Illustrative of the Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld bloodbath in Iraq, options for ten more US troops and scores more of Iraqi's have ended, in death, since Friday, 1 December.

The downed F-16 pilot has been pronounced dead, link, and leaves behind five children.

Come on, Gettysburg, I know you can make a decent argument - why the ad hominen?  Or should I say sloganism?  Please finish your coffee and get back to us.

Neoboho

One way plane ticket to the Hague for Rummy?

Tom

On the bright side, I'm sure the present administration sees the overwhelming re-election of Chavez in Venezuela as just as great a threat to democracy as you do. So you have some common ground with these folks, at least.

Is this a generational thing? When I went to college, one of my freshman year professors, Maynard Krueger, was a former candidate for Vice President on the Socialist ticket under Norman Thomas. He was not noticeably doctrinaire, and this was a very interesting and non-traumatic experience for me. All he asked us to do was to read the source documents and think about them.

I don't know when the phrase "political correctness" first became current, but my experience probably preceded that time. Did things really change that much later on? Did professors really become more doctrinaire or provocative? Am I missing some point or other? What is the cultural history on this?

Now, the student activists were different. They ran the student newspaper, which seemed aggravating at the time. However, when I returned to graduate school at the same place a few years later, the student paper was more conservative, but it was also much, much, much less interesting.

In the activist days, typically some students would take over a campus building, and they would start out with two or three demands. A week later, they would have increased their list of demands to eight or ten or twelve. The impression given was that each of the demonstrators wanted to put in his or her oar. This tends to give an impression that ego was a factor. But in later years I missed them. The truth is, they were right about most things, so they were an important part of my education.

From a personal perspective, I seem to feel comfortable with Socialists, but the student activists in question were, to the best of my understanding, rather pure Marxists. I see a strong resemblance between the Marxists of that time and the Neoconservatives of the present, in their eagerness to work around the opinions of others.

Did professors really become more doctrinaire or provocative?

no, conservatives like "Gettysburg" have an aversion to facts that conflict with their Disneyfied, Reaganized, Hannitized view of the world politics and history. you always just have to remind yourself that these are people who consider "reality based" an insult.

Went to Saint Joseph's University (PA) myself. Our faculty during the sixties was quite a mix of doves (Jesuits and lay teachers) and hawks (Jesuits and lay teachers). Now, of course, at St. Joe's "The Hawk will never die" , at least on the basketball court, but by the early 70's the doves were pretty prominent on campus.

Tom

I have recently taken classes at both Columbia University and the Grad Center of CUNY my professors did not tend to push their ideology but it was a very hot topic at both places. I also know professors in the CUNY and another at Emory. They both agree that most faculty are on the Left and that it colors intradepartmental matters. It does not have all the much impact on the classroom.

Daniel A. Greenbaum

jhc

Maybe they are hippies, maybe they're not. During my final semester Senior year my "Modern U.S. History" professor was an admitted Conscientious Objector during the Vietnam-era and one who gave lesser grades to those who wrote on anything even remotely supportive of ANY Republican president or Congressman/Senator.

Given the current state of affairs with the Bush Administration, Bruce Jentleson has an obligation to instruct his "policy students" not necessarily why Bush is right or wrong. Rather, it is his job to show them why the president and members of his administration come to the policy decisions that they have selected.

For any professor to teach with the whole, "The current policy is wrong and here is how they ought to do things..." is presumptuous and absurd.

Any professor who claims to have "the right answers" is nothing but a Sophist and a fool.

I pray that Mr. Jentleson believes he has the answers given the remarks on his above post.

The idea is to inform, not indoctrinate.

Gettysburg,

I would not dispute that your experience was what it was. I was fortunate that I only experienced that sort of intense pressure from twelve-tone composers. I can only say that, based on my experience with Maynard Krueger, things do not have to be that way.

By the way, there is a short bio of Krueger at Wikipedia. He was a genial man. On the first day in my first week of class, he advised us that we were going to read documents critically, that we might feel that our beliefs were going to be challenged, and that might make us uncomfortable. I never felt uncomfortable, however. He actually gave me an A on a paper that I expected him to dislike. Maybe he appreciated the iconoclasm.