Is freedom of speech coming to Colleges and Universities?

Hahaha!

Anywho, that's totally unprofessional.  You're supposed to let people speak even if you don't agree with them or think they're stupid...well, if they're doing a project/speech/whatever. 

Unless of course the student was being a total inflammatory dick about it.  Not sure what his speech was or how he delivered it.

Meh...need more details to decide who I should be mad at.

~Zoo

A certain professor's insecurity, not to mention cowardice and arrogance, is showing.

hahaha

This is so freakin relevant to me right now.  I am in a LIBERAL ARTS program and the only non-liberal out of 60.

I started out planning to keep my opinions to myself, but damn, its like chewing nails and goes against my nature.

So I talk now...and well it gets sticky most of the time.....take tonight for example...

We did a case study, on a finance director for a school district who embezzled over $2 million.  I won't get into all the details.

In short, she took a job she was not qualified to do, handling vast amounts of money.  Then she took a gift from a contractor.  He threatened to expose her unless she bought his stuff.  So she bought it.  Then he went further and threatened to "tell" about the gift and her purchasing his over priced stuff if she didn't give him more money.

Long story short, two years and $2 million later, she resigned and it was discovered after she left.  She didn't keep one penny of the money.

So the Prof stands up and says, "5-10% of the workforce plan on stealing when they take a job.  Another 5-10% won't ever steal, and the other 80% will steal if they don't think they'll get caught.  Now, is this woman a thief?"

Every single person in the room said NO, but me.

They said things like, she was taken advantage of because she was inexperienced.  She wasn't qualified ethically to take the job.  She was in over her head.  She didn't take the money and keep it. yadda yadda.

I said, "That's not right.  She stole the money.  It wasn't hers, and she took it, then covered it up.  That makes her BY DEFINITION a thief.  If you hit someone with your car and the person in the passengers seat knows how to get rid of the body without you getting caught, do you do it?  UH, NO!  Why?  Because its WRONG, it goes against what you know to be right.  No amount of pressure or inexperience can make you do something unethical.  You choose to do that."

This got the whole class speaking at me, telling me I was "judgemental" and crazy.

So then I looked at the Prof and said, "And I don't agree with the whole 80% of people will steal if given a chance of getting away with it either.  Where did you get those stats?  What study was it based upon?"

He admitted it was just a theory, not a well documented one, a kind of home grown one.  His other job is as a full time city finance director working with $25-$40 million budgets a year.  He's pretty good at it I guess, wins lots of awards for staying within budget. 

All that to say this....when the others spoke, I listened.  When I spoke, they cut me off, boo-ed me, and basically treated me like some uneducated moron because I called a thief a thief.

How's that for free speech and education?

Pitiful.

That's ok though, I was one of the few A's on that case study.

@Tova -

Success in every endeavour in life is built upon simple 'fundamentals' - integrity, honesty, respect for individual responsibility and the willingness to do the right thing.  It is not courageous to do the right thing but it is most assuredly cowardly to do the wrong thing, even moreso to make excuses for having done so.  Suggesting that doing the right thing requires courage empowers the cowardly.

Too many of us are not acquiring the fundamentals.  Our schools, ideally, should be allowed to instill such fundamentals if/when parents can't, for whatever reason.  But students are seldom held accountable by schools any more, largely due to misguided parental interference.  Being products of such schools, it's not surprising that so many in your class were willing to blame anyone or anything other than one individual who could have made a choice to stick with those fundamentals, and were willing to excuse her behavior.  Expecting others to be held accountable might mean they themselves might at some time be held accountable, and who wants that?  Clearly there are exceptions, such as yourself, but they generally learn and adhere to fundamental principles of right & wrong in spite of the moral relativism rampant in public schools.

Tova good job on the grade. Though I believe the educational system is overwhelmingly liberal, there are are some professors that do what they are supposed to do and give an unbiased grade. I don't think liberalism is bad in and of itself, but it shouldn't be forced down anyones throat either. The same for conservatism, but I've never seen an example personally. Looking back, my education was extremely liberal, but my favorite teachers were the ones that showed as many sides of an issue as possible and challenged the student to arrive to their own conclusions. There were some that just wanted the students to agree with them. What I wonder is how many people would sell out their beliefs in hope of a good grade. They are the ones cheating themselves. Good on you speaking your mind in a rational manner (that's what your professor saw).

That, or the others know better and pretend to be liberal. All my friends and me pretend to be liberal in certain classes... ugh, sickening.

I had to drop some classes I didn't pretend in.

There comes a time (for some) when you stop being what others want you to be. I'm not putting you down, because GPA can be important for scholarships and many career paths, and the system can be an up hill battle. I wouldn't expect the educational system to move to the center anytime soon even if all students spoke up at once. Many people start off their lives liberal, since that is what they are exposed to for most of their young lives. Things are different when one enters the workforce, and that is were many conservatives are born. IMO liberals have a declining edge because of the internet. Information abounds for the person that wants to look. If one looks at what did/did not work though our history leading us to today it becomes clear. Campaign promises never solved anything.

I think when some younger folks see that the change that they were seeking never was a real possibility, a few may wise up. It's easy to get caught up in passions (trust me, everyone looks back and asks themselves why the hell they did certain things). Anyway nice to see some younger conservatives out there, your going to have a tough row to hoe for the foreseeable future. 

I am fortunate to be in a program which consists of professionals still in the field, 80% of them at least.  It helps because as state and city administrators many are required by law or charter to bring in an annual balanced budget.  So, even though the personal ideology is liberal, the conservative reality can't be escaped.  So they are at least tolerant.

I'm 40 years old and most of the people in the program hover within 10-13 years of my age up and down.  There are only a handful of young 20 somethings and they don't really have any opinions, they just watch the clock. heh.

The whole reason I started this program was to work with non-profits.  Most of the large foundations and non-profits are run by public administrators because there is so much specialized knowledge in these fields.  A successful businessman typically cannot run them well.  I may write an article on why so many non-profits fail under a business administrator, why in fact the government cannot be run like a business, but right now I'm swamped.

Anyway, my focus turned more toward Government last quarter for too many reasons to go into here.  I was really looking forward to going over the 1400+ pages of the stimulus line by line,...but alas, Obama lied.  He didn't give us 5 days or 48 hours to look it over....is it even out now in the entirety?

It doesn't matter what proof is given.   The people I know who support him twist facts, or squeeze them into their loose definitions just so they won't look foolish for voting for him.

No matter what happens, he's spotless.

Drives me nuts.

Yes, its called graduation. Or in the more general sense, its when those "others" are not in a position of power and authority over you. Weather its being promoted, elected, tenured, graduated or otherwise put in a position where being honest will not destroy you.

There is a saying "if you are a child and you are not liberal, you don't have a heart, if you are an adult and you are a liberal, you don't have a brain". It really has nothing to do with exposure and more to do with underdeveloped reasoning. Liberals put empathy first, emotions of pity and desire to help guide them, but they combine them with knee jerk reactions and badly thought out "plans" that would not work in the real world. Communism is the perfect example... It sounds ideal from an empathy standpoint, true equality, true altruism, maximum efficiency... But it doesn't work.

I embraced communism when I was 11... when I was 12 I figured how stupid and unrealistic it is as a system. If you adjust for IQ it makes sense that many "young" voters will vote for the democratic party because of its promises of equality, and older voters mature enough to wisen up to how silly it is.

Of course you could have the best of both worlds and be moderate a la yours truly. 

Extremism is a poison...no matter which way it goes.

~Zoo

Actually, zoo, conservative principles aren't 'extreme' - only liberals & moderates consider them so.  

I said if you are an adult and you are a liberal you have no brain... not if you are an adult and you are not conservative you have no brain...

A child who is not a liberal, aka, a person who is mentally underdeveloped and lacks experience about human nature and reality, should be liberal unless he is hardless. But as an adult you realize the stupidty of liberalism and how it does not work..

Conservatism means to seek to CONSERVE the ways of the past. A classic conservative refuse to think and instead obeys their religion, parents, and what they view as social norms.

Liberals refuse to think and instead concoct hare brained schemes to make the world a better place.

However thinkers in the UNITED STATES tend to agree with conservatives more, because the conservatives are trying to conserve the most sound economic policy in human history, as well as sound principles of government and freedoms. (gun freedom, etc).

Ex:

A russian conservative is trying to conserve the ways of the past, he wishes for a return to the glorious days of communism.

An american liberal concocts the ill begoten scheme to absolve the "suffering of the poor" and "racial inequality", he wishes for the destruction of "evil captialism" and the creation of a communism commonwealth.

An american conservative seeks to conserve the principles of economic FREEDOM that the founding fathers put in place.

A russian liberal seeks CHANGE, he sees the evil and corruption of communism and wishes to bring FREEDOM to the market, by rapid deregulation.

In this example the russian liberal and the american conservative are doing the RIGHT THING for the WRONG REASONS.

While the russian conservative and american liberal are doing the WRONG THING for the WRONG REASONS.

A thinking rational person would probably dub himself a "conservative" in america to indicate he matches conservative principles here and opposes the liberal ones, but it is not an accurate description of his PHYLOSOPHY as he does NOT wish to conserve the past because it is the past, but because it happens to be intelligent in this case.

This is like telling a person you are an "atheist" or "agnostic", both are horrible terms to describe it, as they imply things that aren't true, but they are rather simple to convey.

It is more complicated to go on explaining that you do not BELEIVE that there is no god (atheist) or that you do not consider there to be an equal probability of there being or not being a god (agnostic), but rather that you beleive in nothing, and seek to instead understand and view proof. That you have seen plenty of proof against and no proof for and that, which guides your tenous understading of the world that you constantly adjust, and will accept the existance of the divine should it be presented but until then hold it to be as unlikely as santa claus or the tooth fairy.

You know, to be perfectly frank I consider both conservatism (as a philosophy of obedience, not having mostly conservative beleifs based on rational thought) as well as liberalism (desire to do good without proper understanding of the consequences) to be natural developmental stages for children from which many never grow out of.

A child is naturualy obedient to authority figures, from that being conservative makes sense... "they know better then me so I will obey". Nothing is more natural. For adults the issue remain. Adult conservatives often accept their limitations or impose imaginary ones. I am not NEARLY as smart as GOD / The fouding fathers / the wise men of yore... They think "I am not very smart, I am a simple person. I better leave the dicision making to my betters"

Similarly the concepts of wishing to help and do good without any grasp of human nature, economics, physics, or generally how the world works and what the consequences will be is a very natural thing for a child. The more arrogant children think they know better, and try to enforce those schemes they concoct.

Most of the "conservatives" who posted in this debate happen to be adults both physically and mentally, who are not blindely obeying, but rather have carefully thought about things and happen to reach the same conclusion as the founding fathers of america, the greatest human phylosophers to date. (although, like every great phylosophers, their ideas will be outdated eventually to our future descendants).

My sister-in-law once wrote an article about her daughter, who, she said, was born liberal. She came into the world "screaming, with her eyes closed."

There are hardcore advocates on both sides of the aisle. 

Which is why I prefer not to align myself with either side.  Both sides have good points here and there, but neither one is perfect.

Anywho, politics are annoying overall...the philosophy part is kind of interesting, but beyond that it's boring.

~Zoo

I tend to think of conservatism as a particular set of somewhat inter-related principles, not the 'opposite' of something.  I think the liberal-conservative spectrum is in many ways a false dichotomy, albeit one that is used by folks in both camps.

you do realize the founders, in general, were considered not merely liberals but wild-eyed radical revolutionaries as eere the philosophers from whom they took their inspiration and ideas. not a few of them were over 20 years old.

I do, In fact that was partially my point.

This is why I pointed out that conservatist views vary from country to country and gave the russia example... where russian conservatists want to preserve communism, american conservatives want to preserve freedom.

Conservatives are not "anti freedom", they are abount obeying and conserving the traditional values of their society. Liberals are about enacting a plan NOW without forthought... change is the solution, even though their unthought of plans are a change for the worst.

Conservatives and liberals are not really opposites of each other.

It's a shame they don't say what year this was. If I was a lecturer and a student stood up and started reciting the dictionary and the bible during a speech, I'd probably fail him too. I can't imagine a good argument coming from a combination of the two. Where's the research going to come from? Where's the sign of a busy mind?

Now if he was citing a whole bunch of religious texts from dozens of different faiths, which all showed support for the same kind of marriage, he'd be making a fairly broadly applicable argument. But just one religion? With only a little more than a billion believers? It's a bit obscure.

russians who wish to return to what passed for communism under stalin and his sucessors aren't conservatives anymore than germans who want to revive the third reich.

america's radical rightwing is hardly about preserving freedom, the spirit of the founders' revolution or their legacy.  in particular--based on their record over the past three decades--those who've wrapped themselves the tightest in their self-styled conservative banner have much more in common with monarchists.  

can you honestly imagine washington, jefferson, madison or franklin proclaiming to their colleagues anything at all like "if the president does it, it's legal"?

Funny, thats what liberals tell me about obama.

not funny at all.  over the past 40 years four presidents have either expressed that position verbally or manifested it whenever possible as policy.  incredibly it was those four who portrayed themselves--and who've constantly and enthusiastically been supported by those who bought into their claims--as opponents of 'big government'. 

in what fantasy world does an increasingly more powerful executive branch diminish government influence on its citizens? if that were the case, why not remove all limitations on personal liberty by restoring monarchy?