Wednesday, May 11, 2005

A Bizarre Tale

David Horowitz relates a tale from a prestigious New England college all too believable for those with exposure to such places:

The student, who was a political science major, had written a paper supporting the Iraq war in a class he had recently taken. When he got the paper back it had been graded “F.” On his previous paper he had gotten a “C-” which he accepted grudgingly at the time, not because he thought he deserved it, but because he couldn’t actually believe his professor was grading him for his political views and not his academic performance. But an “F” was ridiculous. No one at this elite college, which required high SAT scores for admission, got “F’s” unless they wrote their papers drunk—and probably not even then. This time he went to his professor and complained. Taken aback by the student’s passion in defending his paper, the professor conceded that maybe he had graded the paper unfairly. “I’ll give you a chance to rewrite it,” he said, “but you need to use the sources more.” Since the sources were universally hostile to the war in Iraq, the cue was unmistakeable. The student went back and changed every statement that represented a point view to its opposite. Thus, where he had argued that the conflict in Iraq was central to the war on terror he changed the relevant sentence to say that it was a “distraction” from the War on Terror. The entire structure of the paper he handed back remained the same. Only the conclusions were changed. He got an “A.” From then on he lied on the papers he wrote for this professor feeding him the leftwing conclusions he wanted to hear. The result was a series of papers the professor graded with an “A.”

That academia has become the last bastion of tyrannical leftism is hardly news, and one must almost applaud the student’s ability to game the system. Frankly, any professor worth their salt should have smelled the rat of passive acceptance rather than serious intellectual inquiry. But although Horowitz seems surprised, the rest of his story (which you ought to read) shows that passive acceptance is just what they’re looking for. These days it’s almost like such a degree has been reduced to a brand name, but it won’t take very long for that to fade as graduates of such places lack the critical skills to succeed in the marketplace. Really, the only place for them will be academia ...

Posted by Matt on 05/11 at 11:28 AM
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