(The whole article is reprinted here because the New York Times is severing links to its articles after 30 days or so)
This article, (Thank's Kate for writing it with balance and fairness), suggest's what's wrong with our education system. Anti-war, perhaps even anti-American intellectuals, the same crowd that pushed Political Correctness, has seen better days. Young people understand the threat to America demonstrated by 9/11. Many of their professors have analyzed the event incorrectly and I'm pleased to see students challenging their teachers' views and motivations.
If we probed deeper, I believe we'd see the same beliefs held by teachers in our high schools and in the elementary grades. Balance is needed, not brainwashing.
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Professors Protest as Students Debate
April 5, 2003
By KATE ZERNIKE
AMHERST, Mass., April 4 - It is not easy being an old lefty
on campus in this war.
At the University of Wisconsin at Madison, awash in antiwar
protests in the Vietnam era, a columnist for a student
newspaper took a professor to task for canceling classes to
protest the war in Iraq, saying the university should
reprimand her and refund tuition for the missed periods.
Irvine Valley College in Southern California sent faculty
members a memo that warned them not to discuss the war
unless it was specifically related to the course material.
When professors cried censorship, the administration
explained that the request had come from students.
Here at Amherst College, many students were vocally annoyed
this semester when 40 professors paraded into the dining
hall with antiwar signs. One student confronted a
protesting professor and shoved him.
Some students here accuse professors of behaving
inappropriately, of not knowing their place.
"It seems the professors are more vehement than the
students," Jack Morgan, a sophomore, said. "There comes a
point when you wonder are you fostering a discussion or are
you promoting an opinion you want students to embrace or
even parrot?"
Across the country, the war is disclosing role reversals,
between professors shaped by Vietnam protests and a more
conservative student body traumatized by the attacks of
Sept. 11, 2001. Prowar groups have sprung up at Brandeis
and Yale and on other campuses. One group at Columbia,
where last week an antiwar professor rhetorically called
for "a million Mogadishus," is campaigning for the return
of R.O.T.C. to Morningside Heights.
Even in antiwar bastions like Cambridge, Berkeley and
Madison, the protests have been more town than gown. At
Berkeley, where Vietnam protesters shouted, "Shut it down!"
under clouds of tear gas, Sproul Plaza these days features
mostly solo operators who hand out black armbands. The
shutdown was in San Francisco, and the crowd was grayer.
All this dismays many professors.
"We used to like to
offend people," Martha Saxton, a professor of women's
studies at Amherst, said as she discussed the faculty
protest with students this week. "We loved being bad, in
the sense that we were making a statement. Why is there no
joy now?"
Certainly not all students are pro-war or all faculty anti.
But "there's a much higher percentage of liberal professors
than there are liberal students," said Ben Falby, the
student who organized the protest at Amherst only to find
that it had more professors than students.
On campuses like Yale and Berkeley, professors say their
colleagues are overwhelmingly against the war. By contrast,
students polled by The Yale Daily News are 50-50.
Interviews elsewhere find students' attitudes equally
fractured. Some are solidly for the war. Some are against
it, but not to the point of protest.
"Protesting is a niche activity," said Prof. Michael Kazin,
co-author of "America Divided: The Civil War of the
1960's." "There are some people who do drama, some people
who do protest, other people who drink too much."
At Georgetown, where Professor Kazin teaches history, a
handful of antiwar students had a sleep-in last weekend on
Red Square, named for the color of the bricks, not the
political sentiment of those who gather there. Other
students expressed disgust, so much that Professor Kazin
said to his students that they seemed more upset about the
encampment than the war.
He hears similar accounts in academic e-mail chains across
the country. One example was a campus protest that drew 40
students, maybe 60.
Amherst's history should make it predictably antiwar. The
Vietnam protests were so spirited that in 1972 they swept
up the college president, John William Ward, who was
arrested in a sit-in at nearby Westover Air Force Base. The
protest included 1,000 students, 20 faculty members and the
president's wife.
Now, the departing president, Tom Gerety, is firmly
antiwar, as are most professors. The students, however,
have yet to be swept up. Last month, the Progressive
Students Association asked the student government to ask
the faculty to take 15 minutes in class to discuss the war.
The government refused. Some professors chose to take the
time anyway, but many did not, having seen the reaction to
the dining hall protest.
"There was a sense this is a different world," said Austin
Sarat, a professor of political science who was active in
antiwar protests in 1970 as a graduate student in Madison,
Wis.
Students opposed to the war say they appreciate the
professors' sentiments.
"It's a lonely place to be an antiwar protester on the
Amherst campus," said Beatriz Wallace, a junior. In the
dining hall, students have set out baskets of ribbons, some
yellow, some red, white and blue.
Prowar students say they feel just as alienated. "The
faculty, and events, has a chilling effect on discussions
for the prowar side," said David Chen, a sophomore.
In a discussion, Professor Sarat began with the proposition
that if you love the United States, you must, as an act of
patriotism, oppose the war. Students took exception.
"President Bush has taken an imperial position," Professor
Sarat insisted.
Michael Valentine, a sophomore, replied: "I don't think
it's the dominance of the United States. It's the security
of the United States that's at issue. They're saying the
only way we can ensure the security of our citizens is to
go in there."
"And to make the Middle East safe for democracy," Professor
Sarat interjected.
"Professor, that's only because a regime poses a security
risk," Mr. Valentine said.
Professor Sarat said the change in tone reflected a larger
shift.
"The notion that campuses are awash in political
correctness," he said, "is given the lie every day in my
classroom."
Still, he and others expressed wistfulness for days gone
by.
"In Madison, teach-ins were as common as bratwurst," he
said. "There was a certain nobility in being gassed. Now
you don't get gassed. You walk into a dining hall and hand
out an informational pamphlet."
The students' attitudes have many possible explanations.
There is no draft this time. Students on small liberal arts
campuses like this one are more diverse than those of the
60's and 70's. More receive financial aid, and many are
more concerned about their careers than about protesting.
But the students have also been pulled toward a more
conservative mainstream than their parents.
"The most left president they know is Bill Clinton, running
on, `I'm tough on crime,' " Professor Sarat said. "The
Great Society is to them what the New Deal was to me."
John Lewis Gaddis, a professor of history at Yale, agreed,
saying: "These are the kids of Reagan. When I lecture on
Reagan, the kids love him. Their parents are horrified and
appalled."
This generation is also shaped by Sept. 11. When Gary J.
Bass, an assistant professor of politics at Princeton,
asked his class on "Causes of War" how many students were
in R.O.T.C., two raised their hands. The rest applauded.
"I had asked the question before Sept. 11 and not gotten
that response," Professor Bass said. "I definitely hadn't
expected it."
A nationwide survey of freshmen by the University of
California at Los Angeles over the last 37 years reflected
other shifts from Sept. 11. This year, more students called
themselves conservative than in other recent surveys, and
45 percent supported an increase in military spending, more
than double the percentage in 1993.
At a teach-in at Yale, the president, Richard C. Levin,
announced that although he was against the war, the
speakers were chosen to represent a range of opinions.
At Amherst, Prof. Barry O'Connell, too, tries hard. As he
sits in a discussion group with students, he patiently
listens to those who argue in favor of the war, even though
he remains adamantly against it. Across the hall, a mug
shot of Henry A. Kissinger is posted outside his office
with the heading "Wanted for Crimes Against Humanity."
"My job is not to get my students to agree with me,"
Professor O'Connell insisted.
Still, he conceded, `There is a second when I hear them,
and my heart just falls."
Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company
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