The price of academic freedom
How much would you pay to have a classroom free of liberal bias indoctrinating our free thinkers in higher education? Free of women’s lib classes that ask men to wear high heels and dresses to understand what women go through? For the Arizona Senate, they’re not asking the students to pay for the, um, freedom from hearing what professors might actually think. They’re fining the professors.
If you are a professor at a public or community college (but it does apply to K-12 teachers as well) and SB 1542 (n?e SB1612) goes through, you could very well be have to pay the Man for doing things like: endorsing or opposing any candidate for any political office; having an opinion on any pending legislation; merely talking about any current decision in any court, unless you talk about them in a non-positive/non-negative way; or, my personal favorite, advocating ?one side of a social, political, or cultural issue that is a matter of partisan controversy.?
If a professor is found spouting off anything perceived as partisan (the Arizona Daily Star suggests things like “evolution, global warming, foreign policy, voting rights, education policy” but really, the list could be twisted to include anything), the proposed legislation states that they could face up to $500 dollars and for higher offenses flat-out termination. The Arizona Republic calls it what it is: unconstitutional.
Sen. Thayer Verschoor, the Republican majority leader, spoke out about why exactly he thinks crumbling our shadow universities with this legislation is necessary. The cross-dressing lesson was “peculiar” to him, but this gem from Inside Higher Ed is too good not to quote:
In another case, he said, his comments offended a professor?s political sensibilities. While Verschoor did not remember the specifics of the political exchange or the class, he said that the professor accused him of being ?a political plant? and then said that ?plants are to be urinated on.?
He reads and hears about the problems all the time ? we can only guess which sources ? and says the bill isn’t designed to create academic freedom ? at least the perversion of the term by the likes of David Horowitz. For the record, Horowitz does not agree with the legislation for higher ed but is cool with it in K-12.
Horowitz is at least half-right here. College students are adults and if they cannot engage in intelligent, civil and reasoned debate about so-called controversial issues with their professors, and fellow students, what are they doing in college? Conservatives shouldn’t be silenced, just like liberals shouldn’t be fired, but this is the wrong way to do it.
Categories: activism, professors, rights
Comments
Leave a Reply
Comments that do not abide by our Comments Policy may be deleted.
Feed for College Ave.