The dislike of left professors?

[Calmwinds]

I have seen many people on this forum disliking 'left professors' or 'boring leftist professors'. Why such dislike?

Also, would you consider a person a socialist if, he is how do I say, not a very involved socialist? As in, if you were to ask him or her "Are you a full hearted socialist?", he would respond with a 'yes' every time, yet is it alright to be a socialist and not be very active in a party or being involved in workers parties or whatever it is that involved socialists do.

[Tatarin]

I have seen many people on this forum disliking 'left professors' or 'boring leftist professors'. Why such dislike?

I haven't met any "left professors", but maybe it could be because they adhere more to anarchism than socialism?


Also, would you consider a person a socialist if, he is how do I say, not a very involved socialist?

As long as that person genuinely believes in socialism, and is ready to work for it, then yes.


As in, if you were to ask him are you a full hearted socialist, he would respond with a 'yes' every time, yet is it alright to be a socialist and not be very active in a party or being involved in workers politicals or whatever it is that involved socialists do.

A socialist can have many roles. He or she could join an existing party and work from there in one or multiple questions, demonstrate or participate in a revolution. It all depends on where it is.

[valientejv]

I have never met a 'left professor' but I know people who are like them in the knowledge of history and current politics. They seem facinating and not boring. It depends on the individual or student who might be disintrested.

[blake 3:17]

I haven't noticed this dislike on the board but maybe I just tune it out. Universities are mongst the few places in English North America where people can openly espouse Marxism without facing major social consequences. There are variants of academic Marxism/radicalism that seem a bit opaque and disconnected. Some are doing really fine work, others not so.

My main problem with academics and academia is that the rhythm of life on campus is sooooo distinct from the rest of the world. Some left profs do great activist and educational work. A lot just theorize. Doesn't mean their theory is wrong.

I think those intellectual spaces are worth defending. Our campuses have been hit quite hard by Zionists and there are campaigns underway to defend the right to speak freely about Israel/Palestine.

The maddest I ever got was when a grad student asked me why I was reading a Situationist pamphlet when I wasn't a student. Urggh. Tried to stay polite. Sort of.

[GPDP]

As a matter of fact, I have two leftist professors, though they are distinctly different, as one is more of an academic armchair leftist, while the other is far more vocal and is actually active.

The first one is a self-professed Marxist. He specializes in political theory, though his greatest forte is obviously Marxist theory. While he definitely knows his stuff, I still find his politics quite shit. He dislikes the Democrats, but he has an Obama (and Bobby Kennedy) fetish that I cannot understand for the life of me. He does not consider himself a revolutionary, and is not active in any way. I like him as a person, but the label "Marxist" only fits him in the sense of him agreeing with Marxist theories and principles, without acting on them, and even holding politics contradictory to them. I'd say he's the kind of leftist professor most people here would find boring and disconnected, tucked away on an ivory tower.

The second professor, while not outright labeling himself a Marxist or socialist (though he agrees with much of Marxist thought), is far more radical (he actually considers himself a revolutionary, for one). He's a Vietnam war veteran from Georgia, and you can tell he's seen some real shit. He specializes in American politics and foreign policy (and his classes on those subjects are very hard). He's the most intense professor I've ever had, and you'll be hard-pressed to find anyone as outspoken and passionate as he is. He has a heavy dislike for academic politics, and instead sides with the students in almost every respect. Not only that, but he always manages to make time to deliver speeches and attend anti-war and progressive marches and rallies amidst his busy academic life.

Of course, I don't agree with the second professor on everything (unlike my other professor, this guy is religious, though in the liberation theology sense), but for the most part, his politics are much closer to mine than the other professor's. His lectures are a blast, and he's a hell of a comrade and fellow activist outside the classroom. I suspect most posters would agree.

So while technically, one could make the case that my first professor, in being an open adherent to Marxism, is a socialist, I would say the second professor is by far the better socialist. I've marched alongside the second professor in two anti-war and pro-health care protests, while I've yet to see the other professor anywhere but in the halls of my university.

[RHIZOMES]

I have a similar thing this semester. One for social theory is a hardout communist/Marxist but is sceptical of any actually activism. He doesn't hold reactionary views he's just a hardout dilettante.

Another for children's literature is more a left-social democrat but she's far more activist-orientated and is from a famous NZ family of left-wing intellectuals/authors/activists.

[black magick hustla]

I have seen many people on this forum disliking 'left professors' or 'boring leftist professors'. Why such dislike?

Also, would you consider a person a socialist if, he is how do I say, not a very involved socialist? As in, if you were to ask him or her "Are you a full hearted socialist?", he would respond with a 'yes' every time, yet is it alright to be a socialist and not be very active in a party or being involved in workers parties or whatever it is that involved socialists do.

You might be referring to me.

I don't dislike them. I just don't think I will learn much from them. I find more fascinating listening to an old communist militant than someone who makes a very nice living because marx has been more or less comoddified, which is a little disturbing. I am friends with some leftist profs, although I've never taken their class. I don't like someone grading me for how well I can regurgitate their opinions. I'd rather be learning about the curvature of spacetime or quantum tunneling. Seems something more challenging and legit.

[GPDP]

I have a similar thing this semester. One for social theory is a hardout communist/Marxist but is sceptical of any actually activism. He doesn't hold reactionary views he's just a hardout dilettante.

Another for children's literature is more a left-social democrat but she's far more activist-orientated and is from a famous NZ family of left-wing intellectuals/authors/activists.

That's interesting. What are their thoughts on Obama and the Democrats?

I just get so frustrated with my "Marxist" professor sometimes. His lectures on political theory are very informative (we're covering Hegel right now, and will move on to Marx soon), but on the rare occasion that he decides to talk about current events and politics, I wish he'd shut up and go back to lecturing about theory. His Obama worship is almost sickening, especially when he said there's no one in the world he believed to be more worthy of the Nobel Peace Prize. Upon my challenging this view, he even admitted that his view was almost entirely idealistic, while mine was more materialistic. I don't know how he didn't collapse from sheer cognitive dissonance.

Meanwhile, my other professor has no such illusions. He does hold on to the idea that Obama is basically a good guy (albeit one without a spine), but he does criticize him a lot, and even refers to the prize he got as the Nobel War Prize.

Hell, I even see the difference in their attitudes toward the Spy Center and the Global Securities courses the CIA has set up in our campus, no thanks to the reactionary asshole in place as our Dean. The first professor doesn't really like it, but says he'd like to let them stay anyway for their funding, while still somehow criticizing it. The other is extremely vocal in his opposition to the CIA's presence here, and demands that they get the hell out.

[GatesofLenin]

It's not so much dislike but more like these "left-leaning" professors talk one thing and do otherwise. I know for a fact that a university near me (it shall remain unnamed) has lots of leftist profs that talk great but when it comes time for action, they watch their own behinds and even vote right. The money is too great for them to keep their ideals pure and are easily swayed one way or another. Question time: would you jeopardize an easy job that pays >$100,000 a year for stand up to corruption? That is why I think most people hate left or right leaning professors, stand your ground!

[RHIZOMES]

That's interesting. What are their thoughts on Obama and the Democrats?

My social theory lecturer went on a big Marxist rant for two-whole three-hour lectures on postmodern fragmentation/identity politics/etc, like electing one black man to solve the structural inequalities is hopeless. He did however say if he could vote he'd vote the Greens as a pragmatic measure since they're the least shit which I think goes to show he's still a bit soft on capitalist liberalism. But he still has quite spot-on opinions on most things, he concluded the course with an Alain Badiou quote about how communism is the only answer for chissake.

Remember this is New Zealand and my lecturer is from the UK, it's a different cultural context. Besides people at my Uni who are politically naive enough to think Obama is awesome tend to take Pol Sci, not Sociology. :D That's the department that suits people with low political horizons perfectly, the entire department is parliament bureaucrat training 101.

[Invincible Summer]

I've had many "leftist" profs that tend to use a more Frankfurt-school style of Marxist analysis, and then deny Marxist "aggregate class groups" (i.e. proletariat, bourgeoisie) and class struggle.

It's terrible.

[proudcomrade]

In my own case, I attended a US state university whose faculty included a lot of hypocritical types; a lot of mandatory bootlicking for grades and recommendations and such, was required on the part of the students; and the outright contempt that quite a few of these professors displayed toward working-class people and culture frequently left me absolutely enraged. The exploitation of the adjuncts was the real killer for me- really opened my eyes to the fact that that university was anything but a safe and supportive place for me as a Communist. Oh, and the way they shamelessly led naive humanities undergrads down the proverbial primrose path regarding the odds of ever obtaining their own tenure-track professorships after sinking hundreds of thousands of borrowed dollars into some bullshit-studies Ph.D. program that would most likely leave them poverty-stricken and unemployable.

To wit, the two most trendy modes of thought on that campus were liberalism and Derrida. Marx was typically dismissed. We were supposed to spend a lot of our time sighing, being ironically post-everything, and spitting out five-syllables-long bullshit worthy of the Sokal Hoax.

These experiences left me quite jaded about academe and determined never to set foot there again. Occasionally, something that I might say here and there on Revleft will touch on this subject.

[bailey_187]

Sometimes "left professors" and Academics contribute more by writing their book etc rather than taking part in Activism anyway