Just another example of how Truth means nothing to those on the left...

That being said, I learned a lot from having leftist professors. I learned how to think critically, make dispassionate arguments and to stand my ground when challenged. I don't think people necessarily need to pull their children out of university. However, it is very important to have a solid foundation of critical thinking skills before entering college. Otherwise I think it would be easy for an impressionable teenager to absorb a lot of the garbage that is passed for common knowledge on university campuses.

Fern:

Good points. I'm curious, when arguing with your leftist professors, did it ever come to the point where you sensed that if you continued arguing your point your grades might start suffering?

I was going to say -- The big difference between this depiction of the Mayans, and the most vile forms of anti-Semitism, is that the Mayans really did use blood in their religious ceremonies.

Just flabbergasting.

How's the nutty movie doing at the box office?

Kent:

Just when you thought the loony left couldn't get any loonier.

Kishke:

The movie is doing well. It got good reviews, and word of mouth is strong.

Fern:

Here's a question posed for you privately by a reader through e-mail:

An additional question to ask Fern is: "Do you ever also think that those who AGREED with their left-wing profs got a higher grade than they should have gotten, based on their papers, tests, etc."

Robert--

I think grading among leftist professors is a mixed bag. Some of my professors clearly down graded (or excessively harassed) the people who voiced moderate or conservative viewpoints. But there were a significant minority of my far leftist professors who truly graded based on how well a student presented and supported their argument. In undergrad I didn't have any left-leaning friends who weren't in my major (Art) so it's hard for me to know if any of the students who agreed with the professor got better grades purely because their ideology was similar to that of the professor's. In my art classes, professors would make off-hand remarks that were political/ideological in nature, but it wasn't really the subject of the course, so there were never any heated discussions in those classes. In my experience, the religious studies, political science and history departments were the worst when it comes to crazy professors (I went to Cal State Northridge if that makes a difference when it comes to these things).

Law school was a totally different experience because law schools have blind grading and because the professors preferred contrarian students. I also went to a center-right law school (Chapman), so that might be part of it.

What Fern seems be suggesting is to quite interesting -- namely, that the leftist slant is not necessarily leading to overwhelming numbers of students being brainwashed. In fact, I had read a news article a while ago that made this same point. Even so, when there is not a diversity of viewpoints, the academic environment obviously is going to suffer, and some students (those who are not well prepared, as Fran notes) will get brainwashed. In this environment, moreover, every student will be shortchanged for not being exposed to a diversity of ideas. I say that based on my own experience in college.

I, for one, did detect some biases when I was in college in the early 1980s; however, they were quite subtle. For instance, a student who turned in a sloppy paper (typos, misspellings, etc.) might get a break if the teacher liked the political views in the paper and knew the views were those of the student. A student with contrary views, on the other hand, would not be given the benefit of the doubt. At least, that was my read on things like that. These days, however, it seems that things are much worse, as evidenced by complaints of Jewish students being harassed at places like Columbia.

Incidentally, I read the University of Texas student newspaper quite a lot, and it seems that students in certain fields are simply unable to question certain things -- "diversity," "multiculturalism," "profiling," etc. without suffering harsh criticism for taking a view outside of what's considered mainstream. It’s all about political correctness. I would abhor the campus environment if I went to grad school.

David--The extreme nuttiness of many post-graduate programs is why I chose to go to a center-right law school. While I think it was a good experience to be challenged in undergrad (especially since that is a time when many students are formulating their world view) I felt that a post-graduate education really necessitated finding a like-minded mentor. If a conservative student (or even a liberal religious student, as religion and belief in G-d are often looked down upon by academics) is interested in a post-graduate degree, he or she can certainly find top notch schools that share their worldview. The University of Chicago's law school, for example, is consistently ranked in the top five and has a very conservative reputation. The Claremont Graduate University (part of Claremont-McKenna) here in Southern California is another very good conservative school.

My experience in graduate school is that I expected to encounter left bias and wasn't going to give it much heed. Of course, as an astronomy Ph.D. candidate, humanities were not a big part of my graduate curriculum.

Nevertheless, when I got out of the incubator into the non-academic world, I realized that my attitudes and perceptions had been subtly affected without my being aware of it.

I think that's the real danger in an ideologically unbalanced academic community. It's not that people are openly prevented from being conservative; it's more of a groupthink kind of thing. There's also the fact that students who remain nominally conservative are nonetheless denied the opportunity to hear well-reasoned conservative positions.

It appears that Apocalypto is not doing that well after all. See here:

http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117956326.html?categoryid=13&cs=1