Conservative Students Begin Campaign Against Learning

It appears conservative college students have had quite enough of being forced to put up with viewpoints different from their own.

For example, at the University of North Carolina, three incoming freshmen sued over a reading assignment they said offended their Christian beliefs.

In Colorado and Indiana, a national conservative group publicized student allegations of left-wing bias by professors. Faculty received hate mail and were pictured in mock "wanted" posters; at least one college said teacher received a death threat.

The "liberal professors" at American colleges are one of the last bogeymen that the those on the right have to defeat (despite their continuing and anachronistic criticisms of the "liberal" media). Conservative pundits deride the rampant liberalism on college campuses, and have been waiting for an opportunity to open a campaign against it. You would think that conservative college students who are truly concerned about the issue could handle it on their own, but their elders must have figured they need some encouragement.

Leading the movement is the group Students for Academic Freedom, with chapters on 135 campuses and close ties to David Horowitz, a one-time liberal campus activist turned conservative commentator. The group posts student complaints on its Web site about alleged episodes of grading bias and unbalanced, anti-American propaganda by professors — often in classes, such as literature, in which it's off-topic.

As anyone who's been to college knows, college professors can frequently be overbearing dictators in their classroom. While most are very interested in the learning of their students, and very open-minded and tolerant of their student's expressions of opinion, there are those who tolerate no dissent in class, and certainly don't welcome challenges from those who are for the most part their intellectual inferiors. I had professors like this who were both liberal and conservative, and unafraid to express it. Of course, the greatest thing about college is that you are exposed to ideas that differ from your own, liberal, conservative, philosophical, scientific, and so on. That is the underlying purpose of college of course, to educate by challenging your viewpoints... which frankly, are hardly worth much at the ripe old age of 18 or 19 anyway. Of course, this is what many of these conservative students really have a problem with, being exposed to ideas that differ from their own. Being as they choose to go to these universities and be exposed to these ideas, and have the ability to go elsewhere as they feel fit, I can't say I have much sympathy for them. And once again under the banner of "freedom" of expression, they will do their best to stifle the "freedom" of the students around them to be exposed to different ideas that they might agree or disagree with (see earlier posts on creationism in the classroom).