Academic freedom bill overreaches

Editor:

In the last two decades, our elected officials, both in the state and federal governments, have gotten us used to all sorts of silliness, and the proposed bill to “ban professors’ indoctrination” appears to be the latest one.

To think that political and ideological opinions can be separated from other aspects of one’s life, be they choosing a brand of cereal or teaching a lesson, reveals a mind so simplistic that it should have no place in the legislative body of a modern state.

Things will become interesting, though: Consider, for instance, that most engineering professors endorse, more or less openly, the industrial ethos, an endorsement that is definitely a political position, not to mention that “technology” itself is a form of ideology.

If the bill passes, I have some advice for all engineering students: Next time you have an assignment on harmonic analysis or partial differential equations that you don’t know how to solve, simply write, “I refuse to solve this problem because its solution will support the capitalist ideology with which the professor has been trying to indoctrinate us.”

If you get an F, you can sue.

— Simone Santini

San Diego Supercomputer Center