Prof. Said

Submitted by Classmate (2) (United States), Nov 28, 2007 at 10:55

Tomorrow morning myself and others will take the first exam Prof. Said has given as a member of the USC Law faculty- what a perfect time to reflect upon the course and the prof.

I agree with the comments made by my classmate who wrote that Prof. Said was certainly liberal and made no secret of his liberal views in class (I think the other member of our class may have been overzelous in their defense of Said, or they missed more than the ABA maximum 10% days of classes).

After attending an undergraduate college with a very liberal faculty and very conservative student body, I have come to appreciate the advantages in diverse thinking in the classroom. Prof. Said has been less than accepting of conservative views in class, but he comes nowhere close to using the classroom pulpit for the advancement of his views as drastically as I saw in college. So I see no reason he needs to be a topic of criticism outside the USC School of Law. I must agree with others that have said Prof. Said may be bordering on extreme, but if you can't be liberal in academics where can you be liberal?.

I also must agree that he is has not been a good professor. However, it is clear Prof. Said is very smart and working hard at teaching. I think this is the case with many young faculty members. He may yet mature in his teaching style. (First Semester, first year teaching full time may be too early to definitively say he is a bad prof.)

Note: Opinions expressed in comments are those of the authors alone and not necessarily those of Daniel Pipes. Original writing only, please. Comments are screened and in some cases edited before posting. Reasoned disagreement is welcome but not comments that are scurrilous, off-topic, commercial, disparaging religions, or otherwise inappropriate. For complete regulations, see the "Guidelines for Reader Comments".