Indoctrination, Not Education:
Rampant Radicalism in the UCLA Graduate
School of Education and Information Studies
The GSEIS Professoriate - Clara Chu
Just as adamantly
Freirean and race-obsessed in her own way
is Information Studies professor Clara Chu.
A self-described “Peruvian-born Chinese-Canadian residing in the US,”
Chu’s unlikely background is paired with an unlikely intellectual
outlook. Front and center on her homepage is her proud
declaration:
“Inspired by the educator Paulo Freire, I strive to
eradicate the ‘culture of silence’ created when individuals are
oppressed by
information practices/systems that deny them access and representation.”[i]
It’s helpful at this point to take a step back and
remember
that information studies is essentially library science on pep pills. There is of course always room for improvement
in organizing information, preserving it, and making it available to
the public,
and Information Studies can be a major part of that effort. But in the end, there’s no room for creating
a Freirean/Marxist political passion play in the organization or
presentation
of book shelves, library catalogs or the Lexis-Nexis news database. That Clara Chu would dedicate herself to
fighting such imaginary “oppression” in the field, and that GSEIS would
consider this to be a legitimate scholarly enterprise making her worthy
of
hiring and eventual tenure, is all too typical of a school that long
ago gave
itself over to extremism.
Unfortunately, the GSEIS faculty list goes on like
this in
depressing detail – Freireanists, diversity devotees and garden-variety
radicals too numerous to mention. The
case of Dori Kozloff has helpfully opened a window into the operations
of one
(but certainly not the only) radical school at UCLA.
But rather than merely complaining about the
situation, our focus as alumni and supporters of the university must be
on
finding solutions to the problem.
[i]
www.gseis.ucla.edu/faculty/chu/
