Scott Walker attacks Professors and Unions in his new budget

a reply to: MystikMushroom

Right. Attacking tenure is only going to create problems later down the road. Look at the state of our public schools. By contrast we have one of if not the top university offerings in the world. Doing what Walker wants to do in the OP is a good way to drag our universities down to the level of our public schools. Last thing we need is politicians involved with what our universities should be teaching.

a reply to: Krazysh0t

And completely ignored. Siiiigh.

a reply to: Kali74

Are you surprised? Did you think the people calling for removing tenure from professors are going to be well educated or willing to change their opinions when presented with conflicting evidence?

originally posted by: Krazysh0t
a reply to: MystikMushroom

Right. Attacking tenure is only going to create problems later down the road. Look at the state of our public schools. By contrast we have one of if not the top university offerings in the world. Doing what Walker wants to do in the OP is a good way to drag our universities down to the level of our public schools. Last thing we need is politicians involved with what our universities should be teaching.

What you're going to end up with are teachers toeing the political line to keep their jobs, never pushing research into contested waters.

"You will only learn what the political party in power wants you to learn!"

Doesn't that sound a lot like Communist China?

Universities should be bastions of intellectual and scholarly thought, and immune from the political going-ons of a country.

If that means a few rotten apples keep a job, that's fine by me. The hard working, pioneering professors make up for them many times over.

It's Monday morning and I feel cranky, here's one to get everyone worked up over:

Conservatives often complain that liberals control the media or the show business or the academia or some other social institutions. The Hypothesis explains why conservatives are correct in their complaints. Liberals do control the media, or the show business, or the academia, among other institutions, because, apart from a few areas in life (such as business) where countervailing circumstances may prevail, liberals control all institutions. They control the institutions because liberals are on average more intelligent than conservatives and thus they are more likely to attain the highest status in any area of (evolutionarily novel) modern life.

Oh, here's the hypothesis:

...more intelligent individuals are more likely than less intelligent individuals to acquire and espouse evolutionarily novel preferences and values that did not exist in the ancestral environment and thus our ancestors did not have, but general intelligence has no effect on the acquisition and espousal of evolutionarily familiar preferences and values that existed in the ancestral environment.

And the two tie themselves together:

Even though past studies show that women are more liberal than men, and blacks are more liberal than whites, the effect of childhood intelligence on adult political ideology is twice as large as the effect of either sex or race. So it appears that, as the Hypothesis predicts, more intelligent individuals are more likely to espouse the value of liberalism than less intelligent individuals, possibly because liberalism is evolutionarily novel and conservatism is evolutionarily familiar.

Psychology Today

So, it makes perfect sense for conservatives to attack higher learning. It isn't something they control. If they can't instill "conservative values" (whatever that means) into students, then higher learning should be axed.

a reply to: MystikMushroom

Of course they'll be made to tow the line. Like I said, Walker is a Koch Head. How else are you going to keep those damn Liberal Hippy Educators from talking about Climate Change and the Environment unless you can take their jobs away and silence them???

The Koch's can't have a bunch of Tree Hugging Liberals telling people about Fracking and Big Oil killing mother earth. So you have to be able to destroy their ability to teach others. Kill those damn Unions that are protecting them too and letting them join together.

a reply to: mojom

Indeed.

You know what happens when ideas are discouraged from being shared freely (regardless of political slant)?

The Dark Ages.

In those days, educators were were afraid of the church rounding them up and burning them at the stake for their scientific beliefs.

We don't burn people at the stake for believing in climate change, but we can fire you and make you destitute and unable to find a job because of your scientific agenda.

And that, my friends, is just wrong. That is NOT how science works. That is NOT how an enlightened (or aspiring to be enlightened) society treats academia and science.

originally posted by: Krazysh0t

originally posted by: NavyDoc

originally posted by: Krazysh0t

originally posted by: NavyDoc
Few people on the left believe in chem-trails or Conspiracies? Really? Have you been on ATS at all? LOL.

That wasn't what I said. The left has its own share of silly conspiracies, but the good BULK of conspiracies originate from the right, because many have mixed that "the government is coming to get you!" shtick into the conspiracy.
...

Nonsense. Look at all of the 9/11 was Bush's fault, war for oil, Halliburton mind control machines. It may sway depending on who is in office, but those huge reams of conspiracy theories since 9/11 at least have been from the left.

The truther movement is currently maintained by crazies on the right, not the left. The left has moved on away from that conspiracy theory. At least that is what I've seen from its supporters on ATS. Feel free to produce a truther website produced by a progressive that proves me wrong though.

Just wait until a Republican presidency....

a reply to: NihilistSanta

Why would a Republican party cause leftist sentiment for bush being in on 9/11 to rearise? It's not like a new asshole in chief is going to cause people to doubt the actions and words of an old asshole in chief. Even if they ARE from the same party.

originally posted by: Krazysh0t

originally posted by: NavyDoc
They are on part of the required list and there was a hell of a lot more. You do realize that there is a 7500 symbol/letter per post limit, right?

Do you know what an anecdote is?

I know you'll disregard the article because of the writer, but here is a good article by Horowitz.
www.discoverthenetworks.org...

That paper is flawed because the author proves his point through anecdotes. There isn't a statistical analysis of all the coursework compared to political leanings being presented, whether neutral, left, or right leaning. It's just examples of the author's experiences. Albeit, he appears to be educated on the subject, but that leaves one to question why he presented his findings in such a way. I don't care about the individual courses offered that promote leftist ideology. I care about the overall leanings of ALL the classes offered.

He quotes liberal academics themselves who admit the issue:

The article is also from 2006 during the height of the Iraq involvement.

But you have nothing but anecdotes that conservatives are "anti-science" and "hate academia" because "liberals tell the truth." You've even supplied fewer examples than I. So your isolated examples are "proof" yet my myriad more examples are "anecdotes." And you say that the right is blindly ignorance of evidence?

There is a lot of evidence that those in the "hard science" tend conservative.

Engineers tend to view themselves as much less liberal and slightly more conservative than the general public, according to a recent survey of over 1,200 readers of MACHINE DESIGN and Electronic Design magazines. The same survey also found that engineers say they are more likely to be Republican (42.1%) or Independent (33.7%) voters, as opposed to Democrats (14.5%).

machinedesign.com...

And those not in a hard science discipline are more liberal.

It is disingenuous to say that conservatives are anti-science .

You know, I'm just going to say this -- maybe 100 years from now this will be archived and someone will read it...

In the future, maybe 100-500 years from now, we're going to look back on climate change deniers creationists the same way we currently look back on flat-Earth supporters.

a reply to: NavyDoc

So I went looking for sources for my stance and what I found was this:
Liberals And Conservatives Are Anti-science, Just About Different Things
and this:
Liberals Are as Anti-Science as Conservatives, Study Finds
and this:
Anti-Science Views Are a Bipartisan Problem

So I guess I was wrong, either side of politics can be pretty anti-science.

dbl post

a reply to: Krazysh0t

No, just saddened.

originally posted by: Krazysh0t
a reply to: NavyDoc

So I went looking for sources for my stance and what I found was this:
Liberals And Conservatives Are Anti-science, Just About Different Things
and this:
Liberals Are as Anti-Science as Conservatives, Study Finds
and this:
Anti-Science Views Are a Bipartisan Problem

So I guess I was wrong, either side of politics can be pretty anti-science.

I can agree with this. There are extremists on both sides who refuse to let evidence sway their opinions.

a reply to: NavyDoc

Now, don't get me wrong. I still don't believe that Universities are all liberal indoctrination centers. I think that many who work in academia are liberal minded, but that doesn't necessarily mean they are purposely indoctrinating all the students to be liberals. If that were the case, then conservatism would be a dying ideology as more and more people went to college and it is stronger than ever.

Santorum's attack on college education is no joke

www.dailykos.com...

Hannity's Terrorist Campaign Against Professors

www.dailykos.com...

Removing tenure from professors is a bad idea. It's important for educators to be free from the political ideologies of the day.

As far as the liberal slant goes. I've been in college for a long time, I have over 500 credit hours so I've had more than my fair share of professors. More lean left than lean right, but I have never heard viewpoints from the right shut down and instead they are routinely encouraged. Almost every professor I have ever had has taken their job to mean that they not only teach you something, but that they should be exposing you to new and conflicting ideas, so that you as an individual can attempt to determine what the truth is. Because of this, I've seen those on the right be given far more opportunity to speak because there are fewer of them, and their points should be heard.

In any writing class I've had, I can't think of a single time where I was ever marked down on a paper for the side of an argument I was choosing to make, and I have picked some pretty controversial topics in the past just to get a feel for the professors reaction. Instead what I have found, pretty much every single time is that the side of an argument you choose to take is irrelevant to the class, and what really matters is how you support it.

originally posted by: neo96
a reply to: NavyDoc

I highly doubt that the basket weaving and womyn's studies profs are creating life saving doctors.

Here's 20 more 'teachers' than don't need tenure.

theeconomiccollapseblog.com...

I just looked at each of those classes. Can you explain what is wrong with them? Most of them appear to be critical thinking/writing based classes.

How would you fill that aspect of college with those classes? Or would you just cut them and contribute to the lack of critical thinking in society?