An academic who can't take disagreement.

[Mark Healey]

I sold some books to a guy last night. Somehow the conversation got to the Sokal Hoaz. My opinion was and is that it was great. He showed that the king is naked. All those people in foo studies are pretty much speaking gibberish. About 20 minutes he comes back and returns the books and says that he doesn't want to give money to someone who agrees with Sokal.

When this guy is on tenure comitees, do you think he will even consider anyone who disagrees with his pet theories?

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

Guess what? That's quite a few professors and academics out there.

They're so wrapped up in their personal theories or causes or politics or whatever that they'll make things very difficult for you if you disagree with them. They'll flunk you or call you out right in class sometimes.

Fortunately, I found them pretty easy to handle: agree with everything they tell you, then forget it forever once you're finished with the class.

I suspect the reason some of these people are in academia is because they're too disagreeable or loony to make it anyplace else. Once they have tenure, they have their job as long as they want it and it takes a lot to remove them.

[PepperElf]

hating anyone who disagrees with sokal? hah.

i find that actually pretty funny cos i clicked the link and read that Sokal proved that the journals would publish pure drivel just based on how well it sounded and who wrote it... even though they knew it was crap.

so he's against people who prove the system is flawed? that's actually kinda funny.

[pile of monkeys]

I read the title of this thread and thought, "Oh, all of them?"

[South Texan]

When this guy is on tenure comitees, do you think he will even consider anyone who disagrees with his pet theories?

That is a rhetorical question, of course?

Fortunately, I found them pretty easy to handle: agree with everything they tell you, then forget it forever once you're finished with the class.

I often wonder if that is supposed to be part of the education we receive at these institutions. I have found that the same outlook helps when dealing with management.

[SailorMan]

Sokal was responding to the modern tendency of those in the sociological 'sciences' to treat the empirical method (i.e., the scientific method, used to determine the physical properties of things in our world) as if it were just one of a series of possible explanations for physical reality. For instance, in this view, the scientific notion that 'gravity' is responsible for the fall of an apple from a tree is treated as being as equally valid as, say, some remote, isolated tribe's view that things fall because invisible spirits pull them to earth. They would call these two examples equally valid ways of 'knowing' reality. The people who advocate this view, it seems, are trying to take the political ideas of equality and democracy away from the social sphere, where they definately belong, and are trying to force them into the field of scientific research, where they don't belong. I mean, start a research lab trying to build a better spaceship, and see how far the people researching getting to other planets by appeasing the gravity spirits will progress, compared to those researching the physical effects of various rocket fuels.

[zzapp the witch]

I believe that there is an invisible spirit the world over that pulls objects to the ground. I have named this invisible spirit "Gravity."

There's a reason my siblings and I go to most of our schooling online, a course I was failing in college previously, I am now passing with flying colors, and all because I don't have to engage a know-it-all professor in conversation. They don't grade you on how well you learn and know the material, they grade you on how well they like you.

[SuperB]

They're so wrapped up in their personal theories or causes or politics or whatever that they'll make things very difficult for you if you disagree with them. They'll flunk you or call you out right in class sometimes.

It certainly has changed. It's to the point where I don't expect I'll be pushing my kids to go to college. I'm not about to pay for the environment I'm hearing is becoming the norm lately.

[JoitheArtist]

*resists temptation to launch into rant about how the art department was the most conformist place on campus at her university* Yeah... heaven forbid you want to talk about things that might have some objective reality...

*shuts up and moves on*

[auntiem]

I believe that there is an invisible spirit the world over that pulls objects to the ground. I have named this invisible spirit "Gravity."

There's a reason my siblings and I go to most of our schooling online, a course I was failing in college previously, I am now passing with flying colors, and all because I don't have to engage a know-it-all professor in conversation. They don't grade you on how well you learn and know the material, they grade you on how well they like you.

Yes, but sometimes you get professors that like you for good reasons - like you are the only one that cleans the press and puts stuff away correctly. Or the one professor that let a few of us out of the final because we argued in class every day. By argue I don't mean calling each other idiots we had lively debates backed up with references from the texts so he knew we knew the material backwards, forwards and sideways.

[SailorMan]

*resists temptation to launch into rant about how the art department was the most conformist place on campus at her university*

I just ran across these quotes from Einstein: "Unthinking respect for authority is the greatest enemy of truth." And, later in life: "To punish me for my contempt for authority, fate made me an authority myself."

[Chanlin]

Fortunately this "norm" does not seem to be in place everywhere, that or I have gotten lucky enough to get the Professors at my University that know how to teach.

I'm taking a class titled "Music of Non-Western Cultures" The professor has decided that since over 50% of the class scored a 100% on our first of two exams that he will give us all 100% on the second exam as long as we are present at the remaining classes. His reasoning for this "The second exam is going to be over the same theory as the first exam, just applied to new material. Since you all have shown that you clearly understand the theory quite well there is no need to test you on it again."

[PepperElf]

OT slightly... heh... all this is making me think of a co-worker... who'd say "if you don't agree with my political beliefs you're stupid"... all because of what his college professors taught him... ... which basically sounds a LOT like the SC from the OP.

[Can I Help Your A$$?]

Wait--so who is the post-modernist?

I try not to have discussions with people who don't accept reality, because it always ends badly, but I'll still buy stuff from them.

[Imogene]

Had a teacher at the community college who taught psychology, and spent weeks (literally) on Freud, but when we got to Jung, she said one sentence about him and continued on.
"Whoa whoa whoa, hold on a second there, Miss B*tch! There's far more evidence that Freud was talking out his ass, and you spent weeks on him, whereas Jung has become widely regarded as the foremost authority in psychology with the collective subconscious and that, and you spend a whole MINUTE on him? Just because you don't believe his theories?"
I almost walked out of that class.