, not oppressing them. You can't persuade anyone to buy a product or service from you unless you make it clear and compelling that it's a benefit to them. This is how the real world works.

But I think the academic world is really taking an aesthetic view, rather than an objective one. You can see this in the crisis that post-deconstructionism has been laboring through for the last decade or so. Marxism has been passe' since the Seventies, and they are desperately on the hunt for some new material. And one of the key yardsticks by which they measure the quality of arguments is how much jouissance they have. Jouissance (apart from its crude sexual undertones) is fundamentally an aesthetic quality.

Bottom line, these people are talking to themselves, not to us. You're best off ignoring them entirely.

I nreading that, I was having a hard time believing that was a true story.  Not saying it wasn't, but was it?  If so, wow.

man, but I would be interested to hear from some other people about real life encounters with political correctness that adversley affected them?

A couple of areas could shade the story:

First, it's a second hand story, being told in a moment of high emotion. A few details being changed by the teller could have a big impact on the overall lesson.

Second it's a 20 year old story. Details fade in memory over time, new details are inserted. That's just how our memory works.

Third, it could be that the person involved didn't understand exactly what was going on. On occasion a teacher will try to make a point in class, and the exercise falls apart for one reason or another. Sometimes you can run out of time, sometimes the lesson plan is poorly executed. In any case if a point was being made it could be that the plan fell apart before the student grasped the point being made and jumped to another, unrelated conclusion.

Or, fourth, it could be that the student recieved exactly the lesson that they were intended to recieve, possibly to gauge their reaction. Challenging beliefs is a part of a classical education. Gauging reaction by putting a student in an uncomfortable position can be useful.

Or, of course, it could be a jerk of a teacher.

Any or all of the above could be in play. There's just no way to know from what we see here.

In some of our institutions (namely, Academia and the government bureaucracy that oversees the welfare system), the forces of capital-P Progressivism won their revolution. Now they are the status quo, and they are reflexively defending their power.

Their enemies:  free thought, free speech, honest elections, organized religion, traditonal values.

George Orwell saw all of this pretty clearly in Animal Farm and 1984. An excerpt from the Appendix to 1984 pretty well sums up political correctness:

The purpose of Newspeak was not only to provide a medium of expression for the world-view and mental habits proper to the devotees of Ingsoc [English Socialism], but to make all other modes of thought impossible. It was intended that when Newspeak had been adopted once and for all and Oldspeak forgotten, a heretical thought ... should be literally unthinkable ....  The word free still existed in Newspeak, but it could only be used in such statements as "This dog is free from lice".... It could not be used in its old sense of "politically free" or "intellectually free" since political and intellectual freedom no longer existed even as concepts, and were therefore of necessity nameless.

How quickly the Left has adapted to reactionary (dare I say Fascist?) tactics to defend their power base. The press has been conditioned to expect constraints on our freedoms to come from the Right; they are totally blinded by the Tyranny of the Left.

I think you are spot-on with your explanation.

Let me just say, though, that the original author could possibly ignore these types because he was in a Physics program at the time. His friend who was in the Sociology program, however, could not ignore these folks. They were teaching his courses and grading his papers. You have to play their game or suffer the consequences. It's a lot of calculated risks, provided that you don't just wholesale buy into their theories like a lot of their students do.

Even if you don't buy in, sometimes you end up absorbing things just by osmosis it seems. I know that's been the case in my experience, unfortunately, and it takes a considerable amount of time to de-propagandize and return philosophical arguments to actual positions rather than the sound bites that get rammed into people.

Just my two cents.

The guy writing this is British, about an event that happened across the pond.

Especially about the osmosis part. Makes me wonder what it will take to establish a parallel academia with degree-granting power and accreditation, but that's based on reason and objective discourse.

Well, charter schools are one way. I know a few people who intend to, in the future, try to set up some charter schools that teach things the way they used to be taught -- the right way, I might add. Teach the basics of reading, writing, and arithmetic without silly things like creative spelling and all that garbage. Teach American and Western history without rewriting it; none of this Mansa Musa junk while you leave out George Washington. Teach the hard sciences, and, yeah, maybe teach a little morals too.

It's very hard to set up a university system that would be able to counteract the leftward pull of modern academia. Just ask Jerry Falwell.

I think Ann Coulter made a good point when she said that it makes good sense to pick conservatives who come from the Ivy League schools because they know how to do combat with the far left from their own personal experience. They had to sit in their classrooms, they had to have their papers graded by them, they had to share dorm rooms and study sessions with them. They know the enemy better than, say, somebody from Southwest Missouri State (no offense to any SMSU alumni out there!).

I just know from my own experience that there's a lot of people who are fundamentally reasonable under the surface but either picked up the far-left ideology by osmosis or bought in totally because of pressure from peers and professors. It's just a matter of knowing what the "right" political opinions are and using them in class, even if they don't make any sense.

Case in point, in an upper-level sociology course yesterday, with forty students and a left-wing professor, one of those Latin American Marxist-nationalist types. When asked a question whether or not Iraq today is a sovereign state, thirty-nine said no. I think you can probably guess who the one who said yes was.

I had to defend why Iraq is a sovereign state, mainly on the basis that the Iraqi government is an independent entity that has a monopoly on the sole use of political coercion within the state (a very Weberian definition). Even if the U.S. military is in Iraq, politically they remain subservient to the Iraqi government. They don't run the country by military dictatorship.

Not one of the thirty-nine who said it was not sovereign had an argument as to why it was not sovereign, except to ask me whether or not the Palestinian Authority was sovereign too. Oh, or interrupt me and say that the government is a puppet regime.

I don't actually believe that any of those thirty-nine students had a justifiable reason for saying that Iraq was not a sovereign state except that it is a Known Fact at my university that, if a question arises regarding Iraq, the position counter to that of the U.S. government/military/Bush administration is the preferred and correct position.

How did that happen? Not by the deep thought and consideration of the students, no way. Sure, some people have come to these conclusions on their own, and they might have come to basic conclusions independent of their professors. But they are primarily getting their political education in the form of indoctrination from people who hold considerable authority over them.

The best way to start believing something is to start saying it, and if you want to pass the classes, you have to start saying it. Before you know it, it's all you know. I had a left-wing high school education too. It took me a long time to figure out I was being led on a leash. Y'all can see the results of it strewn across RedState and elsewhere. Rather painful to look at quite frankly.

You would think that educators, who claim to care so much about the well-being of young people, wouldn't do that to them. But, they think they know better than parents or history for that matter. So, they're just gonna do what they have been trained to do: create ideological clones for the future battle against all things that are tried and true.

Someone asked for first hand examples of PC thought, where students are required to espouse beliefs against their will.  Here's my story:

It was 1981, and I was a senior majoring in political science at a major public university in the South.  For whatever reason, I had waited until my last semester to take one required course, that most people took their sophomore year -- political theory. I had already been accepted into law school, so I really needed to pass this class!

I was excited about the syllabus -- reading Sigmund Freud, Martin Luther, John Locke, Rousseau, etc. sounded great.

On the first day of class, the PhD student teaching the class asked us, "Which ones of you consider yourselves evangelical Christians?"  Two other students and I raised our hands.  He continued asking, "Who considers themselves Christians, but not evangelical? Who considers themselves agnostic?  Who is atheist?"  Each time, a number of students raised their hands.  Then he announced "I am an atheist, of the mean kind."  

I thought that was strange and very unprofessional, but after all, I was at a liberal institution, and I laughed it off.  Then he started teaching the class.  It turns out that his entire political philosophy was based on looking at political theory through the prism of Freudian psychology.  It was clear (to him) that Martin Luther, for example, was messed up because his understanding of salvation by faith alone came to him while he was in the "privy."  He was obviously anal retentive and simply tried to use his religious beliefs to enslave others.

Our first assignment came after we had read the parts of the syllabus from Freud and Luther.  We were told to write a 7-10 page paper analyzing Luther from a Freudian perspective (essentially to spit back to him his ridiculous theories about the Freudian perspective of Martin Luther's writing).

I calmly went to him after class, and told him my situation.  I was a senior, needed this class to graduate, needed it to go on to law school, but could not and would not put my name to any such thing.  I could not pretend to believe such rubish, and would not put my name on a paper that analyzed Luther in this way.

Fortunately for me, he relented.  He said that if I could write a paper that demonstrated that I understood his thesis, and then went on to refute it, that such a paper would count (although that was not the assignment he gave us).  

To my knowledge, I was the only student in the class to do that.  Most (all) of the other students simply went along with the program in order to pass the class.  My impression is that these examples, while not the norm, are not uncommon either.  Most people, like the sociology student in the original post, simply go along with the PC program in order to get by.  What a shame that this kind of thing is accepted in our "liberal" learning institutions.

I can't help thinking that the people whose minds you'd most like to change are in fact the least amenable to reasoned argument.

It is also a reflection of the subject matter, that will invariably get both sides rather worked up (usually descending into rather poorly argued positions all around :)  ). I say your use of the word jouissance is an ad hominem attack. I have trouble accounting for such a pervasive ideology to simply a seductive argument. It can be demonstrated to be logically wrong, but, not on those grounds.

It would be like claiming that what you have said about persuasion and not oppression is simply a euphemism, your argument hasn't been addressed at all (and while I agree with you largely) I haven't actually shown what you said to be wrong.

"Now the trouble with this is that it is the enforcement of a religious belief on someone, in order that they may have a career in a particular field. Why do I say it is a religious belief? Because it is an unproven, unprovable, statement of belief; it has about it every characteristic of religious belief that those who sneer at religious belief ascribe to it.

That is the nature of political correctness."

While I share your view that the PC-ness of the sociology department was and is an unacceptable and counterfactual imposition of a particular ideology, you are seriously mistaken in equating that ideology with religious belief.  It is certainly true that religious beliefs are unprovable in any objective or scientific manner; but it is not true that any proposition that is unprovable in that fashion is religious in nature.  You do a disservice to religious beliefs generally by analogizing or equating it with the PC stuff at work in the sociology department you describe.    

Rather, the phenomenon you describe is, at its core, an aspect of the totalitarian concept -- the imposition of a political ideological to which all must declare fealty.  While it is also true that, in centuries past, the totalitarian concept has been the moving force behind efforts to impose religious orthodoxy (the Inquisition comes to mind, among other historical examples), that fact does not transform the totalitarian impulse into a religious phenomenon.  Totalitarianism is all about power and its uses, regardless of the particular object or the particular ideology to which it seeks to compel assent and squelch dissent.  It is political, not religious.

The interesting fact, which your post highlights, is that this echo of totalitarianisms past is today found, at least in Britain and the US, only in academia.  No other institutions in our society would dream of imposing such off-the-wall craziness as the sociology department described in your post, other than some other, equally benighted outpost of the academic thought police.   At least none comes readily to mind.

Why should the universities -- self declared temples of open inquiry that they say they strive to be -- have become, at least in this respect, the opposite of their own ideal?   While that is a large topic, it seems to me that the answer is partly rooted in arrogance (my ideas are better than yours, my principles purer than yours, my concept of the good better than yours), and the self-delusion that comes with it; ego, and the need to validate one's own viewpoint by suppressing any other; the lack of a truly diverse intellectual environment, where it becomes easy, and socially acceptable, to vilify opposing views; and as general intellectual hold-over from intellectual fancies of the past (Marxism, etc.) that, for reasons that I find hard to understand, have always seemed to attract academics.    

Prove the posts basic conclusion regarding political correctness?  You say "I don't want to say that your scenario is a strawman"  but what does that really mean?  Isn't it just another (PC) way to say that you think the point of view of the poster is wrong?  As for your request for other peoples "real life encounters with political correctness that adversley affected them", how about these examples:

Indians (U.S. Indiginous)- American Indians (U.S. Indiginous)- Native Americans (could encompass all N. and S. American irrespective)

Black/Negro (slave or free) - Black American (post civil rights)- African American (as opposed to just a person/U.S. Citizen)

You can say that my response is a strawman too if you like but to my way of thinking the more the PC crowd pushes to enhance precieved differences between whoever or whatever, the more the PC crowd wants to make the point of the differences between whoever or whatever.  

I agree that the Academy demands religious-like adherence to its dogma.

I'm a conservative law professor at a public law school. I always find it galling to hear affirmative action justified on the basis of racial diversity's importance in higher education. Given that the most relevant "diversity" important to higher education is intellectual and viewpoint diversity, the Academy's defense of affirmative action on diversity grounds rings hollow, especially at institutions  (such as mine) that demand an ideological orthodoxy from prospective students, prospective hires, untenured faculty, and tenured colleagues.

I've always avoided the sort of people who do things like "political correctness", so it hasn't affected me a whole lot. The one time I ever ran into it, my girlfriend was taking a Women's Studies class, and was describing to me how there were researchers piecing together the lives of medieval abbesses and the like. I gave it a moment's thought, imagined how little interest your average medieval scholar would have in the lives of women (because, y'know, they WERE actually sexist), and said something like, "It must be hard to do that; I'd think there wouldn't be  nearly as many records about women of the time as about men."

I didn't get any for a week.

straw man argument.  I was just implying that I willing to be proven wrong if there any examples out there to solidify the one he used.

The different names you cited arose for specific reasons, not just because some PC guru had a whim.  Calling someone native American is an imperfect description, but it does effectively differentiate between North/South America and India.  And I think it's pretty obvious (I hope) why the term negro has fallen out of favor.  And I live in Boston and hear black just as much as African-American.  So I'm not sure of your point.

I majored in computer science at the University of Maine. A course in speech communications was required for the degree.

The first day I walked into class, I was handed a list of terms I was not allowed to use, together with preferred alternatives. For example, we were never to say, "economically disadvantaged," we were to say, "economically oppressed." The course went downhill from there. I ended up cussing out the instructor and being put on probation.

I could have taken the course again, but instead I changed majors to mathematics, which didn't have the requirement. The author's experience is common throughout academe.

Was it satire, and I missed it? :-)

Economically oppressed instead of economically disadvantaged!

Even I haven't received that in official print yet.

Political theory is difficult to teach (In fact, I would say the first mistake was having some graduate student teach this course, but that's another matter.) and in order to make the subject matter comprehensible, some organizing theme is needed. The  course has to be taught from some perspective--a set of questions for each text--in order to make sense to the student. (My personal choice is "liberty and order" with a healthy dose of historicism thrown in.)

I certainly won't defend the Freudian thing, as it is perhaps a pretty weak frame--but the Freud/Luther thing does show up in Erik Erikson's Young Man Luther.

The instructor did let you modify the assignment--that the other students didn't even cosider doing so say at least as much about them and their approach to education as it does about the particular biases of the instructor.

At least western political philosophy has to be the most canonical of the humanities--the course material will look pretty much the same (Plato, Hobbes, Rousseau, Mill, Marx) regardless of the political orientation of the instructor.

Let's see:

PC speak--a reaction to actual and observable offenses, or at least possible to falsify by conversing with a marginalized subject.

Religion--unfalsifiable record of and privileged response to an ambiguous super-entity none of us have met.

Yeah, pretty much the same thing...

I'm not sure if you'd call my experience PC or not, but I took a theology class while in college in which all my papers and test answers were required to: (1) agree with the professor's beliefs as to authorship/dating of Biblical scripture, and (2) be sourced from texts available at the University library and published after my birth.  We were specifically told that Internet sources were not to be used.

BTW, I went to Valparaiso University, which I understand is more conservative than most other liberal arts institutions, and I majored in Computer Science, so I didn't have much exposure to situations in which PC would be a factor.

Except that Valpo's theo stacks aren't exactly world-renowned.  My available resources were very limited on a couple assignments.

If there was any I'm sure I would have noticed. :-)

and you're probably laughing at me, but where is the ad hominem?

and who was the professor?

Yes, the fact that the other students didn't stand up to the TA says something about them, but mainly it says that they were kids, mostly 19-20 years old, and were easily bullied by an abusive teacher with a certain amount of power over their future.  This is the same reason why lots of people don't stand up to educational bullying by the PC crowd.

Second that.

Let me see if I got this strait.....

A professor for an undergraduate class asked you to analyze "Luther from a Freudian perspective" and you somehow interpreted that as him forcing you to believe a certain theory of life.

Then the professor made a special concession to you becuase you complained that being required to engage in such an academic exercise would somehow be harmful to you.

Then you went to law school where you should have been trained to craft a plausible argument for positions which you yourself did not hold, and are presumably now applying that to your daily work.

And yet, this event still strikes you as evidence that there is something wrong with our education system.  Despite you personal opposition to that particular instructors personal beliefs, and your feeling that he should not have openly shared them with a classroom full of adults, I think you really missed the point.

The post was about a student being required to state that he was a racist or forced being removed from studying in his chosen field.  Your example is about an assignment you didn't feel you could do because you refused to accept paradigms outside of your own into your thought process.

On behalf of SMSU alumni, no offense was taken. However, I don't think Mrs. Coulter was demeaning us anymore than someone who attended, oh, I don't know, just to pick a random school, say .. Temple.  

Oh and by the way, it is not Southwest Missouri State University, it's just MISSOURI STATE UNIVERSITY.  OOHRAH! Next stop is the Ivy Leage baby! I don't care if they are private.

WELLLLLL, We're moving on up ....

Little in your initial post led me to think the TA was abusive or a bully. Your own experience even suggests otherwise.

I was commenting on the fact that it did not even seem to occurr to the other students to challenge the view of the TA. Why are they so easily bullied? How much power over a future does a TA really have?

Finally, what counts as bullying? It seems that for many of our overly sensitive students raised on a steady diet of self esteem and affirmation, telling them they are wrong about something counts as bullying.

Oh, Temple is a dump, don't get me wrong. But it's a dump with a 100% left-wing political science faculty (not an exaggeration). Is SMSU/MSU the same way?

I think the point she was making is that Ivy League schools tend to be more dominated by left-wingers, therefore you would want people who have done combat with an overwhelming number of left-wingers on campus as opposed to somebody who maybe didn't have to deal with that.

assignment.  The point is whether or not you understand the reasoning, not whether or not you advocate the position.  Change the context slightly.  Suppose that you're taking a course in ethics.  It wouldn't be at all illegitimate for you to be required to write an essay on Kant's categorical imperative 1) explaining how Kant defends his categorical imperative as the fundamental principle out of which all ethical reasoning follows, and 2) to show how the categorical imperative might be applied to concrete moral situations.  Similarly, you might, in the same class, end up being required to write a paper on Nietzsche's Geneology of Morals, where you're asked to carefully explain why Nietzsche equates Christian morality with a form of slave morality and a form of nihilism that is contrary to life.  You might even be asked to give a Nietzschean analysis of contemporary religious phenomena.

The aim of a philosophy class, like the aim of a political theory class, is not to advocate the theories explored but to understand the reasoning process behind these theories and to critically evaluate these positions.  After all, how can you rationally or responsibly argue against another person's position if you don't have a thorough and charitable (meaning the kindest possible interpretation that approaches the text and author in good faith) understanding of what that person is arguing?  So long as your professor gave you the opportunity to critique the position you were writing about, I don't see that anything was out of line.  Moreover, requiring you to think in frames of reasoning outside your accustomed habits of thought can only make you a sharper reasoner in the long run.  By entertaining the position of Freud and looking at Christianity through a Freudian lense it stands to reason that you would gain keener insight into possible criticisms you might encounter as a Christian and thereby be better able to defend yourself.

As for this diary, I cannot say that I've encountered such an egregious instance of political correctness in all the time I've taught in academia.  If this truly occured, then the professor should have been immediately fired.  Somehow I suspect that there's a misunderstanding at work here, however.

First of all, I have to admit, my undergrad experience was in the science field, so not a great deal of political context was being shoveled out when presented with class information when I attended SMSU, now MSU.  Secondly, it has been 10+ years since I was there. (showing my age)  But the best I can tell about academia anywhere is there are two kinds: those that are Ivy Leage and those wannabee's of the Ivy League to varying degrees.  Looking back, I understand that to be potentially conferred and accepted among your instructors as an academic equal, it was not necessary to partake of the liberal orthodoxy but it certainly made things a heck of a lot easier especially if you had no other opinion.  It was (and still is) never written, never spoken but always understood.  There is no "tending" about it, left-wingers dominate academia, just some places less than others.  Oh and by the way, I agree with the point Ann Coulter is making.  

He was probably teaching you the skill of walking a mile and writing from another persons shoes (so to speak). The ability to think, and write from different perspectives is part of college perspective.

At that time, both she and I remained what might be thought of as left-leaning people. We were and both remain very concerned about the poor, the oppressed, and so forth.

I am really frustrated with hearing/seeing this concept: "I am/was a liberal because I care about people."  

As if.  Aren't their plenty of evil dictators who want what is best for their minions without respecting them enough to let them choose for themselves?

 Caring does not dictate politics.  

Conservatives and Liberals alike want to better the life of the poor and oppressed.  Liberals want to do it the in the worst way possible, and have been doing so for the last forty or sixty years.  Conservatives believe in giving each individual the most freedom possible to make his own choices.  Naturally I think this way has shown to be the one that works better.  

I think CS Lewis said something about free will be the surest sign of God's love, and it is no accident that the secular left would deny free will to those they claim to love.

returned to university after 24 years to seek a second degree. But although all of my proffs are left wing, I have not seen any actual PC horror stories.

  However, some of the books that are used (history in particular) are awful post-modernist, deconstructionist crap.  I remember one book which was supposed to be about the experience of Chinese Immigrants to America. But all it was, was one chapter after another of bashing white america, and precious little actual story of peoples lives.

are very very concerned about and sympathetic to all the wrong people. Criminals, terrorsts, and parasites.

Like when the left says all the right cares about is making money and enriching the rich.

It seems that faith is closer to a certainty which comes from inner knowing, whereas leftists seem to hold dogma which they have picked up from each other and which dare not be examined.

Nice.  And here Leon was trying to tell me how much more refined the right side of the blogosphere really was....

if "leftists" share a dogma which they dare not examine, how on earth do you examine someone else's "inner knowing?"

We gain that power by virtue of our VRWC rings.

A response email to your comment is forthcoming this weekend.

Perhaps I have under-estimated you, you have more power then I imagined. Now we must kung-fu fight! :)

Can an argument have jouissance and still be worthy of a logical discussion?

I was under the impression that you were writing off a whole school of thought on the grounds that the argument has a seductive quality (sex appeal).

To me a sexy-logical argument is usually an indicator of the need for more investigation (not proving, but, instigating discussion). For some on here I imagine that someone following an idea due to a seductive quality might be seen as a personal attack (intellectually lecturous? :P ).

I haven't heard jouissance used in context so I have probably misinterpretted your point. I wasn't actually disagreeing with, just trying to make a point in a round about way. :)

...that I can think of to interpret you is that you are trying to make literary jouissance, rather than argue about it. That in fact was my first thought. If so, then bravo! You have done impressively well. And the logical incoherence of what you have expressed also neatly makes my point that post-deconstructionism (and all of its tributaries and offshoots) is primarily concerned with aesthetics. Not that this is bad, but it's a big problem when you're using it teach impressionable college kids how to think, because they apply the lessons to politics.

In case you were arguing seriously (in which case I am somewhat less impressed with you, but your last sentence belies this interpretation): if you re-read my original post without the parenthetical observation about the sexual connotations of the word jouissance, then my points are unchanged and perhaps clearer.

When it comes to getting money from the university, libraries are last in line, after a new chair for the Assistant to the Vice President for Cafeteria Food Complaints.

I don't think PC has anything to do with it.  

... but it would be easy to make the argument that requirement #2 might be equally as viewpoint-limiting as requirement #1.

At what point would you, in your above argument suggesting that entertaining adverse positions regarding a individuals personal faith, see the institutional practice as negative?  I personally advocate exploring many ideas and viewpoint, that which doesn't kill you makes you stronger.  However, in the context of personal belief, and maintaining a purity of mind, some of what you advocate is destructive to the individuals personal walk.  Granted, it is the individuals choice to even attend and study such material, so my question is a one of hypothetical ethics in instruction.  For instance, Freud has colored my thinking (adversely), even though I can discriminate between his theories and psychological reality.  Its not a test of faith, yet inherent in the language and context of those theories are desires of a base nature and explanations of the individual sans faith, which, in hindsight, I could do without.  

Its a interesting conundrum, in that you can not understand modern psychology without investigating the context and theories of Freud, yet for the most part, he is a crackpot, and utterly useless in terms of quantitative science.  However, I find using his material in a humorous and allegorical frame to be successful communication at times.

In a similar example, my little brother just graduated with a double major in Mathematics and Philosophy.  He is now a solid determinist, and proudly boast that in his favorite senior philosophy class, there were four people who raised their hands as Christians in the beginning of the class and none at the end.  I'm not offering a explanation of that, as again, if you can't tack the heat, you won't get refined.  But it is suggestive.  Just wondering if you see this line, or think that, in a proper academic context, its a none issue.

sry, spl chk died....

think that such a line exists.  If a person's faith is truly strong, then reading materials such as Freud will be unable to have this sort of impact upon the person.  I even think such a person can benefit from reading these sorts of materials (there have been numerous theologians who have marshalled Freud's psychoanalytic theories for purposes of faith...  I don't share your conviction that Freud is a crackpot, but that's another matter).  Moreover, I think we benefit from knowing the human spirit.  For instance, I see a value in reading Marquis de Sade's work or Hitler's Mein Kampf for the insight it gives us into the nature of the twisted human soul.  

On the other hand, I think that prohibiting something can have a tremendously negative impact on the nature of faith.  In Romans 7:7-10, Paul asks "What shall we say, then?  Is the law sin?  Certainly not!  Indeed I would not have known what sin was except through the law.  For I would not have known what coveting really was if the law had not said, 'Do not covet.'  But sin, seizing the opportunity afforded by the commandment, produced in me every kind of covetous desire.  For apart from law, sin is dead.  Once I was alive apart from law; but when the commandment came, sin sprang to life and I died."  Here I think Paul's elementary psychological insight is that when we prohibit something, we transform it into an object of desire.  Paradoxically, forbidding books like those written by Freud, Marx, etc., has the effect of transforming them into forbidden fruit, which, in turn, makes them fascinating and tempting to our children.  The effect is not unlike forbidding our children from going into the attic before Christmas or forbidding them from going into the cookie jar.  Similarly, in the classroom, if you forbid students from using the word "like" when giving class presentations, you discover that it's almost impossible for them not to use the word.   All of us have heard of the proverbial preachers daughter and perhaps some of us have even met the preachers children.  It's worth asking why, given the upright nature of the preacher and the fact that he does everything to instill them with a knowledge of proper values or religious law, do his children nonetheless behave in such uncontrollable and wanton ways?  I think Paul has here given us the answer.

I take it that this is why Paul saw redemption as something beyond the law or prohibition.  "Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit of life set me free from the law of sin and death.  For what the law was powerless to do in that it was weakened by the sinful nature, God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful man to be a sin offering.  And so he condemned sin in sinful man, in order that the righteous requirements of the law might be fully met in us, who do not live according to the sinful nature but according to the Spirit" 8:1-4.

As for the young man you mention who became a materialistic determinist through studying mathematics and physics, I would ask whether it's the mathematics and physics that turned him into this, or whether mathematics and physics were simply the occasion for a decision he'd already made in his own heart?  Often enough, mathematicians are deeply spiritual people.  Gregor Cantor and Goedel both understood themselves to be investigating the nature and thought of God.  Similar claims could be made about any number of physicists.  I personally don't see a conflict between faith and reason, nor do I believe that one must be unreasonable or dogmatic in order to maintain one's faith.  I've been particularly troubled by this suggestion which I hear implicitly in the discussions of many social conservatives.

When I suggest that reading someone like Marquis de Sade might actually enrich our faith, I'm here referring to the manner in which authors like Sade enrich the understanding of our own moral psychology and thereby help us to purify our own faith.  A good parallel here would be Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment (in Russian the title reads Sin and Redemption) where the exploration of Raskolnikov's psychology and motivations helps us to understand the way in which our beliefs are often motivated by the worst sort of pride.  Similarly, Kierkegaard thought it vital to explore the various psychological motivations that inhabit a person at the various levels of their spiritual development, so as to understand the inherent conflicts they generate and how they push us further away from faith.  In this regard, I think Freud-- whatever he might have himself thought about religion --can be of tremendous value to both ministry and personal faith, as his psychology reveals the prevalent hypocrisy and maliciousness behind so many of our moral motivations.  In recognizing these things we are also given the opportunity to surmount them so as to develop a faith that is both more pure and more true.  Sade is of value not as a model to be imitated, but for the insight he gives us into the dark side of our souls.  I suppose I'm one of those Catholics (yes, I know I cited the Protestant Kierkegaard, though I still see value in his work) who believes that faith is a struggle, and that a large part of this struggle consists in perpetually examining one's true motivations and ferriting out all elements of hypocrisy and narcissistic motivations, where morality is used more as a tool of vanity and asserting one's superiority over others, rather than a real path of spiritual growth and love.  I don't think this can be accomplished without looking at what is dark in human nature.

I will have to concur with you on one point.  Its not the law itself but embracing the concept of self or humanistic judgment of the law that is against God's intention  And does not the law lead to death?  But the ultimate punishment meted out by such was fulfilled.  And in that death we have the subsequent resurrection, and a life not subject to the law.  Accessing that life is the principal purpose for those who believe in that sacrifice.  This is where I would diverge with you.  Faith is the seed that yields fruit of the spirit, these are covered in grace.  I would contend that the struggle of examining one true motivations, let alone ferreting out the undesirable elements is perhaps the occupation of the self, and not the response to faith.  Is not the examining and ferreting akin to sitting in judgment?  If the self, the man knowing the law, is in that seat, toil certainly will ensue.

Not having the exposure to darkness does not disqualify one from spiritual growth, as per the condition of Paul.  He is referring directly to the principal in Genesis of choosing the wrong tree.  Yet now, do we not have the choice of the right tree?  Is not the redemption apart from the law a path which subsequent exposure to darkness is unnecessary?

Again, you state that prohibiting something elicits in humans enhanced desire, but is not that desire executed on the cross via actualized faith?  The prohibition is then meaningless to one who does not posses that nature.  Does not God, for the Christian, recommend eating from the tree of life every day?  And in choosing life, is not subject to the compulsion inherent in "knowing the law".

Returning to the hypothetical 'line' though, I still wonder at what point does institutional exposure (i.e. widespread societal exposure through education) become deconstructive.  Or are we setting ourselves up from a position of evaluating 'better' and 'worse' societies in the context of Christian ethics?  Maybe my question was biased at the outset.

As to my little brother, it was the study of Philosophy that yielded his (bias) preposterous beliefs.  I can argue all day against Determinists, both from the standpoint of personal realization, and with the beauty of mathematics.  But I haven't chinked that armor yet, he is determined to remain blindly deterministic.

Thanks for your view.  I appreciate your synthesis and perspective.  I am interested to know if you have read "The Spiritual Man" by Watchman Nee?

I've been wondering about that. I can understand why the instructor wants his students to use books in the library, so he can check their references and detect plagiarism. But I don't understand the requirement that the copyright dates be later than the student's birthdate. Surely theology hasn't changed that much in the past 30-40 years.

"The ability to think, and write from different perspectives is part of college perspective." In that case, left-wing students should be demanding their tuition back, since nobody is going to require them to think or write from a different perspective!

I think the requirement to use contemporary scholarship is simply part of how scholarship is done. You simply don't submit a research paper without reviewing recent literature. And in some ways, the study of religion has changed a lot in the last 20 or 30 years--archeological finds have been a big part of this. Also, given that Valpo is a Catholic school, I suppose it might be important to take Vatican II into account.

I appreciate your considered and thoughtful response.  I think you make an excellent point with regard to the struggle of faith, and suggest that perhaps this is another dimension of narcissism.  I worry, in discussing these issues of faith, that I'm perhaps discussing something that is inappropriate for this forum.  At any rate, while I see your point, I also find myself thinking that certainly your soul and my soul is something significant and that both you and I, and everyone else, have our own spiritual journeys to pursue.  The moral law is something abstract.  It is something that all of us are commanded to follow.  Yet certainly our souls, our singularity, are nothing.  I take it that this is one of the messages of the story of Abraham and Isaac.  Abraham was called upon to fullfil a singular duty, a duty that belonged to him and him alone...  And a duty that is difficult to comprehend from the standpoint of the abstract, universal moral law.  A duty, indeed, that contradicted that law, for the law calls us to hold our child above ourselves.  So I would humbly suggest, that inwardness and the examinations of one's motives is something of the order of Abraham's call to faith and what was singularly his.  Yet perhaps you're right that there's narcissism here in this thought.

I do not wish to cause offense, so I hope that you'll forgive my comments about your younger brother.  However, when you tell me of your younger brother's recent determinism, I find myself wondering if these aren't the thoughts of a young man who still needs to live his life and who still needs to discover his faith.  In my view, it is easy to hold many contemporary Christians in contempt.  One gets the sense that many people are Christians because their parents were Christian, just as many people are Republicans or Democrats, because their parents were Republicans or Christians.  In such a context professions of faith become a sort of status symbol or brand name, like wearing the stylish clothing of the day, rather than a singular spiritual journey.  Everywhere you see people who speak one way and who act another, and who clearly use their professions of faith as a way of both belonging to a particular community and exerting superiority to other communities.  When an intelligent young man looks at the hypocrisy of such believers, it's not surprising that he loses his faith because he believes that this is the sum of faith.  And perhaps such a young man chooses something which he perceives as both higher and purer, such as mathematics and physics, which he experiences as, at least, being devoted to truth and a demonstrable truth at that.  It's easy to become cynical in the face of how religious issues are so often used for political and social reasons, rather than inward reasons that truly pertain to the divine.  This is a spiritual journey that I myself underwent in my youth, so perhaps I'm projecting onto your brother.

However, and again I hope I cause no offense, I would suggest that perhaps your brother will at some point discover the true dimension of faith.  While his determinism is a form of error in that it doesn't recognize the freedom and divinity of the human soul which is the soul's true essence, his love of mathematics and physics speaks highly of his character as these things bespeak a yearning for what is true, pure, and transcendent.  I suspect, at some point, he will discover that these things, while beautiful and pure, do not provide the answers he's seeking, and that he will discover his singular faith as that which he was already always seeking in his studies of the science.  It's difficult for me to imagine a mathematician who doesn't experience wonder in the nature of numbers and their various properties...  Not to mention their eternity.  It's doubly difficult for me to imagine a physicist who doesn't look into the cosmos and see it's incredibly beauty and wonder.  Yet man is dwarfed by the infinity of number just as he's dwarfed by the enormity and emptiness of the cosmos...  And in being dwarfed by these things he, I think, also discovers his singularity and divine vocation, which brings him to faith and that he too has a place in this universe that seems to make him so small.

Apologies for my exhortations.  I don't believe this is an issue of you and your brother arguing, but of your brother discovering or recognizing that which he already knows to be true.

Point taken, but I recall the same thing being accomplished in a different way - one instructor told me a paper wouldn't be accepted unless it referenced periodical sources, for example. But excluding older ideas altogether seems excessive.

Suppose that some branch of scholarship has gone "off the tracks," disregarding plain common sense in pursuit of political correctness. (Probably most Red Staters can think of some; if you are a liberal, perhaps you will need to use your imagination.) If no ideas older than 20 years can be considered, how could the situation ever improve? Isn't this another way of limiting discussion, just as bad as keeping conservatives off the faculty?

Not that this is bad, but it's a big problem when you're using it teach impressionable college kids how to think, because they apply the lessons to politics.

I have been making literary jouissance so as to understand a point more clearly. I now see more specifically what you are saying.

I'm not dedicated student of philosophy so I will not try to pretend that I can refute your claims concerning the aethetic (I also have little grounding in the study of aethetics) nature of the subject matter.

My own brief encounter with this way of thinking has brought me to see post-modern thinking as a tool (like so many other philsophies). It seems to me that it will fail in many circumstances (since it yields few concrete answers) and in a few cases it will shed light on certain phenomena. I understand your concern for the weirder side of it.

You have spoken well and I respect what you are saying, perhaps you are taking issue with the level of focus (I don't know which colleges are informing your opinion) in schooling? It is rare that I discuss these topics so if you will indulge me I am curious as to why a philsophy that addresses power shouldn't be used to inform about politics?

Maciavelli (sp?) is both incredibly useful for understanding International Relations in some respects but, I dare say you'd prefer to live in a world of solely macciavelians (self interested: yes but, not macciavelians). Students will still learn about him and others (far more bizarre). Supporting and refuting philosophers goes a long way to learning how to think about politics.

For my own sake though I would be more interested in how we should teach college students to think. I'm sorry if this question is a bit loaded, but it is the language that you have used. You clearly have thought about this a fair bit and I'm sure if you could recommend a writer it would be challenging and interesting to read.

Sheffield, England. The Professor was of course not mine, as I was doing Physics, and my friend was doing Sociology, so the identity of the academic concerned was of no interest to me. In my studies I was concerned exclusively with Physics, Mathematics, Electronics and Astronomy for three years. British science degrees are very narrowly defined. I used to tease those doing classics that I read more than they did, but that was for my own recreation, and was no part of my degree.

I also heard similar concerns from those doing Postgraduate Certificates in Education (training to be a teacher following a degree), but these were not as concrete or as immediately repeatable. I have to admit that at the time I didn't want to listen, but the particular example I referred to was so blatant that I could not avoid taking note.

Basically in the 1980s Britain went mad, and I could name a woman who openly stated that she became a lesbian purely to further a career in student politics. Quite what her lover thought of that, I never did hear.

Students need limits, or to use another word, guidance. And it's difficult to speculate much about whether these limits are appropriate or not without knowing more about the specifics of the assignment, the purpose of the assignment, and the subject area--sure, scholarship can "go off the rails" but sometimes old ideas are best forgotten. For instance, much of the work of Margaret Mead has been discredited in anthropology.

I believe that any half-way competent instructor ought to challenge the beliefs of the students, regardless what they are. The second responsibility is to get students to be able to articulate their own beliefs, and defend them in a reasonable, and cogent way.

Certain authors are very useful for this exercise--Hobbes's Leviathan is my favorite example. The challenge I throw out to students is to try to figure out where Hobbes goes wrong. Rousseau works too. When I teach Locke, for instance, I spend a few minutes reviewing the familiar life liberty and property, but focuse a lot of my attention on the distinction between liberty and license, since that distinction is foreign to my students. (What do you mean liberty might mean something different from doing whatever I want?) In fact, just about all the standard canonized authors in a political theory class work well in this purpose. There are two stages to this--working through the ideas themselves, then working through the reasoning and seeing how it helps us understand who we are.

Again, I have problems with the Freudian approach--it seems unnecessarily academic, for one, and a very limiting approach to political theory.

Your argumentative style is so elliptical that it's hard to decide which point to engage. So I'll just ignore the (to me very interesting) bits about post-deconstructionism and its relation to aesthetics, and stick to the original topic of the thread.

We were talking about the oppressiveness of academic PC in its cruder manifestations as thought-control. In particular, the idea that white people, especially those of the male persuasion, are necessarily racists. Now the idea that life is to be understood in terms of power relationships is essentially unquestioned among many academic specialists. It long predates deconstructionism, and even its antecedents, being more properly located in a crabbed interpretation of Marxism.

Perhaps the most seductive aspect of this idea is that it leads to a transformative ethic, with agenda for social change (which of course gives relevance to the whole enterprise). Since they believe human nature is to oppress anyone and everyone at all times, then they (and their students) are of course far better people because they work against this tendency. Because they're looking for snakes under every rock, they find them. They police their own thought meticulously, and end up with nothing in their brains that resembles real life.

This idea is utterly pernicious, and even more so when taken to its logical conclusions as happens often in university classrooms. That it leads to absurdities like "all whites are racists" should be quite clear. But it also leads to radical moral relativism, the idea that marriage equals rape, and many other ills, because the very act of evaluating ideas is taken as oppressive.

I'm going to stop short of extending this to deconstructionism, which to me has a certain coherence, but is deeply marred by faddism and, ultimately, irrelevance. The big quarrel I have with the post-Marxians is that life is not all about the abuse of power relationships. I can't say this loudly or often enough, because it is a direct challenge to the most fundamental article of academic faith. Personal relationships are not zero-sum. Quite the opposite. We grow and learn through our relationships, and this is good to do. There is far far more to say, but since you and I are the only people reading this, cliffd, I'll leave it there.

I swear to you, I've read your pgh on Macchiavelli (about whom I happen to know something) several times, and I still don't know what your point is.

I am glad that I you have taken the time to put these thoughts down, thank you. I think I now understand what you are saying and I think that I am more knowledgable for it. What you have described does accurately describe some experiences in my life. I understand your point about leading to a transformative ethic(which can be very loaded with hubris). I can now understand your concern with the way of thinking (if at least not moderated by other schools of thought). I never thought that the anecdote described in the original post was permissable, but, you have shown how the method of thinking can easily arrive at this kind of situation. I also like that you have substituted a human philsophy in place of the school of thought that you are taking issue with(a philsophy that claims to be compassionate).

Now that I understand you position more fully I think that my point concerning Macchiavelli is a moot point. It return for responding to my question though I will expand what I was trying to say.

Since you know about Macchiavelli you may actually disagree with what I'm about to say (as I am not very knowledgable about his total corpus of work).

At the time of writing I was concerned that you were writing off an entire school of thought. My point was that one of the best ways to learn to think (indeed about politics too) is to defend and to support ideas that are not necessarily our own tendencies(thereby learning different patterns of thought which both disturb and re-affirm what it is that we ourselves actually think).

I used Macchiavelli as example because regardless of Macchiavelli's relevance to an understanding of international politics - his way of thinking seems rather alien to my sense of how it is we should live (and govern our politics). I was using this as a example of a school of thought that I may find troubling but is of great value for extending the ability to discuss and should be taught.

Like yourself I have a number questions that I would indeed find interesting to hear answeared, however, unless you wish to make any clarifications or ask me for clarifications I suppose there are new topics on the front page to attend to :).

I'm glad that I have enquired more deeply into what you were saying (I feel that I have learnt a lot) and I look forward to reading your thoughts on other subjects blackhedd (and discussing them with you :)  )

Thanks for your thoughts. In regard to Macchiavelli, I'm not sure I would regard him as representing a complete "school of thought." As you know, he was a political adviser to several powerful heads of state, the Karl Rove of his day if you will. His writing contains much practical advice that was intended both to inform and to flatter his patrons. Many people regard him as somehow odious, which I have a hard time understanding. We have just been through a century in which the practice of statecraft has been regarded by many as involving high moral and ethical imperatives, which Macchiavelli perhaps would have little patience for. For better or worse however, geopolitics is now reverting to its historical mean and I think the future will look more like the distant past than the immediate past.

In regard to deconstruction: if you are a specialist in the field, you already know about Alan Sokal, a physicist at NYU. If not, then read Toward a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity. This paper is an interpretation of physical reality as a social construction. It was published in the highly prestigious journal Social Text about ten years ago. After you read the paper, then google around for the backstory. In case you don't already know it, I won't give it away here.

Yes, that is a true story. I had a hard time believing it myself at the time I was told, because I had never met these things face to face (being after all a Physicist at that time), but the events of the past twenty years in Britain have unfolded in such a way that I find it entirely possible that that was, and for years afterwards remained, the standard way of teaching a degree in Sociology in the United Kingdom. Because I am not actively involved in Sociology I give you an anecdote, which I know to be true. I could alternatively just come up with ideas and opinions, but I have a preference for specifics when I can quote any.

At what point would you, in your above argument suggesting that entertaining adverse positions regarding a individuals personal faith, see the institutional practice as negative?  I personally advocate exploring many ideas and viewpoint, that which doesn't kill you makes you stronger.  However, in the context of personal belief, and maintaining a purity of mind, some of what you advocate is destructive to the individuals personal walk.

This is a real issue for me. Sometimes, I believe it is useful to be adverse to certain articles of faith. Even though I teach in the Bible Belt, I find my students are more or less relativists, and some to a fairly extreme degree. They don't have a good argument for relativism (since one doesn't exist) so I try to point this out.

On the other hand, as far as I'm concerned, religious faith is pretty much off limits. Some students say my classes challenge their faith, but typically their faith is pretty superficial to begin with. I think in these cases, the issue is parochialism. They really have never been exposed to certain ideas, and the fact that someone like Socrates or Kant could think about morals and faith in a way both familiar and unfamiliar opens up certain worlds to them.

I've had at least a few students who are planning to enter the ministry, and they've never had a problem. (I even, to my shock, found a student asking me whether he should could go to seminary--evidently, he was not certain whether or not he had been called. I told him I honestly had no idea.)

I totally agree that a professor should challenge a student's beliefs, regardless of what they are.  That was one of the best parts of law school -- professors pushing students to see the problems with their arguments through the Socratic method.  The second responsibility you mention above is also crucial -- having students articulate their own beliefs.  The best professors do this in such a way that you have no idea what their own position is, because in the classroom they play "devil's advocate" to all of the students, thereby encouraging them to both challenge and articulate their (the students') beliefs.

The teacher I was referring to did just the opposite.  He announced his position from day one.  He criticized only those who challenged his position.  Those who parroted back his theories got kudos, while those few who were willing to challenge him were ridiculed publicly. This is not to say that I didn't grow from the experience -- I think I learned much more than those who parroted his position back to him.  But his teaching methods discouraged most of the class from doing anything other than towing the party line.  And I would have learned even more if ALL presuppositions were challenged, not just those that disagreed with his narrow interpretation of life and political theory.

Let's play a little intellectual game here, and reverse the situation.  Let's suppose a T.A. in a public university asked his class on the first day the same questions my T.A. asked (who was a Christian, who was an atheist, etc), and then announced that he was a Fundamentalist Christian, and that he thought anyone who believed differently from him was an idiot.  Let's say that he spent the first month of class studying Romans 13 "Everyone must submit himself to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. . . ."  Then let's say he publicly ridiculed anyone in class who challenged Romans 13.  And then he told the students to write a paper describing why George W. Bush was chosen by God to be the President of the United States, and why he should be followed without question.  How long would that T.A. last?  He wouldn't have kept his job long enough to even give such an assignment.

Yes, by all means, our universities should be challenging people's presuppositions (both liberal and conservative presuppositions).  (And from what I've read, I trust that you, Arkie Liberal, try to do this.) But I'm afraid that too often it is only those who disagree with the professor who are challenged.  And since the vast majority of professors in our large liberal arts universities are liberal, it is all too easy for a culture to develop in which it is assumed that the liberal view is "correct" and the conservative view is not, leading to "political correctness" on college campuses.

As per problems with the Freudian approach, so what your saying is the holes in it politically are so large you could drive trains through?  This may open the door to further criticism...

Sam Gamgee is a personal favourite character, and if you write in that vein you'll quickly be a favourite correspondent as well ;)

It is of course very difficult to know what proportion of people at university meet with this, but applying a reverse argument, if we look at the preponderance of political correctness in social services, bureaucracies that employ liberal arts graduates, and so forth, we can ask how did things get to be that way?. Than we have two answers, I think; one, that they have been indoctrinated at best and coerced at worst; two, that this tendency discourages people with a different view from taking such studies, and that results in even more of the first cause. The vicious circle is then complete.

I chose Sam Gamgee as my moniker because he is my favorite character from my favorite book.  Other than the Bible, I've read LOTR more than anything else (I re-read the series about every 3-4 years).

As to the vicious cycle, you are exactly right.  For example, a lawyer in my firm just became the first (and only) registered Republican professor at the law school I attended (there are over 50 faculty members there).  I still live in this University town, which is extremely liberal.  There are clearly a few professors who engage in the extreme types of political correctness and coercion that gain attention in the media.  But for the most part, I don't believe that the liberals at the University are intentionally trying to coerce (or even indoctrinate) their students.  Rather, they are so deeply entrenched in their world view that they simply can't imagine that educated people can be conservative.  (Hence the comment recently from a professor at Duke University explaining that there are very few conservative faculty members because most conservatives are not smart enough.)  Even when they try to represent both sides of an issue, they often have a hard time presenting both sides fairly.  This isn't necessarily a criticism -- it's simply human nature.  This is why "viewpoint diversity" on college campuses is even more important than religious, ethnic or racial diversity -- so students can be exposed to professors who hold divergent viewpoints and so professors can learn from other professors who think differently about issues.  Sadly, that happens very little -- leading to the vicious cycle you mention.

....that even as a moderate to leftish Democrat sociology was a stomach-turning experience. But I just don't think the academic environment is rife with these examples of coercion. They occur, but are not the rule, and certainly not that extreme. Most academics, even at Berkeley, where I went to school (and was a Republican prior to, during, and six years after), are simply hell-bent on facts and meaning. At least in the more fact-based social sciences, such as history and political science. I was told by ONE teacher's aide (at the behest of the prof I'm sure) once that if I didn't care to understand one particular writer's take of 1960's then there was no way I could understand what was going on at that time. The entire rest of the four years were rigidly academic (except for that sociology class, of course).