The California Association of Scholars report on UC Campuses

A disturbing report about the UC campuses that is not hard to believe,most unfortunately. See especially the downloads of the studies, linked to in the article.

We’re in trouble.

Note: I’ve had someone point out to me that there may be problems with this article in that UC Berkeley appears to have more courses in western civ (at least from the perspective of European history) than purported here. However, check this out. There is something to it. I know that David Horowitz has been noticing this issue for some time, and was ahead of the curve on this problem. He has stated that while there are few conservative professors in the Humanities, that most left wing professors don’t teach in a biased way. He said only around 10% do, but I do think that can be a crucial 10%. Of course, some departments are more heavily biased toward a left-wing perspective than others. In any event, the reports bear looking at and the article is certainly of great interest.

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NEW STUDY SHOWS RADICALS RULE AT UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA by by DAN GAGLIASSO.

The California Association of Scholars, a division of the National Association of Scholars, have just released an incendiary report showing that all nine of the University of California’s campuses have been compromised by too many politicized courses and radical faculty members. CAS members include a number of current or past professors from the UC system who have taught at UC-Berkeley, UCLA, UC-Santa Cruz, and UC-San Diego.

Conservatives have long complained of a strong liberal bias in college classrooms, and this new study shows just how far off track it has gone in one of the most prestigious public university systems in the country. You can read the full CAS 81-page report here.

CAS’s president John Ellis knows very well of what he speaks; he’s a professor emeritus of German Literature from UC Santa Cruz. “The quality of education at the University of California has been jeopardized by political activism,“ Professor Ellis said in a phone interview. “Dogmatism is rapidly displacing open-minded inquiry, especially in the social sciences and humanities, to the severe disadvantage of students.”

A Crisis in Competence: The Corrupting Influence of Political Activism in the University of California isn’t trying to purge the system of differing left of center opinions. The well-documented study just hopes to even the playing field so students get a quality education – an education that has standards and teaches students to look at all sides of the issues. The CAS report emphasizes common sense observations that seem to be beyond the grasp of the assumed intelligent members of the UC Board of Regents.

One observation points out that “a political science department with one half of the spectrum of political thought missing cannot be considered a competent department.” It seems only a Marxist professor with an agenda and no common sense would disagree with that idea from this new study. Unfortunately, as the study shows, there are a lot more Marxists now teaching in the University of California system than you would think.

The CAS report took the time to carefully vet the studies it cites from various institutions, including George Mason University, the Center for the Study of Popular culture, and many others. They even scoured carefully scrutinized and recorded students complaints on the subject, many of which you can read here.

Here a just a few of the conclusions about the University of California system that CAS came to:

There has been a sharp increase in faculty members who self-identify as radicals. This has led to “one party” academic departments, such as at Berkeley, where left-of-center faculty members outnumber their right-of-center colleagues in Political Science by a ratio of 28:2, in English 29:1 and in History 31:1. A number of these professors are openly avowed Marxists! (Has Van Jones applied for one of these positions?)

Many curricula promote political activism, in violation of UC regulations. Critical Race Studies at UCLA’s School of Law, for example, aims to be a “training ground” for advocates committed to racial justice theory and practice (sounds like Harvard during the Professor Derrick Bell/Obama years).

Several departments attempt to erase the study of Western tradition. History majors are now not required to take a survey course in Western civilization on any of the nine University of California campuses. Four more UC campuses have dropped their American History requirements (many UC students cannot even answer basic questions about American or World History).

Suppression of free speech is commonplace. Speakers at UC Berkeley who have been shouted down by protesters include Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Secretary of State Madeline Albright, and Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Conner (but Columbia welcomes Iran’s Ahmadinejad to speak with open arms).

Radical and left-of-center UC professors favor hiring like-minded new academics and block the hiring of new professors who don’t “think the right way.” (Why would a conservative incur the enormous debt and hassles pursuing a Ph. D. if the possibility of a professor’s job is little or nil?)

The advancement of “social justice” is now the open aim of a number of UC faculty members and even whole departments in the system (if a student asks questions or writes answers or papers that challenge these professors and their radical assumptions they can expect a poor grade).

The UC curriculum has been gutted because too many professors now show an open preference for promoting a partisan political agenda. These are just a few of the important issues confronting the UC system that the CAS study raises and documents in very credible fashion.

Resident conservative Jennifer Rubin at the Washington Post compared the 25th anniversary of the publication of Allan Bloom’s groundbreaking The Closing of the American Mind to the release of the new CAS report. She astutely pointed out that, “…the left systematically has dumbed its side down, to the point where supposedly well-educated elites are untrained and unaware of our country’s history and constitutional traditions.”

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The rest here and comments of course: New study of UC System proves radical professors rule

No binary gender for Occupy San Francisco!

I”m watching a livestream of arrests being made of Occupy San Francisco protesters who  occupied a building on Turk Street in San Francisco last night. The camera man observing, who is an Occupy SF person, states as he observes a protestor being led away by police from the building to the police van, “Another protestor, a woman, being led out of the building… I say “woman”, ah – just to make a judgment but ah, I’m not too much into the binary gender thing…”

I think it was a dude (as in a man) talking but don’t quote me on that.

Funny now how people feel they have to apologize for calling someone, who looks female, a woman. Which may mean they recognize that people are men or women, a no no.

Guess the far left, at least in San Francisco,  has absorbed the anti-binary sentiments of various political gender benders. Please, do LEAVE ME OUT OF IT!! I hope to never be blamed for this silliness. I do believe in the binary. A loose and slightly bendy binary, but  — a binary.

All those reading who have no idea what I am talking about, you are not missing out on much. Believe me on this one!