Some outtakes from a new blog written by a conservative graduate student in English:

Wednesday, Nov, 19:
I recall when I started my PhD program that the professor I was "TA"ing for at the time, got all the TAs together and told us how to deal with "right wing assholes' who will try to steal the discussion and push their narrow views on the class.

I made a comment about how, yeah, extreme views on either side of the spectrum are bad when taken overboard - what is needed is real discussion considering all the sides of the issue.

I was given an odd look and told that liberals are never wrong and their views are appropriate for class, since liberals are open-minded and tolerant and that's what higher education is about: liberalizing the students.

Silly me, I thought it was about clear and honest discussion of all sides of an issue.

Friday, November 14:
The professor I work as a TA for (in a general education class designed for the General student body) admitted he chooses works of literature that are anti-religious because he wants to show the students how idiotic it is to be religious. This is a general education class designed to teach literature to students who otherwise will never take a literature class.

Instead of teaching literature, he is using literature as a way to force his atheistic beliefs on the students. I wouldn't mind so much if there was some balancing going on - such as using literature that is fairly pro-religious, or a discussion of how the books can be read as anti-hypocrisy instead of anti-religion. No such luck, though.

He knows I am religious, but he hopes I'll get over it.

Monday, November 10:
...we read our teaching philosophies and one student actually said his teaching philosophy is to make his students realize that George W. Bush is a bad, evil man on the level with Hitler. Critical thinking apparently requires hating conservatives and buying the liberal party line without question.

What bugs me is the lack of critical thinking among English majors. Overall, they just mouth idiotic liberal phrases like "one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter" and act as if the debate is over. (Because to argue is to show yourself as an evil western colonialist with views that resemble Nazis. You may think I'm exaggerating - I'm not. The other day, in the graduate student lounge, several students complained loudly that Paul Wolfowitz hadn't been killed in Iraq yet).

One anecdote among the many I could tell: When I was in teacher training at Michigan in 1991, we had a discussion much like the one described above. The issue was: What do you do when a student turns in a paper with politics you abhor? I assumed, in my 22-year-old naivete, that the proper way to handle such a paper would be to address it on its own merits, and that the proper role of the teacher-grader in such an instance would be to help the author of the paper see where his argument was strong, where it was weak, and what he could do to make his case as convincingly as possible. I assumed, in other words, that as a writing teacher, I had no business imposing my politics on students and that I had an ethical obligation not to allow my personal beliefs to affect how I treated students or graded them. I was wrong. We were told--by a group of resident composition specialists no less--that there are some political positions that by definition cannot be well-argued. You can, of course, guess what those positions were.