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Mister Answer Man:  Special UCLA edition!

Dear Mister Answer Man:  Have you seen the latest news from the campus wars?  It seems that—as Scott Jaschik of Inside Higher Ed puts it—“a conservative group is offering students at the University of California at Los Angeles money to tape lectures and turn over materials distributed by professors.” What do you think of this? —R. Cohn, Long Island

Mister Answer Man replies: Actually, Ms. Cohn, dozens of people have written to me in the past few days about this, and I’ve had the chance to look over the website of UCLAProfs.com, which describes itself as “exposing UCLA’s radical professors.” Here’s their pitch, for those of you who don’t want to visit the site itself:

Do you have a professor who just can’t stop talking about President Bush, about Howard Dean, about the war in Iraq, about MoveOn.org, about the Republican Party, about the Democratic 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 ongoing class this winter quarter.

If you can help UCLAProfs.com collect information about abusive, one-sided, or off-topic classroom behavior, we’ll pay you for your work.

To see if we need information on the professors you’ve already taken, or will be taking this winter quarter, call 310-210-6735, or email bruinalumni (AT) bruinalumni.com today, and you could be paid tomorrow.

The following are materials we need for past or ongoing classes, along with rates of compensation.

* Full, detailed lecture notes, all professor-distributed materials, and full tape recordings of every class session, for one class: $100

(Note: lecture notes must make particular note of audience reactions, comments, and other details that will properly contextualize the professor’s non-pertinent ideological comments.  If the class in question is ongoing or upcoming, UCLAProfs.com will provide (if needed) all necessary taping equipment and materials.)

* Full, detailed lecture notes and all professor- distributed materials, for one class: $50

(Advisory: without tape recordings, detailed note-taking is crucial.  Particular care must be taken in transcribing the professor’s non-pertinent ideological comments as closely as possible to direct quotes.)

* Advisory and all professor-distributed materials: $10

Even if you didn’t take detailed notes or attend class regularly, you can still help UCLAProfs.com by alerting us to a problem professor not already in our database or target list (below).  This is a particularly attractive option for students wanting to report past classes in which their notes and attendance did not match UCLAProfs.com’s high record-keeping standards.  Simply provide us the name, your notes from the class (or substitute your current recollections), and any other materials you still retain, and we’ll pay you $10 for the tip.

To answer your question, Ms. Cohn, I condemn this enterprise wholeheartedly and unreservedly.  It’s going about the task all wrong.

Dear Mister Answer Man: Come again?  What do you mean, “going about the task all wrong”?  Would you care to explain yourself? —C. Coughlin, Detroit

Mister Answer Man replies: Well, Ms. Coughlin, for one thing, look at the pay scale.  Fifty bucks for full, detailed lecture notes and all professor- distributed materials for one class, including notes on “audience reactions, comments, and other details that will properly contextualize the professor’s non-pertinent ideological comments”?  A hundred bucks for all of that plus full tape recordings of every class session?  It’s downright exploitative, is what it is. In-state tuition at UCLA is about $6500; nonresident tuition is over $24,000.  That means students taking, say, ten classes per year are paying either $650 or $2400 per course.  And this Andrew Jones fellow wants to pay students only $50 for all that information?  UCLA is on the quarter system, with ten-week instruction periods.  So students are being asked to provide detailed lecture notes for twenty or thirty class meetings—or somewhere around two dollars an hour for all their hard work.

I find this reprehensible.  If I were a student at UCLA who wanted to rat out liberal, progressive, and “radical” professors, I’d demand at least a living wage.  Not that I would form a union or anything.  That would be marching down the road to serfdom.  But I’d definitely hold out for a better offer.

Also, I think the pay grades should be scaled to the kind of professor you’re going after.  Many of the professors listed on UCLAProfs.com so far seem to be involved in ethnic studies and women’s studies, and I think they’re worth only about $300 or so, myself.  If a student can bag bigger game, like a Howard Dean supporter in the department of political science, for example, I think Jones and his friends should put up at least $1000.  And if an enterprising student manages to out a scientist who criticizes the Bush Administration over stem-cell research, climate change, Intelligent Design, or energy policy, I would think a full quarter’s tuition remission is in order.

Dear Mister Answer Man:  I have to say I think you’re missing the point.  This is a straightforward attempt to intimidate professors, and it constitutes an attack on academic freedom as well as (via the taping) a possible infringement of the intellectual property rights of faculty members.  Moreover, if you read a couple of UCLAProfs.com webpages devoted to individual faculty members, you’ll find that these professors aren’t being charged with inappropriate behavior in the classroom; instead, they’re being charged with thoughtcrimes like writing for The Nation and signing petitions that call on “our members of Congress [to] assume their Constitutional responsibility to debate and vote on whether or not to declare war on Iraq.” This is wingnuttery of the first water.  I thought I could count on you!  Where’s the outrage? —J. Dewey, New York

Mister Answer Man replies: Whoa, hold on there, Chicken Little!  Next we’ll be hearing hysterical remarks about “McCarthyism” from the likes of you!  Listen, Ms. Dewey, maybe you haven’t heard, but everything changed on 9/11.  If you’re trying to tell me that college professors can go on about Howard Dean, or bring irrelevant remarks about the Democratic and Republican parties into their American history, sociology, and political science classes, you’re clearly stuck in the 9/10 mindset.  We are at war with people who hate our freedoms, Ms. Dewey.  It only makes sense that if we rid ourselves of some of those annoying freedoms, then those people will like us and stop fighting us.

Dear Mister Answer Man: So you’re not worried about how this information is being gathered?  What about the ten-dollar option for students who “didn’t take detailed notes or attend class regularly”?  Isn’t that an open invitation to all manner of mischief and nonsense?  —J. Spicoli, Ridgemont

Mister Answer Man replies: You may have a point, Ms. Spicoli.  I asked my wife, Mrs. Answer Man—oops!  I mean “Ms.” (don’t want to get the little lady all riled up!)—about this, and she suggested that Andrew Jones might have more success with those students if he offered them a drinking game instead.  You know, whenever your professor mentions Howard Dean, MoveOn.org, Iraq . . . it’s shots time!  No “detailed notetaking” involved.  It’s a win-win.

Dear Mister Answer Man:  I still don’t know.  This whole thing sounds creepy and Horowitzian to me.  I mean, spying on professors is cool and all, but I just think money taints the system. —J. Abramoff, Silver Springs

Mister Answer Man replies: That just shows you how little you know about the real world of money and influence, Ms. Abramoff.  As a matter of fact, the Chronicle of Higher Education (sub required) asked David Horowitz about UCLAProfs.com, and here’s what they learned:

The Bruin Alumni Association has no connection to Students for Academic Freedom, a national watchdog group, started by David Horowitz, that helps college students document professors who introduce their politics in the classroom.

Mr. Horowitz said that while he objects to professors’ injecting their politics into their teaching, Mr. Jones’s approach of “baiting people” is wrong. Furthermore, he said, Mr. Jones used to work for him but he had to fire the UCLA activist after receiving complaints that Mr. Jones pressured students to file false reports about leftists.  Mr. Horowitz accused Mr. Jones of stealing his donor list and has contacted his lawyer.

What Horowitz fails to understand, clearly enough, is that pressuring students to file false reports about leftists is what it’s all about.  See my answer to Ms. Dewey, above.  And surely Horowitz doesn’t have to be so possessive about that donor list!  Goodness gracious, let’s have a little honor among false-report-filers, shall we?

Posted by on 01/19 at 02:26 PM

  1. The Kos Kids have been on the Kase for the past couple of days.  One of the first things mentioned was that said recording of lectures is a lil’ ole’ violation of the student code.

    Posted by  on  01/19  at  04:39 PM

  2. "If I were a student at UCLA who wanted to rat out liberal, progressive, and “radical” professors, I’d demand at least a living wage.”

    Unless things have so “radically” changed since my days at UCLA (65-78undergrad and grad and very radical chic too) a vast majority of this very information is freely available to most members of fraternities and sororities.  The files date back decades, and were overflowing with detailed notes, quizzes, exams, A+ graded papers and blue books, and so much more.  It would seem disingenous of UCLAProfs.com to offer such a pittance to misquided unpopular geeks when the jocks and socialites could merely dip a few fingers into their files and garner a return on their investment of several dozens of percents.

    Of course there are also incredibly detailed notes and other pertinent information provided to all those students who have appropriately filed IDEA IEP’s, including transcripts of recordings and videos of the lectures.  UCLA has a vast library of videos of professors lectures actually.  You just have to check them out from the various reserve collections for the two hour time window, record(oops, i mean watch, right?) them and return.  It seems that Mr. Jones doesn’t seem to know what is happening??

    Posted by  on  01/19  at  04:57 PM

  3. Brilliant post, Michael. Well done!

    Posted by Chris Moore  on  01/19  at  05:14 PM

  4. I think D.Ho shouldn’t object to his former hanger-on doing this, in fact, he should compete w/ him. If more wingnut groups start competing in keeping tabs on the lefties, and pay students, why the compensation will start going up and the quality of the spying will go up w/ it! The unregulated Free Market is indeed a beautiful thing, don’t you think?

    Posted by  on  01/19  at  05:20 PM

  5. Maybe the students who rat out their professors could join a union, so they can earn a living wage?

    Posted by  on  01/19  at  05:21 PM

  6. Feh. I was picturing a bidding war for my concocted story of having the dread librul agenda crammed down my innocent, unbiased throat. Then I read D. Ho’s masterpiece about the biology professor showing Fahrenheit 9/11 prior to the 2004 election. I have to honestly face the fact that I’ll never be in Mr. Ho’s league.

    Back to the drawing board.

    Posted by  on  01/19  at  05:32 PM

  7. Dear Mister Answer Man: You’ve got it all wrong. The right to protect donor lists from unwarranted search , seizure and thievery stands at the heart of our constitutional system. I’m sure reader J. Abramoff would agree, his donor list is being splashed all over the media and he’s lost all his friends. It’s just not fair!

    Posted by  on  01/19  at  05:46 PM

  8. i’ll have you know that i called these people a bunch of cheap bastards yesterday on inside higher ed.com i also said that the least they could do is make it worth students’ while to rat on their teachers, because these are depression era prices.

    i believe that berube is plagiarizing my ideas. but of course he probably he thinks i parodied those ideas first in yesterday’s forum, before he had a chance to think of them.

    the early bird gets the word.

    Posted by  on  01/19  at  06:33 PM

  9. Damn you for your speed and accuracy, joker!  Now it’ll be only a matter of hours before Roger Simon posts something about how paltry these incentives are—and blames Clinton.

    Posted by  on  01/19  at  07:19 PM

  10. Horowitz shows his commie background in expecting students to rat out their profs for free.  He is clearly soft on the profit-motive—Dept. of Heimat Security take note.

    Posted by  on  01/19  at  07:27 PM

  11. I thought I’d blog on about the paltry nature of these new incentives they’re offering to college kids to spy on their professors. I am starting to feel badly for these student workers; they’re being taken advantage of by people who think they are *just* students, and not *also* workers. Do you understand the double-nature of the role they play in this complex situation?

    If it hadn’t been for Clinton’s philandering, the left would have remained in power, politically and culturally. The embittered pseudo-leftist professors who now feel the need to spout off in class and on-line about “the right wing conspiracy” could have just kept going on with their lives, in silent epiphany. But now we see so many vocal about their non-sensical views, that I long for the wisdom of Ed Koch. I blame Clinton for making the nation sad, and for causing these professors to make remarks that they would never have made. It makes me cry.

    Posted by  on  01/19  at  07:29 PM

  12. Haven’t been here for a bit, Michael.  It’s good to see you’re still in top form.  Tell the Mrs. (d’oh!) I said hello. (btw, i miss you guys terribly!)

    Dan

    Posted by  on  01/19  at  07:55 PM

  13. "Where’s the outrage?”

    Is anyone else experiencing outrage fatigue?

    Posted by  on  01/19  at  07:56 PM

  14. Let’s see: $650 to take a course at UCLA (lots more if you’re from out of state) vs. paying $100 to get notes, materials and recordings.  Sounds like a way to get a UCLA education on the cheap, to me.

    Posted by  on  01/19  at  09:23 PM

  15. Hmmm. I got the idea from reading the news about it that it was $100 per lecture, and I was all ready to hop on the bandwagon and turn myself in, if only the program would spread to the UM system.  But now I see it is $100 per semester...a real ripoff.  I suppose I could just photocopy all my lecture notes and hand them off for the $50, but you know, it just isn’t worth it.

    Posted by PZ Myers  on  01/19  at  10:04 PM

  16. I don’t understand why you’re against this, Michael.  The English Department, at least, couldn’t fly further left if some of them joined the reconstituted SDS.  In fact, I bet some of them already have.

    Posted by Scott Eric Kaufman  on  01/19  at  10:08 PM

  17. Scott, who’s against it?  I just want to see fair wages for a fair quarter’s work, that’s all.

    Which brings me to PZ:  I’ll be damned if the website didn’t say “for one class” (instead of “for one course”wink for that very reason.  It’s clearly meant to hornswoggle innocent Young Americans for Freedom into thinking they can pick up a quick $50 or 100 just for attending a class and writing stuff down.  When, in fact, they would have to put up with a radical Democrat professor for the entire semester.  Pretty sneaky, if you ask me.

    Posted by Michael  on  01/19  at  11:23 PM

  18. "Is anyone else experiencing outrage fatigue? “

    I was.  Then fatigue fatigue kicked in and my outrage came back.

    Posted by  on  01/20  at  10:21 AM

  19. Talk about playing into the hands of one’s enemies! Does Mr. Jones realize that he’s offering cash incentives for his fellow wingnuts to expose their minds to the daily leftist blandishments of some of most gifted professors on the UCLA campus? I mean, what if some of them flip under the repeated pressure to think critically?  This would never pass IRB on my campus.

    Posted by  on  01/20  at  10:44 AM

  20. what if some of them flip under the repeated pressure to think critically?

    OMG, I bet Jones didn’t even think of that.  Which is shocking, really, because the rest of his plan is brilliant from start to finish.

    I suppose there’s a lesson to be learned here about “unintended consequences.” And like Roger Simon (thanks for chipping in, my friend!), I think that lesson can probably be traced back to Clinton’s infidelity.

    Posted by Michael  on  01/20  at  11:22 AM

  21. I would probably agree with the Clinton connection. In a certain sense, it all began with Linda Tripp tape-recording her phone calls with the college-aged Monica Lewinsky. That’s probably when the Jones crew first realized that young people are foolish and malleable, and able to provide information about intimate settings that outsiders would not normally be able to access without paying for the cost of tuition.

    By the way, the joker who says they first noticed this economic connection (ie: the cheap bastardness of it all) is not the authentic joker. I’m the true JOKER who posted that remark to InsideHigherEd. But I really did mean it as a “joke,” in that I don’t find this whole situation particularly amusing.

    If students feel their professor is not following the course syllabus, or spewing irrelevant matter, they should talk to their departmental chair, or undergraduate dean. If enough students come forward to report a problem professor (which do exist), I’m sure the university would act on the situation.

    Posted by  on  01/20  at  11:43 AM

  22. Speaking of Jeff Spicoli (who’s a “he” by the way, Mr. Answer Man) from Ridgemont, what’s he up to these days? Did he get clean? Did he graduate from H.S.? Did he get over his feud with Mr. Hand?

    And what about Phoebe Cates? Is she still single?

    Posted by Bulworth  on  01/20  at  12:15 PM

  23. I have an almost irresistable urge to write the people I know on the list a letter of congratulations, and to write some of the other people I know at UCLA a letter asking them how they missed getting ON the list.

    Posted by Bardiac  on  01/20  at  12:50 PM

  24. I’m actually convinced it’s a secret plot—by the students’ parents.  A hundred bucks seems like it would be a perfect amount for a parent to give to their kid, through a front group pretending to be a bunch of exploitaitional dopes, just to get that kid to pay attention in class for a change.

    Posted by  on  01/20  at  12:57 PM

  25. What I want to know is what do they have against chemists?

    Posted by Steinn Sigurdsson  on  01/20  at  01:44 PM

  26. One hundred dollars doesn’t really go very far in Westwood these days.  It can easily be consumed in the course of a typical Friday night, and that wouldn’t include dinner.  Hell, the $12K that it costs for an academic year of dorm living would use up that $100 in two days; and i seriously doubt the food has gotten better?? One would have to be inordinately misguided to agree to Jones’s deal.

    Posted by  on  01/20  at  03:03 PM

  27. Speaking of Jeff Spicoli (who’s a “he” by the way, Mr. Answer Man) from Ridgemont

    Mr. Answer Man never gets genders wrong, Ms. Bulworth.

    But speaking of Mr. Hand, here’s a toast to Ray Walston, who really was brilliant in that film.

    Posted by Michael  on  01/20  at  03:18 PM

  28. I actually had one of those professors in law school.  He “taught” property law, meaning that if we were lucky we might hear something about property law in between his political rants.  *And* we had assigned seating and had to be there, on time, to pass.

    But even with all these factors, $100 would still be pitifully low*, because while I had to be there, I didn’t have to pay attention.

    And another difficulty for D Ho’s little buddy:  In all my years of university, that is the 1 (one) example I ever ran into.  And my schools were in California and Boulder Colorado.  Slim pickings . . .

    *Even if it didn’t stick in my America-hating craw.

    Posted by  on  01/20  at  04:34 PM

  29. There’s a reconstituted SDS? And here I thought the return of the bellbottoms was lame. Can’t you kids do anything original?

    Posted by Ron Sullivan  on  01/21  at  12:23 AM

  30. Ron,

    From H-Net’s 1960s Listserv (which should, I think, take care of all the official attribution stuff):

    All,

    Students for a Democratic Society issued a press release Monday announcing they will hold their first National Meeting since the infamous 1969 convention.

    When I was in Washington D.C. last year, I had heard that SDS was indeed stirring on several campuses, but I was unaware of any goals of reorganizing it on a national level.

    Among those organizing the convention are several notable members of the original SDS, including Alan Haber and Paul Buhle.  Buhle is apparently at work on a graphic novel-style alternative history of SDS.

    The press release, along with links to the current organization, is included below.

    What do people think about this?  Any thoughts about the impetus behind this?  Does it suggest parallels with the 60s in terms of the current administration and conditions of American empire?  What does it tell us about the current student movement(s)?  Is, as the press release claims, the Port Huron Statement “as vital today as it was in 1962?”

    Any thoughts?

    Ed Martini
    Editor, H-1960s

    Posted by Scott Eric Kaufman  on  01/21  at  12:35 AM

  31. FWIW, my view on one aspect of UCLA’s reposne is here: http://www.nyu.edu/classes/siva/archives/002701.html

    Posted by Ann Bartow  on  01/21  at  02:56 PM

  32. i wasn’t aware of this, but the founder of this bruin haha alumni organization, which sponsors the pitiful payments for ratting out teachers, actually graduated from UCLA.  in the class of 2003.  http://www.bruinalumni.com/aboutus.html

    i am pretty sure his 2.5 years of life past graduation qualify him for this venture, though.  no way would he put his credit card on the line unless he was really for real.

    Posted by  on  01/22  at  02:42 AM

  33. "I actually had one of those professors in law school.  He “taught” property law, meaning that if we were lucky we might hear something about property law in between his political rants”

    Property law is a political rant.

    Posted by Karl Marx  on  01/23  at  09:21 AM

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    Posted by  on  01/07  at  01:11 AM

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