Some blog readers may have seen a letter to the editor in
the LA Times by Chancellor Gene Block and Senate Chair Andrew Leuchter
which responded to an earlier op ed in the Times by John M. Ellis and Charles
L. Geshekter of a group called the National Assn. of Scholars and its
California branch. Yours truly suspects
that many blog readers did not peruse the letters section of the Times this
holiday weekend so here is a summary and explainer. The op ed was based on a larger document
published by that group and sent to the Regents. It accuses UC faculty of liberal bias and
of indoctrination of students in various courses. If you didn’t see it, the Block-Leucther letter
(along with other letters to the editor on the same topic) appears at:
Excerpt: …UCLA, like
our sister campuses, welcomes and embraces all points of view. Though we agree
that faculty should not inject political views into the classroom, Ellis and
Geshekter have merely strung together anecdotes from handpicked courses across
our system to try to prove a crisis. The plural of "anecdote" is not
"data," however, and they cite no meaningful evidence. In fact,
credible studies have shown that left leanings are typical of young Americans,
and college does not make them any more liberal…
The earlier (May 20) op ed is at:
Excerpt: …In
California, the state Constitution contains this unambiguous statement:
"The university shall be entirely independent of all political or
sectarian influence and kept free therefrom." Yet despite that, a bias to
the left is now accepted as a routine part of a University of California
education. That's the finding of a recent study by our organization, the
California Assn. of Scholars...
The study to which the excerpt refers is at:
Excerpt: …This report
is concerned with the corruption of the University of California by activist
politics, a condition which, as we shall show, sharply lowers the quality of
academic teaching, analysis, and research, and results in exactly the troubling
deficiencies that are being found in the studies to which we have referred...
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