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Oh dear.

If this report, from a student journalist at the University of Oregon interested in greater representation of conservative views on campus is correct, it’s scandalous.

He’s in the office of a professor who disagrees with the student’s point of view on the matter. They’re talking away.

He was eager to chat, and after five minutes our dialogue bloomed into a lively discussion. As we hammered away at the issue, one of his colleagues with whom he shared an office grew visibly agitated. Then, while I was in mid-sentence, she exploded.

“You think you’re so [expletive] cute with your little column,” she told me. “I read your piece and all you want is attention. You’re just like Bill O’Reilly. You just want to get up on your [expletive] soapbox and have people look at you.”

From the disgust with which she attacked me, you would have thought I had advocated Nazism. She quickly grew so emotional that she had to leave the room. But before she departed, she stood over me and screamed.

The screamer (again, if the account is accurate) plays directly into the hands of people who attack professors as monolithic and arrogant.

The behavior is way out of bounds, and the student deserves an apology.

Margaret Soltan, July 13, 2009 3:18PM
Posted in: professors

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9 Responses to “Oh dear.”

  1. Joe Says:

    While the student deserves an apology because faculty are supposed to have control over their tempers, the student’s point is absurd (at least according to the article you linked to). Diversity is about issues which are not subject to the control of the person, e.g. race, gender, sexual orientation, etc. Complaining about not enough Republicans on the faculty is ridiculous. If he polled faculty about religious affiliation I’m sure there would be very few Satanists. Is that an issue as well? The student needs to grow up and live in the real world, a world where sometimes one is in the extreme minority and stop whining about it.

  2. Digger Says:

    Uff. That kind of behavior is completely unwarranted. If the professor was that upset, they could have just excused themselves; or, perhaps engaged in the discussion. Without swearing or yelling. Manners, people! Joe – I’d agree with you, except according to the story linked to, "political affiliation" is explicitly included in the University’s diversity programming.

  3. Bill R Says:

    I’ll bet there are more Satanists than Republicans.

  4. Margaret Soltan Says:

    Is there a difference?

  5. Dan Says:

    Of course, there is the strong possibility that the story is some sort of embellishment (mild or extreme) of what really happened. For example, *IF* the author really is a spotlight-loving O’Reilly wannabe, then embellishment is extremely likely.

    In any event, I don’t see what’s so scandalous: A university instructor of some sort (adjunct, grad student?) curses out a student (who is not *her* student) because of a disagreement over politics. Certainly, that is bad manners and bad behavior, but a scandal or a blot on the academy? Hardly. There are a lot of hotheaded professors just like there are a lot of hotheaded people.

  6. Dance Says:

    At some point during the election I wandered onto a conservative blog haranguing the liberal university for teaching slavery as all the fault of the white man. Except, that the "hidden story they aren’t telling you!" was the same story of slavery I teach in world history, and the same story I have ever heard any historian offer.

    Last spring, I assigned a book on globalization that was quite anti-globalization. We spent a lot of time not just poking holes in his argument, but breaking down the techniques of propagandistic writing.

    I am a kneejerk liberal who will passionately defend my tendency to vote by party.

    Which is to say—without further evidence, this story is a one-off incident between two individuals. Yes, the student deserves an apology. But I don’t think a good journalist should try to present this as damning evidence. And the original piece, on voter registration—somewhat more relevant, catchily presented, but basically a hackneyed revisit of an old sound bite, not even contextualized with any discussion of overall voter registration in Oregon (blue state called for Obama 30 secs after polls closed in West) or Eugene (notoriously liberal hippie town), or among university students, or any rationale for the depts he picked to study.

  7. theprofessor Says:

    The Satanists share with the Left the feature of having an overriding goal. The Satanists want your body and soul. The Left wants your freedom and your money, not necessarily in that order.

    The Republicans have no clue about what the hell they want most of the time.

  8. Shane Says:

    There is far more ideological diversity among faculty in the hard sciences and engineering simply because they are not selected for their politics. This is not true in the soft sciences and liberal arts. It is cultural evolution at work–selective pressure yields allele changes in the population under the stress.

    theprofessor: Ssssshhhhhh. We had them confused.

  9. Michael Says:

    There is far more ideological diversity among faculty in the hard sciences and engineering simply because they are not selected for their politics. This is not true in the soft sciences and liberal arts.

    Um, no, it’s not true in the liberal arts or social sciences. What kind of crazy hiring committees have you been on? Seriously, the only department I know of at most universities that is ideologically rigid is the Economics department, where free-market absolutism is taken as a given, and is never subject to examination of any kind, either in scholarship or in teaching.

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