On Sun, 6 Feb 2005, Doug Henwood wrote:
> [a friend who wishes to remain anonymous asked me to forward this post]
>
> In my experience there is a noxious trickle-down effect too, even for those
> of us radical academics who don't overtly teach or write about "war on
> terror" (trademark) issues. I recently lost my job at a major state
> university. More than one of my colleagues (sic) who voted against retaining
> me explicitly commented that my publishing "activist" articles in
> "unorthodox" outlets "uneccessarily" puts the department in a vulnerable spot
> when the administration is wielding the budget-cutting axe.
>
> JLG (anonymous)
>
Here's an interesting dynamic in higher education: this outrage and pressure about left-wing professors seems to be inversely related to the number of students who are actually being taught in the classrooms. The leftists who seem to be catching most of the flack are tenured profs who--let's face it--have relatively light teaching loads at respected universities. In contrast, community college teachers teach four or five courses every term to larger groups of students than most tenured professors at universities see.
Here's the interesting thing: in my varied academic positions, I have never seen a faculty member's politics play a role in hiring and retention in the community college setting. There is nothing like the horror story Doug posted above (nor anything like Justin's experiences as a left-wing academic). In short, being a leftist prof is not a big fucking deal in the community colleges in my region (Pacific NW). Consequently, most students in community colleges are exposed to leftist critique and analysis (social science is a distribution requirement, and they can't meet the requirement by taking 20 credits of econ).
So nobody tell O'lielly, but he's barking up the wrong tree: Getting rid of all the tenured leftists "superstars" will not stop the dissemination of leftist analysis and theory in our society, because this dissemination occurs mostly at community colleges and metropolitan universities that do not deny tenure to leftists.
Miles