<p>USNews doesn’t have a “naughty” list…</p>
<p>FIRE and USNews are not affiliated with each other. It’s just a FIRE advertisement you saw on the USNews website…</p>
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<p>You’re using slavery to compare religious teaching? One oppresses, the other shows you a viewpoint. Two different things.
BTW, tell me what makes religion so bad that it can’t be taught in class?</p>
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<p>You must be kidding me. Harvard and Yale were VERY well known in the 1700’s and 1800’s to the aristocracy and the MINISTERS (hence the term ELITE). They were created for the SOLE purpose of educating the liberal arts to ministers, but then expanded in the late 1800’s to become what we know of them today. Many elite schools STILL have a department of religious studies, including Stanford (gasp).</p>
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<p>Because they themselves are narrow minded, unlike the term “liberal” seem to indicate? I bet you none of them have actually set foot in a theology class and tried to listen. Sorry, but I definitely don’t get this hate for religion. Religion is not a bad thing when taught (like it or not, religion has played a big part of history); it’s actually pretty interesting. It’s better than being taught that government is the evil entity of society, that’s for sure.</p>
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<p>Because it is located in DC, where it dominated and continues to dominate the political science field? It has little, if nothing, to do with religious affiliation. Notre Dame is just as worthy of scholarly recognition, yet it it far more religious than BC or Georgetown.</p>
<p>You raised very interesting points, but I think I didn’t make my point clear. I have nothing wrong against studying religion. I had to for two quarters as part of my humanities requirement this past year-it sucked big time but that was only tangentially related to the subject matter. What I have against institutionalized religion is that it limits academic freedom. In a religious school, would you be able to do research involving stem cells? Would you be able to write papers supporting the benefits of abortion? The questions go on, especially if you’re untenured. It limits the scope of a university. Sure a Catholic high school may not adversely affect the experience since you are not prodcuing new knowledge in high school. That’s why Harvard shed its religious affiliation. Not to welcome people of different religions (because everyone was a WASP) but to broaden the horizons of ideas and research. That’s what I have against it-liberal means broad minded to things that have intellectual merit.</p>
<p>Extremely liberal schools and extremely conservative schools are equally guilty of “indoctrination.”</p>
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I haven’t seen FIRE’s advertisement. However, if they are singling out these 5 schools, this seems a bit unfair. In fact, FIRE’s [2009</a> report](<a href=“http://www.thefire.org/public/files/Fire_speech_codes_report_2009.pdf]2009”>Spotlight on Speech Codes | The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression) indicates that 270 schools (out of 364 reviewed) have the highest “RED LIGHT” rating. Their 2009 report (see Appendix B) indicates that many other well-known schools (a few examples: Harvard, Princeton, Cornell, MIT, Caltech, Swarthmore, UCLA, and Michigan) have the same “RED LIGHT” rating as the schools listed above. </p>
<p>In fact, there were only 8 schools (out of 364) that got a clean “GREEN LIGHT” rating from FIRE. So if you use the FIRE ratings as a guide, your college options may be rather limited.</p>
<p>Incidentally, many schools with the heaviest suppression of free speech are not included in the FIRE rankings. An example is Liberty University, which earlier this year denied permission for students to form a chapter of the College Democrats. </p>
<p>FIRE’s rationalization is that some schools don’t even claim to offer freedom of speech: they explicitly put their religious or political agenda first. If a school says up front that it doesn’t allow free speech, then FIRE is OK with it.</p>
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In all fairness, Liberty is not accredited so it shouldn’t show up on that list. lol, you know what though, Fordham’s on that naughty list too…oh the irony. </p>
<p>But, hey, UPenn is green light, amirite?</p>
<p>The heavily left-leaning academic institutions (and the right-leaning ones, too–although you don’t see any of international fame) are no different from religious groups who “indoctrinate.” I love it when the far-left academics mention the freedom of speech, while many of them wouldn’t even consider listening to or giving legitimacy to those who don’t agree with them politically or otherwise. </p>
<p>Mind you, I’m saying all this as someone who would’ve voted for Obama if I were an American citizen in 2008.</p>
<p>And I have to agree that whoever came up with that ranking didn’t spend enough time on Harvard.</p>
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Not so. It’s true that Liberty did not have recognized accreditation when it was first established in 1971. But it has held regional accreditation from SACS since 1980. </p>
<p>In terms of accreditation status, Liberty is no different from other Virginia schools like UVa, Virginia Tech, or William & Mary (all of which are on FIRE’s current “RED LIGHT” list). FIRE only exempts Liberty from evaluation, because it is clear that there are no free-speech guarantees there.</p>
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If you were wondering, the eight “safe” schools, according to FIRE, are:</p>
<p>Alabama A&M
Carnegie Mellon U
Cleveland State U
Dartmouth
U Nebraska
U Penn
U Tennessee
U Utah</p>
<p>Any other school choice places your free-speech rights at risk.</p>
<p>I referred only to the partial list in the advertisement. I openly stated in the initial posting it WAS AN ADVERTISEMENT IN USNWR and that the editors of USNWR have the option to select advertisers, particularly in THIS special issue of college rankings. I also stated I did not necessarily agree with who was on the list or why, only that it existed and asked the question who was on the list. Freedom of association, speech and expression are valuable principles of our democracy and even more so on the campus of any college. Any professor anywhere who denigrates or grades down a paper because of a difference of opinion on politics or other “protected free speech” should be terminated, in my view. Sadly, many professors don’t teach, they “indoctrinate” students to their own point of view. This happens at many colleges.</p>
<p>Whether there are 8 safe schools or 100 I don’t rightly know. I also suggest that FIRE could well be too extreme in their judgement and perhaps should be criticized for that. I just applaud the effort to ensure freedom is defended on college campuses. But human nature being what it is, people frequently demand freedom of expression for their personal views, and attack the views of others and attempt to put a chilling effect upon them. </p>
<p>Scurrilous and bigotted commentary has no place in a University and no place on CC. Individuals who express themselves in such a manner only disgrace themselves and their school.</p>
<p>JMHO.</p>
<p>Morsmorde casting the dark mark are we? lol nice name</p>
<p>Yep we are =)</p>
<p>Corbett yes you are right that Liberty is accredited-my mistake.</p>
<p>Some people should learn that “degrees” from certain “universities” are at best half baked attempts at a true college curriculum and at worst not even befitting of my toilet paper. These “degrees” provide little post-graduate opportunities, and said “graduate” would have been better off doing manual labor upon graduation from high school and saved himself the tuition.</p>
<p>Just my opinion, of course.</p>
<p>AT9 said: “Extremely liberal schools and extremely conservative schools are equally guilty of “indoctrination.””
I could not agree more- as an older college student and the mother of two college students. Many professors love to get up and push their viewpoints- of course students can decide for themselves, but I saw firsthand how young and impressionable traditional-age students (18-22) are when they gobble up viewpoints that take more life experience to formulate…</p>
<p>Hopkins has been on the FIRE hit-list because of one frat-party incident and one time when the school decided to expel a student because he was CARRYING a loaded weapon in university housing.</p>
<p>I don’t exactly see what’s so “restricting” about that</p>
<p>Wow why are people bashing Fordham? Yeah it’s Jesuit, but so is Georgetown, no? Fordham students have a required class called Faith, but religion doctrine isn’t being “shoved down their throats”. It’s not a bad school at all. Yeah its students aren’t Columbia or NYU-caliber, but I know a bunch of kids who’ve chosen it over NYU and Cornell for reasons other than financial aid. I’ve been to some parties there too. They certainly know how to have fun.</p>
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<p>No offense, but I believe that Notre Dame, a religious school, is no more restrictive than Brown, a liberal school. I do not see any evidence that indicates otherwise (I’ve read some scary stuff about Brown’s treatment of conservatives).</p>
<p>^Yeah man I agree. Just look at how the Notre Dame community treated our President at their commencement ceremony this year! Despicable</p>
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<p>It’s a FIRE list. The title of this thread was very misleading… </p>
<p>USNWR did not create this list therefore it shouldn’t be called “USNWR naughty list”. You mean you happened to see FIRE’s list of naughty schools. USNWR did not create or endorse this list. It’s just an advertisement in a magazine. It doesn’t mean that USNWR endorses it or anything.</p>