2008 Woodie Awards
Academic Censorship
LaGina Phillips
Issue date: 3/22/06 Section: Opinion
- Page 1 of 2 next >
College students are adults. They choose the colleges they attend, the classes they take and whether to accept instructors' opinions as fact. They don't need an Academic Bill of Rights to censor instructors in their classrooms because students are "young and impressionable."
According to the proposed legislation, college students are unable to differentiate between when instructors are teaching facts and when they are expressing opinions.
As a student, it's insulting to know there are people who think that we need protection from our big, bad agenda-touting instructors.
A clear sign that this bill is a bad idea is the fact that it's taken three years to get off the ground, but nonetheless it has. The bill has passed in Georgia and is up for consideration in three more states.
The man behind the curtain is David Horowitz, an ultra-conservative propagandist who has been in and out of the media for years for his controversial views, including his take on Affirmative Action. (He argues that slavery was a benefit to blacks).
Horowitz's McCarthy-esque witch hunt has gone as far as spear-heading the Students for Academic Freedom and offering rewards encouraging students to record their instructors in case they say something leaning toward the left. Horowitz also wrote a book, 101 Most Dangerous Academics in America, with his blacklist of liberal college instructors.
A Student Rights Survey taken by more than 900 Valley College students found that there is no need for the bill. Eighty-five percent of students disagreed with the statement: "I feel that professors are trying to indoctrinate me into a specific viewpoint that I don't agree with;" and 78 percent disagreed with the statement: "I have taken a course in which I felt I had to agree with the professor's political or social viewpoint to get a good grade."
The survey also found that students would not find it inappropriate for an instructor to make a political joke during class or have a political cartoon displayed in his office.
According to the proposed legislation, college students are unable to differentiate between when instructors are teaching facts and when they are expressing opinions.
As a student, it's insulting to know there are people who think that we need protection from our big, bad agenda-touting instructors.
A clear sign that this bill is a bad idea is the fact that it's taken three years to get off the ground, but nonetheless it has. The bill has passed in Georgia and is up for consideration in three more states.
The man behind the curtain is David Horowitz, an ultra-conservative propagandist who has been in and out of the media for years for his controversial views, including his take on Affirmative Action. (He argues that slavery was a benefit to blacks).
Horowitz's McCarthy-esque witch hunt has gone as far as spear-heading the Students for Academic Freedom and offering rewards encouraging students to record their instructors in case they say something leaning toward the left. Horowitz also wrote a book, 101 Most Dangerous Academics in America, with his blacklist of liberal college instructors.
A Student Rights Survey taken by more than 900 Valley College students found that there is no need for the bill. Eighty-five percent of students disagreed with the statement: "I feel that professors are trying to indoctrinate me into a specific viewpoint that I don't agree with;" and 78 percent disagreed with the statement: "I have taken a course in which I felt I had to agree with the professor's political or social viewpoint to get a good grade."
The survey also found that students would not find it inappropriate for an instructor to make a political joke during class or have a political cartoon displayed in his office.
