Professor's letter to Christians goes viral on Reddit.

[mockingbird]

I don't know if you could use one student's review as evidence that he definitely goes overboard. It's possible that he does, but it's also possible that that student was someone who had their beliefs challenged and couldn't handle it. Just think about how the fundies react when they come over here and we ask them questions.

I never had this happen in a class but I wouldn't be surprised if it did, and I could see a need for a letter like this. I don't think it's too condescending, rather I read it as making it clear that you will need to shelve your biases for this class. Although something like this did happen in a class in college I remember many conversations along the same lines, mostly at the beginning of a class as part of the syllabus - what we should expect from the class. This especially happened in my theology classes (I went to a Jesuit college so we were required to take theology) and in my classes about Middle Eastern history (because it's such a hot-button issue today). The #1 rule in our theology classes was that "because it's true" was NOT a good answer, and that we needed to look at the Bible as a scholar, not just a Catholic or Christian. They didn't shy away from pointing out contradictions or other issues with the Bible and in our papers we were also expected to look at sources that explained the culture of the time period to help give the texts context (Bible, I also took a class on Augustine).

ETA: I'd rather have this guy than my professor who refused to give full credits for any papers that disagreed with his viewpoints because the papers were "wrong". :roll:

[emmiedahl]

Yup. Exactly my thoughts as well.

I completely disagree.

It is not bigoted or atheistic to ask students to examine the cultural roots of religion in a class that deals with that very topic. The students were like the assholes in my bio class who said it was religious persecution that the prof was not also teaching literal creationism. The professor has a right to teach the academic material of the course without kowtowing to anti-intellectualist fundamentalist traditions. He not only has a right, he has an obligation. He would have been a bad professor if he allowed Christianity to be treated as a special snowflake in this matter.

[Deleted07]

Those were quotes from many reviews, not just one... There's pages of them saying the same thing about him. He clearly had an agenda! And that's my problem.

He wants to play a blame game and say "oh you Christians" because others have said to him "you you Atheist!". When infact the bigotry of his atheism is just as bad as the bigotry of the Christians.

I agree it is the professors job to challenge their thoughts and help them realize and learn and respond etc.

I just don't think he does a very good job, clearly he has his own arrogance and agenda.Its ripe throughout his letter and students reviews. Basically swinging things in a complete other direction, which means he is indeed being bigoted in his own views by setting students up in such a way, and reveling in that set-up he has created in that classroom, and to me that isn't healthy.

There IS a happy medium and a way to teach and make these points without being an arrogant ass-hat and spewing your agenda.

[FlorenceHamilton]

If the class was listed as "Proof that Creastion is True", then it is perfectly reasonable for this to be what the class is about. If you go into that class wth the idea that you are going to disagree with the professor and as a student, instruct the class to stop listening to him/her, you would be out of line.

Similarly, if the purpose of this class is to teach religion in a relativistic fashion, and you see your own religion as the absolute truth, then you have no right to suggest not coorperating with the class agenda. You may certainly disagree in either case.

The point is that there was nothing hiddenabout the content of the class going in.

Professor has the right of way here.

[Esther]

I just don't like the argument that "a super-atheist professor is as bad as a super-Christian one" ... Frankly, I think the super-Christian one is much, much worse, because his personal belief that some guy 2000 years ago was crucified for his sins has zero relevance on anything the class is supposed to cover. At least an atheist professor would be able to analyze the different religions without any particular bias for this one or that one. I think atheists or agnostics often, not always, but often, make the best comparative religion teachers.

Also, I'm not gonna judge an academic I know nothing about by the reviews some snotty kids who may well be mad at him for completely unreasonable reasons wrote on RateMyProfessor.

[MissBeaufort]

When I took my Religious Studies 201 class ("Origins of Western Religion"), there was that one True Christian who would disrupt class all the friggin' time. My professor was a nice Jewish man who tried to present everything even-handedly and I thought he did a wonderful job of explaining the respective histories and traditions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. But nooo-ooo, anything that argued that Christianity was not the only way, even obliquely, had to be challenged by this guy.

I think my favourite was when, after 30 minutes of my prof explaining why Jewish people don't believe in Christ as the messiah, this guy put his hand up and basically just said "but Christ is obviously the messiah, so what were they thinking when they decided otherwise? I mean, there's references to his death and resurrection everywhere in the old testament, so why aren't they able to draw the connection?". My professor sort of blinked at him very slowly and replied that it was unfortunate how some people fell away from the inquisitive study of religion after they left Sunday school, so they were left with a very "Sunday School understanding of religion". I don't think the guy actually understood that he was being made fun of - my prof was a very knowledgeable man but a terrible speaker (I counted the number of "ums" in his hour long lecture once, they numbered in the 300s) and I'm pretty sure that the True Christian had zoned out after about 2 sentences. Which is a shame, really, because he could have learned something.

Anyway, I kind of wish I could find that guy now and give him this letter. He interrupted the lectures so often and what he had to say wasn't very interesting and was often offensive. :? Blurg.

[Palimpsest]

Those were quotes from many reviews, not just one... There's pages of them saying the same thing about him. He clearly had an agenda! And that's my problem.

He wants to play a blame game and say "oh you Christians" because others have said to him "you you Atheist!". When infact the bigotry of his atheism is just as bad as the bigotry of the Christians.

I agree it is the professors job to challenge their thoughts and help them realize and learn and respond etc.

I just don't think he does a very good job, clearly he has his own arrogance and agenda.Its ripe throughout his letter and students reviews. Basically swinging things in a complete other direction, which means he is indeed being bigoted in his own views by setting students up in such a way, and reveling in that set-up he has created in that classroom, and to me that isn't healthy.

There IS a happy medium and a way to teach and make these points without being an arrogant ass-hat and spewing your agenda.

I just scrolled through the student reviews on RateMyProfessor. What site were you using? From what I could see arrogance and pushing his agenda is hardly rife (was ripe a typo?) throughout. On the contrary, the vast majority were well written good reviews calling his classes "awesome", "hilarious", "funny", "challenging", "excellent", "the best class," etc.

RateMyProfessor is not really a reliable source, but I only saw a few "poor" evaluations. This one is a good example of poor reviews: "He is the most cocky, sarcastic, irrogant professor that I have ever encountered!!! I can spend hours and hours studying for his rediculous tests and still fail. [snipped for brevity and because I didn't understand the last sentence!]"

Yep, that was a cut and paste with spelling intact. Please add your own *sic*s. :lol:

I get the impression that he does come over as arrogant, probably doesn't suffer fools gladly, and has a no-nonsense pedagogical style. He may well be heavy handed in coming down on uber-religious and naive students of any faith who challenge him and waste class time. Snowflakes who have never experienced Socratic methods probably loathe him.

Although I pretty much agree with everything he said, I do question his judgement in sending out the letter above. A bit trigger-happy on the send button, IMO, and there might be better ways in dealing with the students who were disrupting his class. Like asking them to leave!

Honestly, I agree that there is a happy medium in teaching. There is no need to be an ass-hat as you attempt to convey your greater knowledge and experience to students -- but he is hardly the only arrogant professor out there. Legitimate claims of malfeasance are handled through performance review, and arrogance is not grounds for termination!

My feeling is that students who are upset in this case have absolutely no idea of what will happen when they hit the real world work-place. :roll:

[Austin]

OMG, some of the comments here are disturbing. Maybe some FJers should examine whether or not they are religious bigots.

Christianity is not inherently deserving of the default belief system position in our society. If someone believes that, they are a religious bigot, not one of the persecuted.

We need more professors like this one, not fewer.

[Palimpsest]

OMG, some of the comments here are disturbing. Maybe some FJers should examine whether or not they are religious bigots.

Christianity is not inherently deserving of the default belief system position in our society. If someone believes that, they are a religious bigot, not one of the persecuted.

We need more professors like this one, not fewer.

:clap: :clap: :clap: :clap: :clap:

You said it with much greater clarity and brevity than Professor Negy! Thanks.

[emmiedahl]

As soon as you see the words "cross-cultural" in a course title, you can assume that majority perspectives are not going to be given preference. I am sorry if this is so hard for the poor little Christians who had to suffer by seeing their beliefs treated with the same level of critical thinking given to other religions. Sorry guys, you don't *always* get to be the special case that is not questioned.

The reviews for this prof look pretty good. Unless you are handing out A's like Halloween candy and patting everyone on the head for every insipid thought that they utter, you will have negative reviews.

[wtfrenchtoast]

As soon as you see the words "cross-cultural" in a course title, you can assume that majority perspectives are not going to be given preference. I am sorry if this is so hard for the poor little Christians who had to suffer by seeing their beliefs treated with the same level of critical thinking given to other religions. Sorry guys, you don't *always* get to be the special case that is not questioned.

The reviews for this prof look pretty good. Unless you are handing out A's like Halloween candy and patting everyone on the head for every insipid thought that they utter, you will have negative reviews.

This. I don't think Christianity deserves to be treated with kid gloves, no more than any other religion. The letter sounds spot on to me. Any arrogance the professor displays is vastly outweighed by the arrogance of a student who stands up in the class and demands others not participate. I almost think that if, as a university professor, you don't offend someone somehow, you aren't doing your job right.

[Austin]

As soon as you see the words "cross-cultural" in a course title, you can assume that majority perspectives are not going to be given preference. I am sorry if this is so hard for the poor little Christians who had to suffer by seeing their beliefs treated with the same level of critical thinking given to other religions. Sorry guys, you don't *always* get to be the special case that is not questioned.

The reviews for this prof look pretty good. Unless you are handing out A's like Halloween candy and patting everyone on the head for every insipid thought that they utter, you will have negative reviews.

My experience is that the more butt-hurt a person is, the more likely they are to post a review. So any index that relies on review submissions where a person has to actually make an account, login, and post a review is suspect in my eyes and I would give it very little weight in either direction.

[2xx1xy1JD]

I've known many professors who weren't afraid to insult students who were intellectually lazy, or teach/preach their own ideology (my favorite being "pretend the Berlin Wall is still standing", from a socialist comparative politics professor in 1991 who couldn't be bothered to update his teaching materials or dogma).

One of the things that I liked about my libertarian hippie high school was that they got us thinking early on. In grade 9 English, there was a unit on archetypal patterns and we were assigned different cultures to study their main myths - and the Abrahamic tradition was treated just like any other. I also remember that half of my Ancient History History course in university dropped the class as soon as the prof said that they would be learning from an academic historical perspective, which starts with the assumption that the Bible is a document written by man. I still think that this history course was one of the best that I had ever taken. It was great preparation for law school - we were constantly thinking about motive (why would someone write this?), theories and above all, evidence. It was a great way to understand the hearsay rule. We were taught that the face that something is written proves only that someone had a reason to write that thing down. It does not mean that the contents of the writing are necessarily true.

[Jezebel]

The reviews for this prof look pretty good. Unless you are handing out A's like Halloween candy and patting everyone on the head for every insipid thought that they utter, you will have negative reviews.

I once gave a prof a poor review at RMP for being a lazy teacher and easy grader. I took his class because I was genuinely interested in the subject, but I would have done just as well to check a couple of books on the subject out of the library and read them over winter break.

I've seen plenty of bad reviews of bad profs that I agreed with. But I've also seen the best, most challenging profs described as "arrogant" and "pushes his/her own agenda" because they tried to get their students to think, and to understand others' experiences and worldviews. It wasn't always the fundies leaving reviews like that, either; in history classes there was always some kid (usually a guy, majoring in business) who worshipped Rush Limbaugh, Ayn Rand, or some other conservative figurehead, and who would whine about "PC" profs imposing a liberal agenda by expecting them to take Indians, slaves, women, or the laboring classes seriously. History was all about soldiers and statesmen, don't you know.

And I spent a quarter in an otherwise excellent comparative religions course eyerolling at the fundie kid who insisted that Christianity was not a religion, and who couldn't discuss any other religion without using the terms "idolatry" and "false beliefs." And the fact that his dogmatism hurt and offended students of other religions--Hindu, Muslim, Mormon, pagan, Jewish, and even liberal Christians--proved to him that he was right. They were offended, he believed, because they knew they were "in error," and didn't like hearing "the Truth."

He had no interest in understanding other religions; he just wanted to learn the details of how horribly wrong they were so he could better make his case for his toxic brand of Christianity. And any attempts to say, "You might want to reconsider your position in light of x, y, and z"--in other words, trying to get him to think about his beliefs--was automatically "pushing an agenda." I have no idea if he ever left a review of our prof at RMP, but if he did I'm sure "arrogant," "anti-Christian," and "pushes her own agenda" would have been part of it.

In fact, whenever I see "pushes their own agenda" as part of those ratings, my brain autocorrects it to "Expects me to take other viewpoints seriously, and logically defend my own--which is ridiculous, because my views are the correct ones."

[kolga]

Anybody citing Rate My Professors automatically loses the argument. It's an open website. Anyone can sign up to post anything about anybody. I have colleagues on there who've been rated on classes they've never taught, in departments they don't inhabit, in specialties they don't address. I've had colleagues rated on classes at institutions at which they don't even work!

Online rating systems, whether open like RMP or closed like those run by my institution, tend to attract students who feel passionately about a particular instructor. By definition, just like in corporate feedback situations, who tends to be most driven to submit feedback? Pissed-off customers.

I've had students submit, both in my institution's closed online evaluation system and on RMP, that I called students douchebags, lied to students about assignment dates, was drunk in class - you name it, they've lied. Now, granted, few of my student evaluations have been this egregiously libelous, but there have been some absolute doozies.

The current higher education model, especially at the 2-year community college level, is a business paradigm. Students, and their parents if they are involved, see the education as a product they are buying. I cannot count the number of times I've been told, to my face, by students, "I'm paying for this class - you owe me a better grade."

To balance the above out - I love my job. I love teaching my field. I love it when my students "get it" when I'm explaining a concept with which they've struggled or that helps them illustrate their lives.

But believe me when I say that narcissism and entitlement in the college student population is increasing, and the quality of education we're able to offer is suffering, especially when 75% of college instructors these days are adjunct faculty who have no guarantee of a contract the following semester.

edited for typo

[Deleted07]

OMG, some of the comments here are disturbing. Maybe some FJers should examine whether or not they are religious bigots.

Christianity is not inherently deserving of the default belief system position in our society. If someone believes that, they are a religious bigot, not one of the persecuted.

We need more professors like this one, not fewer.

Not sure what thread you are reading, because I don't see anyone here saying that Christianity is the default belief system nor advocating kid glove tactics with the Christianity topic.

Care to elaborate where someone said that? :?:

I get the impression that he does come over as arrogant, probably doesn't suffer fools gladly, and has a no-nonsense pedagogical style. He may well be heavy handed in coming down on uber-religious and naive students of any faith who challenge him and waste class time. Snowflakes who have never experienced Socratic methods probably loathe him.

Although I pretty much agree with everything he said, I do question his judgement in sending out the letter above. A bit trigger-happy on the send button, IMO, and there might be better ways in dealing with the students who were disrupting his class. Like asking them to leave!

Honestly, I agree that there is a happy medium in teaching. There is no need to be an ass-hat as you attempt to convey your greater knowledge and experience to students -- but he is hardly the only arrogant professor out there. Legitimate claims of malfeasance are handled through performance review, and arrogance is not grounds for termination!

My feeling is that students who are upset in this case have absolutely no idea of what will happen when they hit the real world work-place. :roll:

You go on to say the same things I just said... So essentially we agree. :roll:

I agree the Rate my professor thing isn't 100% reliable, however when several people are saying the same things (and yes they are - I presume its just different people looking for different specifics in the reviews?) it does paint a picture of the person, I feel. Confirming what I hear in the tone of the letter, which is my opinion.

I can't believe I'm going to have to go ahead and say these are my opinions only on the situation, and that I am entitled to see it that way. Funny how again we essentially are saying the same things, that I agree with his concepts, just not his execution and you guys are all just arguing semantics, and making mountains out of molehills.

If anyone needs to "examine" themselves, its clearly a few of you. If anyone dares to agree yet differ slightly and say "hey, I think there was a better way to have behaved and acted". You're the ones calling them a bigot, uneducated and saying "you lose the argument" like a kindergartner.

I think a lot of you need to go back and read what was actually said and learn some basic comprehension, because flying off the handle and playing a name-calling blame game, arguing points that are actually the same views the person you are arguing against, is quite strange to me.

(Can I just reiterate I'm not a Christian, most of you have jumped on some Christian band-wagon, when I am infact not one. I am not an Atheist either. I fall somewhere in the middle.)

[Cran]

While complaining about people calling other people bigots you call people bigots. Impressive, very impressive....

[Esther]

I think many people, especially in the US, are way too damn careful to be "fair" on the poor, poor Christians - Christians can be oppressed too! the ebil atheists persecute the Christians! OMG!

The US is the most deeply Christian country I have ever visited. Christianity dominates almost every aspect of society, particularly in the South and the Midwest. An atheist could never be elected president, not in a thousand years. LGBT people cannot legally marry because a bunch of douchebags keep thumping their Bibles. This is not a country where Christianity is in danger. Yeah, so Christians may meet the occasional atheist who pokes fun at their beliefs. Shouldn't happen, I agree, but it does not persecution make.

[Deleted07]

Can I just suggest people stop and think for two seconds instead of being sarcastic and such for no good reason? It adds nothing to the conversation.

You know what, I fold. It isn't worth it. I just hope you can understand what I was trying to say, and appreciate that without sarcastic name-calling, and, hopefully realize that we do essentially agree on the original letters contents, just perhaps not the professors execution.

[wtfrenchtoast]

I think many people, especially in the US, are way too damn careful to be "fair" on the poor, poor Christians - Christians can be oppressed too! the ebil atheists persecute the Christians! OMG!

The US is the most deeply Christian country I have ever visited. Christianity dominates almost every aspect of society, particularly in the South and the Midwest. An atheist could never be elected president, not in a thousand years. LGBT people cannot legally marry because a bunch of douchebags keep thumping their Bibles. This is not a country where Christianity is in danger. Yeah, so Christians may meet the occasional atheist who pokes fun at their beliefs. Shouldn't happen, I agree, but it does not persecution make.

This. I'm kind of sick of it. No one can even question Christianity without "pushing their agenda". If you make fun of it, immediate uproar. Now I'm not saying the professor should make fun of Christianity in his classes...but at the same time, I don't want to say he shouldn't either. Think about it, professors probably make off-the-cuff jokes about the Greek myths, but if you say anything even remotely negative about Christianity, everyone gets their pants in a knot. I can't tell you how many times I've seen people say things like "Well I don't like you implying my religion is a myth! It's Sacred!!!11!1" Oh get the fuck over yourself, please. Your beliefs are no more valid than anyone else's.

Rant over.

[emmiedahl]

Not sure what thread you are reading, because I don't see anyone here saying that Christianity is the default belief system nor advocating kid glove tactics with the Christianity topic.

Care to elaborate where someone said that? :?:

No one here has to say it. It is a fact that Christianity is the default belief system in our country. And it is a fact that most Christians expect their beliefs to be handled with kid gloves. So, there. I said it.

I agree the Rate my professor thing isn't 100% reliable, however when several people are saying the same things (and yes they are - I presume its just different people looking for different specifics in the reviews?) it does paint a picture of the person, I feel. Confirming what I hear in the tone of the letter, which is my opinion.

Several? I found a few, in many many pages of reviews. I am surprised there are not more because I have witnessed this behavior in university classrooms and I am pretty sure it comes up every semester in this course.

I can't believe I'm going to have to go ahead and say these are my opinions only on the situation, and that I am entitled to see it that way. Funny how again we essentially are saying the same things, that I agree with his concepts, just not his execution and you guys are all just arguing semantics, and making mountains out of molehills.

What do you have a problem with here? The fact that he wants to critically look at the cultural roots of religion or the fact that he wants to look at the cultural roots of all those little stupid religions and also OMG Christianity?

If anyone needs to "examine" themselves, its clearly a few of you. If anyone dares to agree yet differ slightly and say "hey, I think there was a better way to have behaved and acted". You're the ones calling them a bigot, uneducated and saying "you lose the argument" like a kindergartner.

From the description of the event, which is all I have to evaluate with, the Christians in this class were bigoted and uneducated, and they lost the argument by failing to even engage it. Again, I have seen this behavior in a college class. Every time a class does not kowtow to Christianity, the Christians go into persecution rage. The professors are not required to entertain this. In fact, a good professor won't. Even though it will thrash his RMP ratings.