This is what people mean when they describe academia as a cesspool of liberal ideologues. Over the years, I had come to see the students and professors (in New York City) as overwhelmingly liberally biased. What I now can see is how such a bias is sustained by willfully suppressing any material that conflicts with the agenda.
When Stephen Hawking decided to boycott Israel earlier this year based on the opinions of academics like Noam Chomsky I was astonished. How can it be that one of the smartest people in the world can hold such a dumb view? It turns out that this is quite common. As I began to teach at Queens College (City University of New York), I have seen firsthand how this can be.
It has often been said that there is no cure for stupid, while ignorance is easily treated through education. What happens when educators willfully steer their ships in an ignorant direction? It seems that many academic ships are sailing in this direction. I happened to board one myself recently.
I began teaching “Introduction to Political Science” (PoliSci 101) at Queens College as a Graduate Teaching Fellow this semester. As I am new, I was given a “mentor” whose syllabus I essentially mirrored. After a brief review of the content I got a sense of what textbooks are being used in the practice of college-level teaching. I researched syllabi elsewhere to get some more ideas. It seems that what is being assigned at Queens College is not all that different from what professors assign elsewhere.
[…]
