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Sunday, March 20, 2005

Dueling Professors

Over the weekend I engaged a couple of professors in an exchange about the Academic Bill of Rights and the celebrated exam question in Colorado on the History News Network. The interested can find it here.


Posted by Horowitz @ 8:02:00 PM Eastern Time  
 

3 Comments:

prowlerneedsajump said...

Liberal professors, journalists, what-have-you, can be self-critical and concerned when an issue comes from the left. David Horowitz is unquestionably a right-winger and therefore the liberals uncritical, knee-jerk response is to circle the wagons.

Contrast this to today's Republican legislators and their supporters, who, despite the obvious uneven-handedness of challenges, are able to muster outrage at one of their own, or at least the willingness to consider that they may be wrong. Trent Lott and Abu Ghraib come to mind as examples.

The ability to be self-critical in the face of an attack from an opponent requires patience and maturity. It is borne of long being the underdog, an experience I am happy to observe is becoming more commonplace for the liberals among us.

Mon Mar 21, 02:40:05 PM  
orangeducks said...

What a fantastic resource. This was a great exchange to read. The posts from T.J.B. were unusually civil and thoughtful for a Leftist (most other posts from DH's challengers fell into the typical deny-distort-disparage Lefty pattern of "discourse").

One important point of TJB's (post #56898) to which I simply must respond: He says it's easy to understand why the medical profession is monitored for malpractice, but for professors he asks, what's the harm?

Our education system is imploding, as demonstrated by the product it turns out - high school grads who can't read, and college grads who can't think. Anyone who hires young people straight out of school (as I do) can tell you this. Their heads are full of ideals and devoid of ideas.

In college 10 years ago I took an American Political Theory class. Thomas Jefferson was mentioned once - maybe twice. Karl Marx was discussed throughout. I got an A without doing any of the assigned reading (I stopped in the first week on about page 5 of one of Chomsky's gems). I did so by simply selecting every exam answer that characterized America in the worst possible terms.

No harm, right? I got an "A". Except that I didn't LEARN jack shit about American Political Theory.

Apply to a multitude of other subjects and disciplines, season, shake, then serve. You get armies of American airheads, stumbling into no future, ass over tea kettle.

"A mind is a terrible thing to waste." - NAACP

Mon Mar 21, 05:47:29 PM  
Icarus said...

Mr Horowitz, you're worth every cent.

That exchange itself is worth the price of admission. I only hope Ralph used more scholarly vigor in 'earning' his credentials than he did in that performance.

Thank god for the free market.

Tue Mar 22, 12:16:52 PM  

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