I did not want to be the only one to say it and I am very glad that Graham brought it up but yet again our speaker brought in her own personal views on the topic. I understand that she is passionate about 46 but what I originally expected was for these talks to be academic and suppose to give us facts and information. I know that it is hard when someone is very passionate about atopic to keep their opinions to themselves. But I was yet again disappointed that we had a far left speaker coming in and preaching her believes on us. As I said about the last speaker, I sure hope that when she teaches she is not so blatant about her political believes.
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Let me first affirm all of you who have expressed this same kind of critique over the past few weeks. I'm not sure I totally agree that speakers should always be objective in their talks (I kind of like listening to passionate people offer a very specific take on an issue) ... but I will unequivocally state that I'm very pleased that many of you are expressing your criticism. It shows you're thinking critically about these issues, which is ultimately one of our goals as instructors.
But this makes me want to ask additional follow up questions (and this could evolve answers that might make for very interseting final reflection papers): When teaching or learning about these kinds of political issues, what is the most effective way to present or learn about them? Is it better to have speakers who are unabashedly partisan on these issues, so you know where they stand? Or is it better to be neutral? Is it possibe to really be objective? What do we gain from either approach?
In a disciplinary sense, is it necessarily a good idea to stage a debate between certain points of view within a gender and women's studies course? That is, our course of study has evolved out of feminist theories and politics, and don't we have some intellectual obligation to respect certain positions with regard to women?
For example, one could imagine a political issue like this one: Should women be able to vote? Today, of course, I don' think any of us would say this is or should be a debatable topic. But as we've seen, even just 75 years ago it was. So for issues within today's political world, how do we respond to speakers who are advocating feminist or anti-racist politics? Where do you fit in within this kind of framework?
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