Another CampusWatch Front at UCLA

[RPankn]

A message from Bruin Alumni Association President Andrew Jones:

Welcome to UCLAProfs.com, a project of the Bruin Alumni Association. As our motto attests, UCLAProfs.com is a long-term project dedicated to exposing UCLA’s most radical professors. The extensively researched profiles you will find here are proof of an increasingly radical faculty. As a large number of the profiles also demonstrate, these professors are actively proselytizing their extreme views in the classroom, whether or not the commentary is relevant to the class topic.

The result for students is nothing less than a debased education. Douglas Kellner rages about a “Bush Reich,” the vicious anti-Semitic troika of Gabriel Piterberg, Saree Makdisi, and Sondra Hale peddle hatred of Israel and Zionism, while Peter McLaren teaches the next generation of educators how to politicize their own classrooms ... (read more)

… and the list goes on.


Take a minute to skim several profiles. The need for an academic freedom movement that respects both the professor and the student should become clear.


We believe there is hope for depoliticizing the classroom and emphasizing professional behavior – provided we can count on your support.


What can you do to help?


- Your generous tax-deductible donation will allow us to offer compensation to the students helping us on this project. We are paying for top-quality class notes, lecture recordings and other materials because volunteer labor and internet anecdotes do not provide solid proof of abusive professor behavior. As the saying goes, “You get what you pay for.” We demand quality from our contributors, and with your help, we’ll be able to pay them for their hard work.


- Express your concern to upper UCLA and UC administration figures (if emailing, please carbon copy to bruinalumni (at) bruinalumni.com).


- Join the Bruin Alumni Association mailing list. Drop an email to bruinalumni (at) bruinalumni.com, and we’ll sign you up.


Thank you for visiting, and for your interest in the Bruin Alumni Association and UCLAProfs.com.


- Andrew Jones

President, Bruin Alumni Association

www.bruinalumni.com/aboutuclaprofs.html

"Anti-semite" [their word] history professor, Gabriel Piterberg, an Argentinean-born Israeli Jew.

Perhaps the only thing more oddball than Piterberg’s political views is his background. While born in Argentina, Piterberg was raised Jewish in Israel. As he told the Daily Bruin in 2002, his state-mandated military service found him fighting in southern Lebanon as part of Israel’s 1982-1985 battle again Palestinian Liberation Organization infiltration in the region. In the Bruin’s paraphrase, Piterberg did not feel the war was “necessary for national defense.” It’s a safe guess that this view isn’t exactly kosher with the families of the hundreds of Israelis killed and wounded by PLO terrorist attacks launched from across the Lebanese border.

Already jittery from opposition to the war, Piterberg claims that the assassination of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin showed him that Israel was irredeemable. Feeling that Israel was “increasingly impossible to live in,” Piterberg decamped the country.

After leaving Israel, Piterberg became an Israel-hating (and some would also say self-hating) Jew, thrashing about in the fever swamps of Oxford University. And since being hired by UCLA, Piterberg has slowly established himself as an anti-Israel speaker and activist of local renown. In discussing the founding of Israel, Piterberg claims, “there’s no question that there was substantial expulsion [of Palestinians living inside of what would become the borders of Israel] in 1948. I call it ethnic cleansing.” And in addition to this kind of tireless activism on the UCLA campus, Piterberg and other small-timers also comprise a crucial base of support for the better-known national “critics” who work the anti-Israel circuit. In one typical example from 2004, Piterberg invited and secured honoraria and travel expenses for his good friend and fellow Israeli (and Israel-hating) academic, Ilan Pappe.

Tripe continued here: www.uclaprofs.com/profs/piterberg.html

[RPankn]

January 18, 2006

UCLA Alumni Group Is Tracking 'Radical' Faculty

By Stuart Silverstein and Peter Y. Hong, Times Staff Writers

A fledgling alumni group headed by a former campus Republican leader is offering students payments of up to $100 per class to provide information on instructors who are "abusive, one-sided or off-topic" in advocating political ideologies.

The year-old Bruin Alumni Assn. says its "Exposing UCLA's Radical Professors" initiative takes aim at faculty "actively proselytizing their extreme views in the classroom, whether or not the commentary is relevant to the class topic." Although the group says it is concerned about radical professors of any political stripe, it has named an initial "Dirty 30" of teachers it identifies with left-wing or liberal causes.

Some of the instructors mentioned accuse the association of conducting a witch hunt that threatens to harm the teaching atmosphere, and at least one of the group's advisory board members has resigned because he considers the bounty offers inappropriate. The university said it will warn the association that selling copies of professors' lectures would violate campus rules and raise copyright issues.

The Bruin Alumni Assn. is headed by Andrew Jones, a 24-year-old who graduated in June 2003 and was chairman of UCLA's Bruin Republicans student group. He said his organization, which is registered with the state as a nonprofit, does not charge dues and has no official members, but has raised a total of $22,000 from 100 donors. Jones said the biggest contribution to the group, $5,000, came from a foundation endowed by Arthur N. Rupe, 88, a Santa Barbara resident and former Los Angeles record producer.

Jones' group is following in the footsteps of various conservative groups that have taken steps, including monitoring professors, to counter what they regard as an overwhelming leftist tilt at elite colleges and universities around the country. He said many of these efforts, however, have done a poor job of documenting their claims. As a result, Jones said, the Bruin Alumni Assn. is offering to pay students for tapes and notes from classes.

"We're just trying to get people back on a professional level of things. Having been a student myself up until 2003, and then watching what other students like myself have gone through, I'm very concerned about the level of professional teaching at UCLA," said Jones, who said he is supporting himself with a modest salary from the organization and is its only full-time employee.

He said he plans to show what he considers biased material to professors and administrators and seek to have teachers present more balanced lectures or possibly face reprimand.

UCLA administrators say they are planning no immediate legal action, other than to notify Jones and to alert students that selling course materials without the consent of the instructor and Chancellor Albert Carnesale violates university policy. Patricia Jasper, a university lawyer, said UCLA would reserve the right to take legal action if any students engaged in unauthorized selling of materials.

Adrienne Lavine, chairwoman of UCLA's academic senate, agreed that the university could do little more at this point. She said she found the profiles on the alumni group's website "inflammatory" and "not a positive way to address the concerns that Mr. Jones has expressed." Still, she said, "I certainly support freedom of speech and that extends to Andrew Jones as much as it does to every faculty member on campus."

The group's recent campaign has upset a number of targeted professors and triggered the resignation last weekend of Harvard historian Stephan Thernstrom, a prominent affirmative action opponent and former UCLA professor, from the advisory board for Jones' organization.

Thernstrom said he joined the alumni group's more than 20-member advisory board last year because he believed it "had a legitimate objective of combating the extraordinary politicization of the faculty on elite campuses today."

Still, Thernstrom said, "I felt it was extremely unwise, one, to put out a list of targets of investigation and to agree to pay students to provide information about what was going on in the classroom of those students. That just seems to me way too intrusive. It seems to me a kind of vigilantism that I very much object to."

Thernstrom said a fellow advisory board member, Jascha Kessler, an emeritus UCLA English professor, also resigned for the same reason. Kessler could not be reached for comment, but Jones confirmed that Kessler had resigned.

Jones said other members of the advisory board include Linda Chavez [pro-Batista gusano], former federal civil rights commissioner in the Reagan administration and head of a Virginia-based anti-affirmative action group; former Republican Rep. Jim Rogan; and current UCLA professors Matt Malkan and Thomas Schwartz.

Jones said he has lined up one student who, for $100 a class session, has agreed to provide tapes, detailed lecture notes and materials with what the group considers inappropriate opinion. He would not name the student or the professor whose class will be monitored. Jones characterized the work as non-commercial news gathering and advocacy that does not violate university policy.

On one of its websites, the Bruin Alumni Group names education professor Peter McLaren as No. 1 on its "The Dirty Thirty: Ranking the Worst of the Worst." It says "this Canadian native teaches the next generation of teachers and professors how to properly indoctrinate students."

McLaren, in a telephone interview, called the alumni group's tactics "beneath contempt."

"Any sober, concerned citizen would look at this and see right through it as a reactionary form of McCarthyism. Any decent American is going to see through this kind of right-wing propaganda. I just find it has no credibility," he said.

The website also lists history professor Ellen DuBois, saying she "is in every way the modern female academic: militant, impatient, accusatory, and radical — very radical." In response, DuBois said: "This is a totally abhorrent invitation to students to participate in a witch hunt … against their professors."

But DuBois minimized the effect on campus, saying "it's not even clear this is much other than the ill-considered action of a handful, if that, of individuals."

The group's leading financial backer, Rupe, is a UCLA alumnus. He said his foundation donated $5,000 because "I think there's not enough balance on the campus. Some families are going into hock to send their kids there, and are not getting their money's worth."

Rupe said the group's plan to pay students to record alleged bias "would be ideal if it could be done legally."

Rupe's philanthropy is not centered on conservative causes. His foundation donated $500,000 to UC Santa Barbara in 1998 to endow a professorship studying the effects of the media on social behavior.

Ronald E. Rice, who holds the professorship, said Rupe told him he was "really interested in the truth. He wants to bring people with different perspectives together to really argue."


www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-ucla18jan18,0,4943877.story?track=tottext,0,5493744.story?track=tothtml

[RPankn]

Bruin Alumni Association Targets 'Radical' Faculty

By Malcolm Maclachlan

(published January 17th, 2006)

An organization calling itself the "Bruin Alumni Association" that has no official affiliation with the University of California has published an online list of UCLA professors it deems "radical." The Association also posted an online offer to pay students for evidence proving that instructors have been espousing left-wing views in class, in violation of University of California rules.

The Association lists an advisory board of UCLA alumni that includes Senator and current Congressional candidate Bill Morrow, R-San Diego, former Congressman Jim Rogan, and former California Republican Party head Shawn Steel. The group's founder is Andrew Jones, a 2003 UCLA graduate who has worked as a research assistant to David Horowitz, the right-wing commentator closely identified with criticizing universities for being too liberal.

The Web site, www.uclaprofs.com, lists 31 current and former professors in disciplines such as African-American studies, Chicano studies, education, history and political science. These names are linked to detailed profiles of professors and their activities. There is also a ratings system in which faculty are rated from one to five "black power" fists to indicate how radical they are.

The site, which states that it was launched Jan. 7, also includes a button that reads, "UCLA Students: Help UCLAprofs and get paid!" This invitation leads to a page that states:

"Do you have a professor who just can't stop talking about President Bush, about the war in Iraq, about the Republican Party, or any other ideological issue that has nothing to do with the class subject matter? It doesn't matter whether this is a past class, or your class for this coming winter quarter. If you help UCLAProfs.com expose the professor, we'll pay you for your work. Full, detailed lecture notes, all professor-distributed materials, and full tape recordings of every class session, for one class: $100."

This offer was followed by a list of another 24 professors who had yet to be profiled but were "of special interest." The text of the offer matched that sent to Capitol Weekly by several listed professors.

Offering to pay students for notes and recordings violates University of California rules, according to UCLA campus counsel Patricia Jasper. A 2003 policy gives instructors copyright on their class materials. Another rule precludes the recording off [sic] classes without explicit permission and disclosure of the purpose of the recording.

The original offer was taken down over the weekend, then reposted with numerous legal disclaimers. However, Jasper said, it was still not fully in compliance, and that she planned to contact Jones. Jasper said that she [[/i]sic[/i]] her only contact with Jones so far occurred last year, when she sent him a warning that his website and donation materials were causing confusion among some UCLA alumni, who thought the group was officially connected with the school.

Jones, who is the only person listed under the "Who We Are" section of the Association Web site, is already a well-known conservative on the UCLA campus. A former chair of the UCLA Bruins Republicans and founder of the conservative campus publication the UCLA Criterion, he might be best known for his "Affirmative Action Bake Sale." The February, 2003, publicity stunt offered lower prices on baked goods to minority students. Jones did not return calls and e-mails requesting comment for this story.

One targeted professor, Ellen Dubois of the History Department, said that the website concerned her, especially considering that the California legislature has taken up the issues in two recent bills: SB 1335, the "student bill of rights" stalled in the Senate last year, but has reemerged as SB 5. Both bills have been attacked by academics as "McCarthyism."

Dubois said sent a letter to several members of the Association's advisory board. Some of these, she said, said they did not know their names had been listed. At least one of these names has since been taken off the Web site. The letter noted: "Information about the existence and nature of this organization is circulating rapidly through the Web and will no doubt reach the press quite soon. You may want to reconsider your relationship to this organization in light of its activities."

For Congressman Rogan said his "one and only" contact with Jones was a phone call several months ago in which he was asked to give advice to the Association. He said he did not give permission for his name to be used in connection to any Web site that targets individual professors.

However, another person listed as a member of the board, conservative activist Mike Spence of the California Republican Assembly, said that he has been in contact with Jones and enthusiastically supports the site's mission.

"The joke is always the UCLA is ACLU rearranged," Spence said. "There is a radical, left-wing bias among faculty, not just at UCLA but at other colleges as well. I don't think there is a problem with sharing that information."

Professors' right to privacy is outweighed by citizens' right to know that their tax dollars are being used to fund "anti-American" activities, Spence said.

"I wish every UC had a group like this," Spence added.

However, Jones' one-time mentor, Horowitz, has distanced himself. He said he and Jones had a falling out and that he fired Jones from his job at Students for Academic Freedom two years ago. [Why don't I believe this.]

One of the professors profiled, political science faculty Mark Sawyer, said his profile included details about his life going back to high school, and left his parents quite concerned when they saw it. He added that it appears that black and Latino faculty were disproportionately targeted.

"What underlies it is a sense of intimidation, the sense that anything you say could be taken out of context and put on a Web site," Sawyer said.


www.capitolweekly.net/news/article.html?article_id=434

[karpomrx]

I suggest a torch light rally followed by a good old fashioned book burning. That should straighten out the fuzzy thinkers. If that is not enough, they might hint at burning the errant "free thinkers". Ah, nothing like academic freedom,( if it fits the truth as revealed to the leaders).

[Moses]

Interesting how similar Horowitz's front orgs are to those of Abramoff and Norquist.

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