Fitz, here’s the kind of proof that’ll do the job: all you need to do is to show cases of actual conservative students having actual trouble finding mentors in an actual department, and contrast them to the number of actual students who don’t have this trouble.

Instead, you keep harping on your 3 lesbian professors. Which means your methodology is effectively as follows:

*See 3 lesbian professors.

*Perform a thought experiment—yes, a thought experiment—where you imagine yourself asking each of them, “Dear Sir/Madam, I’m a student in this department and I hate fags. Will you be my mentor please?”

*There’s also a libertarian professor? Heck, write that off as an experimental error.

*Bingo.

That’s one cool methodology, I say.

Apparently you’re not familiar with the American Law Institute. It is the most influential & premier professional organization for family law in the United States. The proposals in PRINCIPLES OF THE LAW OF FAMILY DISSOLUTION included (famously) three distinct proposals: each of which brings the law further away from its traditional foundations.
One includes polygamist/polyandrous & “polyamoris”t family formations. The others recommend collapsing the distinction between cohabitation and marriage law.

http://www.ali.org/

Here is their web site.

I understand the “keep trying” is some type of snipe that says I have not “proved” my point.

Nonetheless I feel undeterred. It’s evident that the contemporary Academy is influenced by specific trends popular on the left. The connection between the make up of my Law Schools family law department and current decisions in the Massachusetts & New Jersey Supreme Courts as well as the (influential) professional organizations and activists I provide links to above satisfy my criteria.

The difficult thing about the charge “prove it”- is the question – “to who’s satisfaction?”

Clicking the link, one finds this:

“With this innovative and groundbreaking new volume, the Institute completes more than a decade of work on the legal consequences of family dissolution, including those involving domestic partners. These Principles cover such vital issues as the allocation of custodial and decisionmaking responsibilities for children, child support, distribution of marital property, compensatory payments to former spouses, and the legal effect of agreements between the parties.”

Can anyone find the slightest hint of evidence of “Lesbian/polyamorist activism/scholarship” in this?

Me neither.

Can anyone find evidence on the linked page that said publication represents “the mainstream of thought on this subject in our Universities”?

Me neither.

Keep trying, fitz. We need the entertainment.

Its time for your “counter-point” were you say “nope, you three lesbian/polymorist professors don’t represent the mainstream of thought on this subject in our Universities”.

At this point you whip out multiple professional organizations and prominent academics who are against deconstructing the institution of marriage.

Before going off spouting even more half-baked claims about Academic Oppression, will you have the decency to at least go back and substantiate some of your earlier claims. For example, you say

“young conservative minds have a hard time finding mentors in the modern university”

Wow. What a sweeping generality, stated with such great conviction. But how did you determine it to be true? What methodology did you use? (I imagine Fitz going through the list of professors and saying to each one of them, “Dear Sir, I’m a student in this department and I hate fags. Will you be my mentor please?”) Anyway, care to elaborate on how you arrived at your conclusion?

“proof that this poor teaching was a consequence of their being lesbian polyamorists.”

I never said they were poor teachers, I said they maintained orthodoxy…

The “proof” of their Lesbian/polyamorist activism/scholarship can be seen in the fruits of their labor.

AMERICAN LAW INSTITUTE PUBLISHES PRINCIPLES OF THE LAW OF FAMILY DISSOLUTION

http://www.ali.org/ali/pr051502.htm

LAW COMMISSION OF CANADA REPORT: BEYOND CONJUGALITY

http://www.cga.ct.gov/2002/rpt/2002-R-0172.htm

Beyond Same-Sex Marriage: A New Strategic Vision For All Our Families and Relationships

http://www.beyondmarriage.org/

They make no secret of it….

The want to De-privilege the Privileged (traditional marriage)
And privilege the de-Privileged (any thing but traditional marriage)

(yes I believe there is a direct causal connection between lesbian/feminist/polymorist law professors saturation of family law dept and universities & Judicial rulings and legal movements as exemplified above.)

fitz didn’t say the topics shouldn’t be studied—he objected to creating isolated disciplines for them. I agree only to the extent that comparative studies of various identity groups would suffer when scholars are isolated disciplinarily. For example, a scholar of social movements housed in a Latin American Studies dept. has less incentive to compare LA social movements to African or Asian ones if the research is less likely to appear in LA Studies journals, and if that is how tenure and promotion will be judged. But geographical or cultural pigeonholing of this type occurs in traditional departments as well, so this is not a compelling reason to avoid identity-specific departments.

Re maynard’s post, Howard Zinn was in the Political Science dept. at BU, even though he was a historian by training; he did not need a identity-based dept. to write A People’s History…. In short, Zinn’s genius was his decision to avoid elite-centered history and focus on the participation of multiple identity and class groups.

Horowitz’s campaign is exaggerated and one-sided, but that doesn’t mean that bias doesn’t exist. I have colleagues who have no compunction about railing against Bush at the start of class. But no one is downgrading the GOP students.

Let’s not forget what the PA report states: systems to rectify inappropriate bias in academia exist, and most think they function well. There is no need for the ABoR. Political biases in grading and promotion are rare. Reporting systems could be improved by allowing students to report concerns of bias to a neutral party.

Me, I think the best response is to point out repeatedly that Fitz’s claims of Academic Oppression are based on nothing but his own butt. As I like to say, the onus is on him to prove his case, and since he’s not done so, there’s no need to even answer to his charges. The burden of proof always lies in the person making the claim: it’s true for Horowitz, and it’s true for Fitz.

Wow. Just wow.

Well, that means I can now declare this officially: thou, Fitz, art a lamer.

You’ll see that Fitz is simply cutting and pasting posts, rather than engaging in conversation. Something to think about as you consider whether he’s worth your time to engage.

I personally find many of his claims extremely unlikely. BUT the fact is that he also points out some very interesting things; things that strike me as quite plausible and thought provoking.
For example, his stuff about Africans influencing meso-American culture strikes me as pretty unlikely. But his claims about African heads on Carthaginian coins or in Egyptian artwork strike me as undeniable. And surely the field of history is richer for having someone like him pointing out some very definite holes in history as it was written in 1950? Likewise, are we not all better off for someone like Howard Zinn telling us the history not only of white cowboys but also of hispanic cowboys, not only of male politicians of the 1890s but also of female garment workers?

It strikes me that the appropriate stance to take on this sort of work is not to rant about how he is furthering some sort of racist agenda or something, but to look at the work for what it is. I’d be far more impressed with a conservative minded historian taking on van Sertima and his evidence as a matter of attempting to get at the truth, than hearing one more rant about how awful it is that anyone ever try, god forbid, to show that Africans attained respectable levels of civilization at earlier times.

Sure some of what these people publish is garbage. Some of what the English department publishes is also garbage. Ditto the B-School. Even some of what the Chem and Physics departments publish, while probably factually correct, really isn’t filling any particular need and will be filed away never to be read again.
But that’s how the system works. We allow people, who appear to be smart, to think and write about what interests them, and the occasional gem justifies the dreck.

You could, if you were serious, quantify this in some fashion, however poor, and show us that the African-American studies department produce 1/10th as much “worthwhile” information as the English dept which produces 1/10th as much “worthwhile” as the Chem dept, and we could then start to discuss the validity of your metric and your findings.
(Along with discovering that the football team produces precisely 0 times as much information as any dept and therefore, according to your lights, should be canned).

But, given the way you’ve approached the problem so far, heavy on anecdote (your personal experience) and light on data, I see this as unlikely to be a direction you’ll pursue.

Maybe they are bastions of leftism, but they contain important critiques of the liberal tradition that are simply not available anywhere else. What other departments are as well-suited to criticize a constitutional tradition that was consistent with the countenancing of slavery, segregation, and institutional sexism under its rubric of equality?

These departments aren’t just interest group “correctives”—they are sources of scholarship that rejects the liberal tradition as misconceived and wrong to its core. The reason traditional departments cannot fill this critical role is they are usually the very institutions being critiqued.

It seems odd to criticize these departments as leftist—they are sources of thought that seep their way into the American left. Economics departments create scholarship that is delivered and received intact to the right and the center-left. But I don’t see that as a criticism, either. There’s no neutral, objective, pure and glowing academic discipline that can absorb the insights of these critical studies, although many disciplines deceptively cloak themselves in objectivity and neutrality. It’s simply wrong to think of traditional disciplines as neutral, and gender or african-american studies as somehow biased. All scholarship will have some political valence because … well, it exists in our unavoidably political world.

“If you have genuine complaints about your education, give us specific details, not vague stories in which you are (no surprise) the hero. For example, so what if your family law professors are lesbians or polyamorous. The point is, give us specific details in which you felt they did a poor job of teaching the course they contracted to teach (as opposed to, perhaps, the course you took because you didn’t know what you were doing). And, give us >b>proof that this poor teaching was a consequence of their being lesbian polyamorists.”

Yes, Fitz, so far you’ve shown nothing solid except vague personal anecdotes, just-so stories, and more unsubstantiated claims.

But wait a minute…

“P.S. If all dynamics are power dynamics, than education IS indoctrination.”

Wow! I’m so impressed! Who needs any facts about actual professors teaching actual students in actual colleges, when he can simply whip out this sentence? Fitz hates facts, and he’s proud of it!