The Truth About Conservative Colleges

Academic conservatives say what they want is a depoliticized academy. What they really want is a right-wing politicized academy. The left-wing politicized academy is a popular right-wing meme. Blogs, such as Erin O’Connor’s “Critical Mass” devote themselves to tracking what they consider to be leftist outrages in the academy.

David Horowitz set up Students for Academic Freedom as a forum for students to report abuses by left-wing instructors. I have observed for a long time that, far from being bastions of white-hotradicalism, colleges and universities are instead, very timid institutions. The right has
found a pressure point that does not take pain well and buckles easily. They’re pressing for all it’s worth.

How can I say this? The right has left a paper trail. I would ask people to consider to consider three important points for my case, that for the intellectual right, “Academic Freedom” means the freedom to be conservative in the academy.Here’s my first piece of evidence as given by no less an academic right-wing icon than Stephen Balch, of the National Association of Scholars. In a 2004 piece in The Chronicle of Higher Education, Balch floated a proposal for helping to assure that right-wing academic catchword, “Academic Diversity.” Balch said that departments of
flagship institutions should be subdivided up according to the political views of its members. To wit:

Within a single large institution, departments could be subdivided into semiautonomous programs, each exemplifying a distinct outlook. Alternatively, special interdisciplinary programs could be set up outside regular departments for the purpose of harboring a significant perspective that is underrepresented across the institutional board.

In other words, incoming scholars would have to come into these balkanized institutions and swear their fealty to the political creed of whatever sub-divisions they would wish to become a member. This would not depoliticize institutions. Rather, this would set updepartments into warring political camps. That is my first piece of evidence.

My second piece of evidence is what I call the “conservative college” movement. This is a movement to make colleges set up by conservatives into ideological vanguard facilities. This movement is helmed by such legacy institutions as Grove City College and Hillsdale College. While these are expressly politically conservative institutions andcater to such, they really can’t match the new breed for devotion to being expressly ideological Patrick Henry College and Tom Monaghan’s Ave Maria College. These institutions have had very serious academic freedom issues and yet we here not a peep about them on websites and blogs devoted to the issue. To its credit, the National Association of Scholars criticized former president George Roche III for expelling a student named Mike Nehls, for publishing an independent newspaper. But only the
supposedly left-wing AAUP covered the dismissal of distinguished assistant history professor Warren Treadgold for publicly disagreeing with the dean of women. We neverhear about these incidents on the right-wing blogs. Several academics quit Patrick Henry College, because they felt that college’s required “Statement of Faith” put strictures on the types of matter that they could address in the classroom. We heard not a peep on this, from the conservative defenders of academic freedom (As an aside, am I the only one who finds it ironic that the name of this college is an obvious homage to theconservative, yet atheistic Ayn Rand, as Patrick Henry College was the alma mater of John Galt?). I’m sure they would argue that these are private colleges and can do what they will. Frontpage Magazine, has however, criticized such private colleges as DePaul
for alleged violations of academic freedom.

Conservatives are also trying to buy courses of study and institutions of research to place on college campuses. The George H.W. Bush library, which will be placed on the Southern Methodist University campus, has as its mission, promoting research favorable to the legacy of the soon-to-be-retired president. The BB&T foundation, a charitable arm of a financial holding company has endowed a course of Marshall University that requires that Atlas Shrugged be taught in a college course. This is the“gold standard” at its finest. He who has the gold sets the standards.

These three pieces of evidence taken together provide irrefutable evidence. Conservatives don’t want a depoliticized academy. They want an academy politicized intheir favor. If they want to leave and only be among their own kind, I suggest we let them.

The Problem of Water and Urban Sprawl in Utah

Some 150 southwestern Utah residents gathered for a water symposium Saturday April 12th – calling for a referendum on a proposed water pipeline for a growing area that they say will endanger water resources and contribute to urban sprawl.

Hear this story

Being Pro-Abortion

Cross-posted to my Newsvine page.

I’m about to step on the third rail….abortion.

This issue is still so touchy that not even Hollywood’s liberal elite can really say where they stand. Two recent movies that dealt with unplanned pregnancies, Juno, and Knocked Up, didn’t even really allow for the possibility of abortion.

So, I’m going to say it. I’m not pro-choice. I’m pro-abortion.

I’m not pro-abortion in the sense that I want women to have abortions. I want abortion to be available to women who want or need it.

There was a campaign started a while back that was unapologetic about abortion. I think the campaign died, because it was too bold. The campaign had women where T-shirts that simply read, “ I had an abortion.” This was the face of evil for the right in this country. Ordinary women unapolegitcally proclaiming that they had an abortion. I also think that women demurred from this campaign, because, if they had an abortion, I think that they thought it was now one’s business if they had and they would have been right.

I’m pro-abortion because the other side’s arguments are simply wrong. The other side says that abortion is a sign of decadent and cruel civilization. I hate to trot out this old horse, but Nazi Germany was very much anti-abortion. So was Nicolae Ceauşescu’s Romania. I would rather live in a United States that allows abortion than either of these two regimes.

The possibility of abortion being recriminalized is a landmine. Let’s suppose that we recriminalize abortion. With what crime should women who have had an abortion becharged? Murder? In the First or Second Degree? Manslaughter? If women are not to be held legally accountable for having an abortion, then abortion opponents are telling us that as far as this issue goes, women are legally incompetent. If they want women to beheld culpable in abortions we better be prepared for the prison population of the United States to go up over 1 % of the population.

A new book, tries to remake the case that embryos are human beings. Here’s a selection from Embryo: A Defense of Human Life by Robert P. George and ChristopherTollefsen:

Human embryos are not...some other type of animal organism, like a dog or cat. Neither are they a part of an organism, like a heart, a kidney, or a skin cell. Nor again are they a disorganized aggregate, a mere clump of cells awaiting some magical transformation. Rather, a human embryo is a whole living member of the species Homo sapiens in the earliest stage of his or her natural development (p. 3).

This is a classic straw man argument. It makes a claim that is not made by the opposition Say that it is, and then shoots it down. I would never say that a human fetus does not become a human being anymore than I would say that an acorn doesn’t become. Here’s where I part logical ways from George and Tollefson: the fetus isn’t a human, yet. It can have no existence beyond its host/mother. When it can, then we can start talking about it being a human being. Not before. The host/mother has to be able to decide what to do with it.

I have a feeling Roe v. Wade will become what is known as a super-precedent. I really don’t think it will ever be struck down. Legal abortion is here to stay. While it remains a public issue, let those of us who favor keeping this choice with women call ourselves what we are. We are pro-abortion.

Coal and Controversy In Utah.

Is It A Guarantee Of Plentiful Energy Or A Health Hazard Waiting To Happen? Coal Continues To Cause Controversy In The American Southwest.

From The Salt Lake Weekly

Barack and Affirmative Action

It was hard to believe, but there it was in my current home town paper. The St. George Spectrum. Let me quote the author of the piece: “The presidency should not be decided by Affirmative Action. And, I fear, that's all Obama's election would be. The same, of course, could be said if Hillary Clinton, God forbid, runs a successful campaign.” A meme had successfully migrated to the paper.

A meme is an idea that gets transmitted through a culture. The right has already tried “the closet Muslim” meme on Obama with little success. This one I think will be more successful.
Let’s call this, “The affirmative action” meme. It’s the idea that if people are voting for Obama, they are only doing so out of a sense of guilt. They are depriving a qualified white man of their vote. The idea that affirmative action deprives white men of their due by placing unqualified people of color in their place still has currency.

As a white man, let me give you my quick take on affirmative action. We have made it necessary. My white skin buys me certain privileges in this society. I will never be pulled over by police because of the color of my skin. This is not white guilt. This is a recognition that some historical redress needs to be made. I don’t think affirmative action is perfect, but right now it’s the best we have. I’m voting for Obama not because of the color of his skin. At first, my horse
was Edwards. He was the strongest anti-war candidate there was. Obama’s a close second.

But let’s get back to the meme. I first noticed it a little while ago while reading David Horowitz’s Frontpage Magazine website. Joseph Puder called Obama, “thefirst affirmative action candidate.” Here’s more:


The blind support and almost universal cheering of college students for Obama is a by-product of years of indoctrination on college campuses (especially Ivy League universities) under the stern eyes of faculty and administrative “political correctors,” who bar the teaching of Western
Civilization and bash Europeans as imperialists, oppressors and racists. It seems as if American college students have been groomed to cheer a black presidential candidate thereby providing them with a small measure of ablution from their “racist sins.”


Yes, White America, us college profs were working behind the scenes for years, just to ensure an unqualified black man would defeat a qualified white man for the presidency.

It only took two days for this meme to travel from Frontpage to my hometown paper.

Here’s what the conservative open-source site Conservapedia says about Obama:


Obama has absolutely no military, executive or foreign policy experience. Yet he is the favorite of the leftist attack site "MoveOn.org" for the Democratic nomination for President of the United States in the 2008 election, campaigning to the left of Hillary Clinton. He has no clear personal achievement that cannot be explained as the likely result of affirmative action.


I guess if one ignores a pretty solid legislative record as a first-termer, including ethics reform, international proliferation of loose nukes, and restructuring of disaster relief, port-Katrina, his record does look pretty bleak. Not to mention his accomplishments at one on the premier law schools in the country and a fairly solid record of legal scholarship. I guess it is just another unqualified black man stealing what rightfully belongs to a white man.

Apropos of nothing. The conservative record on affirmative action is pretty baffling. I generally support affirmative action and see it as a flawed but necessary remedy for what has happened in this country. It's used in other circumstances as well. Curiously conservatives have no problem with legacy admissions to schools. In fact, National Association of Scholars president Stephen Balch, seems to think they’re pretty benign. I’ve also never heard conservatives express reservations about civil service “reach downs” to veterans. Military veterans are fast-tracked for all kind of government jobs, from police to firefighters. I’ve never heard a conservative say
that an unqualified veteran took a job from a qualified non-veteran.

Maybe we should listen to this meme. Maybe Obama is part of the legacy of affirmative action. But he’s the best argument I’ve seen for it yet.

Cross-Linked From:

commprof.newsvine.com

Research on Social Movements and Virtual Connections

This study examines the impact of geographic dispersion and technological mediation on the organizing processes of a virtual network organization. Listserv and conference call records from the approximately two-year existence of the Continental Direct Action Network were analyzed in order to examine how the virtualness of this organization impacted participants' perceptions of opportunity, balance of latency and mobilization, formation of a collective identity, and formation of affective bonds. The results reveal some of the local/global tensions that may exist in the organizing processes of virtual network organizations. They also demonstrate that an identity tension may emerge when new geographic localities join an already existing virtual network organization. It is suggested that new routes for informal communication among geographic localities may be necessary in order to enhance these processes and socialize new members into the network.

Full Article Available Here:

http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol11/issue3/shumate.html