<p>
</p>
<p>Absence of proof is not proof of absence. Sheesh.</p>
<p>And what century was that? ;) (Granted, there have only been 264 views.)</p>
<p>I'll go post the question on the college cafe and let you know...</p>
<p>"The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently."- Friedrich Nietzsche</p>
<p>Come on. If you have a genuine concern that a policy disagreement with a professor will result in a lowered GPA, then by all means ignore that professor. However, ignoring a professor solely because of policy differences is a close-minded proposition.</p>
<p>You could always audit the course. ;)</p>
<p>I took West's introductory class my senior year. I didn't find it to be any more or less indoctrinating than any other course, even though I did not agree with everything he said. It was one of the academic highlights of my college years, actually. There was one very vocal conservative in my section, and he graduated summa that spring, so I doubt he got a C. (In fact, that course was a frequent target of critics of grade inflation.)</p>
<p>My TF graded my papers anyway, so even if the professor were inclined to punish students who disagreed with him, no one person could grade the lengthy written work of 350+ students. If I recall correctly, there were several 8-15 pp. papers assigned. Each one could be on virtually any topic we'd covered (including music, history, sociology, etc.), and since at least half of the 20+ assigned books were fiction or poetry, there was plenty of good material if you wanted to avoid hot-button political issues. I wrote one paper about death imagery in Toni Morrison's "Beloved" and another about the lyrics of the slave spirituals that WEB DuBois quoted in "The Souls of Black Folk." I didn't choose those topics to avoid political controversy, but looking back, I don't think you could have learned anything about my politics from those papers.</p>
<p>Hanna: Thanks for sharing your experience.</p>
<p>Princeton has Professor West. Harvard wants Professor West. Professor West can pretty much get a teaching job where he wants. Is it likely all those schools got it wrong? Possible, but not probable.</p>
<p>I should add, in all fairness, that most of the eminent professors I've had could be considered to be "indoctrinating" their students, in the sense that they are often people who've come up with an original and distinctive way of looking at a classic subject, and that set of ideas is the real topic of the class. I'm thinking of Marjorie Garber on Shakespeare, Larry Tribe on constitutional law, Stephen Jay Gould on evolution, Irven DeVore on behavioral biology, etc., as well as Cornel West. A major part of what made those classes special to me was that I was getting big ideas straight from the horse's mouth. Some big-shot profs are more inclusive than others as far as introducing their competitors' ideas to the class (Morton Horwitz requires students to read his nemesis' text, which is full of essays about why Horwitz gets everything wrong), but I was just as happy when they didn't. I want to spend my class time with Garber hearing from Garber! I have a whole lifetime to read Harold Bloom's books myself if I want a contrasting perspective on Macbeth, but I'll never get another chance to hear HER ideas from HER. IMHO, in the context of a whole liberal arts education with 32 courses or more, there's plenty of room for some classes like that.</p>
<p>I agree 100% Hanna. Like you I would prefer to hear it "straight from the horse's mouth". Colleges should make available views from a wide spectrum, the left, right and middle. Can you imagine how dull an academic environment would be if you did not have the ability to hear contrasting perspectives?</p>
<p>
[quote]
I should add, in all fairness, that most of the eminent professors I've had could be considered to be "indoctrinating" their students, in the sense that they are often people who've come up with an original and distinctive way of looking at a classic subject, and that set of ideas is the real topic of the class. I'm thinking of Marjorie Garber on Shakespeare, Larry Tribe on constitutional law, Stephen Jay Gould on evolution
[/quote]
Gould is popular with those on the humanities side of Snow's "Two Cultures" as well as an icon to those on the left, and learning first-hand from Gould is not to have learned at all. Many on the left see science the way the Bush White House apparently sees Federal Prosecutors; as an entitity that finds what you want it to find, focuses where the wielders of power want it to focus. The "truth" is not an absolute, but culturally determined. Gould, BTW, was one of those spear-heading the charge against EO Wilson for daring to suggest (in Sociobiology) that there might be human temperments and innate differences. I think the economist Paul Krugman puts it best regarding Gould
[quote]
Consider, for example, evolutionary biology. Like most American intellectuals, I first learned about this subject from the writings of Stephen Jay Gould. But I eventually came to realize that working biologists regard Gould much the same way that economists regard Robert Reich: talented writer, too bad he never gets anything right. Serious evolutionary theorists such as John Maynard Smith or William Hamilton, like serious economists, think largely in terms of mathematical models. Indeed, the introduction to Maynard Smith's classic tract Evolutionary Genetics flatly declares, "If you can't stand algebra, stay away from evolutionary biology." There is a core set of crucial ideas in his subject that, because they involve the interaction of several different factors, can only be clearly understood by someone willing to sit still for a bit of math. (Try to give a purely verbal description of the reactions among three mutually catalytic chemicals.)</p>
<p>But many intellectuals who can't stand algebra are not willing to stay away from the subject. They are thus deeply attracted to a graceful writer like Gould, who frequently misrepresents the field (perhaps because he does not fully understand its essentially mathematical logic), but who wraps his misrepresentations in so many layers of impressive, if irrelevant, historical and literary erudition that they seem profound.</p>
[/quote]
</a></p>
<p>Princeton is PROGRESSIVE. Female President Tilghman and the mostly female Deans are PROGRESSIVE. Princeton is a feminist institution. Hillary has visited many times. LIVE WITH IT- that is why Princeton is number one. The Ole Boy Network is happily GONE forever. C. West is the greatest. More women and LGBT recruiting in Admissions.</p>
<p>If by "Progressive" you mean forward thinking, then I agree. But one would hardly label Princeton as feminist. Princeton's Deans were selected because of their quality, not their sex. In fact two of them are now Presidents of Ivy League Schools (Penn and Brown). And when you consider that former Princeton Provost Neil Rudenstein also recently served as Harvard's president, it would seem that Princeton has become quite the training ground for top college Presidents. With perhaps the Ivy Leagues's best balance between conservatives and liberals, perhaps you should reconsider terminology (and agenda for that matter).</p>