Via the NYT comes another tale in the war on bias in the academy: Professors’ Politics Draw Lawmakers Into the Fray:

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 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 it is the case that professors are known to spout their political views, often in clearly inappropriate fashion (e.g., criticizing the administration in physics class, as per the article–inappropriate in the sense that physics shouldn’t be taken up with political discourses, let alone personal diatribes), I continue to maintain that the worst way to address the problem is to get state legislatures involved.

Indeed, it strikes me as the opposite of how Horowitz should want to go about fixing a problem: the increase of governmental power. But, I will confess, that in recent years I have found Horowitz to be hysterical and hyperbolic. and not just on this topic. It has gotten to the point that I really cannot take him, or his organization, all that seriously.

I think that it is shameful the degree to which some faculty think that their positions allow them to spout forth on whatever topic they wish to discuss, even if it makes students uncomfortable. One has a responsibility to teach the subject that one is supposed to be teaching. And certainly no one should think that it is their job to make sure students think “the right way” on a specific political or religious topic. Of course, there are times when digressions occur in class (as my students can attest) so I won’t state that every second not spent on the subject matter is to be admonished, as that would be a rather hypocritical statement on my part. I also know that some profs do more than just digress, but instead wear their political views on their sleeves.

Yes, there are self-righteous professors (as there are self-righteous non-professors) who think that it is their job to spread their version of the truth. That should not happen, but it does and will, regardless of whatever ridiculous legislation Horowitz can get state legislatures to pass.

I am also not a big fan of trying to determine bias by the collection of disparate anecdotes. For one thing, a given student’s interpretation (as well as Horowitz’s) is often wrong.

If a physics professor in constantly going off on whomever the occupant of the White House is in lieu of teaching physics, then students should complain to the Departmental Chair, the College Dean and the Provost’s office. Now, will one complaint be sufficient? No, but is there any walk of life where one complaint is sufficient to create change? However, if there are sufficient complaints, the likelihood is that action will be taken. Does that solve a specific student’s discomfiture? No, but then again neither will griping to a state legislator in the hopes of fomenting legislative action.

Professors should not be using class time to air their political views–of this fact you will get no argument from me. However, the notion that the solution is some kind of monitoring device by state government of classrooms all in the name of academic freedom should be considered absurd on its face.

Further, I thought that one of the tenets of modern conservatism in the American political sense of the word was supposed to be less governmental interference in our lives, not more. I thought that the whole Reaganesque school of thinking, that Horowitz is allegedly part of considers government to be far more of a problem, than a solution.

One of the worst things that can be done in regards to governmental power is to give it oversight in ares as difficult to define as what the appropriate thing to say should be.

Even if one thinks that there is a rampant problem on college campuses (which is not the case, as far as I am concerned, while acknowledging that abuses do take place), then surely one has to see that the “cure” being proposed here is far worse than the “disease.”

As I have noted before, all this will do is create a situation in which grades will end up in litigation and members of state legislatures will try to score political points by showing the “pointy headed intellectuals” in their “ivory towers” a thing or two.

Neither of those things is healthy for learning, teaching and scholarship.

Update: Professor Bainbridge takes a somewhat different view.