Exposing UCI’s ‘dangerous minds’

Several years after we bailed out of Vietnam, I wrote an essay for Harper’s Magazine expressing distress over the abrupt and pervasive change in the students I was teaching at UC Irvine from socially involved to socially disinterested.

Part of this change, I’m sure, was the result of public officials using citizen revulsion at student excesses during the Vietnam War as a club to beat down university budgets and anesthetize what they saw as the troublemaking potential of students and faculty alike.

I got well over a hundred letters in response to my essay, mostly from current students on other campuses who were outraged at the way I’d portrayed them. But there were also more than a few letters from readers who accused me of sour grapes because I was no longer able to clone students in my own image.

If that, indeed, was my intent -- which it wasn’t -- they were absolutely right. I was failing miserably.

All this history came to mind last week when the Los Angeles Times devoted the front page of its Sunday Current section to the ongoing -- and apparently tireless -- effort of the Neanderthal political right to protect the rest of us from dangerous thinking. This time they have returned to an old and proven foe that they see eating its way through the decent, God-fearing foundations of our young people. These worms, we are being told -- most recently by an alumni group at UCLA -- can be found on the faculties of our colleges and universities. They must be exposed and squashed before they influence growing cadres of students, if they ever start voting, to -- God help us -- elect Democrats.

The movers and shakers behind this activity are a recent UCLA graduate named Andrew Jones and political gadfly and right-wing talking head, David Horowitz.

Jones’ resume includes heading up UCLA’s campus Republicans and -- according to the Times -- being fired as a Horowitz assistant for pressuring students to file false reports about their professors. Jones’ riff on this approach in his UCLA campaign was to offer students $100 for each professor they exposed. The offer was withdrawn last week, not , I suspect, for ethical reasons but because it would have provided an instant source of income to an enthusiastic passel of creative students.

All this is connected up with an “academic bill of rights” introduced last year by state Sen. Bill Morrow, a Republican from Oceanside. It didn’t pass but will be offered again. And probably again and again.

Its provisions would make eunuchs of professors who have spent a lifetime becoming authorities in their own field. In place of the teacher’s judgment, it would require the artificial balancing of factors of quite different weight -- or, perhaps, no weight at all. It would reduce lectures to a recording machine, absent the human excitement, eccentricities and passion with which they are delivered.

My students were quite aware of my biases and political preferences. I was on record all over the place.

But they were also aware that this had no influence in my teaching, my grading, or the way I dealt with students.

And in my 21 years at UCI, I was unaware of any imposition of personal views on students among my colleagues. They were exceptional teachers who were also on record in many ways and places, involved in the life of the community, and expressing themselves as professionals in their fields and as citizens on public issues.

I’ve been retired for 15 years, so it seemed a good idea to find out if there has been any collateral effect on UCI of the faculty witch hunt at UCLA.

The answer I got was “Not really, but ... “

Two examples will illustrate.

Mark LeVine is a UCI social science professor whose specialty is modern Middle Eastern history. He sent a strong protest to Andrew Jones that he had not been included in Jones’ posting of “radical professors poisoning the minds of otherwise upright young citizens.”

LeVine feels that faculty at all UC campuses, not just UCLA, should be allowed the opportunity to be recognized on Jones’ honor roll.

He wrote, “I hear you have some kind of list where you feature profiles of some of my friends up at UCLA. I have a bit of anxiety that I’m not making these lists. Could you please send me some pointers on how I could get on. I have tried really hard, and was even yelled at by both Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity when appearing as a guest on Fox News.”

So far, LeVine hasn’t received an answer.

Meanwhile, at the other end of campus, a much quieter protest is taking place. At the risk of whistle-blowing, I feel an obligation to expose it, even though it might alert Jones to a new danger.

Howard Tucker is a professor of mathematics and a member of the Faculty Senate’s subcommittee on academic freedom. He has been teaching UCI students almost since the beginning of the campus and admits to being one of the last faculty members to wear a coat and tie in the classroom. He says his associates are much too ex- cited about the work they are teaching to be concerned about the flap at UCLA, adding that the only time he recalls the Jones’ pogrom coming up among his fellow faculty -- and then dis- missed as “idiotic” -- is while they have been changing to exercise gear in a campus locker room.

Then, on reflection, came the admission that should interest Jones. Tucker admitted buying a tie clasp in the shape of a peace symbol during the Vietnam War period some 40 years ago. He found it recently, and now wears it while he teaches.

“I guess,” he said, “that’s my statement.”

I retired much too long ago to be considered for Jones’ list. But some of the people who responded to my Harper’s essay clearly believed I would have been a highly qualified candidate.

I would have been proud.

*

While I’m on UCI, one short slap on the wrist.

I’ve been a regular at UCI basketball games for many years, and -- like the Chicago Cubs and the World Series -- the Anteaters keep falling short of making it to the Big Show, the NCAA tournament. This year started out well with a win over Stanford, sagged badly in the middle, then suddenly caught fire in January.

UCI is presently on a nine-game winning streak. No. 9 victim was arch-rival Fullerton. I was there -- in a half-full Bren Center.

The UCI student body should be ashamed.

If they can’t fill a 4,500-seat arena with a game like this in support of the team that has emerged, they’re hopeless.

UCI will try to extend its winning streak with games at Pacific and Northridge this weekend. Then they’ll be home for four games that will wrap up the conference and precede the tournament.

Have a look. Right now, it’s the best show in town.

* JOSEPH N. BELL is a resident of Santa Ana Heights. His column runs Thursdays.

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