The Economist

From the great British weekly, The Economist (subscript. required):

On red alert

Jan 26th 2006 | LOS ANGELES
From The Economist print edition

How to prevent the warping of impressionable minds

FANCY being a student mercenary in the culture wars? Go to the University of California's giant Los Angeles campus and take notes—or, better still, tape recordings—of any professor who “just can't stop talking about President Bush, about Howard Dean, about the war in Iraq. If you can help UCLAProfs.com collect information about abusive, one-sided, or off-topic classroom behaviour, we'll pay you for your work.”

This offer—rates as high as $100 with a tape recorder supplied—was made earlier this month by Andrew Jones, a 24-year-old UCLA graduate who once headed the campus's student Republicans and who believes that far too many of UCLA's 3,300 teaching staff are left-wing radicals intent on warping the impressionable minds of their 35,600 students. This week, amid howls of protest from the university, Mr Jones abruptly withdrew the cash incentive, saying he wanted to protect his spies from possible legal action. But he still wants ammunition on Bolshie teachers, and his website, which names some 31 professors who deserve special scrutiny, accuses one of raging about “a Bush Reich” and others of being anti-Israel.

The professors point out that UCLA already lets its students give anonymous evaluations of their teachers. They say Mr Jones, the sole employee and founder of his Bruin Alumni Association, is the real zealot.

The cash-for-tapes ploy may be unsubtle, but it reflects the keenness on the right to tackle what many see as the American left's last redoubt. Mr Jones persuaded a score of well-known local conservatives to serve on his advisory group (though at least three have now resigned). Others on the right want state legislatures to pass “an academic bill of rights” forcing universities to have more politically diverse faculties. Given conservatives' success in changing Congress, the judiciary and the press, pinkish academics have every reason to be scared.