Former U.S. Rep. James E. Rogan has resigned from the advisory board of a conservative UCLA alumni group after learning that the group's founder had offered students $100 payments to record professors' "non-pertinent ideological comments."
Rogan, a Republican who represented Glendale and Pasadena for two terms and was a manager in the impeachment trial of President Clinton, said he did not want his name linked to the controversial effort to record professors in their classrooms.
Rogan, now a lawyer in Irvine, on Wednesday sent an e-mail tendering his resignation to Andrew Jones, head of the Bruin Alumni Assn. and its one full-time employee. The year-old group, supported by donations, has no formal connection to UCLA.
In his e-mail, Rogan wrote, "I am uncomfortable to say the least with this tactic. It places students in jeopardy of violating myriad regulations and laws."
Jones had offered to pay UCLA students $100 for recordings and lecture notes of professors caught in "indoctrination, one-sided presentation of ideological controversies and unprofessional classroom behavior." Jones said one student, whom he declined to identify, had taken up the offer thus far.
While saying that he was interested in monitoring professors who inject any sort of inappropriate ideology into courses, Jones has identified mainly instructors with liberal and leftist views as potential monitoring targets.
Rogan said that when he agreed to serve on the alumni group's advisory board, he believed its role would be to mentor Republican students and student groups. He said he did not recall any discussion of faculty monitoring, which he does not support.
"I went to Berkeley as an undergraduate and UCLA law school. I don't need to go to a website to learn there is an overabundance of liberal faculty," Rogan said.
Being taught by liberal professors is a simple fact of life when attending an elite university, Rogan said. "You should not go to Harvard and be surprised to find an over-abundance of liberals," he said.
Of his own education, Rogan said the faculty's ideology "doesn't seem to have hurt me."
Rogan's resignation follows that of Harvard historian Stephan Thernstrom and UCLA professor emeritus Jascha Kessler, who also quit the board after the plan to record professors was announced.
The group's monitoring effort has outraged several faculty members listed as potential targets; they likened it to a witch hunt that could harm the classroom atmosphere.
