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LETTER TO THE EDITOR: Professors should be treated with deference and respect rather than
Letters to the Editor | 3/4/08
Posted online at 1:53 AM EST on 3/4/08
/ Last updated at 1:00 AM EST on 3/4/08
To the Editor:
I read about Professor Hindley's experience with the thought police at Brandeis with considerably dismay, but not surprise. ("Prof penalized for alleged racist remarks," Nov. 6 issue) It sort of sums up the degradation of liberalism in the past 30 or 40 years, particularly, although not exclusively, in academia.
I remember how students and faculty acted when I was an undergraduate. Faculty members would often treat students as fools-since we were. Nobody, least of all students, was upset. We assumed, with some justification, that the faculty knew more about the subject being taught than we did.
No student would ever think to go to the administration about such matters. I don't know if there was a position of director of employment then but if so that individual would have been concerned with such useful and prosaic issues as how could the University hire and retain competent faculty and staff.
If some student had gone to the administration about such matters then I think the response would have been: Grow up. You're at a university to be challenged, not to be pampered.
I can just imagine the response of, say, former Prof. Ray Ginger (HIST) if the provost announced that he was placing a monitor in his classroom because of some comments he had made.
-Joel Margolis '65
I read about Professor Hindley's experience with the thought police at Brandeis with considerably dismay, but not surprise. ("Prof penalized for alleged racist remarks," Nov. 6 issue) It sort of sums up the degradation of liberalism in the past 30 or 40 years, particularly, although not exclusively, in academia.
I remember how students and faculty acted when I was an undergraduate. Faculty members would often treat students as fools-since we were. Nobody, least of all students, was upset. We assumed, with some justification, that the faculty knew more about the subject being taught than we did.
No student would ever think to go to the administration about such matters. I don't know if there was a position of director of employment then but if so that individual would have been concerned with such useful and prosaic issues as how could the University hire and retain competent faculty and staff.
If some student had gone to the administration about such matters then I think the response would have been: Grow up. You're at a university to be challenged, not to be pampered.
I can just imagine the response of, say, former Prof. Ray Ginger (HIST) if the provost announced that he was placing a monitor in his classroom because of some comments he had made.
-Joel Margolis '65
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