Is there academic freedom at Harvard?
Harvard President Lawrence Summers has yeilded to pressure to resign. The not-especially-conservative Yahoo News reports that many faculty, even those who consider themselves liberal believe that Summers has been "done in" by an ultra-liberal faction in the faculty who found some of his opinions "unacceptable."
My Favorite quote from this article comes from Harvard Law professor Alan Dershowitz:
"I'm clearly in the left 20 percent of the country, nationally. I'm a Ted Kennedy liberal," Dershowitz said. "In the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, I'm in the 10 percent side of the conservatives.
"That doesn't show I'm out of sync with the country," he said. "It shows how out of sync Harvard is."
I have been complaining for a while of what I see as an extreme liberal bias in America's colleges that not only betrays the principle of academic freedom of thought, but sends a steady stream of "spin" to the public under the guise of "solid Academic Research." This is not to mention a steady stream of future leaders who have been indoctrinated by said "spin."
I wonder what happens to the pursuit of truth when college professors, even when they are backed by methodologically sound research, are not able to make any kind of statements that challenge the prevailing ideology at their universities?
If a "Ted Kennedy liberal" agrees with me, you know things really are THAT bad, if not much worse.
(for a similar rambling, see my post for 12/01/05)
My Favorite quote from this article comes from Harvard Law professor Alan Dershowitz:
"I'm clearly in the left 20 percent of the country, nationally. I'm a Ted Kennedy liberal," Dershowitz said. "In the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, I'm in the 10 percent side of the conservatives.
"That doesn't show I'm out of sync with the country," he said. "It shows how out of sync Harvard is."
I have been complaining for a while of what I see as an extreme liberal bias in America's colleges that not only betrays the principle of academic freedom of thought, but sends a steady stream of "spin" to the public under the guise of "solid Academic Research." This is not to mention a steady stream of future leaders who have been indoctrinated by said "spin."
I wonder what happens to the pursuit of truth when college professors, even when they are backed by methodologically sound research, are not able to make any kind of statements that challenge the prevailing ideology at their universities?
If a "Ted Kennedy liberal" agrees with me, you know things really are THAT bad, if not much worse.
(for a similar rambling, see my post for 12/01/05)
Labels: Cultural issues, Education
posted by Rev. Daniel McLain Hixon at 2/26/2006
3 Comments:
I've been out of college for seven and a half years, and it is only in retrospect that I realize what leftist tripe I swallowed whole back then.
I vividly recall asserting that Fidel Castro was one of the greatest leaders in Latin American history.
Thankfully, that nonsense has since been purged from my brain.
One of my favorite qoutes from Reverend Lovejoy:
"Well the short answer is no...but the long answer is yes with a but...and the the real answer is it is a mystery."
Since I'm an evangelical, I spent most of my college years arguing with my professors. I didn't go to Harvard, just an ordinary UM school. It'd have been nice if it'd been a Christian school also.
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