Monthly Archives: February 2017

Feb. 25, 2017 at 4:27 PM

Former Labor Secretary Tom Perez was elected Democratic National Committee chair Saturday.

The race for chair of the Democratic National Committee came to an end today in Atlanta when former Labor Secretary Tom Perez was elected to the position, beating out Minnesota Rep. Keith Ellison in a race that had come to be framed as a battle between the partys Obama-era establishment and the burgeoning progressive wing of Sen. Bernie Sanders. Conceding the race, Ellison, who was backed by Sanders, pleaded with his supporters to give everything youve got to support Chairman Perez. Some Ellison backers in the room, wearing the candidates green T-shirts and upset by the vote, chanted in protest.

The former labor secretary had appeared to be ahead, if only by a slim margin, in the final days before the election, which gave the party time to fret about potentially angry reactions from Sanders voters. Perhaps inevitably, given the power vacuum in the Democratic Party following the presidential election, the race became freighted with deeper meaning and led Sanders to condemn a failed status-quo approach embodied by Perez, who served under Obama. Well aware of the raw feelings lingering from a hotly contested presidential primary season, the two front-runners have been publicly adulating of one another and were spotted out to dinner in Washington the week before the election. Saturdays messages of unity were almost certainly planned ones.

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But Perezs win deals an undeniable morale blow to the Sanders-supporting wing of the Democratic Party, which feels that the partys loss in November was something of a referendum on the status quo. Nina Turner, a prominent Sanders-turned-Ellison surrogate, told The Washington Posts Dave Weigel that if Ellison lost, the future of the Democratic Party will walk away.

The argument from the partys Sanders wing was that Ellison was the best choice to put forth a message of progressivism that would reinvigorate the partys base, implying that Perez was something of an establishment centrist. But Perez and Ellison laid out essentially identical visions for the party during the DNC race. Both called for a more decentralized organization that placed greater emphasis on the particular political climates and needs of each state, better candidate recruitment, and well-honed messages of economic populism that would speak to the partys traditional base and beyond.

And both Perez and Ellison are well to the left of center on the spectrum of beliefs within the Democratic Party, though Ellisons views are more deeply left. In fact, hes more liberal than 90 percent of House Democrats, according to FiveThirtyEight ideological ratings that look at congressional voting records, donors and public statements. Ellison scores a -57 in our ratings (-100 is most liberal; +100 is most conservative). The average Democratic member of the House in the 114th Congress (2015-16) had a congressional record voting score of -40. Perez never served in Congress, but he did make an abbreviated run for attorney general of Maryland and has made public statements on political issues. Using these, we estimated his average score at -45, which is not as liberal as Ellisons but indicates that he may be further to the left than the average Democratic member of the House.

Taking the podium in the afternoon after hours of balloting and his win, Perez motioned for Ellison to be appointed deputy chair. The party, it seems, is looking to move past the drama.

Harry Enten provided analysis.

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Tom Perez Isn't As Liberal As Keith Ellison, But He's Still Pretty Progressive - FiveThirtyEight

News Corp reports a band of Liberal MPs were actively colluding to pressure Malcolm Turnbull in the media.

Liberal MPs have been plotting to get Tony Abbott back in Cabinet. Picture: Kym Smith

MALCOLM Turnbull has blasted Tony Abbott as reports emerged that a group of Liberal MPs calling themselves the deplorables has been plotting to undermine the Government and get the former PM back onto the frontbench.

The group of more than a dozen conservative members of the party held phone hook-ups and meetings at Parliament House to discuss the strategy.

The Australian reports the former Prime Minister and Senator Eric Abetz co-ordinated the meetings via calendar invites and group texts.

In a double-blow for Mr Turnbull, the report comes as a new poll released today showed the his governments popularity has plunged to a record low.

Speaking in Canberra this morning, Mr Turnbull accused Mr Abbott of deliberately attempting to skew the poll results by criticising the Government in an outburst last Thursday.

A poll is a snapshot of opinion at one particular time, the election is two years away and what we saw was an outburst on Thursday and it had its desired impact on the Newspoll it was exactly as predicted and calculated, Mr Turnbull said.

The Prime Minister then hit out at the media for being too focused on personalities and conflict.

It wasnt a Donald Trump-level attack, with the Prime Minister beginning with great respect to all of you in the media, but his frustration was clear.

Youre much more entertained by conflict and personalities than you are by jobs, he said.

Now, you can focus on the personalities if you wish, thats up to you, but Im focused on jobs, Im focused on economic growth, Im focused on ensuring that as hardworking Australian families can get ahead.

ACT senator Zed Seselja appeared beside the Prime Minister in his press conference this morning after being named as one of the Liberal MPs agitating to undermine Mr Turnbull.

Liberal MPs have been plotting to undermine Malcolm Turnbull. Picture: AAP Image/Mick TsikasSource:AAP

The group also reportedly included Kevin Andrews, Michael Sukker, Rick Wilson, Andrew Hastie, Ian Goodenough, Cory Bernardi, Nicolle Flint, Jonathon Duniam, Craig Kelly, Scott Buchholz and Tony Pasin.

Junior MPs were reportedly given directives to use the media to put pressure on the Turnbull Government on issues such as Safe Schools, same sex marriage and freedom of speech.

A number have now distanced themselves as the group began to feel they were being used to get Mr Abbott back into Cabinet.

Others were silenced as they were moved to the frontbench.

Some junior members had initially thought the meetings were purely to discuss strategies on how to push conservative policy positions before realising the other motives at play.

Mr Abbott reportedly wanted to keep his hands clean so other Liberal MPs were directed to push the government on conservative issues. Picture: AAP Image/Mick TsikasSource:AAP

One MP told The Australian Mr Abbott wanted clean hands so the group were co-opted into the attacks.

Mr Abbott had publicly declared there would be no sniping the day after he was ousted as Prime Minister.

But members of the group have opened up about the plotting after yet another public stoush between Mr Abbott and Mr Turnbull last week.

The outbursts youre now seeing from Tony have happened because the hook-ups didnt produce the results he was looking for, one MP told The Australian.

Most of us quickly came to realise this was about personalities, not policy.

Liberal Tasmanian senator and former cabinet minister Eric Abetz was a reportedly a co-ordinator of the efforts to undermine the Government. Picture: AAP Image/Mick TsikasSource:AAP

Others described the continued invitations to take part as spam requests, while one said Mr Abbott was becoming increasingly frustrated about the groups failure to follow through with the plan.

Its all about Tony, thats what most of us have come to realise, one said.

WA MP Andrew Hastie had reportedly suggested the term the deplorables to describe the group, a reference to Hillary Clintons comments about Donald Trump supporters in the lead up to the US presidential election.

NSW MP Craig Kelly reportedly informed the group he wasnt interested in taking part, while Senator Bernardis departure from the Liberal Party earlier this month was said to be partly due to the realisation some MPs were trying to rumble Mr Turnbull.

Finance Minister Mathias Cormann said today he had not heard of the groups meetings but did not think it was there agenda to undermine the government.

Minister for Finance Mathias Cormann hit out at Mr Abbott for behaviour he said was deliberately disruptive and completely unhelpful. Picture: AAP/Mick TsikasSource:AAP

Mr Cormann, who was a loyal Abbott supporter during the leadership challenge but last week hit out at the former Prime Minister for being deliberately disruptive and completely unhelpful, said the people mentioned cited as members of the group were all good people and valued friends and colleagues.

Theres nothing wrong with discussing policy matters internally and theres nothing wrong with discussing policy matters internally with a view of participating in the overall policy debates within the Liberal Party, he told ABCs radio national program.

Meanwhile, Education Minister Simon Birmingham told Sky News: Anything that creates the perception that a Government might not be focused on issues that matter to people is bad for that Government.

I can only reassure your viewers that Malcolm Turnbull and every senior member of the Government is far from distracted from these issues that might be generating a lot of newspaper headlines and a lot of chatter, Senator Birmingham said.

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Liberal MPs 'the Deplorables' plot to oust Turnbull, get Abbott back - NEWS.com.au

Elections have consequences.

Boom!

Thats the collective sound of liberals heads exploding during and after the presidents speech to the Conservative Political Action Conference.

Their heads were exploding because he started right out with an example of the medias fake news. When he said fake media is the enemy of the people, most of the liberal medias headlines claimed Trump said the media are the enemy of the people. When they report fake news, they are the enemy of the people.

The push by the administration to enforce the immigration laws on the books, in order to minimize the number of illegal criminals in this country, is being reported by the liberal media as anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim. Thats a totally false representation for the purpose of promoting their preferred narratives.

The liberal media are fixated on any little mole hill out of which they can make a mountain against the Trump Administration.

The liberals heads were exploding as he listed what his priorities are, especially because they are the same as what he promised while campaigning. To make matters worse for liberals, hes already made progress, or already delivered, on some of those promises.

Jobs are coming back to this country because of the presidents positive tone from the top. More businesses are now planning to build or expand in the U.S.

The stock market is already responding to this positive tone, as well as the anticipated tax code changes by this administration and Congress.

The president is determined to repeal and replace the Unaffordable Care Act. He and Congress are on the same page, despite the Democrats fighting it every step of the way, and the liberal media saying it wont happen.

President Trump is going to authorize significant funding to rebuild our military. We have great men and women serving our country, but our military readiness is not what it should be because of inadequate funding and poor strategic leadership.

The newly confirmed Secretary of Veterans Affairs is saying all the right things about changes we need to make in order to take care of our veterans, a commitment by President Trump from the beginning of his run for the presidency.

President Trumps biggest conservative move was the nomination of an indisputably conservative judge, Neil Gorsuch, to the Supreme Court. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has said Gorsuch will be confirmed one way or the other, despite Democrat stall tactics.

Instead of the liberal media pitching a hissy fit about how they are being treated by President Trump (treatment they richly deserve), they could be reporting on the amazing fact that the national debt has gone down by $12 billion in the first month of the Trump Administration.

This is a direct result of two executive orders by President Trump. One EO put a freeze on federal hiring except for the military, while the other EO which said if you want him to approve a new regulation, you need to show him two that will be eliminated.

In contrast, the national debt went up by $200 billion during the first month of the 44th presidents administration.

The overarching take away from the presidents CPAC speech was consistency. His priorities, agenda and purpose as well as his role as a voice for the people have not changed since he started running for president.

That consistency makes it harder to find a mole hill from which to create a convincing mountain in the eyes of the people who are paying attention. And yes! More people are paying attention.

Get used to it, liberal media! Hes just getting started.

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Liberal heads explode as Trump CPAC speech confirms he means what he says - Canada Free Press

WASHINGTON Speaking before a crowd of liberal American Jews, Arab Joint List leader MK Ayman Odeh denounced the Israeli Labor Party in biting terms Sunday, accusing it of betraying its principles and failing to stand up to the countrys right-wing coalition government.

He called on the American Jewish left to form a coalition with his own political union of Arab-majority and non-Zionist parties.

You showed up today because we know we cannot rely on the opposition we have, the one that is ready to sell out our values in exchange for power, he told a crowd gathered for J Streets 2017 National Conference in the Washington Convention Center Sunday evening.

He began his half-hour speech at the left-wing advocacy groups annual gathering by recounting the deadly clash last month between residents of the Bedouin village of Umm al-Hiran and Israel Police officers carrying out court-ordered home demolitions in the village. A resident of the village, Yacoub Mousa Abu Al-Qiaan, was shot by police and then drove his vehicle, possibly unintentionally, into a group of officers, killing 1st Sgt. Erez Levi, 34.

Police officials and politicians, including Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, insisted Abu Al-Qiaan had intentionally rammed the officers in a terror attack, but video footage released by the police seemed to show another officer shooting Abu Al-Qiaan moments before his car accelerated and hit Levi.

Odeh was at Umm al-Hiran that day, January 18, and was lightly injured when he was apparently hit by rubber bullets fired by police.

The Labor party did nothing to stop the order to destroy Umm al-Hiran and leave its residents homeless, he said. It has abandoned the human rights organizations and civil society groups that the right-wing parties attack. And it has failed to provide any real leadership toward ending the occupation and resisting the extremist agenda of the right-wing government.

He went on: They have called themselves the Zionist camp. The right-wing calls itself the national camp. We, Arabs and Jews together, are building a new camp, a democratic camp, that has already begun to show the world what real, principled, and strong opposition looked like.

This is the time for a real opposition, principled, fearless, he said. An opposition led by a Labor party that is a shadow of the right is no opposition at all.

Odeh, who leads the Hadash party within the Joint List faction, also sought to link Netanyahu with US President Donald Trump both of whom are intensely unpopular with his audience.

In Israel, around the world, and here in the United States, those who sit in the halls of power care only about their own power, he accused.

Trump and Netanyahu have cemented their power in the same way regimes have throughout history: with the language of fear and a slow-burning hate, by turning us against one another instead of reminding-us of our shared values and our mutual interests.

J Streets sixth national conference, which runs from February 26-28, will host a number of prominent Democrats on Monday, including numerous members of Congress like Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine and California Rep. Nancy Pelosi.

Vice President Mike Pence, Defense Secretary James Mattis and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson were invited but did not respond, the group said.

Then-secretary of state John Kerry and then-vice president Joe Biden spoke at last years conference.

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Odeh tells liberal American Jews that Israel's Labor abandoned its principles - The Times of Israel

Lobbyist and Liberal powerbroker Michael Photios "took one for the team" by resigning as head of the party's left faction to shut down attacks about hisinfluence on Premier Gladys Berejiklian and her government, a senior source has revealed.

Mr Photios, whose firm Premier State is registered to lobby the NSW government on behalf of private sector clients, announced he would step down as chairman of the moderates board at a meeting of the left faction at Sydney Town Hall on Saturday night.

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Labor's campaign highlights Berejiklian's close relationship with left powerbroker Michael Photios. (Video: NSW Labor)

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Parramatta Eels back rower, Kenny Edwards gave a brief statement to press outside of the Parramatta court house, after he pleaded guilty to assaulting his former girlfriend.

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February will end with parts of the New South Wales coast forecast to receive their biggest downpours since last winter with possible flooding in places.

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The University of Sydney is investigating Wesley, one of its oldest colleges, after the distribution of a journal that named who had sex with the most people.

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Three men and one woman were arrested around 11pm on Saturday night after a violent brawl at a hotel in Sydney's inner west. Vision: Channel Seven.

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Dr Eman Sharobeem migrated to Australia more than 30 year ago, since then she has earned two PhDs and campaigned against issues such as forced marriage and family violence.

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Shark detecting drones are being trialled on beaches in NSW to combat shark attacks along the state's coast. Vision courtesy NSW DPI.

Labor's campaign highlights Berejiklian's close relationship with left powerbroker Michael Photios. (Video: NSW Labor)

The moderates board is the structure within the left faction where debate occurs about which candidates to support for preselection and related matters.

As chairman, Mr Photios was the leader of the left faction of which Ms Berejiklian is a loyal member.

Opposition Leader Luke Foley has attacked the manner in which Ms Berejikliansecured the numbersto secure the job, declaring that "the powerbrokers and lobbyists who pull the strings in the NSW Liberal party have decided Gladys Berejiklian will be their Premier".

A video distributed to party members for use on social media shortly before she was sworn in as Premier highlightedMs Berejiklian's association with Mr Photios.

"With Gladys Berejiklian as Premier, who is really running NSW?" it asked.

Mr Photiosexplained tothe meeting on Saturday nightthat he had chosen to resign now as he wanted to leave the positionat the top of his game like former New Zealand prime minister John Key.

He noted that members of theleft faction had now secured the jobs of Prime Ministerand NSW Premier.

But on Sunday a senior Liberal party source said Mr Photios' decision was closely tied to attacks on Ms Berejiklian.

"Michael did not want to become the story himself," the source said."He's taken a decision to remove the perception, real or otherwise, of his influence around the government.

"He's taken one for the team. He wanted to make sure that he wasn't the issue."

However, another Liberal source said: "There's no doubt he'll still be the puppet master".

NSW Innovation and Better Regulation Minister Matt Kean and federal member for North Sydney and former NSW Liberal presidentTrent Zimmermanhave been installed as co-chairs of the moderates board.

In April last year Fairfax Media revealed that Mr Photios was one of several NSW Liberal powerbrokers asked to resign from the party's state council in a push to remove professional lobbyists from positions of influence.

The request from NSW Liberal state director Chris Stone came shortly after former prime minister Tony Abbott complained about conflicts of interest during an interview with ABC TV'sFour Cornersprogram.

Mr Abbott told the program: "If you are making money out of the people whose preselections you control or influence, there is obviously a potential for corruption. And that's the last thing that we should have inside the Liberal Party."

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Liberal powerbroker Michael Photios 'took one for the team' - The Sydney Morning Herald

This week has not been great for free speech in the U.S. The Trump administration excluded certain news outlets from an informal briefing with Sean Spicer, Republican lawmakers across the U.S. have been introducing bills aimed at curbing protesting in at least 18 states, and Betsy DeVos decided to reinforce the dubious argument that universities currently pose a threat to free speech. In her words, she claimed that The faculty, from adjunct professors to deans, tell you what to do, what to say, and more ominously, what to think. They say that if you voted for Donald Trump, youre a threat to the university community. But the real threat is silencing the First Amendment rights of people with whom you disagree.

This is not a new argument, nor is it factual, but it is one that has gained an inordinate amount of support from many on the left and on the right. The right has been waging a campaign against liberal academics for decades and opposition to political correctness has proven to be a highly effective political strategy. The myth of the liberal campus functions as a broad generalization that paints all college campuses as bastions of liberal indoctrination without accounting for the differences and diversity in those institutions. This myth is particularly dangerous in that it diverts our attention from actual threats to some forms of speech on college campuses while serving as a useful tool for those who wish to divest in public education. What follows is a list of the current arguments that serve as the foundation for the myth of the liberal campus and an analysis of why their validity should be questioned.

Argument: Liberal Faculty Members are Using Classrooms to Promote Their Agenda

One of the assumptions in the myth of the liberal campus is that simply because one has progressive values they therefore teach progressive ideologies. Nicolas Kristof laments the fact that so few Republicans are represented amongst faculty on college campuses, but this presumes that ones party affiliation correlates with how one might teach math or science or english. A chemist who voted for Clinton or Sanders isnt necessarily going to teach a progressive form of biochemistry, yet we assume because someone is a Marxist or a progressive, they are necessarily teaching in their discipline using that lens.

Secondly, this presumes that all faculty members, even when the very nature of their discipline is political, are able to speak freely on these issues without fear of consequence. Given that most college faculty do not currently have the tenured protections of academic freedom, most professors are unlikely to even engage in any sort of political conversation for fear of termination or student retribution. Untenured faculty on the campus where I teach are fearful of discussing anything that could even be perceived as political for fear of termination. This chilling effect prevents even general discussions related to that which could be seen as political and therefore partisan. This fear has only increased with the knowledge that conservative groups are openly encouraging students to videotape their professors to try and catch them in the act of so-called indoctrination.

And, as many of us who teach in higher education know, due to massive budget cuts across across the nation, universities more heavily rely on adjunct and graduate student labor to try and save money. Kevin Birmingham notes that, Tenured faculty represent only 17 percent of college instructors. Part-time adjuncts are now the majority of the professoriate and its fastest-growing segment. From 1975 to 2011, the number of part-time adjuncts quadrupled. And the so-called part-time designation is misleading because most of them are piecing together teaching jobs at multiple institutions simultaneously. A 2014 congressional report suggests that 89 percent of adjuncts work at more than one institution; 13 percent work at four or more. And, as Trevor Griffey points out, The vast majority of college faculty in the United States today are ineligible for tenure.

Given the fact that most classes around the country are taught by adjunct professors who have no job security and even less academic freedom in the classroom, even if that professor despised Donald Trump or conservative ideologies, what is the likelihood that she would actually engage in a 30 minute Trump bashing rant simply because she either has the platform or the captive audience? Entirely unlikely. Yet again, when we generalize about all faculty, we fail to discern between who actually has the power and privilege to go on such a rant at all, let alone discuss anything that could be perceived as political in nature.

Lastly, this presumes that simply because one teaches in higher education, they arent actually a professional capable of divorcing their own political ideologies from their work. The progressive academic advisor is still capable of giving her students advice on transfer opportunities without delving into the political subject of the day in the same way the conservative math professor is capable of teaching calculus without telling students who he voted for in the last election.

Argument: Look At Whats Happening At Berkeley!

Those who criticize the free speech problem on all college campuses tend to routinely point to those campuses that make headlines like Berkeley or Yale. The reality is that the small number of campuses making headlines arent actually reflective of most institutions of higher education. According to Jonathan Zimmerman, author of Campus Politics: What Everyone Needs to Know (Oxford University Press, 2016) There are over 4,000 places to get a B.A. in the United States. And most of them look nothing like the colleges that you see on TV, or if youre from the upper middle class like the one you attended. Those of us in that class assume that you start college when youre 18, that you live as well as study there, and that you graduate in four years. But most of our students dont fit those patterns at all. Half of all undergraduates attend community colleges, which are rarely residential and serve an enormous range of age groups.

As with most mainstream corporate news coverage, that which is the most sensational makes headlines. But most campuses dont look anything like Berkeley or Yale. My campus rarely makes headlines unless were asked to reduce more services to students due to funding cuts. But those stories of how my students lack advisors or mental health counseling because the state continues to cut millions from our budget arent as juicy as Milo Yiannopoulos getting yelled at by Berkeley protesters. These stories simply do not reflect the experience of many students, yet serve to reinforce only the most negative of stereotypes. My students are kind and tolerant but theyre also adults and dont shy away from difficult conversations. Most of my students work 2 or 3 jobs. They are parents and grandparentsmany of them the first in their families to pursue a college degree. If you truly think all college students are entitled snowflakes, I have a hard time believing youve ever met one. Sadly, however, these types of students arent the ones getting airtime.

Argument: Universities Silence Conservative Speech and Ideologies

One of the primary narratives surrounding campus speech is that universities are hypocritical since they claim to value diverse voices but actively work to silence conservative leaning speech or ideas. What this argument fails to point out is how conservative legislators and watch groups have been actively targeting what they consider leftist or radical views on campuses for decades. If those on the right claim to support all speech from all groups as a bedrock of freedom, why restrict or target certain types of speech? As Jason Blakely argues, One of the more troubling examples of this is the attempt to stigmatize certain professors through the website ProfessorWatchList.org, which compiles lists of professors that purportedly need to be monitored due to their radical agenda. This website professes to fight for free speech and the right for professors to say whatever they wish but at the same time it publicly isolates professors whose perspective is seen as offensive or shocking to conservative students. Through the use of this website students can now know before they ever walk into their college classrooms if their professor is too radical to take seriously (or perhaps even too radical to take the class). At best the website serves as a massive trigger warning for conservative-leaning students; at worst it is a modern Scarlet Letter.

This also ignores patterns of attempts by conservative lawmakers to try and legislate whose voices get heard on college campuses. In Iowa, Senator Mark Chelgren proposed that universities gather voter-registration data for prospective instructors to ensure a balance of conservative voices on campus. In Wisconsin, as Donald P. Moynihan writes, At least three times in the past six months, state legislators have threatened to cut the budget of the University of Wisconsin at Madison for teaching about homosexuality, gender and race. . . . At the University of North Carolina, the board of governors closed a privately funded research center that studied poverty; its director had criticized state elected officials for adopting policies that he argued amounted to a war on poor people. Amid broader budget cuts here in Wisconsin, Gov. Scott Walker, without warning or explanation, tried to yank all the state funding for a renewable energy research center. On both private and public campuses, instructors who discuss race, gender, class, reproductive rights, elections or even just politics can find themselves subjected to attack by conservative groups like Media Trackers or Professor Watchlist. Faculty members in public institutions also have to worry about the possibility of having their email searched via Freedom of Information law requests. The ultimate audience for such trawling is lawmakers, who set the rules for public institutions. Indeed, a Media Trackers employee whose job included writing negative profiles of Wisconsin professors recently took a position with a state senator who likes to attack universities as being unfriendly to free speech.

Finally, this argument assumes all viewpoints are equally valid and good. The reason UW-Madison faculty criticized the state Department of Natural Resources for scrubbing its website of language that stated human activity is causing climate change isnt because those faculty members are tree-hugging lefties who hate jobs, but because human influence on climate is supported by sound peer reviewed evidence. The reason you wont find climate change deniers working in ecology departments on college campuses is because that idea does not hold up to scrutiny and hard evidence. As Caroline Levine argues, Say what you want about professors, but we spend our lives pursuing the truth. This means relentlessly interrogating what we think we know, and pushing ourselves to ask questions that feel, even to ourselves, uncomfortable. We insist on evidence and logic to support our claims. All of our publications are subject to rigorous peer review by experts around the world. We cant win tenure unless the most respected people in the field confirm that we have produced original and valuable knowledge. We are not paid by lobbyists. We do not earn more or less money if we take one position rather than another. And so were free to explore unpopular hypotheses, and some of these turn out to be true.

Yes, instructors demand that students use evidence to support their ideas. Yes, we demand that that evidence not come from the first website you may have stumbled on in your initial Google search. But thats a very different argument than saying faculty discriminate between conservative and liberal ideas. In my class, I ask my students to conduct library research and to use peer reviewed data so that they are making claims based on the best evidencenot simply a topic that aligns with my personal worldview. And this is where we tend to conflate evidence with liberal ideology.

As Bill Hart Davidson writes, Ironically, the most strident calls for safety come from those who want us to issue protections for discredited ideas. Things that science doesnt support AND that have destroyed livesthings like the inherent superiority of one race over another. Those ideas wither under demands for evidence. They *are* unwelcome. But lets be clear: they are unwelcome because they have not survived the challenge of scrutiny. The resistance I see is from people who cant take that scrutiny and who cant defend their ideas. They know it. They are afraid of it. So they accuse us of shutting them out. They cant win, and so they insist the game is rigged. The answer is more simple: they are weak. Bring a strong ideaone accompanied by evidenceand it will always win. Thats the beauty of the place where I work. Good ideas thrive. Bad ones wither and die, as they should.

In this post-truth era of fake news and my YouTube video is just as credible as your peer reviewed journal article, we must support those who are regularly pursuing truth and knowledge for the sake of pursuing truth and knowledge and challenge the false assumption that teaching critical thinking is the same as liberal indoctrination. This means supporting the few areas in the U.S. where this type of work is still happening, one being on college campuses.

Argument: The faculty, from adjunct professors to deans, tell you what to do, what to say, and more ominously, what to think

This is perhaps, I think, the most egregious claim of them all for it essentially presumes that students are so gullible and incapable of free thought, professors can shape their minds and turn them into bots in mere seconds. This line of thinking comes mostly from those who have never taught in a college classroom or who have never actually interacted with a college student. And this is where I would welcome anyone of any political stripes to come and sit in on my classes. My students are brilliant. They work hard, they are kind, and they are capable of thinking for themselves. My job is to get them to think critically; my job is not to tell them what to think. My job is to teach them to question the validity of sources, to learn how to conduct research, and asking them to question authority, even if that authority is me.

I am incredibly proud of the fact that I regularly have students of all political backgrounds enrolling in my classes semester after semester because they know they will be treated with dignity. Last year I won the teaching excellence award on my campus, an award voted on by the student body and given to an instructor of the highest caliber every year. I note this not because I enjoy bragging about my accomplishments but because I, like most everyone I work with, takes such great pride in teaching well and making sure every voice and every student in our classes feels valuedeven if those students are white supremacists or Holocaust deniers. We go to extraordinary lengths to make sure we dont stifle speech in our classes, but that we do create an environment where students must engage with each other civilly. If demand for civility and evidence based reasoning is liberal indoctrination, then yes, I am guilty of that.

So what has changed and why should we worry? Years of divestment in public education and the demonization of intellectualism and expertise has created a culture in which we need people who can teach critical thinking skills now more than ever yet those same people are routinely painted as enemies of the state. Arguments about faculty as thought police on college campuses only reinforces the narrative that these institutions no longer serve the public and that they are no longer a public good. The myth of the liberal campus allows legislators to threaten to withhold funding from institutions where they feel their voices arent getting a fair shake. And when legislators pit taxpayers against university faculty (forgetting faculty employed by the state are, in fact, also taxpayers) we set up a system whereby politicians can argue that states need not fund higher education since these institutions are just imposing liberal agendas in their classrooms. This not only defies logic but also reality. If liberal professors were so good at indoctrinating students, how did Trump outperform Clinton by a 4-point margin amongst white college graduates? If liberal indoctrination were real, how did Betsy DeVos make it through college without adhering to a radical political agenda? Sadly, for many, this reality doesnt matter. What matters is only the illusion that liberal campuses are real, that they are un-American, that those who work there hate free speech and expression, and that they serve no use to anyone. When enough citizens believe this to be true, asking states to invest in education will be impossible.

If you are truly worried about the state of college campuses, visit one. Come to my classes. See for yourselves the level of thoughtful debates and dialogues that happen in most classrooms. But please, stop demonizing faculty and students based on crude stereotypes. This is a dangerous fiction, one created by those who see no value in public education and who dont actually care about the welfare of students on these campuses. These discussions serve as a distraction from the real threats to higher education and we all need to do a better job of dismissing them as such.

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The Myth Of The Liberal Campus - Huffington Post