Fair and Balanced

Inside Higher Ed reports that David Horowitz’s campaign to control college classrooms is in full swing in Florida, where the state House of Representatives has approved an Academic Bill of Rights. The legislation has the support of Jeb Bush, after all.

The bill sounds innocuous enough. It is couched in terms of “Academic Freedom,” though, oddly enough, “Academic Freedom” implies a restriction on what professors can say, and perhaps a requirement that they say other things, instead. It seems like what the bill restricts most is academic freedom.

The proponents of such legislation believe that students are being forcibly indoctrinated by liberal professors. All of this begs the question of what conservative students are so worried about, in Florida, a state where it seems like the only time their views might be challenged, even gently, is in college? If the election of 2000 taught us anything, it’s that the powers that be in Florida are looking out for those oppressed conservative minorities. Because, in fact, they run the state.

The problem is that the bill opens the way for people to challenge, left and right, what happens in classrooms–which, of course, they can already do without clogging the courts. From a logistical standpoint, we can expect much extra litigation. And I am not sure there’s evidence that universities aren’t already handling such complaints well enough. But if every student with a grade dispute simply has to call “foul!” and call a lawyer, there are going to be all kinds of nasty results.

I also worry whether requiring professors to be fair to all sides (and I don’t believe that most aren’t fair) is going to mean liberal professors are eventually replaced with replacements who are “fair and balanced” in the Fox News sense of the term.

The article in Inside Higher Ed states, “Rep. Dennis K. Baxley said his own undergraduate education at Florida State University — in the 1970s — illustrated the failings of higher education: The problem was that an anthropology professor “did a tirade” in his course that evolution was correct and that creationism was not. Baxley said that students should not “get blasted” as he did for not believing in evolution.”

Um, maybe students in an anthropology seminar in a public university should hear a “tirade” about evolution. And what kind of lasting trauma did this cause, anyway? If a student believes in creationism, is being exposed to evolution, or even to a strong proponent of it, going to shatter his/her world?
When I read comments like Baxley’s, I wonder about the way Thomas Jefferson is quoted in the preamble to the bill:

94 WHEREAS, the value of the life of the mind was articulated
95 by Thomas Jefferson when he stated, “We are not afraid to follow
96 truth wherever it may lead, nor to tolerate any error so long as
97 reason is left free to combat it…”

It seems like a student whose world was so horribly shaken by a discussion of evolution (yes, I said discussion–as “tirades” are in the ears of the beholder) is exhibiting, if nothing else, this fear Jefferson warns us of. And yet the problem lies in the words “truth” and “error.” The anthro professor believes s/he is sharing the “truth,” whereas the student Baxley thought he was being confronted with error. Oh dear. What to do? The answer, I believe, is not to add legislation. (Wow, that is the first libertarian-sounding thing I can remember saying ever.)

Interestingly, the Academic Bill of Rights would apply only to public colleges. According to the bill:

11 WHEREAS, the principles enumerated in this act fully apply
12 only to public postsecondary institutions, and nothing in this
13 act shall be construed as interfering with the right of a
14 private postsecondary institution to restrict academic freedom
15 on the basis of creed or belief…

It’s nice that professors in private universities–including religious institutions where one-sidedness is more often a problem–are allowed to indoctrinate to their hearts’ content. No class at (assuming this were a nationwide bill) Bob Jones or Oral Roberts or Brigham Young would be troubled by hearing a different point of view.

And no, in case anyone is worried, I do not believe professors should ideologically bully students. I know there are professors out there whose grading is swayed by ideology. But I believe it is extremely rare (indeed, rarer even than professors getting threatened physically by students, but that’s another story).

As a teacher, I try very hard to create an environment where respectful dialogue is possible. And the topics covered in class are appropriate: I don’t launch into tirades about George Bush when we’re talking about W. B Yeats. I don’t think the vast majority of teachers do, though I think is the sort of thing Horowitz wants us to think goes on in classrooms everyday. And I do believe that this sort of legislation will just yield court cases and instill fear in the hearts of professors, who will be anything but academically free. And believe it or not, students-of-different-ideologies everywhere, we will all be the losers.

Addendum 1: After writing this, I discovered applecidercheesefudge and Crooked Timber have much more coherent stuff to say about this. Check them out.

Addendum 2: You know, the more I think about it, graduate level study will really be screwed up by a bill like this. Think about a seminar in Marxist Literary Theory: Will the prof have to balance that out with another approach? That’s another course. Oy!