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Professors worried students will share lectures with 'right wing sites'
Jon Street
Managing Editor
@JonStreet
on Mar 19, 2020 at 12:42 PM EDTProfessors across the country are expressing concern over courses being moved online as a result of the coronavirus pandemic.
One professor expressed concern that "right wing sites" could expose what is being taught in college courses.Professors across the country are taking to social media to express their concern over being forced to deliver their course lectures online amid the coronavirus outbreak, sharing with each other tips on how to limit the number of people who are able to see what they're teaching students, and criticizing "right wing sites" and even Campus Reform, specifically.
Texas Christian University Associate Professor of Political Science Emily Farris tweeted Thursday, "if you are recording a lecture on anything controversial, be prepared for right wing sites to ask students to share it." Campus Reform reached out to Farris via Twitter Direct Messaging to allow her the opportunity to further explain her comments or to clarify. She later blocked the author of this article on Twitter.
LaSalle University Assistant Professor of Public Health Christen Rexing replied to Farris' tweet, asking why others could find topics such as "gun safety, women's health, elections, etc." to be "controversial, as they are "evidence-based."
"Seems like the flood gates could open," Rexing commented in response to courses moving online.
University of North Carolina political science graduate student Stephanie Shady also weighed in, saying, "Annnnd I just realized that the second half of my course focuses on public opinion towards and politicization of immigration. This will be interesting." Another user with the Twitter name "Prof CWO" replied "Sigh, I teach about white nationalism and this has been my biggest fear since we began transitioning to online instruction."
Columbia University political science professor Jeffrey Lax said he has been "thinking about" how students would be able to record classes.
Trinity College Associate Professor of Political Science Isaac Kamola who, as Campus Reform previously reported sought to hire a "Campus Reform Early Responder," specifically mentioned Campus Reform in his reply to Farris.
"If Campus Reform harasses you or someone you know, the best response is to 'follow the money.' Campus Reform receives $1.4 million from the Leadership Institute, a Koch-funded organization designed to delegitimize academics they consider too left. They are not a new [sic] source," Kamola tweeted.
A user whose website says they are a history professor at a "community college in North Texas" wrote, "I'm taking steps to limit this but nothing is foolproof."
Farris asked how Gunter was working to ensure her lectures are not made public, to which Gunter responded with one tip for her colleague.
"Instead of posting videos direct to LMS (which would then own them) I'm posting links to the videos on youtube. The videos themselves are 'unlisted' meaning you can't find them in a search or if you go to my page-only if you have the direct link. Doesn't stop link sharing though," Gunter said.
https://www.campusreform.org/?ID=14563
So, here I am, trying to wrap my head around the fact that liberals FEAR the possibility of the public learning what they are teaching. Does that make any sense at all? If I want to shape the world, wouldn't I WANT more people to hear the word, to understand my thoughts and goals, and hopefully to get on board with my agenda?
Instead, we have liberals who FEAR the idea that their thoughts might go viral.
Imagine that. We might suspect that liberal college professors are actually just propaganda indoctrination technicians. Brainwash the kids while they are young, before they develop critical thinking skills, right?
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 23 2020, @04:25PM
Ah, but this scenario doesn't create any sort of a slippery slope. These issues are always present in our views and values, but people who never really bother to delve into *why* they think what they think, never really consider them. All the scenario does is emphasize that your views are not necessarily what you think they are.
To understand the importance of considering these scenarios we can turn to one of the most influential philosophers of all time - Al-Ghazali. [wikipedia.org] People are quick to recount that the Islamic world was at one time the center of education and learning in the world. And that is, mostly, true. Of course everything from Arabic numerals to Algebra (from Ilm al-jabr wa l-muqābala) all came from the Islamic world especially during the Islamic Golden Age. But few ever talk about what happened. Why did this end, how? That is where our friend Al-Ghazali comes into play.
Al-Ghazali was a philosopher and particularly a religious philosopher. However, he rather tired of these sort of logical games posing various difficult to answer questions to views that were not really as sound as people liked to imagine they were. So he developed a new theory, extensively elaborated upon in his famous treatise, 'The Incoherence of the Philosophers'. He resolved all of these logical problems by simply rejecting them all, not all that different than you are indirectly proposing. He posited that when a leaf comes to light, it wasn't because it was heated to a certain level, because it was exposed to fire, or anything like this. It was solely and exclusively because God willed it to come to flames at that exact moment. And the only reason such a thing would repeat is because, each and every time, god wills it happen. It has nothing to do with the fire, nothing to do with the leaf, nothing to do with anything except for fire. Everything happens because, and only because, God wills it happen at that exact moment.
That philosophy was comforting to many because it again justified belief in absolutes without all these pesky logical issues that they tend to run into. And it spread far and wide across the Islamic world. That view also persists to this day. It's the very reason that the Islamic world went from the world leader in what was practically everything to a mentally desolate 'nation' with little to nothing to show for their contributions to humanity, in spite of making up a one of the largest chunks of our species' population. And indeed the Islamic Golden Age would come to an end relatively shortly following the adoption of Al-Ghazali's 'resolution.'