Much of this argument and discussion seems to be centered on University levels and I think misses the mark by a considerable margin. This type of non-thinking and avoidance begins, if not at home, at the pre-K level and continues to be fostered by Title IX restrictions.

Parents are turning their children over to the state to raise and the bills are coming due. By the time these children reach University, it's probably too late to help them learn to think, much less to listen to an opposing view.

The kids are protecting their grades. I recall after I'd served in the Navy and returned to college I had a business ethics professor who was an open marxist who loved to extol how socialist and communist countries treated women more fairly and granted them opportunities to advance professionally unlike here in the US.

Having spent 2 months in Haugesund Norway prior to my discharge and having experiencing how women were treated by Norwegians first hand (quite fortunate for me), I objected to his appraisal at least in that country. You'd think I insulted him. He tried to spin saying that he was talking about women professionally not socially. I countered that if a woman is generally treated like shit in her society why would her treatment in the office or ion government be any different when push came to shove.

He moved on and never spouted the virtues of socialism and communism to the kids again (I was 4-5 years older than the rest of the students).
I wonder to this day how a socialist or communist could teach business or business ethics,

Even back then I had to wonder why so many just sate there doe eyed listening to this guy force feed BS down their throats.

Yes !!!!!!!!

how about sending these students (?) back to grade school where they do belong.

Bwa ha ha ha... Bravo, my friend!

I suspect that, were I to teach said class, my tenure in most modern American institutions of the mentally disturbed, er, of higher education would be VERY short lived... but it would, for that short period of time, be an absolute joy to dose the dream-escapers with a dollop of reality before I am unceremoniously given the proverbial boot.

Hello Susanne,
"It is dangerous to be right in matters on which the established authorities are wrong." Voltaire
Regards,
O.A.

Debate means being willing to hear that you might be misinformed. To be honest in a debate, one has to be willing to accept that one's opinions may contradict reality. That's been a tough pill for everyone to swallow over the centuries, but it's been exacerbated over the past few decades here in the US because of leftist culture and the entitlement/protection mentality.

Very well said! Only recently did I learn the term, "Lysenkoism." Lysenko was a Russian scientist (genetics) back in the 1920s who advanced a theory we would recognize as "crackpot" today - the idea that acquired traits would be passed on to future generations (as though picking the leaves off a bush would result in future bushes being born without leaves!). Well, Stalin liked the idea because he thought it fit in well and could support certain doctrines of the Communist Party. So, the official party line was that Lysenko was right, because The Party said so, and if you didn't agree, you were sent to a forced labor camp, or you were executed. Of course, any similarity to Global Warming is purely coincidental! Too bad the Russian peasantry didn't have the Second Amendment!

I'll bet that in any remaining debating teams in public schools today, "BOTH sides win!" - and get "participation trophies" too!

Space is an unforgiving place, and for the children in that philosophy class, in space there is no partial credit.

Well it is useless to have a debate about ethics, if the students do not know how to reason and do not agree that reason is the arbiter of what is right.

In other words it is my guess that this class was just a bunch of emoting.

Students over 20 years ago, were not prepared to think critically. Government schools have taught them to be sheep , and the idea that what they have been taught to believe unquestioned, scares the crap out of them. I observed a young man go into a panic attack and the resuce squad be called during a discussion of objective reality. My dad's stock answer back in the 50s was, "What do you think?: /that was followed by a discussion. Today, they are spoon fed believes and given sound bites they don't even understand. They don't exert themselves to do independent research. Hillary promised during rallies she would end discussion of science and global warming, making it criminal! Later she added she would censor the Internet to filter out dissenting political views. Millennials just let it go over their heads. Philosophy has become something too hard for snowflakes. Try a little Existentialism and work into Objectivism, children.

"... someone staying at my house that would be homeless otherwise.”

A friend used to do that. He was an old, harmless guy, invited a lesbian homeless gal to sleep at his place. She awoke in the middle of the night, noticed that he had an involuntary nocturnal erection (she was unaware of such things), took it as a sexual assault and started to beat him up.

We've allowed homeless people to stay at our farm, twice. Each time things went terribly wrong, both property damage and theft. Never again! I give a couple of bucks to the Salvation Army instead. Let THEM deal with it.

The idea of debating issues seems to have long passed, even in the classroom setting. I don't know if they stll have debating teams, but if they do they must be very timid affairs. The sense of arguing the 'facts' has taken a back seat to how one 'feels about the subject, topics of years ago whould send today's students running to their safe places, ears covered, and minds with blinders on!

"He said that on one of the final days of his class, someone he "had never seen before" stood up in the back of the room and went on a critical "diatribe"..."

He should have asked the rabble rouser if he was enrolled in the class, and if not, had him escorted out. Unless he is fearful of what the Rainbow Renegade Rejects could do... of course, they would demand THEIR safe space, and yet violate the rights of the Prof. Someone ought to tell the young and delicate at UT that their team is the LONGHORNS, not the Unicorns... How evident the depths has UT fallen... where the students determine and drive the curriculum...

Me? I would love to teach said class... probably cause a few snowflakes to melt down, but it sounds like they need to be "educated" in the finer arts of Voltaire's beliefs, as penned by E. B. Hall.

Your observation looks like a bulls-eye to me.

Outer space is the place.
Grant them a stable orbit to contemplate.
On a clear night their hulls shall glow star bright.
Our feet on the ground, watch them float.
Tell your children those are unstable twit glowers.

We are mired in a socialist, authoritarian society, developed over decades, where any form of freedom of thought is considered dangerous to the collective. Rooting out the poisonous, anti-liberty mindset inflicted on the young is going to be like stomping a scorpion, difficult and dangerous.

The whole concept of politically correct speech was lifted from the Communist playbook. We've seen how PC demands have grown from simply suppressing racist terms to whole subjects, non-verbal actions as "microaggressions," manner of dress or diet labeled "cultural appropriation." As in the USSR, there has been a growing demand to consider non-PC behavior as evidence of mental disorder requiring "reeducation" or corrective punishment.

Hopefully we've dodged a few bullets as resistance has grown to this deadly form of thinking. Trump is only the latest manifestation of a growing discontent in the American people as our society has been purposely dismantled and reformed into an increasingly totalitarian state. Thankfully, as we were being told that we had to accept the fact that American exceptionalism is a dead concept, and aspirations for success were counterproductive, enough of us rejected the "new normal."

This is an indication of the ultimate path of PC. Making people afraid to debate or argue is as effective a way to eliminate free speech as outright censorship. If this becomes common, if it isn't already, we are doomed.

"In autumn 2016, Bonevac joined 145 other scholars and writers in declaring support for Donald Trump for president.[2][3]" -- " .......AHHH mystery solved...that is why the outside commie rabble rouser assaulted the whole class.

The Professor needs to grow a pair and when someone like that goes off he needs to ask them who the hell they are and if they are not paying to be there, have them removed. On the other hand....if he did...the wuss administration would probably censure him!

OMG--whatever shall we do with these snowflakes? The participation trophy generation.

What is new is that the professor appeared on national TV (Fox) about it. Thank you for the additional clarification.

Students clam up over opinions for many reasons. Maybe they are thinking about it and will not rush to a conclusion, but prefer to consider the problem and speak later. (Maybe.) Maybe, as Prof. Bonevac suggests, they do not want to consider what they do not already believe. Perhaps they are afraid of retribution for having an unpopular opinion of their own. (I had a conservative comrade warn me not to bother to ask questions. He gave it up two years ago, he said.) Maybe (most likely) they are lazy.

Although the professor does get good scores on Rate My Professors, it is likely from my experience that perhaps 75% of his students are just passive learners. The good scores come from those who are engaged. The others do not even bother to score him on the website.

As for his being a Hugh Akston, that is doubtful. He may well be intelligent and engaging as a teacher. That is all we need to expect, really: getting you to think versus getting you to think what he does. However, his beliefs, considering that he supported Donald Trump for President, are main stream.
--------------------
Daniel Bonevac, a UT philosophy professor who studies ethics, believes we need a careful balance. “Although you can’t help everyone, the obligation of charity is a real obligation … a general obligation [irrespective of religion],” he says. Bonevac recognizes that some can make hundreds of dollars a day off of panhandling, but he challenges us not to take the easy way out. “A rabbinical saying states that it’s better to give to five con artists than to not give to one person in need,” he says.
I asked him how to avoid endangering the beggar, such as inadvertently giving money for drug use. Bonevac encouraged buying food and goods that are not easily traded. He adds that he tends to take extra steps to ensure that people have roofs over their heads, noting, “I currently have someone staying at my house that would be homeless otherwise.”
The Daily Texan (April 2, 2013) here: https://www.dailytexanonline.com/pers...

This is not news. It is a re-hash. Not that the point is invalid. I can offer my own stories in support (BS 2008; MA 2010). Disrupting a class, however, is the kind of thing that a professor can call security over. The prof owns the classroom. I had a progressive haul me before a judiciary board for passing a note. The other students lined up behind her and refused to testify when I asked. But the point here on that is that she owned the classroom: her rules; his, too, if he wanted.

"In 2011 philosophy Professor Daniel Bonevac stopped teaching a course called “Contemporary Moral Problems” because today’s students are unwilling to debate controversial, politicized issues. The course was extremely popular, enrolling up to 600 students in a single class. Bonevac had offered the course for more than 20 years, but it was no longer worth the trouble and backlash, he said." -- http://www.truthrevolt.org/news/ut-au...

"His book, Reduction in the Abstract Sciences earned him the Johnsonian Prize from The Journal of Philosophy. ... In autumn 2016, Bonevac joined 145 other scholars and writers in declaring support for Donald Trump for president.[2][3]" --
[2] http://scholarsandwritersforamerica.org
[3] Daniel Bonevac: guest article (12 October 2016, washingtonpost.com): What it’s like to be a college professor who supports Donald Trump"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_...

Comments from students ( http://www.ratemyprofessors.com/ShowR... ) include "
RESPECTED (7) AMAZING LECTURES (6) HILARIOUS (6) TOUGH GRADER (5) GET READY TO READ (5)"