Conservative Social Worker

There is more information on the "conservative" social work student that claims he was discriminated against because of his views.

The new article, from FoxNews.com is entitled Student Says School Persecuted Him for Being Conservative.

The article gives more details about how this man felt he was discriminated against. He provides proof in the form of an email that a professor admits biases and that his final project wasn't approved because it countered the school's "progressive" agenda.

One of the comments particularly bugged me and it was as follows:

He alleges that Perlmutter spent a 50-minute class "assailing" his views and allowed students to openly ridicule his conservative positions, and that she reduced his grade because he was not "progressive."

If she actually did reduce his grade for not being progressive, I can understand his problems. Can he prove that, though? Or is it just his bias. In the article, it says that he feels he was targeted from the beginning, so wouldn't he be looking for anything to show that he was being targeted?

Anyways, the real problem I have with it is that he says the prof spent a class "assailing" his views. That could mean presenting and teaching the opposing viewpoint, which might just be backed with more actual research. He might have felt like he was being personally attacked because it went against what he feels is correct. I can see this happening, as it has happened to me.

And then the part about the instructor "allowing" students to ridicule his conservative positions. I see nothing at all wrong with this...well, depending on what ridicule means, I guess. If they're just wasting time making fun of the positions, then that's just stupid. But if they're critiquing and analyzing them from their point of view, which might very well feel like ridicule to him, why should the teacher not "allow" that?

An instructor once told me this story about a group she was in where they were critiquing a fellow student's master thesis. My instructor pointed out that a couple of the piece of data did not make sense and it really hurt her presentation. The student started crying and asked her why my instructor didn't like her.

And that's what it feels like sometimes. But as long as there aren't personal attacks, attacks on ideas are perfectly acceptable, in my opinion. In order to learn and grow, we need to attack ideas that not based on fact or have an oppressive nature to them.

I'd love to hear from the professors in this story. I'd also love to read the student's work!