A question for conservative students

<p>Do you guys get annoyed when you have a liberal professor and they constantly make their opinions known? I sometimes feel that I should say something but at the same time I'm thinking of the consequences they could have on my grade.</p>

<p>What is there to win? As an anarchist, I disagree with precisely everyone, so I can relate. Out of the few situations you will learn and benefit from debate, in class against a professor is most definitely not one of them.</p>

<p>Depends on the opinion. Certain opinions will annoy me, yes, but I try to give the professor what I think they want me to write. If I don’t know what they want, I go to them during their office hours and talk to them.</p>

<p>How you should deal with it depends on the degree of professor bias (in whatever direction, but using liberal examples for OP). My one Classics professor who’s still hung up on the Vietnam War is amusing; his asides about politics certainly don’t impact his ability to teach the actual subject, so whatever. If you’re taking a class on Economic Inequality in Inner-City America, well, that’s the nature of the beast. The professor probably supports more income redistribution than you, OP, might, which you should have realized from the title of the course. Taking it might still be a good idea to broaden your mind, knowing you’re not going to be able to feed the professor what he wants to hear, and you’ll just have to hope you’re convincing enough to be okay. In those cases, you should just deal with it.</p>

<p>There are two cases when saying something could be okay. If remarks in whatever type of class actively make your class a hostile learning environment for you, personally–“lol I hope Newt Gingrich wins the nomination he is terrible” gets a pass, since it is not about you; “oh my god all Republicans are evil I hope there aren’t any of you in here because, man, you guys suck!” is not fine, and you should probably delicately ask the professor to be more respectful. If it’s an introductory course that’s not supposed to have political bias, maybe do some googling or ask a staff member or other professor in the department to see what’s up and whether your professor’s comments are accepted wisdom in the field (which sometimes will support policy conclusions with which some people will disagree). If it’s not an accepted policy conclusion, that’s when seeing how the other person in the department, if you know them, reacts will give you your cue for what to do next. (I don’t know if everybody has a professor tagged as responsible for answering the questions of students who are hoping to major in the subject but haven’t declared yet, but that is the sort of person I am thinking of, not just some rando professor you pick off the website.)</p>

<p>Been going to college for over two years now and this hasn’t come up much because I’ve been taking almost all quantitative courses (it’s hard to slip in a line about progressive taxation when you’re covering the unit tangent vector or how recursive operations use the memory stack). In my geology course this would sometimes come up when the lecturer would explicitly say that the right are morons for wanting more oil drilling.</p>

<p>I’m sure things are worse in the humanities, especially areas like gender studies or poor studies or peace studies or <thing> studies. My physics professor (who is a heck of a guy and the model for how all professors should be) is a fuh-LAMING liberal but you’d never know it unless you actually talked to him specifically about politics. It never ever comes up.</thing></p>

<p>I’ve only ever had one teacher who had a regular habit of making in-class, lecture-stopping diatribes that were inappropriate and unrelated to the (physics) curriculum, and he was a hard-core conservative.</p>

<p>I think it’s funny that exultationsy uses economics professors as an example when the average economics professor is well to the right of the average professor (they kind of have to be, because they have to be realistic about how the economy works, they can’t pretend that price controls are good or that big market distortions aren’t harmful, etc.). The average “liberal economist” would be considered a right-wing hack by most OWS protestors.</p>

<p>^Indeed, from what I understand (and I think it’s obvious), the harder the science or “less political” the subject, the less politics you are going to get.</p>

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<p>This pretty much sums up my experience. </p>

<p>In my experience, professors and other students go out of their way to offend people. People here are polite and tactful.</p>

<p>Yea I’m a bio major and when ever we talk about ecology, he makes it known that hes a liberal. I’m taking history as a humanity elective and all my teacher talks about is the flaws of the founding fathers and the evils of the white man.</p>

<p>I don’t mind when they make there opinions known, I just get agitated when they treat there opinions like facts. Especially on really obscure subjects that are open for interpretation.</p>

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<p>Republicans are orthogonal to reality. It isn’t that hard to work in jokes like that. You have to be a pretty unfocused lecturer to get into a longer rant though.</p>

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<p>Haha, my high school physics teacher was just like that. November 5, 2008 was not his finest day as a teacher.</p>

<p>I can’t say I’ve had any professors shove their views down my throat, but I suppose I got lucky. A few of them did talk about liberal views a few times, but nothing too extreme. It’s hilarious when students of any political side take over the classroom and spew their views, though:</p>

<p>Random, This-is-What-a-Feminist-Loks-like shirt wearing, tree hugging liberal student: “UNIVERSAL HEALTHCARE SHOULD BE LEGAL!”
-no one cares-</p>

<p>or</p>

<p>Random, conservative student: -raises hand and proudly announces- I’m a republican!
-still, no one cares-

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<p>I’ve had a science prof slip in an opinion on the election… once. But you’re right: much more prevalent in humanities.</p>

<p>I’ve only really had two professors who spouted their political views. Didn’t bother me that much.</p>

<p>I don’t see the big deal. I’m an atheist and the first day of Gen.Chem, the professor walks in and passes out papers showing science.supporting Christianity and saying the chemistry is a lot like bible study, that Christians make the best scientists because they’re out to prove something while us heathens (like myself) are out to disprove things.</p>

<p>I kept my opinion to myself. He had a right the his beliefs, I didn’t want to sacrifice my grade and calling him out in the middle of chemistry class (rather than, say, religious studies) would have been inappropriate. Plus, he was a TERRIBLE instructor regardless.</p>

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<p>That’s why I always stay silent in political discussions, too. You don’t get anything out of proving the professor wrong.</p>

<p>^^a fair amount of satisfaction if they’re being jerks about it. My sociology professor had a huge chip on his shoulder about young people and how we aren’t active politically like his generation was in the 1960s, especially blacks. He was a homophobe and just an out and out tool. He was also blind so he would only know you if you told him your name.</p>

<p>And he also did this thing like in that movie Ray where once he found out you weren’t a dude, he shake you hand and then slowly start to molest your arm…</p>

<p>I usually bring my (licensed and registered) handgun to class and just casually lay it on my desk when the prof starts talkin’ socialist muslim stuff. That done shut them up quick.</p>

<p>then if they ask me what I’m doing I say “so it’s true you hate america?”</p>

<p>you can make your opinions known if you can respond to ideas in a professional, open-minded and scholarly manner. </p>

<p>replying a la The Economist (which is respected by people of all political alignments) is a pretty good style. remember general rules often break down for specific cases, which is what makes the field so interesting. </p>

<p>your ideas should be expressed, but it’s better to have an inquisitive, inquiring approach, when you express them, for both genuine (learning) and rhetorical reasons.</p>

<p>JanofLeiden, I suspect you are joking.</p>

<p>Ever think about workin’ for the FBI sherlock?</p>