Tenure

To be honest, I haven't really been paying attention to tenure status much on my professors. It's not that I'm lazy or don't care, it's just that I didn't really think it mattered too much (not to mention I'm not sure how to check it).

The thing I try to check most from the class is, "Is this class going to be interesting to me?" I don't care if they show an opposing and biased view, so long as they can make it interesting and make me want to go to class to learn. If the class is boring as heck, and I want to fall asleep everytime I go, then I'm not going to care if the professor is tenured or not.

While I generally don't care if they have an obvious bias (I had one professor who was obviously anti-war and anti-Bush, but rather than rant at us about it, he showed us anti-war experimental films, and films that focused largely on poverty. Some of those were very, very difficult to watch, as they were really depressing, such as people in S. America who went up to the mountains to get ice that they only sold for about $4 US dollars a week, and some were just plain boring to watch, like someone lighting a candle, and then filming the candle burning down for like 20 minutes lol), as long as it's interesting, I'll pay attention.

I just hope that they're doing serious research and trying to get us to think for ourselves, rather than just give us facts to spew back out during tests.

And for me, trying to give more than just one point of view. I really hate it when I only hear one side of the story. For example, virtually all Westerners and non-Communist countries have been taught that "Communism = Evil". But if it was so bad, why did it survive so long? While the professor was kind of boring at times, and kept going off on anecdotes rather than what was on the syllabus, he did give us communism from a former Communist's point of view (telling us of how he watched Nazi soldiers march by his house, and all the fighting going on near him during WW2). And reading through the assigned books, I discovered a lot about communism that I never learned about from high school, such as the US and other countries "invaded" Russia in the 1920's (US high school history books don't make any mention of this, but every Soviet student had this drilled into their heads early on, probably to make them hate the US more), and how President Woodrow Wilson, the famous guy who helped form the League of Nations (which the US ironically never joined), and helped end World War 1, was racist, and refused to meet with some guy named Ho Chi Minh, who wanted a capitalist system and independence/self-determination for Vietnam (and this Ho Chi Minh dude would then embrace Communism, and would get the US involved in a conflict known as the Vietnam War later on in history).

I was kind of mad that I didn't get to learn any of this stuff, nor was I given the opportunity to learn any of this in high school (read Lies my Teacher told me by James W. Loewen, for some more interesting stuff that US high school history books don't talk much about. For instance, racism in the US is downplayed a lot, and then some people in the US wonder why African Americans act they way they do, but don't study the history and suffering many of their ancestors had to endure, and according to one student, "Abraham Lincoln was born in the log cabin he built with his own two hands". Think about that for a second if you don't get it lol ).

And I'm glad that professors are given tenure to look at stuff from other points of view. For example, it's really interesting to see how the Crusades didn't really have much historical impact in the Middle East until the early 20th century. The Ottoman Empire largely forgot about it until some Turkish men went to universities in Europe in the 19th century and saw the Crusades from the European's perspective, and related Crusading to Imperialism (remember, the British and French had large Empires across the globe at this point), hence the problem we have today with this issue (the British and French taking up remnants of the Middle East and then giving part of it to the Jews later on, after WW2 and the Holocaust). Now journalists and the media in general are blowing it way out of proportion, how Islamic terrorists are linking stuff going on today to stuff that happened in the middle ages. While I'm not trying to say I approve of the stuff these extremists do, such as blowing up innocent people, some of the classes I've taken in college by professors have taught me to understand the past, and analyze it to see what people did back then, and how it affects us today. And I have to say, the stuff they showed us really makes the situation a little clearer (although it's a helluva bloody mess, and it's not easy to comprehend what's going on).

As long as the professors are doing honest research, and are presenting it to us relatively objectively (rather than just a biased, one-sided opinion), I'm for tenure. Of course, if they're "abusing" it, by presenting just one sided opinions, and forcing students to get books that have little to do with the course, then yes, I'm all for booting them cause they're getting lazy.

Jam it back in, in the dark.