Stockholm Syndrome? Two Profs Insist Academia is OK for Nice and Quiet Conservatives

I was startled to read a recent opinion article in the Washington Post by Jon A. Shields and Joshua M. Dunn, Sr., called "Forget what the right says: Academia isn't so bad for conservative professors." 

Shields is associate professor of government at Claremont McKenna College and coauthor, with Dunn, of "Passing on the Right: Conservative Professors in the Progressive University." Dunn is associate professor of political science at the University of Colorado—Colorado Spring.

The part of their article that ticked me off the most was the idea that we should be encouraged that conservatives can survive in the academic world if they learn to keep their conservatism as secret until they obtain tenure:

First, conservative professors are not helpless victims -- they have become quite skilled at navigating the progressive university. About a third of the professors we interviewed said they concealed their politics prior to earning tenure. Of course, being in the closet is not easy. (One particularly distressed professor told us: "It is dangerous to even think [a conservative thought] when I'm on campus, because it might come out of my mouth.") But it's also a temporary hardship, since nearly all the conservatives whom we interviewed planned to emerge from the ivory tower's shadows after gaining tenure. Once tenured, conservatives are free to express their politics and publish research that reflects right-wing interests and perspectives. As one put it to us: "I don't mind causing trouble now."

As far as I'm concerned, this is an unacceptable reaction to a vicious, profound discrimination against conservative scholars. 

I served for three years at an assistant professor in the political science department at Williams College. At the time, I was one of only three registered Republicans on the staff. I keep an eye on the college and contribute to two of the websites associated with the college that are okay with freedom of speech and freedom of expression. Here are links to two articles regarding my story.

http://www.thecollegefix.com/post/24821/

http://www.campusreform.org/?ID=6956

I have never gotten over the way my career as a scholar was gravely wounded due to affirmative action. I am especially bitter about how my doctoral dissertation was belittled by the political science department at Williams College. I developed my thesis while living in poverty, working as a gardener, and surviving without health insurance. 

I’m still immensely proud of it. 

It hurts me to think of all the young conservative professors who are being harmed by our college and university system. There has to be a better way to confront the dominance of the hard left in our college and university system than simply telling young conservatives to be nice and shut up. It is hard to do both when you are confronting a profound level of injustice. 

For some great commentary on this story from another source, I recommend this article by David Henderson called "Academic Conservatives and Survivor Bias." My experience rings true with Henderson's comments that conservatives need to outperform their liberal colleagues in terms of publishing, but the ability to publish is limited by the liberal bias of the journals controlled by the liberals. 

I found this to be a no-win situation and I quickly left to find higher paying work in environments with less outright discrimination. Here's an article from the Williams Record back in January 1989 which captured my mood at the time. See, https://ia802705.us.archive.org/zipview.php?zip=/14/items/thewilliamsrecord_vol101b_103a/thewilliamsrecord_vol101b_103a_pdf.zip&file=thewilliamsrecord_vol101b_103a_pdf/thewilliamsrecord_vol101b_103a_0284.pdf

This article, of course, reflects my thoughts prior to knowing that my dissertation would win national recognition from the American Political Science Association that summer or that it would be easily published as part of an edited book - almost exactly as I wrote it -- about seven years later. The publisher, Praeger, also published One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch by Alexander Solzhenitsyn.

Nevertheless, I have received some very friendly e-mails from both Dunn and Shields since I drafted this article. My gut feeling is that they needed to play up the cooperation with liberals angle to help get their research published and then the Washington Post distorted their true views to provoke a reaction from their audience. (I guess that worked on me.) I'm looking forward to visiting with Shields sometime soon and sharing my story with him. 

John C. Drew, Ph.D. is an award-winning political scientist.

Purple Bruises: Mob Rule at Williams College

As one of the last conservatives to have ever taught at Williams College, I feel vindicated in reporting that this once prestigious school has now devolved into a form of mob rule. Based on the aggressive language used to intimidate students like Zach Wood, it looks to me like the college is now dominated by hard leftists who have more in common with Joseph Stalin than with FDR. Under this radical, threatening regime, we have seen a stunning failure to provide adequate security for anti-feminist speaker Susan Venker, the outright censorship of race realist John Derbyshire, and the inexplicable tolerance of anti-Semitic hate speech from Palestinian-American poet Remi Kanazi.

Trust me. I understand mob rule and the role of censorship. I’m a former Communist myself. I’m also well informed about the continuing dysfunction and lack of intellectual diversity at Williams College.  As you may know, I was among the first young, white, professors at Williams College to pay a high price for for teaching politically incorrect ideas including how black poverty and inequality would be more efficiently resolved with the improved use of inexpensive condoms than with the wholesale adoption of a socialist economy. Then, as now, my ideas caused howls of indignation and immediate accusations of racism among supposedly liberal folks who --  by tradition, at least -- should have been more concerned about protecting my freedom of speech. As James Lewis writes at American Thinker:

We can never forget that U.S. ‘liberals” of this generation are not liberals at all; they have fallen back into ruthless Leftism, just like the old days of Joe Stalin. This is the Left that threw Lawrence Summers out as president of Harvard for wondering out loud whether some boys are just better in math than girls. This is the Left that keeps imposing ever-harsher speech and behavior codes on college students, with white guys as the official scapegoats. This Left manipulates universities by mob threats. This is the Left that tried to physically attack General David Petraeus at NYU, so he had to run for it. This is the Left that deliberately stirs up race hatred, as in Ferguson and Baltimore. This is the Left that has made common cause with primitive jihadist regimes in Europe and the U.S.

As one of only three Republicans teaching at Williams College in the 1980s, I was quickly marginalized for suggesting that white attitudes and U.S. capitalism inadequately explained why violent crimes are disproportionately committed by blacks. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, blacks were charged with 62% of all robberies, 57% of murders and 45% of assaults in the 75 largest U.S. counties in 2009, though they made up roughly 15% of the population there. It strikes me as nothing less than ideological blindness to insist that such extraordinary violence is the unfortunate result of peaceful white folks living ordinary lives in our nation’s rural and suburban areas.

In this context, I’m shocked by the sheer ignorance of Williams College’s president, Adam Falk. I don’t think there is a serious person who has studied John Derbyshire who would classify him as either idiotic, a lunatic, or a white supremacist. In my view, Falk’s flippant, juvenile comments are uninformed, and display a profound level of misunderstanding about race realism, political culture studies and alt-right philosophy.

The simplest explanation for his mistreatment of John Derbyshire is that this is the sort of mistake that happens when physicists get involved in political and biological matters for which they have no training or relevant experience. While most faculty members are experts in our own fields, we tend to be hapless amateurs everywhere else.

There is, however, a more complex explanation that goes to the heart at why mob rule is the order of the day at Williams College. If there were more diversity of opinion, and freedom of thought, at Williams College, then someone could have informed Falk that censoring John Derbyshire was a big mistake and a setback for Williams College.

The reason there is no intellectual diversity at Williams College is because conservative, Republican thinkers have long since been pushed out of the full-time faculty.  I should know. While I taught at Williams College, it was said that conservative students were passive and not very active. It was suggested that there was not much interest in conservative thought on the campus. Certainly not enough interest in conservative thought to spend time worrying about the intellectual diversity of the faculty in the political science department.

Nevertheless, in less than a year, the campus saw a veritable renaissance of conservative activities and thought as conservative students – with my support and active encouragement – established a conservative newspaper, a conservative radio show, and a conservative television show on the local cable access channel. We had qualified speakers at the Garfield Republican Club. The conservative students rallied around my office, which I decorated with a large American flag. We went out of our way to tick off the liberal/Communist professors by loudly greeting each other with hearty cries of “Merry Christmas.” Ironically, an independent study conducted of the political science department recommended changes be made to address the department’s lack of ideological diversity.

As far as I can tell, I am the last registered Republican to have ever taught in the political science department at Williams College as a tenured or tenure track professor. I am certainly the last to have ever publicly espoused consistently conservative views from a sincere, heartfelt perspective. I am also, apparently, the first and only assistant professor who was denied the opportunity to continue along the tenure track pathway.

This itself is quite odd, since, in the 1980s, I was one of our nation’s top young scholars. Hired at Williams in 1986, I went on to win national recognition for my doctoral dissertation from the American Political Science Association (APSA). I completed my dissertation during my first year teaching at Williams College. The quality of this work was so great that it has now been published, in book form, almost exactly as I wrote it under the low-ceiling of my tiny, unheated office in Stetson Hall. My thesis was by published by Praeger, the extraordinary house that also published Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich. Apparently, the study, which documented a lack of ideological diversity at Williams College, has had little impact then or since.

Even as the nation has drifted in a conservative direction -- overwhelmingly electing conservatives to statehouses, governorships and Congress -- Williams College has held tight to teaching a narrow band of truth and lies. It clings to an unrealistic and unsustainable hard left faith that intentions are more important than reality. Accordingly, it will be a long time until we see an end to mirco-aggression monitors who eagerly to hunt down the unwitting first-year student who is stupid enough to tell a joke, have some fun, or say something devastatingly obvious. We are in a dangerous time. The hard left mob feels justified in every possible abuse while truth remains as vulnerable as any bunkmate of Ivan Denisovich.

This article was first published at williamsalternative.com on March 6, 2016. It appears here with the permission of that website’s owner.

John C. Drew, Ph.D. is an award-winning political scientist.

Bad Professor: Schooling Derek Catsam of the University of Texas at Permian Basin

While making comments at Ephblog.com, I bumped into the hatred and foul language of Derek Charles Catsam. His most recent comments are particularly unhinged and provide evidence of a rather extraordinary level of anger and bitterness.

He is a tenured associate professor at the University of Texas at Permian Basin (UTPB). This is a school located in one of the most depressing and barren parts of the nation—west Texas. UTPB is low-ranked Tier Two school with a shameful six year graduation rate of 34%. According to public records, he earns about $64,000 a year and yet imagines himself to be something of an extraordinary scholar and a gifted teacher.

Derek Catsam, Associate Professor
University of Texas at Permian Basin.

(In California, for comparison, the starting salary for a tenured professor with a Ph.D. at a community college begins at about $64,000 per year and then moves up to over $100,000 per year.)

I did a little research on this darling of the extreme left. The truth about Derek Catsam is quite different than what he likes to report about himself. For example, I found that the Rate My Professor website indicated that Derek Catsam was one of the lowest ranked professors at UTPB with an embarrassing 2.6 grade. Only two others score lower than him. Ironically, it turns out that Catsam's wife, Ana Martinez, teaches in the same history department as him and she scores a much higher grade of 3.3.

Thankfully, websites like Rate My Professor now provide undergraduates with an opportunity to get out the truth about bad professors like Derek Charles Catsam. Here’s a great comment from one of Dr. Catsam's own students which seems match my impression of him at Ephblog:

“Derrick is an egotistical, arrogant professor who looks like a dork. He was probably picked on growing up and is now taking out his anger and bitterness on his students. No one cares about the idiotic book you wrote Derrick so stop talking about it! Avoid this LAME teacher (he’s not worthy to be called a professor) at all costs if possible!”

Like any normal person, I judge academic performance as a scholar and as a teacher according to the quality of the institution that hires you. At UTPB, Rate My Professor shows Prof. Catsam is under-performing his peers by a large margin. He is literally the worst of the worst compared to other professors on his own campus. Here is a sample of what his students went out of their way to write about him:

“This guy knows his stuff and obviously loves Africa. He is not approachable though and never cared if his students succeed or not. During presentations he wasn’t even paying attention and then proceeded to give most of the class C’s on their work. It’s fine if a prof is hard, but they should be willing to help you succeed too and he is no help.”

“I agree with most of the other raters, he is an egomaniac.”

“Catsam is the epitome of the arrogant prof. He is more interested in telling life stories and supporting his stupid Red Sox book than actually teaching history. And, by the way, missing class so much b/c of A. Martinez or his trips is not cool for us who pay $ for class.”

Sadly, Derek Charles Catsam ranks at the very bottom of the Rate My Professor numbers at University of Texas of the Permian Basin. Out of 20 professors who are rated, he ranks in the bottom 15%.

http://www.ratemyprofessors.com/campusRatings.jsp?sid=4366

Clearly, the comments from his own students make him look like an egomaniac with an inferiority complex. If he taught at Williams College, Derek Catsam's Rate My Professor scores would place him in the bottom 7%. In the Williams history department, he would be its lowest ranked faculty member. Ideally, Derek Catsam should ask his wife for help and advice...maybe she could break the news to him gently, saying: "You're a bad professor." 

John C. Drew, Ph.D. is an award-winning political scientist.

Film Crew at Our House: Trevor Loudon and the Enemies Within

Trish and I were honored to receive a visit from Trevor Loudon and his film crew this morning.

As you may know, Trevor Loudon is a New Zealand author, speaker and political activist who maintains a blog at TrevorLoudon.com. He initially got famous here in the U.S. when he was the first to show that there was a connection between Barack Obama and his mentor, U.S. Communist Party member Frank Marshall Davis.

Loudon is also the founder and editor of keywiki.org, a website which compiles dossiers on activists and political figures. Like me, he thinks it is important to get out the word that Communists are still among us – often in high positions of authority -- even though they have been discredited by the way in which the USSR lost the Cold War and Communist China has adopted market reforms.

Loudon was mainly interested in how I became a young Communist, how I came to meet and debate young Barack Obama, and how my own views changed later on as I matured. It was a somewhat draining interview that brought back a lot of memories. It was also a remarkable moment to celebrate the way that conservatives have been able to use social media like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and alternative websites to bypass the mainstream media and get out stories that are considered too hot or too controversial for the mainstream media...including the folks at Fox News.

No matter what, I feel proud to be part of a small band of brothers who have been willing to risk everything they have to get out the word about the radical roots of President Obama.

John C. Drew, Ph.D. is an award-winning political scientist.

As Bad as it Gets: Feeling Blue About Amber Property Management in Mission Viejo, CA

I'm a board member at Del Prado HOA in Laguna Niguel. I cannot begin to convey my frustration with a low-quality, incompetent, family-run property management company called Amber Property Management located in Mission Viejo, CA. 

As I understand it, one of their most dissatisfied customers is planning a lawsuit against them. If you would like to be part of that effort, they are encouraging you to contact them at vusteven.ghr@gmail.com.  

Most recently, they failed to send the required Call for Candidates statement to approximately 10% of our community members. 

To make matters worse, Pam Morris, 73, Amber's CEO, made a decision to send out a letter notifying our members that the annual meeting had been cancelled and that a new election was being scheduled. To my utter shock, she did this prior to obtaining the lawful approval of the board of directors. 

Then, Amber Property Management scheduled an "emergency meeting" for the Del Prado the board of directors. They notified me that I was supposed to participate in a telephone conference, but they sent me the wrong telephone number and the wrong entry code. 

I am so frustrated with Amber Property Management that I have filed two separate complaints against them with the California Associations Institute (CAI) for failing to follow proper ethical standards.  

Right now, about 20% of us live in HOA run communities. I think we are just starting to learn the dangers of these HOAs and the techniques needed to protect ourselves. I think part of the problem is that we expect retail-level customer service from property management companies, but we end up getting government-level customer service instead. Even so, a property management company that provides poor customer service shouldn't make things worse by failing to follow the rules and regulations in the HOA's CC&Rs.


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LAGUNA NIGUEL, CA - MARCH 16, 2016 - I think I'm at my wits end with Amber Property Management. According to our HOA's CC&R's, Amber Property Management is supposed to let our homeowners know exactly the Article and Section of the CC&R which has been broken by the homeowners whenever they send out a violation letter. Amber Property Management has been failing to follow this procedure despite repeated reminders that this behavior is against our regulations. I've found two letters like this signed by Liza Salinas and one letter like this signed by Jamie Hackwith. At the very least, Amber Property Management should follow the law. I don't think anyone is safe when a rogue property management company is in charge of your HOA's most important duties.

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Below, I have included a copy of the two complaints against Amber Property Management that I recently submitted to the CAI for review. I'll keep you informed about what is going on. If you live in an HOA, you might find it useful to review these complaints so you can be on-guard against similar problems in the future.

Narrative Summary of Allegations Against Pam Morris of Amber Property Management

By John C. Drew, Ph.D.

I’m alleging that Pam Morris, CEO, Amber Property Management violated at least three sections of the CAI Professional Code of Ethics. Here is the background.

Staff at Amber Property Management sent out a Call to Candidates for an upcoming election to the Board of Directors of Del Prado HOA. One of the people most interested in running for the Board of Directors, Ashlie Hadley, did not receive a copy of the Call for Candidates documents even though it had been promised to her in the newsletter. Ms. Hadley has attended all board meetings for the last year and a half and was highly interested in running for one of the three open seats. After Ms. Hadley failed to turn in a form announcing her candidacy and her name was not included in the ballot materials sent to her fellow homeowners. After the ballots were mailed out, Ms. Hadley complained that she did not receive a copy of the Call for Candidates documents.

According to Amber Property Management, the reason why Ms. Hadley did not receive a copy of the Call for Candidates documents is that she elected to receive her communications from Amber Property Management by e-mail. Amber Property Management reports that it did not send the Call for Candidates document to any of our members who elected to receive their information by e-mail. By not sending Ms. Hadley a Call for Candidates document, AmberProperty Management violated Section 5 of the CAI Professional Code of Ethics by failing to “...exercise due care and perform planning and supervision as specified in the written management agreement, job description or duly adopted Board policies.” This lack of due care was so great that at least 42 homeowners or approximately 10% of our members did not receive the Call for Candidate document.

Moreover, Ms. Morris violated Section 8 for the CAI Professional Code of Ethics by failing to “Insure that homeowners receive timely notice as required by state statutes or legal documents and protect their right of appeal.”

Without seeking the approval of the full board of directors in either a special meeting or an emergency meeting, Ms. Morris issued a statement announcing the cancellation of the March 8, 2016 Annual Meeting. This statement was postmarked February 16, 2016. I have attached a copy of this document and the envelope it came in. I allege that Ms. Morris violated Section 3 of the CAI Professional Code of Ethics which says she must: “Act in the best interests of the client; refrain from making inaccurate or misleading representations or statements; not knowingly misrepresent facts to benefit the Manager.” Specifically, she violated our Del Prado HOA bylaws which do not allow for the cancellation of the annual meeting at all. In addition, she violated our Del Prado HOA bylaws by sending a 2^nd Call for Candidates without obtaining a decision to authorize that mailing from the full Board of Directors of Del Prado HOA.

In summary, I am alleging that Pam Morris gravely her violated the CAI Professional Code of Ethics by 1) failing to properly notify members and provide them with the documents needed to run for a seat on the Board of Directors, 2) announcing the cancellation of the annual meeting in violation of Del Prado HOA bylaws and 3) cancelling the annual meeting prior to obtaining authority from the Board of Directors to take this unprecedented action.

Narrative Summary of Allegations Against Pam Morris of Amber Property Management

March 12, 2016

I’m alleging that Pam Morris, CEO, Amber Property Management violated at least two sections of the CAI Professional Code of Ethics. Here is the background.

Staff at Amber Property Management have sent out violation letters which do not follow the procedures established by the Del Prado HOA Board of Directors. According to the Del Prado Homeowners Association Enforcement and Fine Policy (Adopted by the Board of Directors on February 6, 2003) the property management company is required to do the following:

Upon notification or observation of a violation of the restrictions as set forth in the Declaration of Restrictions, Management will send out a notice of violation citing the actual violation, the article and section of the Declaration of Restrictions being violated and a reasonable time period in which to correct the violation.

Despite repeated warnings, Ms. Morris has disregarded these stipulations by failing to include in our violation letters the “the article and section of the Declaration of Restrictions being violated.” There is some sloppiness in her work since some letters, in the very same batch, will be done correctly while other letters will be done incorrectly.

By failing to follow our Del Prado HOA policies, Ms. Morris has  violated Section 5 of the CAI Professional Code of Ethics by failing to “...exercise due care and perform planning and supervision as specified in the written management agreement, job description or duly adopted Board policies.”

In addition, she has also violated Section 8 for the CAI Professional Code of Ethics by failing to “Insure that homeowners receive timely notice as required by state statutes or legal documents and protect their right of appeal.”

In summary, I am alleging that Pam Morris of Amber Property Management and the CAI certified staff members working for her violated the CAI Code of Ethics by routinely failing to issue violation letters that included the article and section of the Declaration of Restrictions being violated as required by our legal documents. This complaint of an ethics violation has been filed because of the persistence of this unlawful behavior in the face of repeated reminders and warnings from me.

John C. Drew, Ph.D. is an award-winning political scientist.