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March 03, 2005

Understatement of the Year

I missed David Horowitz's speech in Minneapolis yeaterday, but the Strib covered it.

Sort of.

A national movement that supporters say protects college students from indoctrination by college professors but opponents say stifles debate made its way to Minnesota on Wednesday when two legislators proposed legislation that they call the "Academic Bill of Rights."

Sen. Michele Bachmann, R-Stillwater, and Rep. Ray Vandeveer, R-Forest Lake, said their bill would require the state's publicly funded colleges and universities to adopt policies that would mandate that professors not use their classrooms to promote their personal political or ideological beliefs. It also says that students would not be punished for disagreeing with their instructors' politics.

The piece, by Mark Brunswick, doesn't actually link to the Academic Bill of Rights. Read it for yourself, you decide.

I did. I see neither a problem nor anything that can be "enforced" in any way (other than abjuring the destruction of books and other materials).

Naturally, there is another side:

Critics of such measures, including the American Association of University Professors, have said the bills could stifle debate and questioned whether its supporters had ulterior motives, such as wanting more conservative professors.
Oh, my.

Debate is already stifled. If you're a conservative student, especially in humanities, arts or soft sciences, your point of view is already under constant attack on most campuses.

And if the goal is to get more conservatives on campus - or, more accurately, to break the left-to-neo-Marxist stranglehold on so many academic departments.

Michael Livingston, president of the Minnesota Chapter of the American Association of University Professors, said he has heard the classroom horror stories anecdotally but believes they are rare occurrences at best.

"I find this very puzzling because it's a solution to a problem that doesn't exist," Livingston said. "The purpose of college professors is to help students think. We help them by presenting divergent perspectives. Sometimes we believe those perspectives, but a lot of times we don't. We just need to present our students with perspectives so they can think them through and understand them."

I know it wasn't like that with a significant part of my professors, even 20 years ago.

Students - how about today?

Posted by Mitch at March 3, 2005 06:35 AM | TrackBack
Comments

So now it's an ulterior motive to want more conservative professors. ???? They are full of moonbatism, they don't even recognize it.

Posted by: Silver at March 3, 2005 07:46 AM

Hard to buy Michael Livingston's point of view while the Ward Churchill and Lawrence Summers kerfuffles are still churning along.

Posted by: mlp at March 3, 2005 09:12 AM

Hard to buy Michael Livingston's point of view while the Ward Churchill and Lawrence Summers kerfuffles are still churning along.

Posted by: mlp at March 3, 2005 09:12 AM

So do conservatives think that affirmative action is BAD or GOOD? I'm so confused!

Posted by: Luke Francl at March 3, 2005 01:06 PM

Luke, what does this have to do with affirmative action? Explain yourself...if you can.

Posted by: Paul at March 4, 2005 12:44 AM

Sorry, Luke, you must be confused - or I missed any reference to quotas.

So do liberals think that discrimination and the crushing of dissent is BAD or GOOD?

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