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December 25, 2005
Professors' Politics Draw Lawmakers Into the Fray
By MICHAEL JANOFSKY
While attending a Pennsylvania Republican Party picnic, Jennie Mae Brown bumped into her state representative and started venting.
"How could this happen?" Ms. Brown asked Representative Gibson C. Armstrong two summers ago, complaining about a physics professor at the York campus of Pennsylvania State University who she said routinely used class time to belittle President Bush and the war in Iraq. As an Air Force veteran, Ms. Brown said she felt the teacher's comments were inappropriate for the classroom.
The encounter has blossomed into an official legislative inquiry, putting Pennsylvania in the middle of a national debate spurred by conservatives over whether public universities are promoting largely liberal positions and discriminating against students who disagree with them.
A committee held two hearings last month in Pittsburgh and has scheduled another for Jan. 9 in Philadelphia. A final report with any recommendations for legislative remedy is due in June.
The investigation comes at a time when David Horowitz, a conservative commentator and president of the Center for the Study of Popular Culture, has been lobbying more than a dozen state legislatures to pass an "Academic Bill of Rights" that he says would encourage free debate and protect students against discrimination for expressing their political beliefs.
While Mr. Horowitz insists his campaign for intellectual diversity is nonpartisan, it is fueled, in large measure, by studies that show the number of Democratic professors is generally much larger than the number of Republicans. A survey in 2003 by researchers at Santa Clara University found the ratio of Democrats to Republicans on college faculties ranged from 3 to 1 in economics to 30 to 1 in anthropology.
Mr. Horowitz said he was pushing for legislation only because schools across the country were ignoring their own academic freedom regulations and a founding principle of the American Association of University Professors, which says schools are better equipped to regulate themselves without government intervention.
"It became apparent to me that universities have a problem," he said in an interview. "And nothing was being done about it."
Mr. Horowitz and his allies are meeting forceful resistance wherever they go, by university officials and the professors association, which argues that conservatives are overstating the problem and, by seeking government action, are forcing their ideology into the classroom.
"Mechanisms exist to address these glitches and to fix them," said Joan Wallach Scott, a professor at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, N.J., and former chairwoman of the professors association committee on academic freedom, in testimony at the Pennsylvania Legislature's first hearing. "There is no need for interference from outside legislative or judicial agencies."
In a debate with Mr. Horowitz last summer, Russell Jacoby, a history professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, portrayed Mr. Horowitz's approach as heavy-handed. "It calls for committees or prosecutors to monitor the lectures and assignments of teachers," he said. "This is a sure-fire way to kill free inquiry and whatever abuses come with it."
So far, the campaign has produced more debate than action. Colorado and Ohio agreed to suspend legislative efforts to impose an academic bill of rights in favor of pledges by their state schools to uphold standards already in place. Georgia passed a resolution discouraging "political or ideological indoctrination" by teachers, encouraging them to create "an environment conducive to the civil exchange of ideas."
While comparable efforts failed in three other states, measures are pending in 11 others. In Congress, House and Senate committees passed a general resolution this year encouraging American colleges to promote "a free and open exchange of ideas" in their classrooms and to treat students "equally and fairly." It awaits floor action next year.
Mr. Horowitz's center has spawned a national group called Students for Academic Freedom that uses its Web site to collect stories from students who say they have been affected by political bias in the classroom. The group says it has chapters on more than 150 campuses.
The student group has fielded concerns from people like Nathaniel Nelson, a former student at the University of Rhode Island and a conservative, who said a philosophy teacher he had during his junior year referred often to his own homosexuality and made clear his dislike for Mr. Bush.
Mr. Nelson, now a graduate student at the University of Connecticut, said in an interview that the teacher frequently called on him to defend his conservative values while making it clear he did not care for Republicans.
"On the first day of class, he said, 'If you don't like me, get out of my class,' " Mr. Nelson said. "But it was the only time that fall the course was being offered, and I wanted to take it."
Marissa Freimanis said she encountered a similar situation in her freshman English class at California State University, Long Beach, last year. Ms. Freimanis said the professor's liberal bias was clear in the class syllabus, which suggested topics for members of the class to write about. One was, "Should Justice Sandra Day O'Connor be impeached for her partisan political actions in the Bush v. Gore case?"
"Of course, I felt very uncomfortable," Ms. Freimanis, who is a Republican, said in an interview.
In Pennsylvania, lawmakers are examining whether the political climate at 18 state-run schools requires legislation to ban bias. Mr. Armstrong said he discussed the issue in several conversations with Mr. Horowitz "as an expert in the field" before calling for the creation of a committee.
"But I don't know if his Academic Bill of Rights is necessary in Pennsylvania," Mr. Armstrong said in an interview. "Before we have legislation to change a problem, we first have to determine whether the problem exists. If it does exist, the next question is, 'Is it significant enough to require legislation?' "
"So the question I'm asking," he added, "is, 'Do we have a problem in Pennsylvania?' "
For now, the answer is unclear. While Mr. Armstrong said he had received complaints from "about 50 students" who said they were intimidated by professors expressing strong political views, Democratic members of the committee have called the endeavor a waste of time, and the Republican chairman, Representative Thomas L. Stevenson, seemed to agree.
"If our report were issued today," Mr. Stevenson said, "I'd say our institutions of higher education are doing a fine job."
SpidermanTuba said:Republicans are more concerned with making money than with having an enjoyable job.
Which is why there will always be more left wing Professors than right wing.
However, any professor who wastes time in a physics class on politics should be fired. Its unprofessional and wrong.
SpidermanTuba said:Republicans are more concerned with making money than with having an enjoyable job.
Which is why there will always be more left wing Professors than right wing.
archangel said:After retiring I took a couple of college courses out of bordom...let me tell you all ya get no matter what class you take today is Liberal politics and brainwashing...
insein said:Care to show some evidence of this? Or is this just another of your wonderfuly idiotic generalizations that you pulled from your ass?
SpidermanTuba said:I have a BS in physics and I am in grad school in physics for one and a half years now, and I have never encountered any politics in any of my classes other than political science. A very bad (as in not funny) nerdy joke about Bush was once made in the weekly department colloquium, but never once in class.
pegwinn said:I took a couple of off duty education classess from time to time and noticed that a lot of the teachers tried to mix in current events with the curriculum. It was most pronounced in the political science class, and in the History class.
Of course this was during the Clinton years (shudder) so I got to be the heckler. Since the classes were on base most of the students were Marines, which meant El Perfessor was outnumbered and outgunned.
:rotflmao:
Jimmyeatworld said:I've mentioned this one before. A little over a year ago I had a debate with a young man... Well, if you consider me making my point and backing it up with facts while he says, "No. I'm right, you're wrong" a debate. Anyway, this young man was insistant that President Clinton had never been impeached. At first, I thought he was just confused on his terminology. Nope. He was adament that the entire impeachment was nothing but a conspiracy created by the "Republican controlled media", and an impeachment never took place. Forget about the fact that there were countless references to it, that Clinton himself had spoke of it, and there was an area of the Clinton Library dedicated to it, it never happened. This might be written off as the ignorant ramblings of a wacko, if it weren't for the fact that he attained this "knowledge" from his Constitutional Law professor. Nope. No Liberal bias there.
pegwinn said:I took a couple of off duty education classess from time to time and noticed that a lot of the teachers tried to mix in current events with the curriculum. It was most pronounced in the political science class, and in the History class.
Abbey Normal said:I'd love to have seen that. You should see the bias in law school.
SpidermanTuba said:No lie. The right wing bias where my fiance went to law school was insane.
Abbey Normal said:Now there is no doubt you are just being idiotic.
insein said:There was a doubt before?
Abbey Normal said:Good point.
When someone lies about something I know about and have experienced firsthand, it's hard to resist pointing it out. I am sure he will come back with more lies in a futile attempt to save his reputation.
He has nothing to save.Abbey Normal said:Good point.
When someone lies about something I know about and have experienced firsthand, it's hard to resist pointing it out. I am sure he will come back with more lies in a futile attempt to save his reputation.
Kinda like the other Louisiana whiners, I guess.Kathianne said:Uh, yeah, it's just not a good rep. :chains:
SpidermanTuba said:I met a guy who swears he was abducted by aliens. I don't know what quacks have to do with our discussion, though. So you found a dude who thinks the impeachment never happened. THere are people who believe the 16th Amendment was never lawfully passed, or that the moon landing never happened, or that lawyers are not eligible to public office.
