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Re: this bizarre exchange about "indoctrination": (1) Isn't it true that the entire object of the liberal arts is to open up students' minds to the possibilities available to them so that they might make informed choices? So how is it a matter of indoctrination to do that job very well? (2) Why do certain kinds of scholars always imagine, despite some decades of scholarship on the point, that newly-arrived groups in the professoriate (women and blacks notbly, but certainly not singularly) are the only ones possessed of a discernable point of view/a politics/the contagion of a well-developed political philosophy, whereas the average (white male) academic delivers objectivity/political neutrality/balance? Liberalism, conservatism, Progressivism, and so on are not "points of view," and don't shape male teaching????? The young woman has it right: evidence is needed here, and lots of it, or (preferably)prompt reconsideration of a position that I do think the profession has successfully criticized. See the last chapter in Joan Wallach Scott, Gender and the Politics of History. I suppose this post will be evidence in support of the point, as I think about it, because I'm female and taking a firm, indeed VERY firm, position. Sandra F. VanBurkleo Department of History Wayne State University Detroit, MI
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