From NoIndoctrination.org comes a disgruntled student's review of an introductory anthropology course at Long Beach Community College. According to the course catalogue, Anthro 1 "Focuses on the evolutionary development of the human capacity for culture and its subsequent effects on human biology: the relation of people and animals; the origin and antiquity of humans; fossil humans; principles of heredity and population genetics; the synthetic theory of evolution." But according to the student reviewer, Anthro 1 focuses on inculcating as much white guilt and anti-capitalist sentiment as can be fit into the space of the semester:

[The professor] uses his Anthropology class as a forum for his excessively socialistic / political views. He would consistently interject his personal views, ie: The white race should be ashamed of itself, I'm ashamed to be white, The system should be more socialistic - Take from those who have and give to those who do not, Women are too lazy to breast feed, We should be ashamed of our government, Our government is nothing more than a giant war monger, Democracy is nothing more than a diguise for colonialism, The rest of the world has just cause to hate us, We should pay reparations to All African Americans, etc... The man is full of guilt and makes every effort to instill this guilt upon his students. None of this belongs in an Anthropology course. He takes young and impressionable minds and attempts to bend them into forming an Anti-American ideology. His use of an Anthropology class as a soap box for his political views is abhorring [sic]!

Dr. Novotny has managed to turn every discussion in his Anthropology course into one which reflects his political views. He shames Caucasian students into being ashamed of their heritage - If he were to do this to any other racial group, he would be labeled a racist!! He was extremely belittling to any opposing wiewpoints. He was extremely hostile to alternative views. When I expresed the viewpoint that reparations would possibly break the bank of our government and would not, in any way, repay anybody who had actually been a slave, he yelled at me. I was uncomfortable each and every class meeting. I felt personally attacked (daily), and we were all discouraged from expressing alternative viewpoints.

Although, the course did (eventually) meet all the criteria of the course decription, I felt that I was held hostage to his personal and political views. This was most frustrating, as I was (and still am) a Political Science major. I filed a formal complaint with the department head only to discover that Dr. Novotny IS the department head. Nothing has changed. His actions (in class) remain unchecked.

Well, here we go again. I sometimes get such glib, knee-jerk patriotic "you hurt my feelings" reactions to my lectures. For many of my students, I am their first encounter with the stark reality of the world at large. I expect to be attacked by people whose reality has been largely formed thorough indoctrination into unchallenged patriotism, unexamined Christianity, and a general absence of understanding of world history, especially the role of multinational corporations and the U.S. military in neocolonial ventures. Yes, I do occasionally "soapbox" on topics involving our species' headlong plunge into self-destruction (after all, I do teach anthropology, the study of people). I am guilty of placing the Earth, all its living systems, and human well-being above corporate greed, national policy, hegemonic religion, and the "comfort level" of students in my class. For every "griper" like the one I am responding to on your site, I can furnish dozens of students whose lives have been empowered by my influence.

I do not "yell" at students, though I can imagine that a professor saying something so upsetting to an ultraconservative student might sound like yelling.

Anyone who reads this and is in the Long Beach area is invited to enroll in one of my classes and judge me, if you must, by first-hand experience.

What's also intriguing about this professor's response is how, in essentially agreeing that he is indeed using his anthro course as a political soapbox, it illuminates one of the more Orwellian terms in contemporary academic newspeak. "Empowerment," in this professor's post, is synonymous with successful indoctrination; those who are "empowered" by his "influence" are those who conform to his ideas. In an academy where a student's grades are too often contingent on a willingness to parrot the professor's beliefs, it is all too clear just how much is to be gained by ideological conformity, and, conversely, just how much dissent can cost.

Interestingly, the professor's comments also reveal what I take to be contempt for religionóparticularly odd since one can hardly imagine cultural anthropology without an appreciation for the essentially constant and remarkably diverse human religious instinct. Once again, (the redundant phrase) "organized religion" is a whipping boy for the far left. Oddly enough, the more socialized nations of Latin America are typically catholic; the state control of churches in the USSR was possible in large part because of their hierarchical (organized) nature. State oversight of religious groups in, say, China also tends to have an organizing effect, at least for those not forced underground. But I digress.

I think that the most interesting of the Prof's comments are those in which he depicts himself as belong to a tiny group whose views his students may not have heard.

The educational establishment is chock full of people who hold his views. I find it unlikely that his students have had little access to his ridicule of patriotism, religion, etc.

In fact, they've probably been brow-beaten throughout their educational lives with the same crap he's dishing out.

The prof likes to think of himself as an original. He's stamped out of a factory.

Per my experience calling someone who works for a CC in California a "professor" is being a bit generous. Erin's comments are trenchant.

"I am guilty of placing the Earth, all its living systems, and human well-being above corporate greed, national policy, hegemonic religion, and the "comfort level" of students in my class."

This is what I find the most objectionable: the casual assertion that his interpretation saves mankind and other views are myopic and selfish. Also note the ad hominem attacks and casual assumptions of beliefs that this student Neanderthal must also hold.

I hate to point out the obvious, but perhaps a college professor doesn't know quite as much about "the stark reality of the world at large" as he would like to think.

Sad, but not particularly surprising.

Here's his resume: Dr. Adrian Novotny has a Ph.D. from the University of Oregon in Eugene. He has a Masters degree from California State University, Long Beach, and an A.B. degree from Youngstown State University in Youngstown, Ohio. He has been a full-time instructor in Anthropology and Sociology from 1994 to the present. He has held the position of Department Head in the Social Sciences Department since 1997. He also served as a part-time instructor in Anthropology and Sociology from 1984 to 1994. Among some other things, Dr. Novotny was a part-time instructor in Anthropology at the University of LaVerne, California, also a part-time instructor in Anthropology at Cerritos College from 1991 to 1992 and a part-time instructor in Anthropology at California State University, Long Beach, from 1983 to 1991. Dr. Novotny is also currently the Department Chair in the Social Sciences Department.

That he's the chair of department doesn't bode well. But, he's taught at very undistinguished places.

Terms I want to ban: Hegemony and its analogs. It's trendy and pretentious and adds nothing to the language. Knee-jerk. It's a cheap shot used when someone else draws a conclusion that the speaker doesn't agree with. I've come to expect blather without content when I see those terms, and I've not been disappointed.

Unoriginal and stamped out of a factory, yes.

This is the perfect opportunity for another little gedankenexperiment that might shed some light on whether the followeers of this blog base their dudgeon on consistent, universal principles, or are merely on the lookout for adventitious occasions to excoriate political enemies in high-minded language.

As we speak, there is a growing controversy at Harvard over the introductory economics course, which is taken by non-concentrators interested in getting some familiarity with basic principles of the subject, as well as most eco majors. It is taught by Martin Feldstein, a conservative economist who was Chairman of the Board of Economic Advisors early in the Reagan administration. By report, Feldstein hews closely to neo-classical, supply-side doctrine, doesn't offer any contrasting or critical views (especially from the left) and gives short shrift to students who attempt to bring up such critiques. Many students have lately expressed themselves as feeling the course is too narrow, doctrinaire, and biased, especially for an intro survey course. Furthermore, Stephen Marglin, another senior figure in the eco dept., has offered to teach an alternative version of the course, competing with, but not supplanting, Feldstein's version. Marglin, who is generally on the left politically and culturally, promises to teach the orthodox neo-classical material from the same texts as Feldstein, but will use a wider reading list that includes many critical views of free-mnarket theory. The issue is still up for grabs, and Presiden Summers, a prominent economist and former Sec. of Treasury, seems to be noncommital to this point.

It seems, in fairness, that the folks who object to Novotny's use of his class as a captive audience for his political views should have the same problem with Feldstein, and should, in principle, endorse the idea of an alternative, competing course for those students who wish it.

Now's your chance to display some real consistency. What say you?

Background info may be found at: thecrimson.com

NL

The comment from Norman Levitt deserves a response.

My guess is that Marglin's course will be taught. At least I see no reason why a University like Harvard would refuse it. Another guess is that many courses like the one that Marglin has outlined are already being taught at Harvard. At least I'd be shocked if that is not true.

This latest post from Erin has to be seen in context -- that all across the country, professors with even a mild conservative bent are being ousted from their posts, and this is happening at Universities that blather endlessly about diversity.

Ask yourself this question: Why is there a need for a site like NoIndoctrination.com? And why are so many of the comments there about obnoxious narrow-minded professors from the left? After all, anyone is free to post there. The answer, of course, is that when it happens on the right, the university newspaper will cover it, as was the case at Harvard. Did The Crimson ever cover an analogous story, like the one mentioned in the original post?

Many professors seem to think that their students come from an "American Gothic" environment in which dad is a small farmer and mom is a housewife and a pillar of the Methodist Church. In actuality, dad is probably a PR exec and mom is a lawyer, and they are both very involved in various New-Age kinds of activities. The "comfort-level-challenging" assertions made by the professors are actually the kinds of things that the students have had asserted as untested assumptions for all of their lives. What would *really* be comfort-level-challenging would be to read, say, Edmund Burke, C S Lewis, and G K Chesterton.

I actually observed something like this in a philosophy course I sat in on. The professor challenged the whole idea of cultural relativism, and he did so very effectively. Many students were clearly having problems with this, never having been exposed to such thinking...

Dear Mr. Levitt,

Es tut mir leid, aber . . .

you are fundamentally mistaken in comparing the two courses. This is in fact a variation of what Solzhenitsyn called the "50-50" fallacy. Feldstein is a distinguished economist and students should be delighted to hear what he has to say about economics. I can't at the moment think of a distinguished "liberal" economist but the same principle would hold true as far as I'm concerned.

The point the students were making about Novotny was that his comments clearly had nothing to do with the content of the course he was teaching, nor does he have any particular qualifications which would make his point of view valuable.

For your point to have any validity whatsoever, there would have to be hard evidence that when Feldstein teaches the course he ventures off into tirades analogous to those described of Novotny.

FYI, the course proposed by Steve Marglin and a bunch of students does not resemble any non-specialist course now being run. The Harvard eco dept. is pretty strongly neoclassical. Marglin (whom I knew briefly in the early '60's when he was a Junior Fellow) first made his mark in very mathematical sorts of things, like applications of optimization theory to input-output models. His political interests developed subsequently.

FWIW, I have, lately, had Marglin and some of his friends as nominal opponents (though we have never clashed directly) in that at one point he developed a rather immoderate enthusiasm for postmodern ideas about culture, epistemology, and so forth. I have spent a lot of time inveighing against such stuff, especially in the context of science. I think he's cooled off since, but I'm not sure.

NL,

Most of the criticism directed at Dr. Novotny, including all of mine, is based on his statement. Please rest assured that I will respond similarly when and if Mr. Feldstein responds to criticism by claiming that his critics are disconnected, ignorant communists who refuse to admit the negative effects of Stalin's economic policy. He should add that his economic analysis is the only path to world prosperity and his critics promote unfair economic models for their own selfish ends.

I agree that classroom activity is open to many interpretations. Assessing events after the fact and differentiating between misconceptions and bias is difficult. However, reading Dr. Novotny's response seems to eliminate the misconception theory since his comments are more damning than anything originally reported.

I think this jackass is the long-lost twin of my current ANTH prof. I'm documenting like mad and readying my post for No Indoctrination as well...and I've no doubt that my prof would say the same bunch of crap as this guy. Terrible!

One other interesting thing about noindoctrination.org....out of all the postings that have been made, only 2 professors have bothered to post a rebuttal. Seems to me this shows a lack of "a decent respect for the opinions of mankind"...ie, arrogance.

I took Professor Feldstein's course in my freshman year at Harvard. It's a year-long course, which, truth be told, is almost entirely taught by section leaders. My section leader was a second-year student at Harvard Business School, and many economics graduate students are the primary instructors in the course. The text is a standard economics textbook (then Baumol and Blinder, now Mankiw). The only parts of the class that have any near-political component are the lectures by Prof. Feldstein and those he invites, which happen no more frequently than once every two weeks or once a month (I can't remember). His lectures and his invited speakers often addressed subjects not even remotely political, though they may have political implications.

In every case, the views he expressed were clearly identified as his own, and they were not testable material. 98.5% of the class was exactly what one would expect a first-year college economics class to contain. Sure, there are people who disagree with his ideas on social security and tradable pollution credits. But if you look at the reading list of the course as taught today, it offers several sources which take opposite viewpoints.

The assertion that Ec10 is some sort of "indoctrination" is ridiculous. And even if it were, it would be a drop in the bucket at Harvard, which offers entire MAJORS which are clearly politically inclined. One only has to examine the syllabus for Womens Studies 131 (heavy on the Catherine MacKinnon, et al) or nearly any Social Anthropology, Social Studies, Women's Studies, Afro-Am Studies, English Lit, etc. class for quite the opposite range of views. The socialist garbage which my then-girlfriend (a social Anthro major) was expected to parrot in her papers and in her tests was astonishing.

Another perennial popular core class, Michael Sandel's Justice, was far more doctrinaire, as we were expected to disavow the "individual rights" model in favor of Sandel's favored "communitarian" approach to issues such as affirmative action, Nazis marching in Skokie, etc.

Even if Ec10 were the most biased course taught in the history of teaching, it would hardly make a dent in the general leftist tenor of classes at Harvard.

This is an argument the left can't but lose; in fact, the American Enterprise (a conservative magazine) looked at voter registration records for the top universities, and almost 80-90% of them VOTED left.

The fact remains that Feldstein's course is the one drawing complaints (note the plural) from what I gather is a significant number of students. Perhaps it's all a put-up job; nonetheless, for the moment no "leftist" course at Harvard seems to be drawing much protest as to its bias.

I don't deny in any sense that there are countless one-sided courses at hundreds of schools whose doctrine is of the left. But, for what it's worth, concerning the NoIndoctrination site, which I check every day or two, I note that none of the courses complained of has so far inspired more than one complaint (in contradistinction to Feldstein's course). As it happens, a course that I would certainly call left-doctrinaire (Marxist Literary Criticism) meets just before mine in a Rutgers classroom. My sense of it is that the students--and there are a lot of them--seem reasonably well-content. From what little I've overheard, the course appears to be something I would urge my own kids to avoid, if only because it's a self-indulgent waste of time. But I do ask myself why 75 or so apparently representative students show up with no symptoms of discontent visible. Perhaps it's because it offers an undemanding "A"--but that's pure speculation. I really have no idea why.

That's a thin base from which to generalize. Nonetheless, one must face the possibility that many students, perhaps a substantial majority, like this type of course, for one reason or another.

NL

What I love dearly is his claim to be the students' "first encounter with the stark reality of the world at large."

My dear professor, you are not reality. Any academic who professes to be the voice of reality is nearly as detached from it as a raving lunatic.

As is typical of his profession, this professor has serious delusions about his importance and impact on the world.

NL, maybe they are happy with Marxist Literary Criticism because they are such a self-selected group. I dearly hope that it's only for those taking wacko majors, and those who aspire to.

A friend of mine has a wonderfully funny poster from the Soviet Union in his living room (bi-lingual English and Russian), it has a worker with a sledgehammer and the caption "Celebrating the People's Victory Over Culture."

My fiance is scared to DEATH of going back to school, as she does not want to have to clash with these idiots at every turn, but wants an education.

"Why is there a need for a site like NoIndoctrination.com? And why are so many of the comments there about obnoxious narrow-minded professors from the left? After all, anyone is free to post there."

Sure, anyone is free to post there. But I would suggest that the site self-selects for what is perhaps a minority of students who have their own, possibly narrow-minded, agenda. Is there any course listed on that site that has prompted more than 1 or 2 complaints? If these courses really are narrow-minded attempts at indoctrination, then why aren't more students complaining?

As for the relationship between the existence of a web site and student need for such a website: I suppose students have the "need" for all kinds of websites. Presumably www.schoolsucks.com answers the "need" for plagiarized papers.

If students want to register their complaints about courses and professors on a website, they are of course free to do so. But I hardly think such a website points to a widespread phenomenon of attempted indoctrination in the academy. I see it as yet another version of such sites as www.myprofessorsucks.com, which is to say, as an extension of the logic of teaching evaluations, where the consumers can register their complaints about the product.

Invisible Adjunct
That's a hell of a lot of assumptions for one post, don't you think?

Did I exceed my assumptions quota?

Let me boil it down to one observation. Having visited www.noindoctrination.org and read many of the comments, I interpret it as follows: the website offers disgruntled conservative students a specialized niche within the larger sphere of websites for disgruntled students.

Brief addendum on the Ec 10 case (Feldstein vs. Maglin) at Harvard. A petition calling for an alternative version of the course (to be taught by Marglin) now has 704 signatures, according to the Crimson, 3/17.

NL

I find it disconcerting and also a bit humorous to see this "professor" profess to have a unique window into "the stark reality of the world at large" that his poor, ignorant students cannot experience without his keen wisdom. That pretense coming from someone who has been sheltered within the malignant fat-folds of academia for his entire life just proves the point that we are in the midst of a national emergency. When someone who has never left academia claims to know more about life than people who actually interact with the "real world", then it is upon us to point out the absurdity. I believe that this is the new American civil war. For years, the "educational" establishment and the media have been indoctrinating our precious young people. They now see the rising tide of backlash against them, and as a result, they are pulling out all stops in their efforts to bring socialism down on America. Those who love this country must unite against them, or all will be lost. We must not cripple the future of our children by refusing them a higher education, but we must prepare them throughout their youth that this kind of crap is what they can expect. We must also begin to hold these types of professors accountable for their actions.