Where Do We Draw the Line

Through our nation's history higher education has always been a haven for intellectual exploration and thought. Colleges and universities have been places for progressive thinking, innovative ideas, and incubators for advancement.

Whether you are a hard line republican, religous fundelmentalist, or left wing liberal the university environment is one where you are free to pursue knowledge and advance your understanding in the areas that you choose without fear of government interference.

Colleges and universities were a place to hold discussion across wide ranges of beliefs and ideologies, political, religious, or otherwise, in what one hopes leads to greater understanding.

This could all change in the near future. While the press has been dominated by news of Michael Jackson's personal habits, the ongoing conflict in Iraq, supreme court nominees, and Karl Rove there is quietly a movement that I personally feel has as much importance as any of the subjects listed above.

There is a number of republican representatives and groups across the U.S. who are trying to push through various forms of a bill, loosely entitled "Academic Bill of Rights", in their respective states.

One of the key points of contention in these bills is that it allows students to sue a professor who teaches something that offends them in any way.

In a sue happy world - see redwolfs post on the astrology lady and her comet calamity - people sue over almost anything. Now we would like to give the average 18-22 year old student the ability to sue over anything that might offend their sensibilities.

Exactly how ridiculous and upsetting is this? This means a professor could choose to teach evolution in his or her biology class and have a student of religous faith choose to sue the professor since it goes against the theory of intelligent design.

Or a staunch republican could be promoting his or her political views in an Intro to Global Politics class and an extreme left liberal student could choose to sue because it doesn't fall in line with their liberal political views.

The ramifications of a bill like this are mind boggling. I can guarantee you that this would significantly drop the amount of professors available in higher education as many would not want to risk their financial well being because some first time freshmen disagrees with what they are teaching.

Those that would teach would have such bland lectures that one wonders if it would be even worth it to go to class any more (of course there are those professors now, but the number would increase).

Sometimes it's good to be challenged, something I think many in America have chosen to forget. My first semester in college I had a history professor who specifically tried to piss each and everyone in the classroom off. Why? Because he would get the students so angry they would rack their brains to come up with anything to refute him, thus his students were always awake and intimately involved with what he had to teach us.

Under this bill he wouldn't last a semester, which would be a shame because if you were willing to get past your personal offense, you could learn a lot through the duration of his course.

The local university and my alma mater UCCS is filled with professors from a variety of varying viewpoints. Liberals, conservatives, christians, athiests - you name it. Through my experiences as a student I was priveleged to partake in classes from professors of all these persuasions. I can safely say I had excellent professors across the spectrum.

People need to realize that a person's belief system does not effect their ability to be an excellent teacher. You might not agree with what they have to say but if you are willing to invest the time I guarantee you will learn a lot.

Finally, this whole idea bugs me because higher education is a choice. You choose what school you want to attend (if you can get in), you choose what degree you want to pursue, you choose what classes you take, you choose which professors to take classes from etc etc.

If you have such an issue with a professor drop the class, or take the class from a different professor, or switch schools. No one is forcing you to sit in the classroom - this is not highschool!

I am not sure what you all think - and I have linked to an interesting article on the subject, one of several I have run across in the last months - but it seems to me someone, somewhere, needs to draw a line and realize that dissenting voices should not be silenced simply because you don't agree with it.

http://http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0714-23.htm