Nexus of Thought: A letter to Michael Coren

Friday, August 31, 2007

A letter to Michael Coren

Michael Coren is a media personality in canada - see http://www.michaelcoren.com/

Hi Michael

Thanks very much for allowing me the opportunity for an interview on your Radio Show.
Its very much appreciated.
As mentioned earlier I believe the topic of Ideology in Education manifests itself not only in the Field of Teacher Training but in many areas of the humanities and social sciences.
Alan Bloom was one of the first to address this issue in his 1987 Bestseller - The Closing of the American Mind and Dinesh D'Souza followed this up with his book Illeberal Education.
I feel that Gen X viewers of your CTS show such as myself would find this a fascinating topic to sink our teeth into.

The following is a list of issues that could be addressed:

1. What are the limits of Academic Freedom of Expression?
2. Can the humanities/social sciences be truly objective?
3. Are professors such as Ward Churchill and Nicholas De Genova (of the million Mogadishus fame)
an embarrasment to their professions? or intellectual heroes?
4. Has post-modernism destroyed Classical Education?
5. Who are the academic McCarthyites? Are we overreacting?
6. Do Universities fail their students? How useful is a humanities degree anyway?
7. What is meant by Critical Reasoning? Has the term been usurped?
8. Are Speech Codes necessary on Campus?
9. What are the responsibilities of a Tenured Prof?
10. Do students need an Academic Bill of Rights?
11. Are the campuses encouraging silence and a culture of monothink?
12. Ridiculous courses on North American campuses: There is one that discusses the role of the Phallus in history, another course focuses on the relationship between Ancient Egypt and Rock n' Roll etc.

I believe that if one looks at these issues one can see some of the thinking that goes into the forces that shape

Anti-Globalization protests
Greenie hysteria
Blind Anti-Americanism
Emerging Moral Relativism
Specism - The psychology that fuels groups like PETA

Most of these can be traced back to Post Structuralism, Foucaltian Power Discourse, Deconstructionism, unrepentant Marxism, Nihilism, Primitavism, Post Colonial Analysis etc.

Thanks for taking the time to read my e-mail

Cheers

Gavin

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My beliefs

I believe ….

1.That there is a God who transcends space and time. (I call it God for want of a name although I personally prefer the Kabbalistic term Ein Sof).

2. That it is impossible to know the nature of God. It cannot be truly defined.

3. That the universe operates according to the Laws of Physics. Life evolved through a combination of natural selection, genetic drift and other selection pressures acting on a genome whose variation arose as a consequence of mutation.

4. That God can intervene but such intervention is undetectable and does not contravene the laws of physics. God is a subtle actor who presents no evidence of understandable design.

5. That an agnostic position on a personal God makes sense.

6. That revealed religion are merely man made attempts at trying to understand God and although some carry the wisdom of earlier thought they are all inherently flawed.

7. That humans need to develop their own moral code based on reason, logic and the collective thinking of what has worked in the past.

8. That some religious customs may serve a purpose with respect to group cohesion but they need to be evaluated on a case-by-case basis.

9. That God is a minimalist in action but not a disinterested party.

10. That the afterlife is unknowable.

11. That skepticism and the scientific method are the best tools we have in understanding the world.