University Centers for Rational Alternatives - Revision history

David at 08:53, 15 April 2011

2011-04-15T08:53:02Z

David: /* History */

2011-04-15T08:51:51Z

History

David: /* History */

2011-04-15T08:51:09Z

History

David at 15:37, 14 April 2011

2011-04-14T15:37:48Z

David at 15:19, 14 April 2011

2011-04-14T15:19:36Z

Steven Harkins at 14:06, 28 February 2011

2011-02-28T14:06:14Z

Steven Harkins at 14:05, 28 February 2011

2011-02-28T14:05:54Z

Steven Harkins at 14:02, 28 February 2011

2011-02-28T14:02:35Z

Steven Harkins: /* Affiliations */

2011-02-28T13:48:42Z

Affiliations

Steven Harkins: /* Criticism of Affirmative Action */

2011-02-28T13:47:37Z

Criticism of Affirmative Action

@@ Line 38: / Line 38: @@
 By 1973 ''Time'' was reporting that 'Today the students are subdued'. It also noted tat the UCRA 'now has 3,000 members among 'faculty and administrators on 350 campuses, continues to carry essentially the same banner.'<ref name="Time"> [http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,907999,00.html Education: Crisis Amid the Calm], ''[[Time]]'', Monday, Oct. 08, 1973</ref>
-But the beginnings of the threat from progressive educaton was beginning to be felt: 'the threat faced by scholarship today may be more insidious than that posed by rock-throwing students.':
+UCRA held a conference on 21-22 of September 1973 entitled 'Philosophy of Curriculum' at Rockefeller University. The conference was designed to discuss the extent to which 'relevance, values and career training should permeate the higher educucation curriculums'. [[Sidney Hook]] questioned whether students were being taught to be 'probing and incisive', arguing that the student of the day were 'gullible,' 'superstitious' and vulnerable to 'demagogic appeal', and 'empty show and eloquence'.<ref>Page 36, Column 1, UNIVERSITY CENTERS FOR RATIONAL ALTERNATIVES INC, ''The New York Times'', 23-September-1973</ref>
 :The vice president for academic affairs at Columbia University, Oriental Scholar Theodore deBary (not a member of U.C.R.A.), raised the alarm as keynote speaker at the New York conference. "In the calm that has mysteriously come over our campuses," he said, "it may seem melodramatic still to speak of the 'university crisis.' " ... For Sidney Hook, a founder and first president of U.C.R.A., the chief threat to liberal education has been the galloping movement for the abolition of curriculum requirements. A former philosophy professor at New York University, Hook proposes a program of required undergraduate studies that would include such predictable basics as communications skills, some knowledge of scientific method, historical forces and literature. But he also wants students to learn how to judge what they see and hear. "Is it expecting too much of effective general education that it develop within students a permanent defense against gullibility?" he asks. "It is astonishing to discover how superstitious students are, how vulnerable to demagogic appeal, to empty show and eloquence."
@@ Line 44: / Line 46: @@
 :At the New York conference there was widespread support for Hook's contention that universities have an obligation to set priorities for their students. Historian [[Gertrude Himmelfarb]] of Brooklyn College deplored a "nihilistic tendency" to argue that "all ideas are equal." Harvard Social Scientist [[Nathan Glazer]] complained that the problem in his field is that priorities are always shifting. But even in this most inconstant area of liberal education, Glazer argues, it is possible to determine essentials if scholars will only try.<ref name="Time"/>
 ==Criticism of Affirmative Action==

@@ Line 36: / Line 36: @@
 :UCRA's members are not without experience. At Catholic University and Northeastern University in Boston, they were instrumental in defeating Princeton Plan resolutions. On other campuses they worked to keep colleges open and to establish democratic means of deciding when classes should be suspended. At St. Louis' Washington University, UCRA Director [[Gray Dorsey]], a law professor, filed suit on behalf of four students kept from classes by a student strike. The suit is pending and UCRA members are considering the same strategy elsewhere.<ref>[http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,876803,00.html Education: Rational Alternatives] ''Time'' Monday, Aug. 31, 1970 </ref>
-By 1973 Time was reporting that 'Today the students are subdued'. It also noted tat the UCRA 'now has 3,000 members among 'faculty and administrators on 350 campuses, continues to carry essentially the same banner.'<ref name="Time"> [http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,907999,00.html Education: Crisis Amid the Calm], ''[[Time]]'', Monday, Oct. 08, 1973</ref>
+By 1973 ''Time'' was reporting that 'Today the students are subdued'. It also noted tat the UCRA 'now has 3,000 members among 'faculty and administrators on 350 campuses, continues to carry essentially the same banner.'<ref name="Time"> [http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,907999,00.html Education: Crisis Amid the Calm], ''[[Time]]'', Monday, Oct. 08, 1973</ref>
 But the beginnings of the threat from progressive educaton was beginning to be felt: 'the threat faced by scholarship today may be more insidious than that posed by rock-throwing students.':

← Older revision		Revision as of 08:51, 15 April 2011
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	:UCRA's members are not without experience. At Catholic University and Northeastern University in Boston, they were instrumental in defeating Princeton Plan resolutions. On other campuses they worked to keep colleges open and to establish democratic means of deciding when classes should be suspended. At St. Louis' Washington University, UCRA Director [[Gray Dorsey]], a law professor, filed suit on behalf of four students kept from classes by a student strike. The suit is pending and UCRA members are considering the same strategy elsewhere.<ref>[http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,876803,00.html Education: Rational Alternatives] ''Time'' Monday, Aug. 31, 1970 </ref>		:UCRA's members are not without experience. At Catholic University and Northeastern University in Boston, they were instrumental in defeating Princeton Plan resolutions. On other campuses they worked to keep colleges open and to establish democratic means of deciding when classes should be suspended. At St. Louis' Washington University, UCRA Director [[Gray Dorsey]], a law professor, filed suit on behalf of four students kept from classes by a student strike. The suit is pending and UCRA members are considering the same strategy elsewhere.<ref>[http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,876803,00.html Education: Rational Alternatives] ''Time'' Monday, Aug. 31, 1970 </ref>
		+
		+	By 1973 Time was reporting that 'Today the students are subdued'. It also noted tat the UCRA 'now has 3,000 members among 'faculty and administrators on 350 campuses, continues to carry essentially the same banner.'<ref name="Time"> [http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,907999,00.html Education: Crisis Amid the Calm], ''[[Time]]'', Monday, Oct. 08, 1973</ref>
		+
		+	But the beginnings of the threat from progressive educaton was beginning to be felt: 'the threat faced by scholarship today may be more insidious than that posed by rock-throwing students.':
		+
		+	:The vice president for academic affairs at Columbia University, Oriental Scholar Theodore deBary (not a member of U.C.R.A.), raised the alarm as keynote speaker at the New York conference. "In the calm that has mysteriously come over our campuses," he said, "it may seem melodramatic still to speak of the 'university crisis.' " ... For Sidney Hook, a founder and first president of U.C.R.A., the chief threat to liberal education has been the galloping movement for the abolition of curriculum requirements. A former philosophy professor at New York University, Hook proposes a program of required undergraduate studies that would include such predictable basics as communications skills, some knowledge of scientific method, historical forces and literature. But he also wants students to learn how to judge what they see and hear. "Is it expecting too much of effective general education that it develop within students a permanent defense against gullibility?" he asks. "It is astonishing to discover how superstitious students are, how vulnerable to demagogic appeal, to empty show and eloquence."
		+
		+	:At the New York conference there was widespread support for Hook's contention that universities have an obligation to set priorities for their students. Historian [[Gertrude Himmelfarb]] of Brooklyn College deplored a "nihilistic tendency" to argue that "all ideas are equal." Harvard Social Scientist [[Nathan Glazer]] complained that the problem in his field is that priorities are always shifting. But even in this most inconstant area of liberal education, Glazer argues, it is possible to determine essentials if scholars will only try.<ref name="Time"/>

	==Educational Reform==		==Educational Reform==

@@ Line 5: / Line 5: @@
 UCRA argued that the student radicalism of the late 1960s represented a new 'Mcarthyism of the left'.<ref>cited in Noam Chomsky, [http://www.chomsky.info/articles/1971----03.htm In Defense of the Student Movement], ''Chomsky.net'', 1971, Accessed 27-February-2010</ref>
-At the time Chomsky denounced this approach in the following terms writing that he thought it was 'quite ill-conceived and that may lead to repression of student activism and destruction of what I deem the few possibilities for significant social change. I have in mind a letter (which I did not receive, though a number of my colleagues did) from the Coordinating Center for Democratic Opinion headed by Sidney Hook and a number of other people. [The organization is now called University Centers for Rational Alternatives.]'
+At the time Chomsky denounced this approach in the following terms writing that he thought it was 'quite ill-conceived and that may lead to repression of student activism and destruction of what I deem the few possibilities for significant social change. I have in mind a letter (which I did not receive, though a number of my colleagues did) from the [[Coordinating Center for Democratic Opinion]] headed by [[Sidney Hook]] and a number of other people. [The organization is now called University Centers for Rational Alternatives.]'
 'The letter speaks', noted Chomsky, of 'the dangers of appeasing this movement, pointing out that appeasement is both "morally intolerable and practically disastrous." And it says that "the main thrust" of the new organization is to be "to protect and advance the freedom and democratic integrity of academic life," to struggle against the "extremist challenge," "to support the university as an open center of free thought and speech – as a meeting house of many viewpoints – not as an enclave of enforced conformity or a totalitarian beachhead in a democratic society."'<ref>cited in Noam Chomsky, [http://www.chomsky.info/articles/1971----03.htm In Defense of the Student Movement], ''Chomsky.net'', 1971, Accessed 27-February-2010</ref>

@@ Line 1: / Line 1: @@
-The [[University Centers for Rational Alternatives]] (UCRA) was set up in 1968 by [[Sidney Hook]], [[Miro Todorovich]] and others in response to the rise of student radicalism in the late 1960s.<ref>Page 30; Column 3, UNIVERSITY CENTERS FOR RATIONAL ALTERNATIVES INC, ''New York Times'', 17-January-1972</ref> In April 1969 the group's executive committee adopted resolutions urging University faculties to adopt 'in advance guidelines of action' in order to prevent the occupation of University premises.<ref>Page 74; Column 3, UNIVERSITY CENTERS FOR RATIONAL ALTERNATIVES INC, ''New York Times'', 20-April-1969</ref> The group published a monthly journal entitled [[Measure]].<ref>Bob Wiemer, When language is drafted to serve a political agenda, ''St. Petersburg Times'', 9-November-1991</ref> UCRA lobbied academics to join their organisation which was set up to:
+The [[University Centers for Rational Alternatives]] (UCRA) was set up in 1968 by [[Sidney Hook]], [[Miro Todorovich]] and others in response to the rise of student radicalism in the late 1960s.<ref>Page 30; Column 3, UNIVERSITY CENTERS FOR RATIONAL ALTERNATIVES INC, ''New York Times'', 17-January-1972</ref> In April 1969 the group's executive committee adopted resolutions urging University faculties to adopt 'in advance guidelines of action' in order to prevent the occupation of University premises.<ref>Page 74; Column 3, UNIVERSITY CENTERS FOR RATIONAL ALTERNATIVES INC, ''New York Times'', 20-April-1969</ref> The group published a monthly journal entitled [[Measure]].<ref>Bob Wiemer, When language is drafted to serve a political agenda, ''St. Petersburg Times'', 9-November-1991</ref> UCRA lobbied academics to join their organisation by sending a letter to various academics which stated that the organization would:
-:'defend academic freedom against extremism, to promote the activism of non-extremists in all aspects of civic affairs, to foster rational treatment of contemporary problems, and to combat attacks on the democratic process'.<ref>Noam Chomsky, [http://www.chomsky.info/articles/1971----03.htm In Defense of the Student Movement], ''Chomsky.net'', 1971, Accessed 27-February-2010</ref>
+:'defend academic freedom against extremism, to promote the activism of non-extremists in all aspects of civic affairs, to foster rational treatment of contemporary problems, and to combat attacks on the democratic process' particularly 'terrorist attacks and multiple varieties of putschism' such as at San Francisco State, and also 'many other extremist resorts to disruption, Intimidation and violence'.<ref>Cited in Noam Chomsky, [http://www.chomsky.info/articles/1971----03.htm In Defense of the Student Movement], ''Chomsky.net'', 1971, Accessed 27-February-2010</ref>
 ==History==

@@ Line 3: / Line 3: @@
 :'defend academic freedom against extremism, to promote the activism of non-extremists in all aspects of civic affairs, to foster rational treatment of contemporary problems, and to combat attacks on the democratic process'.<ref>Noam Chomsky, [http://www.chomsky.info/articles/1971----03.htm In Defense of the Student Movement], ''Chomsky.net'', 1971, Accessed 27-February-2010</ref>
-UCRA argued that the student radicalism of the late 1960s represented a new 'Mcarthyism of the left'<ref>Noam Chomsky, [http://www.chomsky.info/articles/1971----03.htm In Defense of the Student Movement], ''Chomsky.net'', 1971, Accessed 27-February-2010</ref>
+UCRA argued that the student radicalism of the late 1960s represented a new 'Mcarthyism of the left'.<ref>Noam Chomsky, [http://www.chomsky.info/articles/1971----03.htm In Defense of the Student Movement], ''Chomsky.net'', 1971, Accessed 27-February-2010</ref>
 ==History==

← Older revision		Revision as of 14:05, 28 February 2011
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	:'defend academic freedom against extremism, to promote the activism of non-extremists in all aspects of civic affairs, to foster rational treatment of contemporary problems, and to combat attacks on the democratic process'.<ref>Noam Chomsky, [http://www.chomsky.info/articles/1971----03.htm In Defense of the Student Movement], ''Chomsky.net'', 1971, Accessed 27-February-2010</ref>		:'defend academic freedom against extremism, to promote the activism of non-extremists in all aspects of civic affairs, to foster rational treatment of contemporary problems, and to combat attacks on the democratic process'.<ref>Noam Chomsky, [http://www.chomsky.info/articles/1971----03.htm In Defense of the Student Movement], ''Chomsky.net'', 1971, Accessed 27-February-2010</ref>
		+
		+	UCRA argued that the student radicalism of the late 1960s represented a new 'Mcarthyism of the left'<ref>Noam Chomsky, [http://www.chomsky.info/articles/1971----03.htm In Defense of the Student Movement], ''Chomsky.net'', 1971, Accessed 27-February-2010</ref>

	==History==		==History==

← Older revision		Revision as of 14:02, 28 February 2011
Line 1:		Line 1:
−	The [[University Centers for Rational Alternatives]] was set up in 1968 by [[Sidney Hook]], [[Miro Todorovich]] and others in response to the rise of student radicalism in the late 1960s.<ref>Page 30; Column 3, UNIVERSITY CENTERS FOR RATIONAL ALTERNATIVES INC, ''New York Times'', 17-January-1972</ref> In April 1969 the group's executive committee adopted resolutions urging University faculties to adopt 'in advance guidelines of action' in order to prevent the occupation of University premises.<ref>Page 74; Column 3, UNIVERSITY CENTERS FOR RATIONAL ALTERNATIVES INC, ''New York Times'', 20-April-1969</ref> The group published a monthly journal entitled [[Measure]].<ref>Bob Wiemer, When language is drafted to serve a political agenda, ''St. Petersburg Times'', 9-November-1991</ref>	+	The [[University Centers for Rational Alternatives]] (UCRA) was set up in 1968 by [[Sidney Hook]], [[Miro Todorovich]] and others in response to the rise of student radicalism in the late 1960s.<ref>Page 30; Column 3, UNIVERSITY CENTERS FOR RATIONAL ALTERNATIVES INC, ''New York Times'', 17-January-1972</ref> In April 1969 the group's executive committee adopted resolutions urging University faculties to adopt 'in advance guidelines of action' in order to prevent the occupation of University premises.<ref>Page 74; Column 3, UNIVERSITY CENTERS FOR RATIONAL ALTERNATIVES INC, ''New York Times'', 20-April-1969</ref> The group published a monthly journal entitled [[Measure]].<ref>Bob Wiemer, When language is drafted to serve a political agenda, ''St. Petersburg Times'', 9-November-1991</ref> UCRA lobbied academics to join their organisation which was set up to:
		+
		+	:'defend academic freedom against extremism, to promote the activism of non-extremists in all aspects of civic affairs, to foster rational treatment of contemporary problems, and to combat attacks on the democratic process'.<ref>Noam Chomsky, [http://www.chomsky.info/articles/1971----03.htm In Defense of the Student Movement], ''Chomsky.net'', 1971, Accessed 27-February-2010</ref>

	==History==		==History==

@@ Line 52: / Line 52: @@
 ==Affiliations==
-[[Measure]]
+[[Measure]] | [[John M. Olin Foundation]] | [[The Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation]]
 ==Notes==
 <references/>
 [[Category:Academic Freedom]]

← Older revision		Revision as of 13:47, 28 February 2011
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	:But after that, one principle of merit, one standard of excellence, should be fairly applied to every-one regardless of their race, religion, sex or national origin. Anyone who denies this has a right to call himself anything he pleases except ''a liberal.''<ref>Sidney Hook, LETTER: ON AFFIRMATIVE ACTION; Punishing the Innocent Is Unjust Redress, ''The New York Times'', 7-June-1986</ref>		:But after that, one principle of merit, one standard of excellence, should be fairly applied to every-one regardless of their race, religion, sex or national origin. Anyone who denies this has a right to call himself anything he pleases except ''a liberal.''<ref>Sidney Hook, LETTER: ON AFFIRMATIVE ACTION; Punishing the Innocent Is Unjust Redress, ''The New York Times'', 7-June-1986</ref>
		+
		+	==Funding==
		+
		+	UCRA was funded by the following grants:
		+
		+	*In January 1994 they received $10,000 for Publications and other activities from the [[John M. Olin Foundation]]
		+	*In May 1989 they received $25,000 for Publication of the newsletter, [[Measure]] from the [[Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation]]
		+	*In January 1989 they received $10,000 To support the monthly newsletter, [[Measure]] from the [[John M. Olin Foundation]]
		+	*In April 1988 they received $25,000 for Production of the newsletter [[Measure]] from [[The Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation]]<ref>Recipient Grants, [http://old.mediatransparency.org/recipientgrants.php?recipientID=988 University Centers for Rational Alternatives], ''Media Transparency'', Accessed 27-February-2010</ref>

	==People==		==People==