Hello, Phil--

Do you mean to tell me that, if one works for a state-funded institution, one is not allowed to express opinions contrary to those currently advocated by the government? Were these remarks made as part of the required courses (if any) that the freshmen take? Were students tested on these points of view, and do they fail their courses if they do not agree? Are people in their late teens so very vulnerable that they are incapable of taking the lessons they have learned for the first 18-20 years of their lives and make judgments about the statements of professors?

Hint: I was taught by nuns in college. I am not a Catholic.

I work with teens daily. You see a bunch of stupid (and in the case of the woman speaking about profiling of Arabs, maybe some reality-based) remarks from people in positions of authority. I see your remarks as an insult to a whole group of people, the alleged targets, merely on account of their age. Teens and young adults know shit from shinola. They will form their opinions based on behavior, properly modelled. If they grew up watching people being racially profiled in their communities, they will believe the woman whose remarks you cited. Act as you would have them believe, and they will, for they will believe the truth before their eyes.

I also find it ironic that you would post these remarks, and bring attention to them yet again. I don't go looking for this stuff, and would never have heard of it had you not further publicized it. Thank you!

We have a problem with balance on some of our campuses. I suggest you look at why. Do we not have enough conservative professors? Perhaps conservatives with the intellectual qualifications are working for for-profit organizations, which more closely conform to their personal ideals of not working for the government. Or perhaps they are working for the government, but in the halls of power, where the paychecks are bigger.

I read a lot of complaints about the education establishment on this board. Of course you are more likely to find more liberals and leftists in education: they are there because they believe in it so much that they're willing not to be paid what their talents are worth, but to work for the work's sake alone. (State universities don't pay the way Ivy League schools do, either.) Conservatives, generally, don't do that because they understand that, according to their philosophy, when the economic chips are down, we're all on our own. They don't teach because they don't believe they can afford to. The liberals teach because, even though the wages suck compared to other professions, they don't believe (big-picture thinking here) they can afford not to.

And the next time anyone makes the blanket remark that the universities are rotting the minds of our youth, so help me, he had better not bring up later the fact that our current President has a diploma from Harvard to defend him from charges of stupidity (and those charges will be back). Either mind-rot or intellectual achievement: you can't have it both ways. Unless, of course, you are willing to take the good with the bad and allow that >gasp!< institutions, like the people who constitute them, can be right and wrong all on the same day.

Regards--
Mary Anne