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[allbutfoundajob]

TO allbutfoundajob,

    I hope you never find a job with that kind of attitude. I'm sure you never, EVER include your opinion in your teaching. I'm sure your political orientations NEVER emerge in your classroom choices. Shame on you!

I make very sure that my political opinions do not surface in class.  It is called professionalism.  Professors are in positions of power.  To use that power to advocate for partisan political outcomes makes a professor unprofessional and thus deserving of being fired.

[mended_drum]

I make very sure that my political opinions do not surface in class.  It is called professionalism.  Professors are in positions of power.  To use that power to advocate for partisan political outcomes makes a professor unprofessional and thus deserving of being fired.

I'm going to have to disagree here.  While I don't think that trying to convert students' politics is a wise or successful form of teaching, I also don't think that it is an offense that should lead to firing, especially at the beginning of one's career.  Most of the more fiery colleagues I've known have learned to be more flexible, to present things a bit more objectively and with much more humor as the years pass and the intensity of grad school and the quest for tenure eases up. 

I believe that professors should not grade a student based on that student's politics; someone who does that repeatedly is behaving unprofessionally and probably should leave the classroom.  However, presenting one's opinions, particularly if they are relevant to the course (which seems to be the case for the OP), can be effective and important.  Ideally, presenting opposing points of view is the best approach, but that's sometimes unviable (i.e. I wouldn't present the views of holocaust deniers in a course on Jewish literature). 

[dr_zen]

I also need to disagree with allbutfoundajob. It's quite possible that the issue here is not
political advocacy but a problem with student perception. I've often found that when students are, for the first time, confronted with a world view that is not white and male they perceive that view as politicized as opposed to the "neutral" Eurocentric point of view.

[sockgumbee]

Dr Zen makes a good point.

I've taught classes where I explicitly say that we will be taking the pov of the ethnic group we are studying. And many students feel that that pov is racist against whites. This is when I talk about things like the boarding schools that many Native Americans were forced to attend from the late 1800s into the 1970s in some places. There are 50 year olds walking around that lived through the trauma of these places. And while not everyone who went to boarding schools were traumatized, most were.

I've had student get angry about this--they don't feel that I should talk about the history of Native Americans because it flies in the face of everything they have been taught up to this time. They don't have a place to put this new information--it does not fit into their world view, so they get angry.

But sometimes a person can get angry, just because another person acts in ways that does not fit into their world view. Being an intelligent, articulate professor of color teaching at a university does not fit into many people's world view and/or is outside of their experiences. So these people have a hard time seeing anything this professor says as 'untainted' by color. Color = politics.

Some disciplines can seem on the face, more "neutral" than others. All But Found A Job must teach in one of those disciplines.

[acrimone]

I've been called a "feminazi" and a "reverse racist."  I've decided to take it as an indication that I'm doing something right.

Of course you have.

[onion]

I've been called a "feminazi" and a "reverse racist."  I've decided to take it as an indication that I'm doing something right.

Of course you have.

Pardon me? 

[acrimone]

I've been called a "feminazi" and a "reverse racist."  I've decided to take it as an indication that I'm doing something right.

Of course you have.

Pardon me? 

Just admiring your poise, that's all.  The unreflected life isn't worth living, and all that. 

You've got that well in hand.  It's mirrors all the way down.