Community College Bias II: Focus on Foothill

When President Bush called for “strengthening community colleges” in his State of the Union Address, we pointed out that these grassroots institutions of higher learning may already be as politically biased as their supposedly elite counterparts. What we have learned since seems to bear out a maxim of veteran journalist and author M. Stanton Evans, “No matter how bad you think that things are, they’re worse.”

To begin with, the U. S. Government Accountability Office informs us that the federal government already strengthens community colleges to the tune of $25.6 billion a year. And our roster of those colleges that have lapsed from education to indoctrination turned out to be a short list.

I originally took from the NoIndoctrination.org and Students for Academic Freedom web sites those schools labeled community colleges at which pedagogical abuse has been reported. This gave me a total of 14 offending institutions, to which I added two.

Luann Wright, president of NoIndoctrination.org, sent me a kind note in which she added another 13 community colleges of note [a list that I paste below].

Cabrillo College (CA)
Canada College (CA)
Diablo Valley College (CA)
Foothill College (CA)
Fullerton College (CA)
North Harris College (TX)
Orange Coast College (CA)
Palomar College (CA)
Saddleback College (CA)
San Diego City College (CA)
San Diego Mesa College (CA)
Sierra College (CA)
Skyline College (CA)

She also pointed out that I incorrectly noted that Glendale Community College was located in California, rather than Arizona. I stand corrected. Nonetheless, Luann’s additions bring our total of community colleges that serve as a backdrop for bias to 29, and counting. The list moreover, includes a school which we must devote some space to—Foothill College.

At Foothill College, columnist Bob Parks reported in a column, when a Kuwaiti–born student wrote an essay defending America’s founding fathers and the Constitution they authored, his political science professor urged him to seek counseling. That professor, Joe Woolcock, has since denied the allegation.

“He called me naïve for believing in the greatness of this country and told me, ‘America is not God’s gift to the world. You need regular psychotherapy,’” Ahmad al-Qloushi remembered.

“I neither forced nor ordered Mr. al-Qloushi to see a counselor,” Dr. Woolcock recalls, “I have no authority to do so.”

“My suggestion to him was a recommendation he freely chose to accept and which he acknowledged in an e-mail message to me on December 1, 2004.”

“I didn’t want to be deported for having written a pro-American essay, so as soon as I felt his office, I made an appointment with the school psychologist,” al-Qloushi explained. [Melodramatic as al-Qloushi’s reaction may sound, those of us who have watched pro-American in-laws from other lands stalled in U. S. embassies abroad while they watch officially-sanctioned visitors from the one-party states they live in sail through the visa line know that it has some basis in reality.]

Professor Woolcock complained that Bob Parks only talked to two students who had taken his class when Park’s assessed his pedagogical approach. Actually, you can get reviews from 10 of Dr. Woolcock’s students at ratemyprofessor.com, only two of whom offer up happy faces. Those 10, in turn, might be a representative sampling.

“Absolutely the worst teacher I ever had,” one reviewer wrote. “I transferred into USF and nailed a 3.8 GPA, graduating **** laude—and yet I got a ‘D’ on all of my papers because he did not agree with my point of view and what I had to say.”

“By the end of the class, only 8 people remained.”

“Does not respect anyone else’s opinions but his own and at times can be downright **** and anti-semetic [sic],” another reviewer wrote. “Mostly spends time preaching in order to hear himself talk or praising his TAs [teaching assistants] for repeating everything he says.”

“Class supposed to be taught as a seminar but generally if he wants to talk he will interrupt you and talk the whole time,” a veteran of one of Woolcock’s courses recollects. “Of course, then your grade is based on the presentation you were supposed to have done.”