Fairness at CSU
Following months of headlines about the “Academic Bill of
Rights” proposed by California activist David Horowitz, a CSU
student group has formed and related proposals are under
consideration at the legislature.
Let’s be clear: students have the right to organize and
legislators have the right to introduce legislation. But there are
plenty of organizations and lots of bills that lack merit. I firmly
believe that the vast majority of CSU faculty would join me in
suggesting that the complaints behind the group and these bills
are, at the very least, inappropriate and unnecessary.
Many of us teach potentially controversial topics. This includes
the social science and humanities courses that are Horowitz’s
primary concern, but it also includes courses in many other
departments all across the campus. We teach these topics because
they matter. And we try our best to teach them right. Any college
student who expects never to have his or her views challenged is
genuinely expecting too little from the college experience. But, as
Colorado Commission of Higher Education director Tim Foster
recently said on campus, students should not feel harassed and
should know the avenues for appeal when they do have concerns.
Press reports from a recent legislative hearing made it clear
that even prominent Colorado legislators who have studied this
issue agree that Colorado universities have adequate policies in
place to deal with potential abuses. CSU students should be aware
that this campus has several policies in place to deal with abuses
and appeals. The Academic Faculty and Administrative Professional
Manual, section I.7.1, outlines the process for appealing grades
(it’s easily available from the Provost or Faculty Council Web
sites). Other regulations, also easily available on the web, cover
a wide variety of potential abuses and harassment.
So, do these policies work? I am certain that the chairs in the
College of Liberal Arts, as well as chairs in other colleges, take
these policies seriously. It’s an important part of our job to
address complaints. We know the procedures and will share them with
anyone who asks. Any student who has a complaint should talk to
their teacher. If that’s unsatisfactory or inappropriate, they
should talk to the chair of the department. The chair’s boss is the
dean of the college. We know that students are aware of this avenue
of complaint because, as chairs, we hear complaints regularly.
All that said, I sincerely doubt that CSU has a problem that
requires additional legislation or any other form of organized
concern. Several of the stories floated by activists on this issue
have proven much less credible than they might seem; some of the
most widely discussed cases never resulted in an appeal or any
other contact with any administrator on campus. CCHE’s Foster
pointedly did not endorse current legislative proposals and even
advocates seem to be backing away from their odd proposal that
universities should discriminate on the basis of party registration
when hiring faculty (a proposal that yielded stern disapproval from
the American Association of University Professors, available at
www.aaup.org).
There’s nothing necessarily wrong with criticizing university
practices; I’ve done more than a little of that myself, over a long
career as a student and a professor. But the timing of this
initiative still bothers me. At a time when higher education is in
deep trouble in Colorado, due to what many members of the CSU
community regard as terrible flaws in the state’s funding
structure, this issue is a distraction, plain and simple. Ask
yourself whether ideological professors are a bigger risk than a
cut, in one year, of over a quarter of the state general fund
support for higher education.
In the end, it seems to me that this issue demeans the students
it pretends to defend. In my experience, it is flatly impossible to
“indoctrinate” students. Our students are too bright to succumb to
that and too independent to stand for it. This whole issue is a
sideshow, a distraction from the really crucial task of dealing
with very real problems. And, just as I think our students know bad
teaching when they see it, I’m sure they know what to do with this
noisy and misguided attempt to distract them from CSU’s more
important concerns.
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