My, what could they be hiding? An astute parent might thus wonder after learning that college professors are currently strategizing on how to hide their lectures from public view now that Wuhan virus-policy has forced a transition to online courses.
The concern is that “all it takes is one zelous [sic] student and that [lecture] recording can hit the blogosphere.” So lamented Andrews University assistant mathematics professor Anthony Bosman, expressing concern for humanities — a.k.a. Leftist Studies 101 — faculty on his personal Facebook account (which he has since made private. Image below).
As the professor wrote, “Some faculty are concerned about sharing their lectures online because of the sensitive/controversial nature of the topics they cover,” reported Campus Reform.
“Bosman concluded, ‘My advice to colleagues: don’t post anything online (private) that you don’t want to end up public. More thorny discussions can still take place over Zoom, where students have to request permission to record,’” the site continued.
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The fear is that you parents spending tens of thousands a year for your kids’ “higher” education might actually find out what you’re paying for, such as “a professor calling Donald Trump’s election ‘an act of terrorism,’” as the College Fix relates (video below).
The above academic is hardly alone, too. The Chronicle of Higher Education (CHE) “interviewed several professors about their own evasive measures to avoid public scrutiny for lessons that their students might consider indoctrination or rants with no connection to the subject matter,” reported the Fix.
For example, “Washington State University sociologist Dylan Bugden is intentionally not recording lectures, but instead posting ‘presentation slides, short quizzes, activities, and an exam,’ and making himself available for office hours,” the site also related. “He’s previously been warned by students to ‘leave politics out of his material,’ the Chronicle said.”
“Collin College historian Rachel Gunter has started sending students links to her unlisted lecture videos on YouTube so that others can’t find them in a search or on her page, and plans to make them private after two weeks, she said,” the Fix continued.
Providing examples of what motivates this furtiveness, the CHE wrote in 2017 that a Michigan State University professor was recorded in 2013 “saying that Republicans ‘don’t want to pay taxes because they have already raped this country and gotten everything out of it they possibly could.’” A year later, a recording was obtained of a “professor at Eastern Connecticut State University telling his students that, if Republicans had their way, colleges would begin to close,” the site continues.
None of this is surprising. The Washington Times reported in 2018 that “Democratic professors outnumber Republicans 10 to 1” at colleges. Moreover, the Federalist warned last year about how this bias deflates conservative students’ grades.
“Conservative students saw the biggest grade dip when studying in the [left-wing] humanities and social sciences, and a grade boost when studying in hard-science fields,” the site related.
Whatever the details, the bottom line is that hiding professor bias (note: A “bias” isn’t by definition negative; a prejudice is) indicates that the academics don’t have clean hands, or clean ideas, points out Arthur Ujlaki-Nagy, an Andrews University seminary student.
“If they’re scared about what they’re teaching and worried about what other people are going to think about it, then either they shouldn’t be teaching it … or they should just share it,” he told Campus Reform. “If they’re already influencing those students in their classroom, then why should they be scared that everybody else will hear about it?”
“If they believe that what they’re doing is correct, then they should stand firm,” Ujlaki-Nagy continued.
That is the point, too. When I write “controversial material” — which I often do — I want as many people as possible to see it. Oh, I realize that the wider the exposure and more diverse the audience, the greater the criticism. But I believe I’m espousing Truth, universals that, with the right argumentation, can be proven true to the open-minded. And Truth should be shouted from the mountaintops.
This helps explain professors’ secretiveness. With notable exceptions, academics would scoff at the above, cynically and rhetorically asking “Whose truth?” Almost to a person they’re relativists who don’t really believe there are any universals to prove — only preferences (prejudices, really) to enforce.
Put differently, at issue isn’t really an intellectual discussion (though academics feign such) in which points and counterpoints are logically made for the purposes of uncovering Truth. It’s better analogized to a war (to the Left); relevant isn’t right and wrong, only victory and defeat. “Might makes right,” and the goal is to devise a strategy enabling you to “win” — by any means necessary. Keeping information from the “enemy” is often part of this.
Because conservatives generally don’t grasp this leftist mindset is one reason they never saw a culture war they couldn’t lose. It’s also tragic that most “conservative” students today are themselves moral relativists (a study showed that only six percent of 2002 teens believed in Truth) and thus too often are, at bottom, philosophically empty vessels who’ll believe in anything. And teachers and professors are more than happy to provide the anything.
The anything is really something, too. As I wrote in 2013, citing information from the Young America’s Foundation, “academia has descended into course offerings such as ‘The Phallus,’ ‘Queer Musicology,’ ‘Border Crossings, Borderlands: Transnational Feminist Perspectives on Immigration,’ ‘Whiteness: The Other Side of Racism,’ ‘Native American Feminisms,’ ‘Sex Change City: Theorizing History in Genderqueer San Francisco,’ and ‘Lesbian Pulp Fiction,’ just to name a handful.”
Of course, these examples are from 2006. So, no doubt, many of these courses have been eliminated — and replaced with other insane offerings. The point is, though, given that what’s openly presented in today’s academia can be as bad as what’s hidden, why are conservative Americans still offering up their kids and cash to our institutions of lower learning?
Image: skynesher via iStock / Getty Images Plus
Selwyn Duke (@SelwynDuke) has written for The New American for more than a decade. He has also written for The Hill, Observer, The American Conservative, WorldNetDaily, American Thinker, and many other print and online publications. In addition, he has contributed to college textbooks published by Gale-Cengage Learning, has appeared on television, and is a frequent guest on radio.
