There's been much written in the last day or so about UCLAProfs.com, a site that criticizes supposedly extreme left-wing UCLA professors, and that "is offering students payments of up to $100 per class to provide information" — especially audiotapes — "on instructors who are 'abusive, one-sided or off-topic' in advocating political ideologies." My colleague Stephen Bainbridge has more.
I've checked out the site, and find many of the criticisms to be quite shallow and unpersuasive. (I should note that I've informally responded to some questions by the site's author in the past, but I doubt that I'd do so in the future, given the pretty low quality of the materials.) I also do think the offering of money to students is a bit unsavory, though I'm not positive how bad it is; much information-gathering, after all, is done by people who get paid, and sometimes get paid in rough correlation to the stuff they unearth. My colleague Jerry Kang points out that tape recording for money might violate a specific California statutory provision; it's an interesting question whether applying the law to tape recordings in this context (which is also far from the context that seems to have animated the enactment of the law) would be an unconstitutional burden on information gathering.
Nonetheless, I do think we need to put all this in perspective. My colleagues and I are public servants. We have a certain degree of influence over public affairs, both through our public commentary and through our teaching. Others disagree with us, and think we're doing a public disservice rather than a public service. They're entitled to criticize us, and to monitor our public performance of our duties to see whether that performance is, in their view, lacking. I try to imagine what I would think if someone from the Left set up a site to criticize Prof. Bainbridge, me, and my (rather few) conservative colleagues, and to solicit concrete evidence of our supposed misdeeds; I would like to think that I would recognize that this was their right, both legally and ethically.
Now it's true that this may have a "chilling effect" in the sense of deterring some people from saying controversial things, in class or outside it. But all criticism has such an effect; much criticism is intended to have such an effect. It's even good when criticism has such a deterrent effect, for instance when it deters us from saying foolish or unsound things. If you criticize my posts, my articles, or my lectures, and I recognize that your criticism is apt — that my lectures were too partisan, or that my arguments were unsound — then I may well change what I say. That's criticism performing its proper function.
And if I think your criticism is unsound, my duty is to remain undeterred. It's not always an easy duty to fulfill. But look: Most of my colleagues have tenure. Even our untenured colleagues have the protection of being reviewed by their peers, and peers who are generally unlikely to much sympathize with what the UCLAProfs.com site says. We're in a much better position than other public servants, who routinely have to deal with criticism. If we're not robust enough to resist unsound criticisms — if we're deterred from saying certain things even when we think they should be said — what's the point of all the employment protections we have?
If people are criticizing us unfairly, we should fault them for that. (Stephen Bainbridge does so, for instance.) But labeling this (as one professor quoted here did) "a reactionary form of McCarthyism" strikes me as no more sound or effective than the pejoratives that UCLAProfs.com sometimes uses itself. As Prof. Bainbridge points out, "If you can't tell the difference between the abuse of position by a United States Senator backed by the coercive power of the state and the exercise of free speech by a bunch of disgruntled alumni, well...."
UPDATE: Stephen Bainbridge writes more about the power of technology, and closes with this:
Getting feedback from the proletariat is always unsettling for authority figures . . . . The initial and, perhaps natural, reaction is to decry it as McCarthyism and a danger and so on.Upon mature reflection, however, we have to realize that the world has changed. Those over whom we have authority now have at their disposal technology that gives them a very loud megaphone. Very public criticism has become the lot of all authority figures, including those within the ivory tower.
Much of that criticism will be unfair, uninformed, or just plain dumb. Isn't it Sturgeon's Law that says 90% of everything is crap? But so what? As my friend and colleague Eugene Volokh notes [quote of the "if I think your criticism is unsound, my duty is to remain undeterred" paragraph omitted -EV].
Precisely. And so I say to my colleagues: Welcome to the 21st Century. It's going to be a very bumpy ride.
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I guess someone could set up a webpage complaining about our host's conservative opinions displayed on this blog, but I have a hard time seeing the point. As long as the teaching is done well and presents all sides fairly, why would we expect unversity faculty to be apolitical?
But in the half-dozen or so faculty "profiles" that I had time to review just now, I found only one comment that was even related to the conduct of the faculty member in the classroom--a vaguely worded attack on the teaching practices of Adolfo Bermeo, who isn't even at UCLA anymore. Everything else is simply diatribes against the faculty members for their personal views, not their professional conduct.
Doesn't that worry you? In a country that can be turned against the French literally overnight, how hard would it be to demonize a few professors?
Let's keep the rhetoric in perspective. "Mobs" are dangerous precisely because they have the power to commit violence (even if they represent a small minority of the population). A "mob" can't fire a professor; at most a bunch of agitated members of the public could try to influence the UCLA administration or faculty to try to engage in such firing -- not very likely, I think, given the many protections that faculty members have, and given the fact that the administration or faculty is likely to be quite unsympathetic to the Bruin Alumni Association's political position.
It thus seems to me quite unlikely that UCLAProfs.com, for all its weaknesses will jeopardize anyone's career. And analogies to mobs, which can cause huge damage in a few moments of anger, with no need for cooperation from university administrations or faculties, strike me as quite unsound here.
And that's really the problem, isn't it?
Tenure needs to be abolished as the anachronism and destructive influence it is.
Possibilities for it's written like that:
1) We could, of course, blame the radical professors at UCLA who are too busy being radical and teaching radical thoughts to provide proper instruction, not in radicalism, but in writing.
2) It's Southern California, dude. Everything is radical.
3) Campus activists, of all political stripes (conservative, liberal, student newspaper editorialist, leftist, LaRouchite, cultist, angry ethnicity, etc.) are not, as a general matter, the more intellectually hefty representatives of their position.
You're just doing that on purpose, aren't you?
By the way, Mac -- if you want to know why graduates have terrible writing skills, look a little further back along the pipeline than college. Many of my students are unable to construct paragraphs (or even proper sentences) by the time they arrive in my classroom to read and write about Hume, Smith or Marx. Instructors in upper-division undergraduate courses shouldn't have to run a remedial writing seminar.
So true. These professors need to understand that they are going to be held accountable, the same as everyone else. Tenure will not protect them from the consequences of stabbing their nation in the back while we are at war. Nobody likes to be held accountable and these guys have gotten a free ride for years. When I was in college, I had one professor who required that we read some of the works of Karl Marx. It is things like that that have got to end.
In a pre-911 world, the left-wing academic propaganda was an acceptable if distasteful reality. Now, it's a "luxury" we can no longer afford.
Whether or not that was objectionable would depend on the context, which you have not provided. In some types of course--say, a European intellectual history course--it would be perfectly appropriate to require students to read some Marx.
You are absolutely correct. We moved frequently. My son was the recipient of so many "new" theories of writing, he never learned anything. The one I loved the best was when he was in a gifted program and they did not want to "stifle his creativity". Well, they didn't. He can't spell and his punctuation is atrocious. Or, I should say, he has the most creative spelling and punctuation you can imagine. His speaking, thank God, is superb. He won many awards for public speaking and he has excellent grammar. But, that is due to what you hear at home. His sister was a reader. A book a day will do wonders for your English skills. She was reading Grishom at 11. It is a lot of work to learn to speak and write well. It's not fun. I wonder why these kids are in college if they can't write? My son is aware that he has problems, and since joining the Marine Corps (No I don't know why, but I am proud of him when I am not scared to death) and continuing his college, he has made great effort to improve. Marrying a French woman with a Master's Degree who worked for a book publisher and writes far better English than himself, didn't hurt! I don't know what Professors are to do. Many of them have rather poor skills themselves. I don't know. Lowering standards has not helped. It must be very frustraing for you. But, it is awful. At some point, we must get back to basics. I don't know how a lot of these kids can even get through Hume or Marx. Hell, I don't know how they get through a comic book! I don't know how you function. It must be so frustrating. I'd flunk them all. Hmm. Which is why I am no longer teaching myself. I did flunk almost all of them and got fired! Well, it was at one of those private, for profit colleges and they got their certification yanked about 2 weeks later. They graduated too many dummies who couldn't pass even their entry level board exam. A 90% failure rate for entry level when you are allegedly teaching an advaned registry program is seriously frowned upon in health care. Imagine that?
"When I was in college, I had one professor who required that we read some of the works of Karl Marx."
You have to be kidding me. Are you that insecure in your beliefs that you could not read a new book to test the validity of what is presented there? When I was in college, I had to read Marx too. In fact, I had to read it in two different classes. I also had to read Kissinger and Nixon. In the class, I read Marx, I also had to read Hume, Locke, Smith, Hobbes and many other thinkers. Are you saying that your professor had you only read Marx? Or are you just rejecting the idea that Marx should be part of education? If you are, then how are we going to teach our children that communistic ideas are ridiculous? I'm sorry you had to read a book you didn't agree with, but that's how you learn to define what you believe. Where did you go to school? If your going to take history or philosophy or political science, guess what your going to have to read books from across the spectrum.
Noah
Off-topic, but...I would say just that, yes. The problem with Marxism is not merely that it leads to widespread poverty, death, and dishonesty, but that like the free lunch, perpetual motion, and programs to lose weight without eating less, it is so exceedingly seductive an idea that it springs eternally, like crabgrass, in each new generation. You might as well teach youngsters about the dangers of drug abuse by having them sample a little crack. There is a point to making some tempting but evil ideas anathema, so that each generation need not repeat the painful learning experiences of their parents. I think it's perfectly OK that the proposition that one man can own another is now so far outside the mainstream that no one seriously studies the question, and even to propose to do so is frowned upon. May it happen to Marxism.
If you are, then how are we going to teach our children that communistic ideas are ridiculous?
How about: in the same general way we teach them that driving while drunk is dangerous without having them actually do it? Why do they need to drink the original poison? Won't a watered-down, properly put into context version vaccinate them? Would you have them read the Protocols of the Elders of Zion and Mein Kampf without guidance to get them vaccinated against national socialism?
But I don't think the students' education suffered much. The students are savvy and manipulative, they're instrumental in their approach to education and they basically control the content of their education (why else are iPods appearing as required educational technology at leading universities?). What is ostensibly a course in writing skills and critical thinking is actually a course in critical thinking about verbal rhetoric; good students are able to sift through the material and present the appropriate product: excellent training for the young bourgeois at the hands of unreconstructed and post-deconstructed Marxist wannabes.
The best students know all of this: I interviewed one young Marshall college student for an internship position and she mercilessly mocked her "Eigenvectors of Oppression" instructor's apocalyptic world view, the silly assignments, and the praise she received for writing about the suffering of her people (I don't believe she mentioned that her people are Orange County donut-empire Republicans). I surfed with another student who got a one week extension (and a long, heartfelt hug) from his instructor because of the trauma they experienced at the hands of incompetent exit-polling—of course he was hitting Blacks' when he should have been writing, but whatever.
They're not learning to write, but they don't need a website to clue them in. They're learning something I wish I'd been taught at their age.
Me, too. And when we'd finished as best we could, she said "Since you suffered through that we're going to do something fun: read some Kierkegaard."
If you are, then how are we going to teach our children that communistic ideas are ridiculous?
Show them their Marxist TA's pay stubs? Is there any need to teach the ridiculous to a student wearing his Che Guevara t-shirt, laying in the La Jolla sunshine listening to The Communist Manifesto on his iPod? One shouldn't lose sight of the finger or the moon.
Actually, we do, just not in science classes. They're in the philosophy and classics departments where they belong, and where they fit into the curriculum.
That's why it is so important to see where the Marx required reading is.
If you don't want your words to come back and bite you, you can keep them to yourself.
Yes, we do.
From your comment to Houston Lawyer's comment, I take it you also agree with him that the attacks on the Professors are sophomoric.
Smithy here provides an inadvertent argument for tenure: It is needed to protect free debate and inquiry in the classroom from the likes of people like him.
But then again, I'm an empirical political scientist, and leave the normative theorizing, and classes on the same, to others. I do make my introductory course students read some of Charles Beard (as well as a pretty thorough dismantling of Beard's arguments).
And, if I were to teach a class in modern political philosophy (something I'm pretty much underqualified to do, mind you, but that didn't stop me from teaching Con Law!), I would teach Marx. And a lot of other folks, including Hayek.