Bob Jones University in Greenville, S.C., is famous for its overt Christian fundamentalism. The administration lifted the ban on interracial dating only four years ago. Students may face expulsion if they hold too divisive of an opinion. The professors are notorious for permeating every lecture hall with their message. While students choose to attend this university, they must endure blatant indoctrination in every class.
One would hope that a federally-funded university like UCSD would be better than this. It is not.
When professors take it upon themselves to use university time in order to campaign for their own causes, at the expense of the student, the university is no better than the Bob Jones extremists. Unfortunately, many UCSD professors are guilty of this academic trespass.
It is expensive enough to attend universities in this country, regardless of how the tuition is paid. Students have every right to receive the goods and services they have purchased, that is, an education in the subject matter of their choice. When the subject drifts toward excessive opinion, or more commonly, if the professor is actively indoctrinating the students, the student is receiving a faulty product, and the professor is throwing his academic integrity out the window.
Academic integrity, above all, should be the most important facet of learning. In scientific experimentation, any hypothesis tested with a slant toward a hoped-for expectation may not be trusted or deemed valid. The lecture hall should be no different.
This apparently is of no concern to many professors. As many students at even apathetic UCSD already understand, most professors intend to present their viewpoint on the subject matter in the best possible light. Other professors will even refuse to present another viewpoint, destroying any semblance of diversity of opinion. Most blatantly, some professors will change the topic or explicitly form a tangent in order to provide the soapbox for the viewpoint that they wish to preach.
The first form of indoctrination, least unethical but the most costly to the student, is when the professor teaches, or rants, on a subject completely unrelated to the course subject matter. This is robbing students of what they pay for so dearly, an education in the area they choose. If any subject matter is missed as a result of a biased tangent, this is a negligence of the subject matter that these professors supposedly hold dear. In other words, the professor is being paid to give their own viewpoints, while robbing the students of their tuitions that should be spent on, very specifically, course information.
Some professors are known to willfully exclude other viewpoints. One poignant example is the absurd upper-division sociology class titled “September 11th and its Aftermath.” This class exclusively promotes the idea that America deserved the attacks, and that it is most important to understand what America did wrong, rather than what the terrorists did wrong. While this viewpoint is one shared by a portion of the world, and thus should be taught, to exclude other viewpoints is extremely unethical, at best.
As an obvious parallel, if an instructor willfully ignores a valid viewpoint in order to advance an agenda, that instructor is no different than the Catholic Church censoring Galileo and his findings. The Church believed that Galileo was teaching science contradictory to Scripture, and thus his findings were invalid. Many contemporary professors proceed in exactly the same way. If a viewpoint opposes their own, it is considered invalid and excluded from the teaching.
For example, many small Christian high schools prohibit the teaching of evolution, because the administrations feel it is an invalid idea. This not only hurts students of biology hoping to excel in college, it is undoubtedly infuriating to science professors who know evolution’s validity.
The worst trespass, though, should be levied against those professors in the unique position of teaching freshmen, who are impressionable and often idolize the supposed brilliance of their instructors. Those lecturers, who use fundamental, lower-division courses in order to promote their agenda, are truly opposed to any idea of intellectual dignity. Even worse, indoctrinating freshman discourages them for ever thinking for themselves, dooming these students to become puppets to any rhetoric that comes their way.
While every professor should strive to present all sides of an issue, it is understandable that some viewpoints will be underrepresented. As of now, both “creation science” and the related “intelligent design” theory are given little to no time in science courses. While proponents of these theories may protest this (perhaps correctly), professors do need to use their time judiciously to cover at least the intended material. With only 10 weeks of classes, professors cannot afford to be bogged down by every possible point of view.
And despite the extremely politicized nature of professors, and their tendency toward a unified slant, this is not a political issue. The professors at Bob Jones University that still support the far-right indoctrination of their students are just as deplorable as the public university professors preaching from a left-wing standpoint.
However, public university professors do have public money behind them. So, unfortunately, taxpayers are paying for the soapbox that these professors stand on.
Professors have a very difficult responsibility to keep their classrooms beacons of academic integrity. It is not an easy task to keep one’s opinions out of the melee of lecture halls. Regardless, students shouldn’t have to wonder what argument they are missing when they look to their professors for an education. Since our instructors are supposed to be the most intelligent people that our country has to offer, it is a great shame that they cannot do any better.
