 |
|||
|
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
Commentary
by Bruce L.R. Smith, Jeremy D. Mayer and A. Lee Fritschler The charges are familiar: America’s campuses have been taken over by extreme liberals who proselytize in the classroom and discriminate against conservative faculty. Just last month, nationally syndicated columnist Michael Barone wrote “… college and university … administrators … have for years been disciplining and subjecting to sensitivity training any students who dare to utter thoughts that liberals find offensive. The campuses that once prided themselves as zones of free expression are now the least free part of our society” (“The Coming Liberal Thugocracy,” Oct. 13, 2008). These are serious accusations. They call into question core university values. High school counselors should be able to respond to parents and students who might be worried about these accusations. If, in fact, one philosophy or approach or group has taken over and rules U.S. universities, we should First, far from being saturated with politics, the nation’s universities reflect a general disengagement from civic and political affairs, including the disinclination to promote serious debate of political issues on campus. There is too little, not too much, politics on most campuses. The reasons for this aversion to politics are complex and relate partly to historical factors such as the birth of research universities in an era when neutral expertise was prized more highly than involvement with politics. The desire to maintain peace and order on campus after the tumultuous disputes of the post-Vietnam era also played a part. Furthermore, strong incentives exist in the academic world that encourage research and scholarly publication and discourage civic engagement. As Christopher Hitchens has observed, “The real risk to the intellectual health of young Americans comes from those who prefer a mental climate that is risk averse.” Second, bias is rare in the college classroom. Students in our focus groups and interviews did not believe, despite the occasional lapses of some instructors, that professors were generally biased or used the classroom to inculcate personal political views. Professors in our national survey, similarly, did not believe that colleagues in their own or in other departments were biased in the classroom. Further, a special legislative committee convened in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, and made up of Republicans and Democrats, concluded that bias was “rare” in the state’s public colleges and universities. The committee, moreover, resolved that it did not want to be the “school board” for the state’s institutions of higher learning. It preferred that the universities review their own procedures and make sure that students, if they have complaints, have internal channels of appeal. Students should not expect that their views will never be challenged in college. Parents should want their children to encounter and be stimulated by many different beliefs and ideologies. Third, counselors should point out that academic hiring is more open today than it was in the days when the “old boy network” influenced most appointments at the major universities. Our national survey found that 85 percent of college professors believed that political ideology played no role in hiring in their departments. Even 69 percent of conservative professors agreed. Only 6 percent of professors in our survey believed that their political views either affected or would affect their tenure decision. The dominant criterion that operates in academic hiring decisions seems to be the desire to find “tenurable” candidates — that is, candidates who are devoted to research, are noncontroversial and will be able to easily persuade tenure committees of their worth. There are many serious problems facing higher education today, but political bias in teaching and in the academic hiring process is not one of them. The good news for parents and students is that bias is rare. The bad news is that ideological peace has been purchased at too high a price. Universities are all too often disengaged from serious political debate, and many have all but abandoned any responsibility to help prepare students to be effective citizens. Some universities have thrown the baby out with the bathwater by fostering an academic culture pretending that values, controversial issues and civic affairs are not matters to engage the attention of serious scholars and not fit subjects for the classroom. As a result, preparation for citizenship has all but disappeared as an important part of the educational mission. It is this serious and real problem that professors and administrators should address, rather than the chimera of faculty bias. 
|
 |
|||
Copyright © 2008 collegeboard.com, Inc. |
|||