University forces professor to change syllabus that threatened to dismiss students who argue against

University forces professor to change syllabus that threatened to dismiss students who argue against BLM, abortion or same-sex marriage

So, its great that ISU forced this professor to change his syllabus and reminded all professors of a students Constitutional Rights. However I do have to question how they are going to enforce their policy to make sure this professor doesn't take negative action against any student that presents material that they simply don't like. I would also be interested in viewing how they teach their class.

 

I wouldn’t be surprised if there are protests at the school.

 

To be honest I'd rather know in advance not to send my kid there than have some snoody professor concealing what he actually thinks.

They could try to dismiss me, they wouldn't do so without a very public fight.

 

Great!

It’s astounding how a professor would be so incapable of formulating an argument in his favor that he would have to just create a rule that says you can’t argue with what he believes.

it’s almost as if he knows he is wrong but refuses to recognize it and doesn’t want the debate to happen in the first place because he knows he loses lol.

I remember when schools taught you how to think, not what to think. Slowly but surely these incidents will rack up some soldiers on the right. This hurts the left far more than helping them.

 

No doubt there are college students who graduated dumber than they started because of professors like that.

 

Liberal fascism?

Shocking.

 

There is a risk going forward, I suppose, that a student who writes a pro-abortion paper receives and "A" while the student who writes a pro-life paper gets a "C", even if the latter student's paper is grammatically more correct and written in a more compelling way.

The professor should be focused on the style and quality of writing, not the content.

 

College doesn’t make dumb people smart. It’s an opportunity to learn but really up to you to make it a good experience. You have to learn to ignore dumb people yourself in such environments.

 

That's true, to some extent. Although critical thinking skills can be taught to otherwise bright people, instead of straight up indoctrination.

 

It might not have been worded very well but I can see the professors point to an extent. If the purpose of the course is for students to learn about the skills and principles of structured writing, highly controversial and emotive topics only risk serving as a distraction from that. Bomb disposal techs don't train with real explosives.

And for all the people saying now that students should be free to say anything they want, I've absolutely no doubt they would be part of the inevitable outcry if a student wrote something calling for killing all white people, removing the state of Israel, criminalising Christianity or promoting paedophilia.

 

Man, am I happy that I teach Chemistry, and not in the social sciences. Although I have no doubt that, if the current political climate continues, even the ideal gas law may become politicized one day.

 

Idiocy seems omnipresent.

 

Open debate, the initial impetus for university learning, is now giving way to Truth which has been forever learned and sealed by force?

Unless one is studying the rigid sciences like engineering there is no longer a good reason to attend US universities.

Save the significant costs and use them to invest.

 

So this lefty professor cannot argue for these things so he decided to shut down any opposition to them? Lefties are gonna lefty.

 

Monster Theory? As an actual course offered by a University? And it's a course constructed to teach argumentation? But you can't argue about "otherisms" that the professor feels triggered by? (there is an actual trigger warning blurb at the bottom of the syllabus..) So, the course is designed to talk about imaginary constructs but you can't use real ones to argue about? How is the person who teaches this course employed as a professor?

 

As a fierce proponent of argumentation I’m impressed that you are familiar with the term and more that you defend it.
Argumentation is now used to defend orthodoxy and to argue against the opposing opposing points of view. Everyone else you shut up or else!

 

That is why they're not liberals.

 

What is a liberal by today’s standards? Or is requiring definition of a term now considered fascist?
I fear that it is!

 

The tactic I see here at least being "taught" is more indoctrinal than argumentation. Unless the course is simply designed to indoctrinate and teach how to defend that indoctrination which is entirely possible. The left these days are more, to you point, "shut up racist". Or "shut up homophobe"... or the like. And of course, because those are such BS positions to dictate, they offer some measure of attempt to teach folks the catechism to believe in and use in defense.

 

Kudos to the university for correcting this issue but you still have to wonder why they hired this intellectually bankrupt professor in the first place.

 

I love the liberal arts and the social sciences. College students who share my love for these should take a few introductory courses as electives, and then study them for free in public libraries. Watch documentaries on television too. If you are fortunate you will find a boss who shares your interest in the history of the Roman Empire and who enjoys sharing speculations with you about why the Western Roman Empire fell in 476 AD, while the Eastern, or Byzantine Empire lasted another thousand years. Don't count on it. Your boss probably wants to talk about his golf score and last night's ball game.

Any education past high school needs to be job and career oriented. If you want to be a novelist, don't major in literature. If you want to be a singer song writer, don't major in music. If you want to be an actor or an actress, do not major in drama. Major in what you can do if your dreams do not come true.

 

Reminds me of an old Andrew Klavan video from 2009 - plus ça change...



Nce to see "progressives" have made so much progress over the past decade...

 

What he thinks is immaterial. What he teaches is what matters. When I went to college there was no political indoctrination in the classroom. Courses stayed on subject. We would do well to return to that. I couldn't tell you anything about the political views of my professors.

 

It's sad to think that the intellectual life of Medieval universities was more vibrant than it is in many of our own today.

Actually, it's appalling to observe this...

 

Thats the great thing about the Internet - it's like having a university at your finger tips. I didn't learn who Odoacer and Romulus Augustulus were in school, nor does anyone have to enroll in a college History class or drive down to the public library to find out about them anymore. I don't think a lot of people appreciate how the Internet revolutionized and democratized people's access to information, and as we all know, knowledge is power.

While I can see the value in majoring in Lit or journalism if you want to be a writer I agree with the thrust of your comment. The cost of higher education, in my opinion, has made it even more imperative to develop a marketable skill in college. The rest of the stuff you can pick up on your own.