Here’s an example of why I think the UCLAProfs.com site is often shallow and unpersuasive, though as I note below I think some of the “those McCarthyites” criticisms of it are unpersuasive, too. From the front page of the site:
There’s Something About Petitions
Given the vast number of radical petitions UCLA professors have signed in recent years, much of our university’s faculty apparently follows a variation of Descartes’ famous statement, Cogito, ergo sum (I think therefore I am): Signo, ergo sum, (I sign, therefore I am).
Preliminary UCLAProfs.com research has uncovered nearly 500 faculty signatures on petitions, open letters and public statements which take a wide variety of radical positions: anti-Israel, anti-Bush, anti-war. The list also demonstrates that a large number of UCLA professors are ardently in favor of affirmative action, and just as ardently opposed to conservative legal nominees, even opposing fellow alumni like Justice Janice Rogers Brown.
Various faculty profiles that I saw on the site also stress those petitions.
Consider:
1. The irrelevant data: Nearly 500 signatures (not 500 separate faculty members, but 500 signatures) on various petitions. And this matters because . . .?
2. More irrelevant data: “A large number of UCLA professors are ardently in favor of affirmative action, and just as ardently opposed to conservative legal nominees.” So? In a faculty of thousands, of course there’d be a large number of UCLA professors ardently in favor of affirmative action. They’re entitled to hold such views; why is it that important that they do hold such views? It doesn’t show that the faculty is disproportionately left-wing. (It may well be, and certainly is in many departments, but we know that from other sources. That “a large number of UCLA professors” supports affirmative action is not evidence of that, given what a small fraction of UCLA professors must be in their petition signatories dataset.)
3. The putdown that’s really a compliment: “… even opposing fellow alumni like Justice Janice Rogers Brown.” Jeez, school spirit is all well and good, but it’s hardly a sign of poor character that some people don’t let their public policy judgment be swayed by school loyalty.
4. The exaggerated rhetoric: “[R]adical positions: anti-Israel, anti-Bush, anti-war” — since when was being anti-Bush, a view that roughly half (if not more) of the population takes a “radical position”? Likewise as to opposition to the war or opposition to Israel. Now there are surely radical versions of those positions, and doubtless some of my colleagues hold them. But simply labeling “anti-Israel, anti-Bush, anti-war” as “radical positions,” with no explanation of what’s radical about them, is a self-caricature of conservatism.
As I’ve said before, it’s perfectly legitimate to criticize professors. People even have the First Amendment right to do so unfairly, shallowly, and exaggeratedly. But such weakly reasoned criticism is hardly laudable — and, I think, it usually (and especially in this instance) is likely to be counterproductive.
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