I do think the doctoral system is also dysfunction unless you have a grounding in real life experience; it reminds me very much of the plebe system at West Point, or the internship system of medical school–take a recent undergrad, put them in a system that evicerates their social life, make them jump through innumerable hoops, and suck up to their committee, and you produce an individual at the end of the process that has zero social skills. I recall an earlier quote of BeckyJ’s: the battles in academe are so intense because the stakes are so small. Clearly she speaks from experience.

As a footnote, I also am a little bit skeptical of this whole story–As St. Ronald said, “Trust but verify.”

As for the professor’s requirement that the student get counseling, on pain of losing his visa, that is indeed a “he said – he said” issue (although even that is open to confirmation if the professor did, indeed, visit the Dean of Intenational Admissions).

That said, it seems to me that the real question is the nature of the question. Those who say that the student didn’t answer the question, and give the professor the benefit of the doubt about whether he would accept alternative viewpoints, appear to be saying that the student could have criticized the textbook and still answered the question. I beg to differ. This position doesn’t appear to recognize that criticizing the textbook would also constitute “not answering the question,” since the question required the student to “show how its formulation excluded the majority of the people living in America at that time, and how it was dominated by America’s elite interest.”

Professors have no business asking questions such as this.

In my experience BeckyJ is right. While some of the dregs may well end up embittered at community colleges I know of several people who simply got tired of the publishing and politics that are required to succeed at the top universities and went to teach at community colleges, most of whom are happy to get a dedicated prof with a PhD from a top flight university. A good friend went this route. In the hard sciences very few of the ‘failed’ academics end up in teaching. Although there are presumably more in the humanities.

I also wonder about the wording of the exam question. As is:

“Dye and Zeigler contend that the Constitution of the United States was not “ordained and established” by “the people” as we have so often been led to believe. They contend instead that it was written by a small educated and wealthy elite in America who were representative of powerful economic and political interests. Analyze the US constitution (original document), and show how its formulation excluded the majority of the people living in America at that time, and how it was dominated by America’s elite interest.”

it is, as mentioned by Catherine, a very poor assignment. Not to mention grammatically dubious, in that it’s rather hard for the ‘orginal document’ to be ‘dominated’ by the ‘elite interest’. And logically suspect in that there is no logical conflict between the people ordaining and establishing the constitution and the constitution having been written by a ’small educated and welthy elite’.

Remove the idealogical claptrap and the question could look like:

“Dye and Zeigler contend that the Constitution of the United States was not “ordained and established” by “the people”. They contend instead that its formulation excluded the majority of the people living in America at that time, and was dominated by America’s elite interest. Provide examples from the the US constitution (original document) that support Dye and Ziegler’s thesis.”

This would be a clearer question and obviously calls for the student to cite the nature of the franchise (excluding slaves and women), the electoral college, the appointed nature of senate, and so on.

Had I given such an assigment, and received this essay I would certainly have given it an F, if only for the simple reason that it contains no citations of the ‘original document’ that the assignment calls for. However, it’s not so easy to give an F in a university (I’m not as sure about community colleges, but I suspect it’s similar). So to ask the student to come to the office to receive the grade is entirely reasonable.

What happens after that is anyone’s guess. Was the comment that “Your views are irrational” made in regards to the contents of the paper, or to views about course grading, what the assignment called for or whatever else. Was the “America is not god’s gift to the world” comment simply an ineffective counter to a statement by the student that it is?

The psychotherapy comment and the threat to approach the Dean of International Admissions sound to me as comments from someone who had clearly lost control and was in a rage. Entirely inappropriate to say the very least. That part is troubling, but again the context of the (presumed) argument is hard to divine. One would hope that the prof would apologize for this part of his comment.

I’d further wonder whether the grievance was about what happened in the discussion or about the publicity. Colleges should be concerned about students taking grade disputes to the media, and to the college it cannot be immediately clear whether that is what’s going on here. Of course if the college refuse to release the contents of the grievance there is no way to know.

To be clear, I do agree that there are planty of moonbats in academia, and that someone is needed to clean out the Augean stables. I wouldn’t be surprised if this guy is the single minded idealogue he’s being made out to be. I wouldn’t be surprised if the story is substantially as related by the student. But I can see that there may well be another side to this story that is quite different.

I have been playing Devil’s advocate in this thread not because I think the professor is innocent, but because I destest trial by accusation. I am appalled by many of the posts I’ve read in this thread that jump to a conclusion based solely on the accuser’s version of events and the fact that the accusers charges reinforce the reader’s prejudices.

Above I linked to a little snippet to remind people about the Clarence Thomas hearings. I have little doubt that many of the conservatives on this site howled over him being dragged through the mud in the liberal media based only on Ms Hill’s accusations. And at least Thomas got to defend himself quickly and pubically after she made her charges.

This professor is a named person. I, and most likely you, know neither him or his accuser. It does the blogsphere no service to participate in the tarnishing of a person’s reputation because charges against them — that’s charges and not necessarily facts — meet our preconcieved political notions. Just the other day there were complaints in here about the newspaper trails of celebrities, but now we’ll cast stones at some junior college teacher with out at least hearing both sides?

I’m sorry, but that’s wrong.

Back on topic – these “rate my professor” sites actually might do as much good as any Academic Bill of Rights or similar document. Any student who reads the on-line descriptions of these two profs knows exactly what they would be getting into and can plan around them.

The other helpful thing the Web does is to publicize nuthouses like, say, Evergreen State U. (Rachel Corrie’s alma mater) and help students manuever away from them – or, manuever towards them, if that’s their cup of organic tea.

(Of course, that’s all well and good in theory – if your schedule just doesn’t work out and you’re forced to take one of these morons, well, you’re stuck.)

That was exactly my thought. Maybe it’s just me, but I find that terrifying.

Did anyone see the other account of intimidation of a student by a conservative professor at Foothill?

Another nut. He gets low ratings, too.

In the frontpagemag article, the student is not explaining to us why he deserves a good mark for his essay. Instead he is explaining why he supports his school adopting the academic freedom bill.

His gripe with his professor is that:

1) The essay question left him no room to articulate his views without getting an F

2) The professors did not read or critique his work, but instead made a personal attack

The student’s issue was never about failing the assignment.

Sorry if I’m stepping on anyone’s toes here. We all want to make sure that young man’s story is properly heard and I was afraid that we were taking the red herring discussing whether the professor had the right to give him an F or not.

However, I thought the story of Iraqi soldiers and the incubators was debunked…or was there a debunking of the debunking?

Once again, as I see my chosen second career (yep, walked in with my eyes wide open!) trashed over and over, both by idjits like Woolcock and some commenters here, I must defend myself and others. We’re not all barking moonbats and those like Woolcock are actually smaller in number than you might imagine. Problem is, they are much louder. I’m untenured and much as some people might think tenure is a joke and allows idiots to keep jobs while doing nothing, it also means I must watch my words until I get there myself. Trust me, once there you won’t be able to shut me up!

Also, it is unfair to categorize community college faculty as bottom of the barrel. Many people (myself included) really like to teach. Most 4 year schools require that researching take precedence over teaching. This drives many into community colleges. Again, there are those who get there because they can’t “make it” in a 4 year school for whatever reason, but they are the exceptions, not the rule.

My two cents.