Nudge
Dear students: You can get extra credit by doing one of these two political things; be sure to provide a screenshot/photo of you doing one of these two political things; you’re welcome.
Tip Jar
Dear students: You can get extra credit by doing one of these two political things; be sure to provide a screenshot/photo of you doing one of these two political things; you’re welcome.
It’s the sort of thing Republicans would do (have done) within their spheres of influence… which is exactly why you shouldn’t do it.
Nothing wrong with college professors encouraging activism (in my view), no matter how stupid, but you can’t connect it to preferential treatment.
@Blood Knight – I don’t think college professors should encourage activism. Their business is scholarship, not political preaching.
It’s fine for college professors to protest on political issues themselves, but they should not speak about this to their students, any more than talking about their personal lives.
A good question is whether the professor will give full credit if the student attends the walkout, but holds up a pro-Israel sign, or proves they called their congresscrittter, but the message they left is support for Israel.
Well that’s the sterile instruction that conservatives like certainly but it certainly would’ve made my college experience dreary. Same with being ignorant of their personal lives (over sharing is something else).
The important thing is that they not chill or punish speech and free expression in the classroom and are open about their own biases.
Wait a minute. WHICH ‘institution’ welcomed Chesa B[o]udin?
Berkeley.
Berkeley has so long been an epicenter of liberalism, I suppose it’s natural that they are swallowing ‘woke’ ideology. The ‘woke’ have convinced everyone their cause is progressive, so whatever the ‘progressive’ view is, you have to follow it. So insisting that students take the side of Palestine no matter what is sort of not surprising.
There would be nothing wrong with having the students research the Palestinian side of the conflict, together with the Israeli side, and develop an opinion they could write about, but if they are required to support a particular side for their grade, that isn’t acceptable. That’s the indoctrination the conservatives are always accusing colleges of.
Siding with one religious faction or another in a holy war seems decidedly illiberal to me. I doubt this person represents the prevailing sentiment of the whole university. Was the peace movement in Berkeley so long ago?
It’s not really a holy war though. The religions are certainly part of it but it’s also political, ethnic, territorial, existential – too many things to deal with.
@Blood – I suppose it depends what you study. I majored in medieval English literature, with a side order of Latin, and politics didn’t come up. It would be different if you were studying modern history.
On the Latin side – if you were wanting to study colonialism, imperialism, etc you could study Roman history, and that at least would not preach activism – though I do think the Carthaginians were grossly mistreated .