So, the foolishness about liberals on campus continues. In response to the recent articles about how there are more democrats than republicans on faculties, a colleague started a series of emails about the whole thing. I won’ t post those here, though I will note some of the rebuttal links, from Ellen Goodman and the LATimes. (See also my earlier post on Juan Cole.)
And I’ll respond to a piece forwarded from the Chronicle of Higher Ed.
The pseudonymous Chronicle author reports on his oppressively liberal education:
During an "Introduction to Political Science" class, for example, I was required to write paper [sic] 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.
Now, it’s true that the overwhelming scientific consensus on this might not have been as evident when this fellow was an undergraduate-- I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt on that. But after all there’s something to be said for actually responding to an assignment. And even that leftist cabal, the Pentagon, considers the thought experiment worth engaging.
He also complains
In another class, I fell victim to my own indignation at having to use inclusive language in my papers. Flexing the muscle of my perceived linguistic superiority -- the masculine third-person singular pronoun across many languages functions as the generic, genderless third person, after all -- I argued that "he" should be in and "s/he" should be out. Another D paper.
Well, historically, “he” was not a gender-neutral pronoun in English. It was in the 18th century that academies tried to regularize the language, and decided it should count for that. But in fact, of course, people do tend to imagine the person referred to as “he” is male. And, again, there’s the responding-to-the-assignment issue.
Finally he bemoans the parking lot at his new job:
the rustless Volvos and Subarus exuded a clear semiotics of inclusion and exclusion. … “here we drive academic cars”
Ok, this one is just whiny. A Subaru only costs about two thousand dollars more than the Honda Accord the writer reports driving himself, and since he was recently out of grad school, well of course he drove a cheaper car than the faculty members who’d probably paid off those grad school debts and gotten used to having a decent paycheck. I mean, assuming the cars’ prices are the issue here. They're "rustless," by the way, because his new job is in the South. And if it’s just an aesthetic thing, well, I drive a Honda myself (okay, it’s a hybrid Insight, but still). Whiny.
