How about “Osama Abu?”

I didn’t distort your statement. Please read a bit more carefully. I said only that the there is no logical connection between the demographics of faculty members and the demographics of the population as a whole, as I didn’t want us to get side-tracked.

You will note that nowhere did I state that I am convinced one way or another, just that I object to your stating as fact something that you have not demonstrated to be factual, nor can I see that anyone has demonstrated this. Why do you find this do difficult to understand? You made strong statements to the effect that it is an established fact that `the universities’ (which is quite different than `a university’ or `a discipline’ or `a department’) are pushing a `leftist’ agenda, or however you would rather word it. I simply do not believe, and I have seen a lot of rants about this but little reason, that this has been demonstrated. I invited you to either demonstrate it, or stop pretending it is established fact. Certainly `google it’ or `there was a tv bit about it’ doesn’t constitue solid evidence, but that is hardly demanding that `a judge sit in judgement on the sum total of this issue’. I just want something with actual substance to it. Is that so much to ask?

Oh, please explain how you believe I have misrepresented you. I certainly didn’t mean to.

If you REALLY BELIEVE that everything that has been argued, debated and exposed over the years in media as unbiased toward the left as PBS,TV Ontario in Canada and the venerable BBC relating to the leftist agenda in US universities is some kind of chimera, some sort of hallucination dreamed up by people eager to create some politically convenient fantasy – then nothing I can say, do or concoct will convince you otherwise. Please enjoy your convictions to the contrary.

No judge will EVER sit in judgement on the sum total of this issue and no ultimate verdict will EVER be passed. As I said earlier it’s not a case involving forensics.

You don’t agree with me – fine. Am I trying to convince YOU personally? No. Do I care if you think statements made earlier need to have all their i’s dotted and t’s crossed … maybe … but I don’t feel a pressing need here and now to launch into a research project to satisfy your personal requirements.

Live with it.

just a quick comment before I too bow out for similar reasons.

I probably was not clear enough, and although some of my comments were directed at exactly what you said, some of it was more generally aimed at those who make similar claims (re dem/rep statistics).

To restate concisely: You, and many others, state as fact, things such as:

“Liberals have been in the business of creating a CULTURAL MACHINE designed to shut people up – aka political correctness. Universities in the States have resident liberal “gestapos” …”

You do this again and again. However, I have never seen real support of this idea. You do touch on a few of the reasons that such support might be difficult to obtain. That doesn’t matter.

In the absense of real evidence, your statements and many like it are simply intellectually dishonest. You came here making strong and contentious claims, but seem to be unwilling to back them up, falling back to posturing `oh, everybody knows that, just look it up.’. No, everybody doesn’t know that, and it appears possible that in fact nobody knows that. Repeating such claims often and loudly doesn’t make them true, you know? It is ironic that you complain of `killing debate’, when you seem to be most interested in mere regurgitation of received knowledge.

Don’t misunderstand me. I’m genuinely nonplussed by these claims simply because they don’t match my experience. I would be really interested in the results of a serious investigation… but what I’ve seen so far hasn’t been serious, and as far as I can tell is most often being used as a rhetorical device to promote the agenda of those using it.

Soubzriquet … a few points on your response …

1. I at no point provided the statistics relating to card carrying Democrats/Republicans in higher education in an effort to “prove” anything. I merely stated them as interesting facts. The “logical fallacy” you accuse me of is a non-starter because it stems from your assumptions and not my argument re those particular stats. If I had wanted to extrapolate “evidence” from the the stats I would have done so. I didn’t because you can’t stereotype either Democrats or Republicans. Some Democrats can be very right leaning and conservative just as some “progressive” Republican types can be fairly liberal in their postions. It’s impossible to make such labels stick.

2. In the case of students/staff who have been victims of pc policies, it’s hardly like a crime scene where forensics can be gathered and proof presented in the clinical way you appear to demand. We are dealing often with closed door affairs, not unlike unjust proceedings within a club that all hear and know about without necessarily being able to see it all on BBC in a blow by blow expose. Some of these cases will be more thoroughly documented and investigated than others, as is always the case with institutions that maintain is some cases an in-house police force and an administration intent on avoiding scrutiny by the society at large.

3. It may be your opinion that Ann Coulter is someone of questionable “calibre”, this certainly is not my position at all, nor do I think it takes away from the validity of my argument in any way. Coulter may be many things, but I have yet to see her condemned as a congenital liar. She may have her own spin, but she gets her facts straight to support it.

4. I never said that “PC police were CONTROLLING academia” – that’s a misreading of what I was suggesting. It’s a phenomena that relates more to certain universities than others, some departments more than others. In some universities it influences student politics more than others … and so on. To imply that I was inferring some type of “order” with any type of objective existence, akin say to a paramilitary oufit, is verging on the fantastical. To get a realistic assessment of what is really going on along these lines, universities would have to be looked at individually.

Tough shit, ain’t life a bitch.

take a pill

Those statistics don’t mean anything in terms of proving an intentional and/or policy bias. It is a logical fallacy to compare them to population-at-large statistics…

I know there is a lot of material out there, what I was commenting was the apparent lack of material of any real quality. Anectdotal evidence is shaky at best (as I commented w.r.t my own). Wading through a pile of rants that similary unsupported isn’t going to get me anywhere useful.

By the way, quoting people of the calibre of Coulter (only Flynn goes over the top sometimes?) really weakens your argument. Horowitz I have read a bit of, not a fan of the `Academic Bill of Rights’ (which I believe has been discussed here, also).

Look, I know (as previously stated) that you can find extreme examples of people and departments. And I noted that (without comment on the ratio, as I am not knowledgeable about this) this at least exists in both directions. This in no way proves a general intentional bias, or any sort of “PC police” controlling academia. Yet you, like many, trot that out as fact. I’m objecting to that sloppy practice, not the existence of extremes.

Unfortunately, I lack time to follow this either, at the moment.

Interesting on the army stats. And no Republicans would almost certainly NOT be objecting if the bias in academia was in favor of them. Crooked timber are we all!

Have a good one y’all!

If he has supported free speech for conservatives in the past, I would like to see an example or two.”

“Give me a break. Liberals have NO RIGHT to assume a righteous stance on this issue of free speech, when they have been engaged in an orchestrated effort to control speech in public forums.”

Are these people really unaware of the distinction between creating laws against things people say, and saying that you disapprove of these things and seeking to prevent them being repeated through the limited means at your disposal as a private citizen (e.g. by saying ban this person from a message board)?

And why does Daniel need to have defended the free speech rights of conservatives? He hasn’t argued that they should be legally curtailed as far as I can tell, so what makes you think he needs to explicitly defend them over other groups? Surely his defence of their right to free speech is implicit in his whole position.

It seems that the Right has now decided to dissolve the distinction between the right to free speech (e.g. going down to speakers corner to rant) and the right to have access to any media or other outlet for your views (e.g. spouting shite on someone else’s website) – the latter being, as far as I can make out, a call for the right not only to free speech, but to make everyone else listen to what you have to say too.

Barmy.

…Gore said media who challenge Bush and Cheney’s claims of a link [between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda] are intimidated by the administration.

“The administration works closely with a network of rapid-response digital Brown Shirts who work to pressure reporters and their editors for undermining support for our troops,” Gore said.

http://edition.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/06/24/gore.bush/

When I co-ran ‘Stand Down’ the No War Blog we never terminated any comments thread, and never banned any posters. The only posts that got deleted were obviously anti-semitic (‘You Jews are all going to get your come-uppance’ etc.), or spam advertising pornography etc.

Incidentally, I’m not a liberal in the ‘modern’ sense, but if you mean it in its old fashioned sense of ‘liberty loving’ then I’m proud to be a liberal, and I wonder why anyone else would not be.

Finally, as Juan Cole pointed out many months ago, the debate about ‘diversity’ in academia is highly one sided. For example. He quoted statistics (not to hand now) that in the 1950s the political allegiance of the US armed forces was split roughly 50/50 between democrats and republicans, which is what you would expect and hope for.

Recently, however, this has shifted in favour of the Republicans (especially in the higher up echelons). Where are the Republicans protesting about this and demanding diversity in the army?

One last point: is anyone actually deluding themselves that the Republicans would be protesting about the lack of ‘diversity’ in academia if this ‘bias’ was in favour of the THEM?