more campus politics

Four Ohio state senators--"small government" advocates all--have introduced a bill to establish an academic bill of rights for higher education in Ohio. Essentially, the bill provides for state-mandated neutrality on the part of college professors. The bill protects college students from indoctrination by their professors by legislating modes of instruction and evaluation. State senators are going to make decisions about how knowledge is constructed and disseminated! Please read the bill and think about the false sense of neutrality its language employs.

Students are to be graded without regard for ideological content. Okay, so as a teacher of writing, I must (by virtue of a state law?!) disregard ethical concerns. What ought I do with a grammatically correct essay that uses lively and active language to argue for the supremacy of the white race? That's a difficult question--one that is going to be decided by state senators instead of learned scholars who devote their lives to ethics and rhetoric?

What I like even more is the MANDATE that we teach "all human knowledge in these (subject) areas and provide students with dissenting sources and viewpoints." What does it mean to insist that a course cover "all knowledge," including "dissenting" views? Must a twentieth century history course cover the dissenting theory that the Holocaust never happened? Must a Shakespeare course (yeah, they still exist although the sponsors of the bill no doubt think the Shakespeare courses have been replaced with, God forbid, courses in lesbian literature) teach authorship conspiracies? Or, more likely, must a biology course teach creationism? What constitutes a legitimate academic theory can be tough. If a professor only has a ten-week quarter or a fifteen-week semester to cover a broad array of concepts, theories, and methods, some judicious cutting needs to take place. Once again, do we want state senators making those kinds of decisions about the legitimacy of a particular theory?

One interesting note on press coverage of the bill. The Columbus Dispatch ran a story that quoted an unnamed Miami University spokesperson as praising the bill. The story also quoted the president of the faculty union at Wright State as saying the bill was preposterous. The difference between a unionized and non-unionized faculty.

I'm fascinated (and, of course, frightened) by these crack-downs on so-called campus liberalism. The proponenets of the movement employ interesting rhetoric--often a discourse of "free speech" (protect the oppressed conservatives!) that borrows its tropes and logics from civil rights rhetoric. Two noted proponents, David Horowitz and Mike Adams, have gained attention in cable news and a.m. talk radio circles. Check them out.

The campus politics question is rearing its head in many venues. Marquette University shut down an "Adopt a Sniper" fundraiser (raising money for sharp shooters in the U.S. military) that the College Republicans group there was sponsoring. The Catholic University felt the rhetoric of the group (their motto: "1 Shot, 1 Kill, No Remorse, I Decide) was inconsistent with its respect for the sanctity of life. And, of course, Colorado Governor and the state's Regents are calling for the head of Ward Churchill, an ethnic studies professor who has contextualized 9/11 by writing about the role that U.S. imperialism played in prompting the attacks. Specifically, an article of his suggested that "little Eichmanns" died in the World Trade Center that day. Here's an interesting take on Churchill.