Legislatures to Consider Political Bias in Higher Education

[Frodo]

Legislatures consider potential political bias in colleges

Thursday, January 19, 2006; Posted: 12:39 p.m. EST (17:39 GMT)

PHILADELPHIA, Pennsylvania (AP) -- Christian DeJohn returned from a National Guard tour in Bosnia only to fight his own war with academics at Temple University who he says have held up his master's thesis because of political conflicts in the classroom.

To some conservatives, the case represents a national trend by some liberal professors to infringe on conservative students' right to free speech at public colleges and universities.

The debate has reached more than a dozen state legislatures, which dole out the taxpayer funds to those schools, but so far there's been more talk than action.

Legislation modeled after an "academic bill of rights" advocated by conservative activist David Horowitz, founder of Students for Academic Freedom, was introduced in at least 15 states last year, but none has passed it, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

Among other things, the document exhorts professors to present a wide spectrum of intellectual views in the classroom and discourages them from basing students' grades on their religious or political beliefs.

Julie Bell, the conference's education program director, said legislatures have not forced the issue because even public universities typically enjoy considerable autonomy in setting academic policies and procedures.

"Most legislatures have backed away because they really do acknowledge that separation," Bell said.

source

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What clowns. John Yoo is a Professor at UC Berkeley.

If freaking UC Berkeley had a liberal bias, they wouldn't have hired a right-wing terrorist.

[MODU]

It's real simple . . . teachers are entitled to their opinions, just like students.  However, the teacher has to put their bias to the side and grade on content, not positions.  If a teacher doesn't, then he is discriminating, and the student has a case.  I had that issue with a professor during my masters program.  He was a devout Sam Walton worshiper, and I told him that he was no better than Gates, Iacocca, Disney, or Buffett.  The guy flipped his lid and tried to retaliate by giving me lower grades on my exams.  Unfortunately for him, I compared my responses with others in the class, and submitted the materials to the Dean, and had my grade corrected.  Teachers should take a lesson from that.  They are not "all powerful" in their classroom.

[Inverted Things]

When I attended college at the University of Wisconsin at River Falls, there was a blatently liberal economics professor named Jackie Brux. I had a few out-of-class discussions with her about economics wherein I disagreed with some of the viewpoints she expoused in class. Nonetheless, I got an A in the class. I can therefore say with some certainty that her bias does not extend to grading.

I took the class my sophomore year. During my junior and senior years the college republicans on campus started to get really vocal. They began sending letters to professors threatening to get them fired if they couldn't keep their bias out of the classroom. With Jackie Brux, the biggest issue in their letter was that she had put a question on the final test that went something like this: "The quote 'Every gun made, every bullet fired signifies in the final sense a distribution of resources away from those who need it most' is an example of what economic concept?" The answer was "opportunity cost," and the quote was from Eisenhower. (Her tests are always multiple choice).

So, when students complain about liberal bias, all I generally hear is "whine, whine, whine. I'm so narrow minded that I can't stand to hear a different viewpoint in a classroom devoted to higher learning."

MODU's case is clearly a step beyond what I'm talking about here. If your grade is affected by your viewpoint, then that's a problem. In the situation above, no grades were affected.

[Bandit3 the Worker]

To some conservatives, the case represents a national trend by some liberal professors to infringe on conservative students' right to free speech at public colleges and universities.

Give me a break.

[phk]

Horowitz seems to have a lot of problems with the idea that someone, somewhere might disagree with him.