Friday, January 18, 2008

Northwestern Editorial Rant against Academia

I have to post the editorial from the Northwestern this morning. Mary Hiles, ex-lecturer in the UWO English department, recycles the tired, old charges from David Horowitz and the right-wing American Council of Trustees and Alumni about professors' political views in the classroom (many of which have been disbunked).

Her entry into this is Bill McConkey. He was in the paper a few months ago as the lead plaintiff in a law suit against the anti-civil union amendment to the Wisconsin constitution. Oddly, she gives us detail about a professor in New Jersey about whom people on ratemyprofessor.com say bad things.

I am not even sure McConkey is currently teaching here (or ever even mentioned the constitutional amendment in a class), but Hiles decides to use it as proof that "liberal" professors force their views on students in their classrooms.

Besides being a gratuitous, hollow attack on UWO, it demonstrates once again the failure of 'community columnists' to produce editorials that don't waste your time.

2 comments:

Jb said...

I don't know LW ...

I'm pretty sure Ms. Hiles has never once used an example from her personal life to illustrate a point to her students, because doing that is absolutely unprofessional and should never be done, especially in a classroom setting composed of primarily legal adults ...

Nope, that kind of behavior is just unheard of from teachers. All teachers, including Ms. Hiles, whom, like I said before, assuredly never once -- ever at all -- ever discussed anything about her life outside the classroom with her students because, after all, the rest of life has nothing to do with what she taught (English literature/Renaissance drama?)...

What a frickin' tool.

Anonymous said...

I've had McConkey as a professor. He mentioned the lawsuit once --- and in mentioning it he never gave specifics. No one in the class knew what the lawsuit was about unless they personally asked him. He simply used it in a context of the rights of individuals being able to change government instead of always giving that power to senators and congresspeople.

Obviously, Hiles has never attended one of McConkey's classes.

Janine