Posts in "professor"

By Benjamin Levine at 10:25AM

Sep 1, 2011

Confessions of a College Libertarian: Part I

Being a college student and a libertarian are two difficult identities to hold at the same time, specifically because my professors are almost all admittedly socialist. It wouldn't bother me if the university had a more open attitude toward varying ideas, but often times professors are the "shut-down" type. By this I mean that they shut down any student expressing an idea they disagree with. Not all are like this, of course, but a significant portion are. In addition to this atmosphere, there are numerous statements made during classes that kill me a little inside when I hear them. Here are some gems I have heard from professors so far:

Germany's hyperinflation of post-WWI was caused by capitalism.
George H.W. Bush was an idealist.
Bill Clinton sincerely cared about human rights in Third World countries and his record shows this.
Richard Nixon did not want to use the military if he didn't have to.
George W. Bush was an isolationist.
Barack Obama practices non-interventionism in the Third World and values self-determination for Middle Eastern nations.

I've had merely one week of classes thus far and already this is what I have been told.

DHS Teachers Embrace Collectivism

As a student at Dixon High School, which is located in the rather conservative community of Dixon, CA, I never expected to see collectivism so boldly embraced by faculty members.

Today, Friday, Dec. 11th, I had the amazing pleasure of arguing with a biology teacher who had the audacity to say, "There should be no individualism." A biology teacher looked straight at me and said that, her words ringing in the empty classroom with a slight pitter-patter of rain from outside. The statement was provoked after a relatively lengthy argument about a disciplinary issue that had faced the bureaucrats in the school administration.

I serve as a representative in DHS's Leadership assembly, and this week was supposed to be a school-spirit week that ended was to end as all school spirit week -- with a rally at the end. However, two students got in a fight on Thursday, the day before the rally, and the rally, in a knee-jerk decision by the administration, was cancelled. The Leadership Assembly had been planning the event for a month and a half and was therefore very indignant, however the YAL@DHS actually did something about it.

My Email Exchange with a Childish Professor

I am an editorial writer for my school newspaper at Ole Miss, and I wrote this article about a week ago. It discusses how the Democrat and Republican Parties are disregarding the express constitutional limits placed on them by Article I Section 8 of the Constitution. My article focused primarily on the current debate over the public option for healthcare.

Evidently, what I had to say angered a certain professor of modern languages at Ole Miss. He soon emailed me expressing his discontent.

Click "Read more here" to read the email exchange that followed: (If you want to read the full story, click on the link to my original article at the top of the post)