California public universities would be required to adopt policies that protect students from political and religious indoctrination in the classroom under new legislation introduced by state Sen. Bill Morrow (R–Oceanside).
The bill, SB 5, calls for fair grading regardless of a student’s political and religious affiliations, requires professors to expose students to a wide range of viewpoints, mandates the use of discretion in inviting campus speakers and prohibits professors from pushing their own ideological agendas in the classroom.
According to a statement on the bill from the UC-wide Academic Senate, the proposed legislation would also encroach into areas over which faculty should have exclusive control.
“This bill will … have no effect on improving the academic freedom of students at the University of California beyond what is already on the books,” the document stated. “In fact, if enacted, this legislation could actually decrease academic freedom by providing a legal path by which groups outside the university could mount challenges to the judgment of the faculty on the standards of scholarly inquiry.”
Issues included in the bill have already been addressed in the new University Statement on Faculty Academic Freedom, which was endorsed by the Academic Senate and adopted by the Regents in September 2003, it stated.
Morrow introduced the legislation after becoming convinced that many public universities have become too one-sided, forcing students to keep their opinions to themselves out of fears of reprisal, the senator’s spokesman, Wade Teasdale, stated in an e-mail.
“It is a problem in which the overwhelming majority of abused students are afraid to sound an alarm … for fear of being further abused,” Teasdale said.
Though the bill requires universities to adopt protections for academic freedom, it does not include an enforcement mechanism, and permits the colleges to police themselves, according to Teasdale.
On Feb. 3, the A.S. Council passed a resolution introduced by Revelle College Senior Senator Ted McCombs condemning the bill.
“I urge anyone who [is] experiencing some sort of ideological intimidation to report it immediately, because it is inappropriate and shouldn’t be happening,” McCombs said. “But this law won’t fix it.”
The bill is one of several across the country supported by Students for Academic Freedom, a group working to pass a national “Student Bill of Rights.”
“The main thing we contend with academic freedom is that students should be afforded the same academic freedom as the profes-sorate,” SAF Field Director Brad Shipp said. “[Students] should receive the same academic freedom without having their professor demean them for their beliefs.”
The problem is professors who belittle points of view that are different from their own, no matter what ideology, according to Shipp.
“Just because a conservative does it, doesn’t make it right,” he said. “We are unafraid to go after professors who indoctrinate their students from both political spectrums. It is just as bad … from the left as it is from the right.”
The question of whether there is a “lack of diverse political and religious ideologies in school” remains an open one and needs to be answered on a case-by-case basis, Stanford University art professor and Vice President of the California chapter of the American Association of University Professors Graham Larkin stated in an e-mail.
AAUP has come out against efforts to pass a national academic freedom bill.
“The idea of passing laws to enforce intellectual, ideological or political diversity is absurd, especially when we begin to consider the details of enforcement,” Larkin stated. “If professors are to be denied the ultimate authority to determine the intellectual or ideological parameters of their class, then who is to be given this authority? The university administration? The state government?”
Other parts of the bill, such as the protection of students “from the imposition of any orthodoxy of a political, religious or ideological nature,” or provisions allowing them to “take reasoned exception to the data or views offered in any course of study” are just impossibly vague, according to Larkin.
“Legislating these fuzzy ideas would inevitably lead to any number of frivolous grade appeals, many in the form of lawsuits,” Larkin said. “This kind of litigious attitude would be disastrous for the whole ethos of university life — which, as I say, should be based on mutual trust rather than mutual antagonism.”
Although he agrees with the principles detailed in the bill, UCSD Academic Senate Chair and anthropology professor David Tuzin said he does not like the idea of the state legislature telling universities what to do.
“The University of California is awarded autonomous status by the state constitution,” Tuzin said. “The legislature cannot dictate to us how we handle our academic affairs.”
Tuzin said that school administrators and professors are always vigilant of academic freedom and appropriate policies are already in place to deal with complaints of violations. Since his inauguration last September, Tuzin has not heard of any allegations of ideological intimidation.
Morrow unsuccessfuly introduced a version of the bill last year. Unlike the current version, the language in the previous proposal included provisions protecting faculty from discrimination in hiring and tenure promotions.