Fighting the left in the classroom

My History of Africa class was recently assigned a paper on Sven Lindqvist’s “Exterminate All the Brutes: One Man’s Odyssey into the Heart of Darkness and the Origins of European Genocide.” The day it was due, I walked into class to hear our professor asking students to present their theses and one student argued the following: the conquering of Africa by Europeans in the 19th century can be compared to America’s “conquest” of Iraq. He then stated that Americans are in Iraq for the following reasons: to conquer the Iraqis, to obtain oil, and, to exterminate Iraqi civilians. Exterminate Iraqi civilians??

Interesting, last time I checked Americans had saved the Iraqis from an oppressive dictator who was committing genocide, not the other way around.

To this student’s false statement, I promptly raised my hand and strongly stated that Americans are not in Iraq to exterminate Iraqis, rather, we are there to spread the democratic peace and to defeat an oppressive dictator and his regime. I also pointed out that we did not conquer Iraq and did not seek to do so. When I said this, my professor looked at me and, in a visibly annoyed way, laughed at me and questioned how I could say we didn’t conquer Iraq, that invading Iraq was conquering Iraq. To this, I said we did not conquer Iraq, rather we defeated an oppressive regime and he looked at me in disbelief. (I'd like to ask this professor to look up the definitions of the words "conquer" and "defeat," as he clearly did not know the difference between the two.)

A classic liberal professor, he then allowed a democrat in the front of the room to claim that Americans are racist and that we do wish to exterminate the Iraqis, without questioning her position at all.

No surprise there! Rather than allowing students to present their ideas and to mediate the debate, he called out the students he didn't agree with and allowed the liberals to drone on and on about how terrible Americans are. Liberal professors fail to remember that the classroom is a forum for discussion and the exchange of ideas, not a soapbox to push their own agendas or to support students who are of the same mindset.