In the Chronicle of Higher Education, a pseudonymous assistant professor writes about the burdens of being a conservative student and then tenure-track professor. How bad is it? Pretty darn bad! One horror story after another. The tragedy begins when the author was a student and faced blatant political discrimination in his coursework:
During an “Introduction to Political Science” class, for example, I was required to write paper on how to solve global warming. My paper suggested that perhaps there was no reason to, since the scientific evidence was inconclusive. I got a D.
Can you imagine that? The professor required his students to write a paper taking a particular position, and the author declined and decided to write on something else. And for that, a D grade! Unreal. But wait, there’s more. When the author became a professor, he had to sit through an entire sentence at a faculty meeting — yes, a sentence with a noun, verb, and everything – joking about a film by Michael Moore! Here is how the author recounts the harrowing experience:
I sat through 50 minutes of my first faculty meeting on the campus with nary a mention of politics. . . . Then, in the final few minutes of the meeting, a senior faculty member arose to make an announcement: A faculty panel would discuss the impact of September 11 on the United States, with the dean of the college offering summary remarks.
There was no hint of a leftward lean — until, that is, the senior faculty member added, “And just in case the students don’t get our message on how to vote in November, we have arranged for a showing of Fahrenheit 9/11 directly after the panel.”
Can you stand it? The author had to sit there the whole time. I know, you didn’t think it happened in Amerika.
The professor also recounts a striking anecdote that demonstrates what of bunch of closeminded robots the academic left has become:
[D]uring the Republican National Convention, I ate lunch with several colleagues. The discussion turned, inevitably, to politics. The anti-Republican tenor at the table remained unbroken, but reached its zenith with this vehement comment from one colleague, “I’m not even going to watch [the convention]. I can’t stand it.”
This made my jaw drop. As we all know, every true American patriot loves watching political party conventions. I am openminded enough to realize that you can be both a loyal American and yet not agree with everything said during the Republican convention, but to be so vehement as to not watch it is really, well, suspicious. And how else to explain the willingness to admit that curious decision to colleagues but as a sign of moral depravity?
The author’s story takes a particularly remarkable turn when he finds out that the students at his college are in fact suffering in silence just like he is: they’re mostly conservatives, too. But of course they are afraid to admit it; they’re afraid to confess to their Volvo-driving, non-GOP-convention-watching commie professors that they have their own opinions. You just can’t fight the system, I guess.
The author concludes with a Shawshank-Redemption-Meets–The-Paper-Chase sense of resignation:
Which is not to say I’m not happy here. I am. I wouldn’t trade life in this most idiosyncratic of human institutions for anything. By design, academe is meant to transcend human foibles, the better to understand them. But in a masterstroke of delicious irony, academe’s very humanness turns out to be the best justification for its own existence.
I don’t know what that means, but I’m sure there is a masterstroke of delicious irony in there somewhere.
(Hat tip: Instapundit)
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