The faculty of most colleges and universities in the United States, especially the top-tier Ivy league ones, are registered Democrats. Some are outright Marxist socialists or communists.
The University of Southern California (USC) is no different.
A month ago, I wrote about an aging loser of a political science professor at USC, Adjunct Assistant Professor Darry Sragow, who used classroom time to bash white people, Republicans, and conservatives, although he himself is white.
How is Sragow an academic loser?
“Assistant Professor” is the title of the lowest rung of professorship — typically of young fresh-out-of-grad-schools Ph.D.s. “Adjunct” means Sragow is hired only on a year-by-year basis. All of which means that Sragow was hired as a junior Assistant Professor in another college or university many years ago but was denied tenure there. So now he makes his living drifting from one university to another as an Adjunct.
In other words, Darry Sragow is a loser — a failure in academe. How can I say this so confidently? Because I know academe, having gone through the ranks, from young assistant professor, to tenured associate professor, to full professor, to full professor emeritus. I had never ever misused my authority as a professor to use the classroom to advance my partisanship or to hurl insults at political figures.
Now comes news that another USC political science prof, Richard Dekmejian, has also been caught on video using his class as a platform for bashing conservatives.
Oliver Darcy and Josiah Ryan report for Campus Reform, May 7, 2013, that student Tyler Talgo secretly recorded Dekmejian’s 20-minute rant in a political science class in Fall 2012.
In the video, Dekmejian claims former President George W. Bush suffered from mental instability and stupidity during his time in office. He said Bush was bound by “serious intellectual and mental problems” and must have been “stupid or lying” to initiate Operation Iraqi Freedom for the reason of promoting democracy.
Dekmejian also leveled a number of derogatory comments against members of the Bush administration, alleging both Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice “lied” to the American people during their service. The professor instructed his students that “You have to use that term [lying] people. Don’t use that term mislead.”
Dekmejian also accused Christians of salivating over violence in the Middle East: “The right wing evangelical community… these are the people who get happy on television every time there is a conflict in the Middle East. They think that the book of revelation tells them that the messiah…the Christian messiah, Jesus is going to come…all we need is a war in the Middle East involving Israel and the Arabs.”
Dekmejian did, however, praise former President Jimmy Carter (D) for his service during and after his presidency: “He’s still going around doing good things by the way, Carter. That Carter, very respectable.”
Elizabeth Garrett, provost and senior vice president for Academic Affairs at USC, told Campus Reform in a written statement that “faculty members are entitled to freedom in the classroom in discussing their subjects. The freedom to take unpopular positions and the freedom to express those positions publicly are at the foundation of what it means to be a faculty member of a university. One of the most important principles of an academic community has been that academic inquiry and discussion be free from censorship or undue outside control.”
Blah, blah, blah.
But for Garrett, “academic freedom” seems only to apply to faculty but not to students. She noted that USC’s student code of conduct “expressly prohibits” students from videotaping their professors in the classroom, but declined to say whether Talgo would be disciplined for releasing his video of Professor Dekmejian to the public.
Here’s the video of Dekmejian:
Richard Dekmejian is a full professor of political science. Surprisingly for a full professor, Dekmejian’s faculty profile lists only his “conference and other presentations” and his university service, but no book or even a refereed journal article. On Rate My Professors, on a scale of 1 to 5 (with 5 signifying “excellent”), he scored an overall rating of a decidedly mediocre 3.4.
Here’s Dekmejian’s contact info:
E-mail: [email protected]
Phone: (213) 821-3943
Office: VKC 327
I searched for the Chair of the USC Political Science Department, but cannot find who he/she is. To contact the department:
email: [email protected]
Phone: 213-740-6998
To contact USC’s President:
C. L. Max Nikias, President
Office of the President
University of Southern California
Los Angeles, CA 90089-4019
Phone: (213) 740-2111; (213) 821-1342
email: [email protected]
~Eowyn
