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CNN shed negative light on the Bruin Alumni Association, a UCLA group that is exposing radical professors who are unfairly and unprofessionally pushing their political agendas in their classrooms. The Jan. 18th news report used exaggerated one-sided quotes and cited three people, who opposed the group, while using only one positive quote (by the group’s founder, Andrew Jones). After reading the CNN article, I got the impression that the alumni group’s actions were ridiculous and out of line, but when I looked on the alumni group’s Web site, I realized that it’s actually CNN’s coverage of the group’s project that is ridiculous and out of line.
“Any sober, concerned citizen would look at this and see right through it as a reactionary form of McCarthyism,” said UCLA professor Peter McLaren to CNN. McCarthyism is a term used to describe anti-communist hysteria. Is the Bruin Alumni Association “anti-communist” because it promotes professional and unbiased education? Its actions are not “hysteria.” They are powerful, forward steps towards exposing and fixing a serious problem in academia.
I did my research on McLaren. As a sober, concerned citizen who sees right through this guy’s loaded words, I’ve decided that his quote in CNN is his own reactionary form of admitting to being a communist. This is not blind accusation. His personal Web Site flashes socialist symbols and music, and honors socialist icons such as Che Guevara.
The Bruin Alumni Association’s uclaproffs.com lists and profiles the most radical professors at UCLA, based on student accounts, as well as detailed class notes and recordings.
Guess who made the list.
Uclaproffs.com uncovers Mclaren, a UCLA Education professor, in an in-depth report that profiles his overwhelming propensity to discuss his radical anti-capitalist, anti-American philosophy that has no business being spewed around a public American university. If he wants to promote Marxist ideals somewhere outside of the publicly-funded classroom, then that’s his choice, but radicalism like McLaren’s has no place in the classroom.
There are a couple things the legitimize McLaren’s comparison of this group’s actions and McCarthyism. The group has a list of the top 30 radical professors at UCLA and Sen. McCarthy also had a list. McCarthyism dealt with communists and uclaproffs.com deals with McLaren who is, as far as I can tell, most likely a communist. The parallels stop there.
The Web site isn’t comparable to any kind of “hysteria.” Despite much of the media’s claims, the group’s objective isn’t an illicit plan to drive out liberal professors. Like the Web Site says, it is concerned with stopping all “indoctrination, one-sided presentation of ideological controversies, and unprofessional classroom behavior, no matter where it falls on the ideological spectrum.”
McLaren and other professors listed on the site, exhibit horribly unprofessional behavior.
The Web site references an interview published in “St. John’s University Humanities Review” where McLaren said, “Many students in our graduate school of education took action against the imperialist war on Iraq.” So the graduate school of education has done its job since many of its students don’t support the war? What does the war have to do with an Education major’s studies? I kept reading; “Most of my doctoral student advisees are getting their Ph.Ds so that they can become professors and transform teacher education institutions. They were radical teachers and/or social activists who now want to help to transform institutions of ‘higher’ learning.”
Apparently, Ph.Ds are meant for social activists who’d like to use their classrooms as lobbying grounds.
Unfortunately, thousands of students are sitting in classes like McLaren’s, where politics precedes education. Hopefully students have personal ideologies that are strong enough to resist such unmerited indoctrination.
Submitted 01-26-2006
MALIBU, CA
