A former UCLA student has a novel and controversial way of making colleges a little bit less liberal, possibly a tiny bit more mainstream. His solution, put out bounties on radical professors. Andrew Jones is the head of the Bruin Alumni Association. He is offering students up to $100 to report on professors pushing who push their left-wing agendas in class.
Andrew Jones joined Tucker Carlson on ‘Situation’ to explain why he wants these professors uncovered.
To read an excerpt from their conversation, continue to the text below. To watch the video, click on the "Launch" button to the right.
TUCKER CARLSON, HOST, ‘SITUATION’: So you're trying to make citizen reporters out of students it sounds like. For our viewers who haven't been in college for a while, give us some examples of what it's like to be a student sitting in class being harangued by a left-wing professor about his political views.
ANDREW JONES, CHAIRMAN, UCLA BRUIN ALUMNI ASSOCIATION :Well, I can tell you as recently as 2002 I experienced it myself. I was in a class with Ramona Ripston, who is the president of the ACLU Southern California, and I had to sit there and listen to her present a one-sided view on issues as diverse as affirmative action, abortion, racial profiling. Of course, in her view and the way she presented it, there could only be one answer and there was only going to be the presentation of one answer to that.
CARLSON: Wait, what about free inquiry? What about the idea that, you know, all this stuff, everything is up for questioning and we ought to open our minds and let the truth filter down? Was that not the atmosphere?
JONES: You know, I really actually like the idea of free inquiry, letting students be students, letting professors actually profess things. However, there needs to be a movement here to respect both the academic freedom rights of professors, who are already well protected, and the academic freedom rights of students, who have a right to hear all sides of an issue. And again, we are not talking about bringing every single last person to the table, but when 50 percent of this country in a lot of classes does not hear their beliefs, it's a real shortchanging of UCLA students that they don't have this happen.
CARLSON: Well, and a huge misuse of taxpayer and parents' money, as far as I'm concerned. So what are you doing? So you're paying students to report on classes. What exactly does that mean?
JONES: Well, when students come to us and they say, I've got a professor who will not shut up about politics, especially politics that aren't germane to the class, or even in a class that is politically oriented, there's only one side of the issue presented, then we say, you know what, we are going to go ahead and offer you a nominal fee for your extra hard work to go ahead and take extra notes, to take them in extra diligent fashion, to show up to every class session, which for college students, every class session, that's a challenge.
And then if you want to go ahead earn the extra fee, we're going to require the extra work on top of that of going ahead and taping every single class lecture. And that is going to be the independent third-party evidence that will either show in comprehensive fashion that there is a problem, or I would actually hope to find that a lot of these professors that are absolutely out of control outside of the classroom are, you know, veritable Sojourner Truths inside the classroom.
CARLSON: Well, I'm sure that the professors must love this then. You're not doing anything other than representing what they literally said in class. They must welcome this, right?
JONES: Well, they call it a blacklist. And I've been very well-acquainted with the thin skin of academics. You know, back when I was a student journalist with The Daily Bruin, that if you ever happen to mention them and call these professors on their belief in any kind of small way, oh, my gosh, you've just done a terrible, terrible thing. So the question is, was I expecting this sort of stuff to happen? Yes.
Should people believe it? I invite them to look at the Web site, uclaprofs.com, and decide for themselves. I think they're going to find that our charges, unfortunately, are only too true.