UCLA Circles The CAP Wagon

UCLA now has its CAP: The Bruin Alumni Association, started by Andrew Jones , former College Republicans head for the campus. And the profs don't like it.

BAA is focusing on radical profs, as explained on its Web site:

The result for students [of profs "actively proselytizing their extreme views in the classroom, whether or not the commentary is relevant to the class topic"] 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 ...

The group has posted profiles of 30 such profs, an action that was not viewed kindly by the head of the UCLA academics, according to today's LATimes:

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."

The "little more" Lavine is referring to is big enough. The University has told students that it is illegal to "sell" transcripts of courses to third parties -- like BAA, which is offering a $100 bounty for evidence of in-class rants.

Illegal? Really? The students pay to go to the lecture, which means, in effect, the professors "sell" their lectures. But that's not the point. BAA is interested particularly in rants that are off-topic for the class, so Lavine's concern about a student receiving a payment for a transcript or recording is not relevant.

Lavine said she's concerned that BAA is violating the free speech of profs -- the typical Leftist position that any criticism of what they say is an effort to curtail free speech. Of course, it's not. It's an effort to encourage it, but shaming these verbal bullied into allowing free speech in their classrooms.

One such bully is Peter McLaren, who you see on the right -- although he's quite a lefty. Here's what the LAT has to say:

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.

McCarthyism? Cute. The LAT does not share details from BAA's bio of McLaren with its readers. Natch. He's quite a piece of work; here's just the first paragraph of the lengthy bio:

Entering the domain of Peter McLaren (or at least his webpage) is a full sensory experience. The eye is dazzled by a revolving red Communist star and noble Che Guevara iconography. The ears are delighted by the solemn strains of The Internationale, the anthem of Marxist socialism, while the brain is left to struggle with one question: who is this guy?

Universities have had a free reign to go farther and farther left. Groups like BAA and CAP at least give parents and alumni an opportunity to use their free speech, and money, to attempt to influence the interjection of balance into academia.

Academia will fight; it wants to stay on its path to destruction.