T1B

Unaffiliated Alumni Group Goes After Professors
A small, independent alumni group formed to attack "radicalism" at UCLA is calling itself the “Bruin Alumni Association”. This group is not affiliated with the campus or the UCLA Alumni Association. In fact, several months ago, UCLA required that the group add disclaimer language to its Web site and solicitation materials.

In recent days, this group has distributed a student solicitation offering to pay students to provide it with copies of recorded lectures from a target list of faculty. Students may not, however, do this without the approval of the faculty member and the Chancellor, or they will be in violation of campus policy. Our campus counsel is responding to this latest development, as well, and we are communicating with students, so they are aware of the policies.

It is important to note, however, that while UCLA has and will continue to be aggressive with this and any other group that misrepresents its relationship to the campus or otherwise encourages students to violate campus policies, this group is within its rights to communicate its point of view. UCLA is a public university, and is subject to the constraints imposed upon it as they pertain to the rights of free expression.

For its part, the University focuses its efforts on encouraging a campus culture that allows for vigorous debate and the consideration of various points of view, but within a culture that embraces the values of tolerance, civility and respect. We will continue our efforts in this area, and hold ourselves to this standard, even as others may not always choose to embrace similar principles.

The UCLA Alumni Association is a volunteer-driven organization comprising more than 84,000 alumni and friends of UCLA and serving the larger community of nearly 350,000 living alumni. Founded in 1934, the Association has a diverse and rich history of bringing alumni together to support the University, its students and each other.

Today, the UCLA Alumni Association creates a dynamic space for alumni within the University, maintains a vital presence for the University in the lives of alumni and provides endless opportunities for both alumni and the University to find and build their places in a global community.

ChargerMike wrote:...it should only take about 99 years to expose all the Left wing whacko's who run our Universities across the USofA. Mega props to the “Bruin Alumni Association”.

BSmack wrote:Anybody questioning the need for tenure?

College daze

January 20, 2006


COMES NOW ANDREW JONES, UCLA class of ought-three, bringing charges of bias, irrelevance and inappropriate partisanship among his former professors, as posted in detail on his group's website. Let us proceed to a reading of the offenses.

According to the website run by the Bruin Alumni Assn. (http://www.uclaprofs.com), these academic misdeeds in large part consist of petitions the professors signed, articles they wrote or political movements they supported.

Lapses in classroom demeanor are not the main basis for the charges, although the group says it will amend its pleading with such details. It plans to pay students $100 to provide tapes or lecture notes showing that professors showed undue political or social bias in the classroom. The plan has raised the ire not only of the professors but also of a few members of the group's advisory board, who have resigned in protest.

In the meantime, there is a list of "The Dirty Thirty" professors, the so-called worst of the worst. (Actually, there are only 28; the other two are "to be announced.") They include a "modern female academic" who is "militant, impatient, accusatory and radical — very radical"; the political science professor who is "young, radical and in demand"; a "dyed-red laborista radical" who teaches Asian-American studies; a law professor who is a "rising radical star" … OK, you get the idea. Everyone is radical, or at least has friends who are.

The verdict here is clear: UCLA is guilty as charged. Somehow it managed to graduate a bunch of students — Jones and fellow members of the Bruin Alumni Assn. — who can't make a coherent argument. Nor do they appear to understand one of the basic tenets of the Constitution: In the U.S., people have the right to sign petitions, write articles and subscribe to whatever politics they choose. That goes for professors — and for conservative alumni who post amusingly unconvincing whines on the Web.

There is no doubt that academics are more likely to be liberal than conservative. Some may even abuse their position by teaching a distorted view of a subject or making students who disagree feel uncomfortable or afraid to speak out, lest their grade suffer. Universities have procedures to protect students from such abuse; meanwhile, the same academic freedom that allows these lapses of judgment also protects professors so that they can question supposedly sacrosanct assumptions without losing their jobs.

Jones should return to college himself to get his dirt on professors. And while he's at it, he may want to sit in on a few courses on law, ethics, rhetoric and the history of free speech.

OCmike wrote:

BSmack wrote:Anybody questioning the need for tenure?

*raises hand*

I would say though that as far as whacko professors go, UCLA has its fair share, but it completely overshadowed by other SoCal campuses, such as CSU Los Angeles, UC Riverside, UC Redlands and others. Those institutions get the academics that are so far left that even UCLA won't touch them.

mvscal wrote:

BSmack wrote:

OCmike wrote: *raises hand*

I would say though that as far as whacko professors go, UCLA has its fair share, but it completely overshadowed by other SoCal campuses, such as CSU Los Angeles, UC Riverside, UC Redlands and others. Those institutions get the academics that are so far left that even UCLA won't touch them.

I wish the leftists would get out of acedemia and into politics and business.

How's that for poetic justice?

Those who can..do. Those who can't...teach.