Just a day before the election, another piece of scaffolding invented out of whole cloth by conservative liars — I mean, intellectual activists — crashes to the ground: the notion that liberal college professors are indoctrinating their students.

I don’t think the reader needs to actively read anything in to that sentence to conclude the TR has called conservatives liars. The phrase “to make up out of whole cloth” means to lie and to insert the Jim Romesque “errr I mean intellectual activists” was done for comic affect not because she felt conservatives hadn’t lied. Yes, I realize that if pressed TR would say she doesn’t mean all conservatives.

The formatting doesn’t seem to have come through. The link to this article showing that students’ specific views on political issues shift to the left during their four years in college is missing from my comment.

No I don’t have any desire to have a conversation with Debrah. I had my say one time and Debrah responded exactly as I expected.

Thompson, in my opinion, insulates himself pretty rigorously from complexities and practicalities when he gets into the academic culture-war thing. As far as I can tell he’s completely sincere, though. Taking up the research, even to debunk it, would be a step forward , but as I explained, though, it’s not likely to be as entertaining as running another episode of the academic freak show.

I agree it’s easy for Thompson to provide another episode of the academic freak show two or three times a week. Fresh material constantly pops up. But I’m wondering how much research one needs to do when the topic de jour is Quantum Feminist Mnemotechnics: the Archival Text, Digital Narrative and the Limits of Memory. Read the comments on this one and I think you’ll find they are much more entertaining than the usual dissection of an academic stick figure DrThompson routinely performs.

You’re absolutely right on the liar thing—obviously I didn’t read TR’s post that carefully. The (largely) conservative criticisms about indoctrination don’t strike me as lies. And she doesn’t look very closely at the research—your link to The Washington Witness is good as a counterpoint.

I still like her post as a whole. One thing that comes through in it, and in many other things she’s written, is that she’s a good, engaged, and conscientious teacher. As a teacher, I find the assumptions behind a lot of the criticisms about liberal indoctrination to be insulting. It’s a personal reaction and not something I’d expect anyone else to put a lot of stock in. But with that perspective it’s hard for me to get too worked up about TR’s flippancy on the issue.

Speaking of KC Johnson, in the comment thread on DIW he commented about this post.

I’ve noticed that Prof. Zimmerman often employs expletives in his posts about me.

He did, however, raise one substantive issue in his very long post: “In that one, the crusading logic is even more obviously in the drivers seat, especially in the rewrite, which panders to DIW loyalists with low-ball rhetoric that Johnson couldn’t get away with on Cliopatria (I hope).”

I thought I would explain why the Cliopatria post differed from the DIW post. The differences between the two posts were marginal—and the differences between the arguments of the two posts insignificant. The “rewrite” was associated with neither “low-brow” (as in, the use of expletives in a post) nor “high-brow” rhetoric but with my decision to pay more attention in the DIW post to Wahneema Lubiano and other members of the Group of 88.

Since DIW is a blog about the lacrosse case and its effects, it seemed reasonable to me to focus on the lacrosse case angle of the petition in my DIW post. This approach placed a spotlight on the peculiar definition of due process presented by Prof. Lubiano, and so I can see where my decision upset Prof. Zimmerman, who has ferociously defended Prof. Lubiano for several months. I apologize for causing him any consternation.

I don’t now why these things always come with an insincere and unwanted apology—it’s a funny habit. And I don’t know where he got his definition of expletive. My understanding is that an expletive is a word that adds emphasis but “contributes nothing to the meaning” of the sentence (quoting Wikipedia). Johnson’s posts, of course, are full of expletives like the “of course” at the beginning of this sentence—something I wrote about a few months ago.

I did have a meaning in mind, and “low-ball” was a poor word choice. “Low-brow” wouldn’t have been any better. My mistake, as usual, was getting too fancy. “Cheap” does the job just fine—the cheap rhetoric is, for example, the gratuitous reference to “Pete (‘floating phallus’) Sigal,” which would probably raise eyebrows at Cliopatria. There are a couple other examples in my latest over-long post. But I’ll take this opportunity to make the correction—everything I write could use an editor, so I’ll take what I can get.

In what I just posted I’ve said quite a bit about the differences, marginal or not, between the two versions of KCC’s post.

David Thompson thumps the same drum but at least has a little more imagination in conjuring up outrageous academic villains—after all, his banner promises comic books, and what could be more entertaining than vanquishing “far left fantasists” intent on “‘groom[ing]’ youngsters with the ‘correct’ political outlook”? (it’s a lot more fun than the actual research, that’s for sure).

For some one who was so disturbed by Thompson’s lack of curiosity; his “Joy of Not Knowing Very Much” I’m disappointed by the fact you linked to TR’s post. While students political self identification doesn’t change much their views on specific issues sure do. To call conservative critics liars seems to be awfully strong language when the details of the study support the claim being made. Am I applying to stringent a standard to TR? Perhaps so, but then I think The NYT has a distinctly liberal bias and tend to be skeptical of many of the stories they publish. They seem to have a particularly difficult time concerning how to interpret statistics and studies.

Speaking of TR were you aware that she has erased her original Duke Lax post? You weren’t too happy when KC erased one of his posts. I believe your exact words were:

[snip—see below]

TR has returned to the Duke case many, many times over the past couple of years. It has a much longer tail across the internet. There’s actually quite a number of comments concerning the treatment she received from KC’s more (ahem) strident followers. Don’t you think people deserve to see what started the whole dust up?

I don’t see the connection between academic freedom and criticism of professors such as Ayers and Khalidi. Neither is in any danger of loosing their jobs and in the case of Ayers the question of how a terrorist/communist becomes a professor of education feels legitimate to me. I’m not certain why the left feels the need to defend fringe lunatics like Ayers or Ward Churchill. The very act of defending individuals like Ayers gives credence to the criticism from the right.

PS I’m experimenting with Zoho and I have no idea how the formatting will transfer. You might find some of their apps useful.

Who called conservative critics liars? I sure didn’t, and I wasn’t even thinking it, and I don’t see how the accusation can be read into TR (Tenured Radical’s) post, either. Thompson, in my opinion, insulates himself pretty rigorously from complexities and practicalities when he gets into the academic culture-war thing. As far as I can tell he’s completely sincere, though. Taking up the research, even to debunk it, would be a step forward , but as I explained, though, it’s not likely to be as entertaining as running another episode of the academic freak show.

No, I wasn’t aware that TR had erased the post that brought on the wrath of the blog hooligans. I agree that it’s a shame she did, because it is interesting and illuminating to be able to trace her involvement back to its source. Presumably she had her reasons, which I could second-guess, but won’t.

I snipped out the “exact words” of mine that you quoted, though. It may have been my foolishness that led to them being published, but it wasn’t my choice, and I’m not going to discuss them. Anyone who wants to can follow this link to get the whole story, and I imagine Debrah would be happy to take up the thread if you want to have a conversation. But the parallel you were drawing is not a good one. TR erased a significant post, and that’s definitely grounds for criticism. Johnson, on the other hand, quietly erased an absurd and overblown fantasy—an embarassing one, in retrospect, I would think—about the airbrushing of history by some anonymous functionaries at Duke. The irony is deep, and it was magnified for me because I was in the process of posting my criticism of his post about airbrushing when I found out that he’d just airbrushed it. In what I was about to post, I had written that “I have to give Johnson credit for keeping DIW’s historical record intact, though. He’s left this post up, complete with updates and corrections…. I would have been sorely tempted to pull an Emily Litella—‘never mind!’—and then pull the post.”

It may be that the stupid remarks you wanted to quote are the reason the post reappeared—without that episode I’m not sure Johnson would have been aware that I’d noted its disappearance. That would be my one and perhaps only real accomplishment writing this damned blog.

The formatting came through just fine.

I liked KC’s conclusion to his Clio article (the conflict of interest notes). It is clear that he is indeed, very conflicted. The quote he used from Mark Bauerlein was interesting as well: “when like-minded people deliberate as an organized group, the general opinion shifts toward extreme versions of their common beliefs”. For some reason that reminded me of the DIW blog. Having posted comments recently on his blog that is moderated “with the lightest of touches” and then not seeing my comments appear gives me a new understanding of his conflicted nature. His Clio article seems to say that it is OK to be critical of people like Ayers and Khalidi as long as it is from the perspective of being critical of the academic left and certainly not from the standpoint of “educating” the American voter. I could be wrong about this as many conclusions are hard to find much less understand. Take for example this quote from LieStoppers Underground:

Some Islamists in the Muslim world have made statements about Barack Obama. They has characterized him as the House Negro.

My only conclusion is that Barack Obama brought this on - and he is to blame for this.

I thought the conflict-of-interest disclaimer was interesting, too. It was probably appropriate, although I don’t think anything would have kept him from writing an informative commentary that didn’t need a disclaimer. But almost everything he writes about academia needs a disclaimer, really. The Bauerlein “groupthink” thing has been a mantra on DIW, and I agree that DIW itself has borne the idea out pretty well.