Liberal Prof Says He’s Terrified of His Liberal Students
Edward Schlosser is not a fan of his liberal students and writes about his experience at VOX.
Liberal professors created this monster, they have to live with it.
I’m a liberal professor, and my liberal students terrify me
I’m a professor at a midsize state school. I have been teaching college classes for nine years now. I have won (minor) teaching awards, studied pedagogy extensively, and almost always score highly on my student evaluations. I am not a world-class teacher by any means, but I am conscientious; I attempt to put teaching ahead of research, and I take a healthy emotional stake in the well-being and growth of my students.
Things have changed since I started teaching. The vibe is different. I wish there were a less blunt way to put this, but my students sometimes scare me — particularly the liberal ones.
Not, like, in a person-by-person sense, but students in general. The student-teacher dynamic has been reenvisioned along a line that’s simultaneously consumerist and hyper-protective, giving each and every student the ability to claim Grievous Harm in nearly any circumstance, after any affront, and a teacher’s formal ability to respond to these claims is limited at best.
What it was like before
In early 2009, I was an adjunct, teaching a freshman-level writing course at a community college. Discussing infographics and data visualization, we watched a flash animation describing how Wall Street’s recklessness had destroyed the economy.
The video stopped, and I asked whether the students thought it was effective. An older student raised his hand.
“What about Fannie and Freddie?” he asked. “Government kept giving homes to black people, to help out black people, white people didn’t get anything, and then they couldn’t pay for them. What about that?”
I gave a quick response about how most experts would disagree with that assumption, that it was actually an oversimplification, and pretty dishonest, and isn’t it good that someone made the video we just watched to try to clear things up? And, hey, let’s talk about whether that was effective, okay? If you don’t think it was, how could it have been?
Comments
Edward missed the administration’s point with his 2009 example. The point was he could mess over the conservative students with a wink and a nod. It was all good because as he and his liberal boss know – conservatives are wrong anyway. I am sure if it happened again that they would still laugh about it and toss the complaint in the circular file.
However, if he offends one of the special snow flake proggies well that is a different story. Any triggers or anguish must be met by a full flaying and potential burning at the stake.
The big change is that the poodle babies have seen the power granted them to ruin lives and they are using it all over with anyone who does not do exactly as they say. Hopefully some day they will speak of this in the past tense like the salem witch trials. The only way those ended was when the girls overstepped and started accusing those in “power” (the wife of a judge if I recall) and the judge stepped in and said enough of this BS and it was over.
As far as the left or Proggies are concerned the snowflakes can accuse and burn as many poor defenseless people as they want it is all entertainment and sends the message out to the masses to tow the line and watch yourself (do as your betters will). Note: in this case poor and defenseless equals Independents and Conservatives. However, once they start feeding on their own then the cry will be raised (as it was in this article) that something must be done.
Agree 100%…they sowed it and now we are all reaping it, unfortunately, kinda like Obamacare.
You hit it on the head – but I wanted to add:
The problem as I see it, and I’ll use feminists and “people of color” activists to exemplify it is thus:
If you make a spurious claim, and I mean one that is verifiably false, nothing happens to you. It’s a “lottery ticket” of retribution: it costs you very little, but the payoff could be huge.
Feminist women, while denying women make any false claims, especially in serious matters, are, IMO, the **first ones** to make a false allegation, often using distortion and hyperbole, but often outright lying, to destroy the person with whom they disagree.
In the guise of “not causing a chilling effect” no one wants to address this.
Until there are **CONSEQUENCES** to making a false claim, this will continue.
I feel bad for this prof, but he said nothing when others were being tarred and feathered and careers were being destroyed, and now he’s reaping the same fruit – and he’s shocked.
[…] College Insurrection […]
I would’ve been fired for sure. I used to tell my students I don’t care what you feel; I want to know what you think, and the classroom was an open field for a freewheeling exchange of ideas on any and everything. Good thing I decided to change careers.
Your classroom sounds like my kind of place. Maybe we can open a Real World University that doesn’t coddle and puts out students who are successful on their own merits!
You can do it easily as long as you start small and never, ever depend on federal money…
I took the time to read the entire article and (for what it’s worth) here what I see as the problem:
Identity politics is a SYMPTOM of Critical Theory, which drives all PC ideology.
Class warfare, and dividing and balkanizing the citizens into smaller and smaller self-identified groups, all being taught to worship at the alter of, and give power to those in authority to “right the wrongs”.
So – more Diversity Officers are hired, and they must have a set of grievences to work on – and since most of PC arguments are horribly constructed, and very few actual race & gender acts of bigotry exist, they lower the threshhold of what is a grievence.
The people invested in PC politics have jobs, and mortgages, and a career to think of – so simply saying “gee, most of these problems have been dealt with, we don’t need so many programs” is never going to happen.
Plus, many are true believers – and we all know what happens to those that stray from walking in lockstep from the PC narrative.
And, for those at the top, keeping people divided along racial, gender, sexual identity etc makes them more manageable.
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So – at the end of the food chain is this professor, and now all those policies that benefitted his liberal mind set are now coming full circle and biting him in the ass.
Were this happening (and has happened) to conservative professors, driving them into silence or out of academia, all those liberal professors who said nothing, or cheered it on, are now finding the “shocking” discovery that, yes, you too are being held to subjective standards and are in fear of YOUR job.
Maybe if he’d spoken up he’d not have a job now in the first place, but if those in academia want to change this culture of fear, they are first going to have to change their ideology – and I doubt that’ll happen for a variety of reasons – if they want to have a true open academic institution where the fear of simply proposing ideas no longer happens.
Again – when this PC ideology precluded hiring conservative professors, denied them tenure or positions of authority and kept conseervative ideas from the classroom, all those liberals said nothing (at best) and often smiled and nodded.
Now they are finding out, that even with all the conservatives gone, the grievence industry WILL find a reason to whine. There must be villains if there are victims – and now, bereft of conservatives to villify, they are turning on their own.
I feel for this man, but only with a grain of salt.
I don’t feel sorry for him one bit. As someone who was silent (and whose fellows were silent), who helped to maintain (if not create), and who has benefited from the earlier pogroms that drove conservatives out of academia, he is reaping the whirlwind. Also known as “what goes around, comes around.”