Conservative colleges are not offering up liberal points of view

There is ignorance of the entrenched Arizona State University educational bureaucracy that blocks classroom access for anyone who doesn’t fit their rigid pedagogical model.

The folks who teach the teachers how to teach have a vested interest in the status quo.

I moved to Arizona with an MA in communications, decades of professional experience and university teaching experience. I’d seen the results of poor basic language skills while teaching college. I wanted to teach those skills earlier where it mattered. It was not to be.

Academically and professionally qualified to teach university-level communication and writing courses, still I wasn’t qualified to teach in public schools. To ASU I was the same as a freshly minted 22-year-old graduate with no teaching or practical experience: The rule was two years of classes plus another year student teaching for a credential. No waivers, no credits, no flexibility. I could afford the cost, but not the time lost that could be spent doing some good in the classroom.

That intransigence dissuaded me and likely has dissuaded many others who want to help. Perhaps the state easing the certification process will do some good.

— Brian Lawson, Fountain Hills

The hue and cry from many conservative voices that their free speech is being stifled is somewhat disingenuous at best. Yes, conservative ( and I should say radically conservative) voices have been shouted down at some universities.

In some instances, the speakers are such outliers that their views are not really supportable in fact. Being called out for one’s outrageous claims is a far cry from stifling speech. As despicable a human being and her views are, Ann Coulter was invited to and should have been allowed to speak at UC Berkely.

The students should have waited until after her speech to call her out. Conservatives love to point out this behavior as making them victims. However, they lead the effort to quell opposing thought.

I just saw the picture of Trump and his battalion of old gray hair and bald guys celebrating the passage of the Trumpcare bill yesterday as if they had just won the lottery.

Never mind that millions of Americans will lose health insurance, women will lose more rights, disabled and preexisting folks will see their rates go through the roof, and it has no chance of passing in the Senate.

This is what it takes to get a “victory” for Trump?