English Club Chatter

Separation

Got you looking over at me
because I creeped up in your area,
but you are calling for the end of separations.
Compensations.
You can see all the wrong in the world
But sit on your ignorance,
I hear his voice:
"People are so ignorant
Dont know what this world is about
Got this liberal man making a joke
About our Holy War.
And he says we should just eliminate
All the stupid people of the world.
Cover them up, and hide them"
They all got something different from him.
"he says that would be the end of discrimination
Killing people for there sin"

My voice is silenced,
And I know that wont protect me.
But can you change someones mind,
By telling them this was done once before,

He breaks in again:
"No such thing as Peace on Earth."
Lord, I hope hes speaking for himself,
Got this contentment inside of me since the day I was saved,
Peace--tell him it starts on the inside.

And Im sitting on my silence,
Listening to his verbal ,
Little Redneck boy,
Thinks hes a man
Better watch out because Ill only listen for a little while,
then I am going to creep up beneath,
Call you out, on this Holy battle

(Killing people for there sin
Calling it a Holy elimination)

VOTE NADER !!

This seems a really interesting thread. Thanks, Trish! I hope some more of you will weigh in on these questions that connect to all of us involved in education. One thing I'm curious about -- my sense is that most English faculty are politically liberal (Democrats or even further to the left of the spectrum). Is this just coincidence, or does studying English make one politically/socially liberal? If the latter, is this just because liberal professors indoctrinate their students, or does the study of English itself have this effect? Related questions -- should their be more English faculty at OSU-M who are politically conservative? Should faculty be open about their political views or keep them private?

Inquiring minds REALLY want to know. I hope you won't feel this is too risky a subject to discuss. I'm genuinely interested in hearing what you think, and I'm sure my colleagues are too!

If it's not coincidental, it could be psychological- both Liberals and those in the Humanities are naturally more sensitive and empathetic (is that too broad an assumption to make?). I think affiliations and affinities are as much a result of one's nature as their environment, therefore the same mechanisms that cause one to gravitate towards the humanities are the same ones that cause one's heart to bleed, right? ; ) It just depends on what type of person you are to begin with. I've felt liberal tendencies since before I even understood politics (I remember not liking the first George Bush when I was elementary school, even though I wasn't up to speed on his policies per se).

Beats me. I think critical thinking might lead us toward answers that make sense to us whether or not we are "bleeding hearts" to begin with. Often those answers might tend toward the freedom for each of us to be who we are and to accept others for who they are. This, naturally, tends to come out in the way we relate information in classrooms. I believe strongly that it is not beneficial to preach my views in classrooms, but to present and discuss the many views that are part of the larger human/national discussion.
What I often find out in my classrooms, is that many students have firm views already ingrained within them. One of the issues I have with this, is that they often seem to be the kinds of views for which not a lot of thought has gone into them. Many times it is what a parent thinks, or it is some blanket statement with little to back it up upon challenge.
I feel it is a dangerous road that insists that faculty be hired based almost entirely on a conservative or liberal viewpoint just to create a perceived balance (is that a FOX balance?)or to appease a political faction who feels that students are being brainwashed.
It is at this age, the age of a traditional student, that the brain has neared its full development. Isn't this the time to encourage students to think through issues and to weigh each side of any discussion for merit? Yes, it is wrong to assign punitive damage to those who don't think the same way or the same things as the professor. This is a completely unfair practice. Shame on anyone who does that, if for no other reason than that it provides that wicked brand of anecdotal fire to those who know how to use it to influence the choir.
One sad truth in politics today is the lack of choices. To accept the Republican party because of a strong view on, say, guns or abortions, tends to send a message that everything on the agenda is being supported and that to accept anything else is unpatriotic. Obviously, this goes for either party.
So, beats me.

i knew if someone said NADER!! that the conversation would start to flow.

a couple comments (in stream of conscience form): As a real life student that has been affected by a teacher and a class, yeah, I think that it is possible for a teacher to have such a great effect on your character "politically". I dont think that there is a danger in this though--although i am partial to the outcome--if we stayed as we were then not much would happen--or would it?

Then again, we have to question whether it should be welcome or not....because my situation was not welcome. I was thrown into (what i called at the time" a "raging feminazi' class OH MY DID I JUST SAY THAT...and for most of the quarter i rejected ideas that were put forth--It acctually brings me to a deeper question of putting classes like "feminist lit" or Womens Studies or African-American Lit in catagories where we can take them if we want--but we dont really have to...and so how much is really IMPOSED on us? To me the education system is still pretty conservative, especially with the fact that if you really want to aviod taking a class you can. In my case i choose to ride out the semester---and look where it has pushed me. not egzactly a RAGING LIBERAL--as my grandmother would like to put it if i ever EVER told her i considered myself a "feminist" but still OH MY tainted!! (sarcasm there if you can't read it)

I think you can also take a class though, and to you the prof. can be so totally out there on thier ideas and values that you dont connect. There is always that chance--but to say that the chance of changing someones mind could be dangerous--I think the thought that you wouldnt want your ideas challenged could be on the realm of danger--we would all be stuck. uneffective.

yeah ok. should i re-read what i just typed or just post this.*thinks for 5 secounds* just post.

Ok, so say a student comes into school a card-carrying Republican and then does a 180 and ends up chained to a tree. Whose 'fault' is that? I'm sure that students' parents probably blame their commie pinko professors, but doesn't each student have autonomy and free will? I've seen teachers who make blunt statements about their own views, but I've never seen a professor agressively pursue an 'agenda' or even deride or fail a student for their own views. The fact is, students are sometimes presented with information that goes against what they've always assumed or had been taught, and some subsequently change their mind. I've heard stories from a lot of students like that. We all come in here as adults, and we all have a certain responsibility to make our own decisions based on the best evidence- that's called education, not 'Liberal poison'.

depending on which end of the scale you balance on.... haha because we are either RAGEING LIBERALS or KILLING CONSERVATIVES.....*sigh*

Another matter to consider is what exactly we mean by Republican and Democrat, conservative and liberal (or progressive), right and left. Isn't part of the purpose of any liberal education, especially the "English" part of it, to understand people as individuals, in all their complexity? How would we rate our favorite literary characters in terms of our familiar political scale? Is Elizabeth Bennett conservative or liberal? Darcy? What about Hamlet? Hester Prynne? Ben Franklin? Milton's God? What about poets like Plath, Auden, Eliot, Donne, Whitman, Frost, Bishop? Would we label the poets the same way we label their authorial personas (i.e., could Frost's poems be liberal but himself a conservative)? We'd all no doubt like to think that our favorite authors and characters are just like us (whatever we are), but is that realistic? Aren't we all more of a hodge-podge than the labels suggest? I have sympathy with some Green Party positions, but I couldn't care a hoot about industrial hemp (!). I voted Democrat last federal round, but I hardly agree with all their policies (increasingly). These days, I find myself warming to Arlen Specter and John McCain -- which seems uncomfortable to me, but then, on the other hand, I might find I did in fact have certain positions in common with them (at least when they raise voices in protest). When we think
"conservative," are we thinking socially, economically, morally, culturally, gastronomically? Can one support the Green Party and still enjoy a T-bone? Can one support tax cuts but be pro-Choice? Can one support the troops but not the death penalty? Can one support gay marriage and still be an evangelical Christian? Can one enjoy both Jane Austen and Karl Marx? It seems to me that if we answer "no" to any of these questions (or many others), we may be (maybe) denying the very complexity that makes people, and education, and literature so endlessly fascinating.

If this is Austenism, then I am not an Austenist.

Personal clarification -- my grumblings about Democrats come from a position further left, my pleasure in Specter's and McLean's protests from the same place. The last bunch of combinations was purely hypothetical (though I do occasionally eat steak). For what it's worth.

My point was simply to ask whether thinking about academia only in terms of "conservatives" and "liberals" is not problematic in itself.

I don't know if that makes any more sense, but there it is.

I agree with you, it seems that no one party represents me completely, and I sometimes resent being pigeonholed into being a 'liberal' when I might not necessarily feel that way about an issue. Both parties seem to say 'either you're with us or you're against us' and I don't think that's reasonable. What is the driving force behind such strong bipartisanship? I don't necessarily agree with my boyfriend on every issue in our life; it seems pretty unreasonable to think that a politician or a party is capable of doing so. So, to answer your question, thinking about academics in terms of liberal and conservative is problematic, so is judging anyone by those standards- when we do so, we're reducing ourselves to stereotypes.

The long running joke in my house is that I'm a conservative Liberal, and my wife is a liberal Conservative. We may still cancel each other out in the voting booths, but we don't have to disagree like Carville and Matalin seem to.

FYI, here's a new story along the lines of this thread.

http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2006/02/09/dakota

I know I'm back tracking a bit, but I would just like to interject that this business of worrying about professors influencing their students negatively or to too high a degree is asinine. First of all, do not enroll in a university if you do not want to encounter other influences or learn anything. Secondly, a surprising number of people are so indoctrinated with whatever they heard or experienced growing up that they don't know reality when it bites them on the behind (I would bet money that these are the same people afraid of being 'influenced'). I personally come to class dying to know what my professor thinks about the topic at hand and am grateful for whatever influence and understanding I can glean. Also, I think (and gather from reading you guys) that a lot of the controversy stems from conservatives feeling under represented--obviously this indicates that educated, intelligent minds have highly liberal tendencies and conservatives are people who just need to think a little more.

Ah, if it were just that simple.

To be quite honest and without including saying that I am a raging, teheehhahhha anything, I have to wonder in my own mind why we even consider what a professor or educator's socio-political stance is unless it invades or violates the basic doctrines supported by the academic setting.
We come here to educate ourselves within a specific discipline. Does that also mean that we must consider our choices of educators based on whether or not they are liberal or conservative? When we begin to start down a path and discussion of this nature there are many , many possible scenarios to consider. Several of those are very controversial. If we are weighing the socio-political "correct" fit for our professors, then why don't we also include gender, age, sexual preference? These are all descriptions that seem to be able to be "looped" into what I consider the same type of description. For me, I value what I believe that I can learn from the course description and the course. I guess that I am strong enough, that I do not let "liberal" or "conservative" influence any choice that I would make that may enhance my own learning.
One of the factors that really makes a differenece in the case with a regional campus such as Mansfield, is simple geography. We are a mid-western, small, regional campus, in Ohio. Perhaps, that tends to lend to certain expectations. Such, that, the educators there should be "mid-western" conservatives. It is with these very generalizations that the value of the individual is down-played. We see these very type of things happen every November. Experts attempt to predict how, voters will vote based on simplistic vision.
With regards to George W. Bush, and the student, he has done nothing to embrace eduacation. Rather, as of July, 30 2006, the fixed rate on all outstanding student loans will be 6.7%, informed students should recognize these large steps towards "no child left behind". But consider, when you graduate, and six months after, you begin to re-pay those student loans, the old rate was in the 4% range.
Maybe it is simply because I have had an opportunity to experience life at a much faster pace than some of my current co-workers, and the fact that I am a little older that I have the views with regards to pedagogy that I do. I simply never consider from what socio-political perspective that I am going to learn!!!!!!!!

Republicans.......there was only 1 good one!!

Reagan....He saved Harley-Davidson.

Prompted to post so I did so!!!

Well the Conservative faction is on a roll right now and,I suspect, want to accomplish as much of the agenda as they can while they have the wherewithal to do so. Part of that manifests itself with concern about the loud Liberal backlash and the spin necessary to shout it down. Much of the controversy surrounding Universities does not originate with the students, but with mouthpieces from various factions without. Perhaps the concern is that an educated populace might tend toward not wanting the rich to get richer or the powerful to get powerfuller or the fundamentalists to get all fundamentalistier and strip away certain privacies and rights we as humans might wish to enjoy.
I'm amazed that those same people who embrace the right to own guns also find themselves in the it's alright to tap phones and to see what people are looking at on the Internet camp. I can remember a time when the Conservative faction was big on not having a big government and an interfering government. Now that it's all done in the name of patriotism, a most insidious buzzword these days, well, God bless America.
Beats me.

I don't hypocrisy really bothers them so much, that's why they support the death penalty but not abortion, rally against the filibuster unless they need to use it, and complain about activist judges while trying to install new ones that will turn over thirty-year old precedents... isn't that called relativism?

I know I don’t participate often with this blog, but I feel compelled to throw in my two cents. As with anything, moderation is fine, even among education standards. It’s always a tight rope act trying to balance NOT being blind-sided with your view when being an educator (I assume anyway). These views are getting spilled over into the class room in some shape or form all the time, and it’s totally fine when it’s done in moderation. The real problem is when educators feel the need to ‘convert’ students into something the educator wants or believes. Offering opposing views or challenging views should always be encouraged. But when the ultimate goal is to ‘change’ these views at the end of the day, there is a severe problem. Of course it is always at the discretion of the student to buy into any of it. This may sound incredibly rude, but students that are subjected to this, it often leads to a charade being put on by the student in order to get a good grade. At the end of the day they leave the class with zero respect for that professor.

Oh and on a side note, Todd I thought it was the Japanese that really saved Harley, I’m serious.

Actually I wasn't so much referring to the politicians and the administration, but rather to the more unwitting followers who must be feeling a bit conflicted with the government these days. Waco and Ruby Ridge helped get the new government, but that faction can't be enjoying the way things seem to be heading.

There is one thing that seems to be making a pattern here and that is this notion of trying contain ones views to a ‘party’ or side. I’m not sure if we feel the need to contain all our ideas in one little nice and neat box so we know who we are or if it’s for segregation purposes. I do know that staying inside these boxes is very unproductive and how we expect to change the world while remaining in the box is a mystery to me.

I'm probably more conservative (small "c," as in libertarian) than a good number of my English colleagues. I suspect, however, that I'm like most people in trying to judge each issue on its merits and the question(s) at hand rather than an explicit set of Blue or Red, if you will, criteria. It's precisely for this reason that I've chosen to register as an Independent my entire (voting) life and, like HH, am drawn to folks like Specter and McCain while cringing at various Republican positions.

What I never try to do, and hope I don't do, is address questions in my classes in a way that prevents *conversation* among whatever positions are available, whether that's one or one hundred. Some issues are more easily settled than others, of course--the Holocaust *did* happen despite what the kooks may say--but in all cases, it's wise to be as rigorous with ourselves as we are with others, even if we each leave the classroom with the same position as before.

Indeed, self-reflection and conversation encourage us to understand better how/why we hold the position(s) we do, which benefits everyone, even if minds aren't changed per se. In that sense, I suspect that most everyone who teaches is intent on equipping students to judge *more fully* the available evidence before deciding on a position, not expecting or demanding they'll reach the same conclusions that their teacher has.

On the question of whether English, or the Humanities, attracts liberals or helps make people that way, it's probably a bit of both. Ethics, empathy, and all the other issues we eventually encounter in our studies aren't inherently Left or Right, but I'm fairly certain that they affect us differently when viewed through the lens of language or the arts rather than the lens of business or the sciences. That said, it's surely possible to love the arts and be conservative or to love business and be liberal.

I worked for a company that has a whole floor of lobbyists just waiting to fly off from Jacksonville to Washington to rally behind every piece of legislation that may in some shallow , minute way effect the railroad. Despite, the minute chance this particular legislation could manifest any malignant implication on railroad business, these people were paid to make the real important interests of CSX known in Jacksonville. Not, only were these lobbyists employed, but they also have their own legal department to defend any action that they take. This is the kind of idea that I got from Dion's last thought, BIG BUSINESS for the good of the poeple? Was this or could it be truly a company dedicated to it's workers? As an officer in this company, these were never things that I considered until after I left. How much were they really for the workers, despite many, many, worker devoting their lives to this company.

I think even when we consider party standings today, we have to consider the way the original Deomcratic and Republican Parties separated. In reality today, there is not that much that really separates the two. I have argued this point with many people. How can you seriously discern as to what party the candidate comes from. If you were to take of the signifier, republican or democrat, then would we be able to even say, oh yeah, he's a man for the people, he is Democrat. Or this guy is striclty for Big Business, he is a true Hard-line Republican. I think many would agree that clear party separation no longer exists. But, what happens is more like a battle of the lesser of the two same evils.......

I agree with Todd on the idea that clear party separation no longer exist. This is to do the fact that candidates have to appeal to every voter to get votes, which seriously limits any real uniqueness. Yet the real problem lies within the actual citizens who refuse to compromise, but instead we want things in our own narrow direction. Thus relates back to the issue at hand of this type of behavior spilling over into the educational process. You can simply look at the argument of teaching ‘intelligent design’. Should educators be forced to teach this based on some valid points it raises? Yet this is not happening due to the fact either because people in the scientific fields want to fully omit god as a whole, or because extreme Christians want god totally at the base of everything. It’s amazing how accustomed we have become to believing that two wrongs DO make a right.

I'm no real historian, but I do know enough to know that the political parties change wildly over time. I actually have an ancestor who shifted from the Democrats to the Republicans when the latter party was first founded in the 1860s. The reason was that the Republican Party was founded as an anti-slavery party. Even long into the 20th century, the Democratic Party, at least in the South, was pretty solidly racist. Later in the century, of course, the Democrats morphed into the party of civil rights and the working man (not in the order I guess -- the latter back in the thirties). The Republicans, on the other hand, become associated with business and corporate interests and with conservatisms of various kinds. So, it seems, even the association of liberal and conservative with Democrat and Republican is a 20th century one. All that to say, along with others, that what is important is not party affiliation but where you stand on the issues.

As for the matter of indoctrination in the classroom, I often wonder to what extent this really happens. I'd be appalled to think it happened on our campus, certainly. I can't imagine there are more than a handful of nuts who expect all their students to toe the line on political issues. In fact, it would make classroom discussion pretty boring if everyone agreed all the time. I usually get kind of excited when a student is willing to disagree with me, especially when the student can make a strong case.

First and foremost, I don't even know enough about what specifically constitutes liberal or conservative to know which label I would fall under. I just am.
That said, yes it's true that people should be coming to school with the expectations of being exposed to different ideas, and yes, ultimately each indivdual decides what views and beliefs to ascribe to, but their is a difference between knowing what a professors beliefs are and having to listen to them everyday. I have known at least one professor who spoke of their personal beliefs nearly everyday, yet I couldn't tell you what most professor's political persuasions are.
In reference to the articles attached to this thread, in "Liberal Bias" the idea that limits might be imposed upon professors is somewhat scary. More and more I see the liberal voice being silenced whenever possible. Even though I have trouble identifying myself with either end of the spectrum, their separate voices need to be heard in all environments. Well, at least until we stop talking about everything in terms of polar opposites.
Most of my response here is actually motivated by things I've learned in my english studies here, and is at least partially motivated by listening to and learning from a specific professor, who opened my eyes up to the ideas of specifically not talking about things in black and white. So, I've been influenced by a professor, but not to adhere to and believe in a specific ideology, but instead to look at and analyze all viewpoints.
So, while I don't really want to hear about the ideologies of any of the professors in a classroom setting. The discussion of ideologies in general and when appropriate is almost necessary to learn. Outside of the classroom, I'd love to have an intelligent and civilized discussion along these lines with anyone open-minded.

---end of rant---

More on (from) David Horowitz at InsideHigherEducation -- 101 Dangerous Professors identified!http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2006/02/13/list