California prof’s required reading paints Usama bin Laden as a freedom fighter

010917-N-7479T-509

Usama bin Laden was a freedom fighter and the U.S. is a “neocolonial power,” according to a California state university teacher whose writings are required reading for his political science students.

Emmit Evans, a political science lecturer at the public university Cal Poly in San Luis Obispo, requires students in his “World Food Systems” class to read the textbook he co-authored, “The Other World.” In the book, about politics in the developing world, Evans offers up a sanitized version of the 9/11 mastermind and the terrorist group he headed.

“The Al Qaeda movement of Osama bin Laden is one example of an attempt to free a country (in this case, Saudi Arabia) from a corrupt and repressive regime propped up by a neocolonial power (in this case, the United States),” the book says.

At least one student found the description hard to swallow.

September_11th_terrorist_attack

“It totally blew my mind that a professor would essentially call Al Qaeda a bunch of freedom fighters in required reading for class,” Aaron Bandler, a junior who took Evans’ class, told FoxNews.com.

Asked about his line referencing Al Qaeda, Evans told FoxNews.com in the language of academia that he merely presents facts and doesn’t moralize.

“With respect to my writings, they are empirical, not normative,” he said.

But Bandler said Evans’ bias showed throughout the course.

“He was encouraging us to be activists… the whole last part of the course was about how to cause ‘positive change’… but his examples of positive change were all stuff like Occupy Wall Street, the Arab Spring, and raising the minimum wage,” Bandler said. “He would say things like, ‘I know you guys can go out there and make things more sustainable.'”

Evans told FoxNews.com that his class does indeed have a bias — one towards sustainability.

“World Food Systems has a built-in slant:on sustainability,” Evans said. “We do not focus on ‘the other side’ — how we might build more unsustainable food systems.”

Several studies have documented the left-wing orientation of most college professors. A survey done by UCLA researchers found that just 9.5 percent of public university professors identified as conservative, while 65.7 percent identified as liberals.

 

Fox News has the full article

You may also like...