Illinois is at it again—and no, I’m not talking about the Governor.  Yet another public college in Illinois is proposing severe speech restrictions on its campus (see earlier posts on the College of DuPage).  The administration of Northeastern Illinois University (public 4-year campus on the north side of Chicago) is proposing a “Policy Concerning Demonstrations on Campus, Distribution and Display of Visual Communications and Solicitation of Signatures on Campus.”  The new policy has quickly and deservedly drawn criticism and suspicion from on and off campus. 

There's a lot to roll your eyes at in Joe Malone's op-ed to the Patriot Ledger , beginning with the single-sourced tales of harassment for which there's nothing in the way of verification.  However, this nugget takes the cake for absurdity:

In yet another case, a young woman complained about her "extremely liberal" and "intolerant" professor. She said, "I finally gave up trying to express my opinion and began taking notes of what the professor said in class. It was once I began to regurgitate his exact thoughts that I started to make better grades, though the style and proficiency of my writing remained the same."  

Allow me to decode that for you.  After having her "opinions" not be "tolerated" in class (I'm guessing because they weren't based on the theories and evidence that were relevant to the particular discipline and course), the young woman started taking notes and demonstrating that she understood what was being presented in class and, voilà!, she started making better grades.  Funny how actually doing what is expected of you in a college course will yield better results.

Here's a news flash to Mr. Malone and students who claim that their opinions aren't being respected.  You certainly have a right to your opinion.  And expressing your opinion in class is fantastic, if you express it while engaging the relevant materials in a class and available evidence. 

Perhaps an example will serve to illustrate this point.  Let's say I teach a course on social inequality (which probably already marks me as dangerously liberal and intolerant in the feverish minds of some, but whatever).  In it I discuss four common theories for the existence and persistence of poverty, ranging from theories based on individual choices to Moynihan's "culture of poverty" argument to theories of structural inequality.  I discuss the evidence for all four theories and give my opinion (based on the existing empirical evidence) on the two theories that I (and most other scholars) find most convincing and useful for further research.

A few weeks later, I give an exam in which I ask the question, "Summarize the four common theories concerning the existence and persistence of poverty and explain how the evidence supports each theory."  A very simple, straightforward question.  If I received a paper from a student who wrote three pages about how poverty exists because poor people are lazy and don't pick themselves up by their bootstraps, that person would not receive a very good mark for that question.  Likewise, a student who claimed poverty exists because of an elaborate conspiracy by the government to maintain a large section of the population in wage-slavery would also receive a poor mark.  It's not that I would be "intolerant" of the students' opinions.  Rather, it's that the students didn't answer the question.  They in no way demonstrate that they understood the explanations that mainstream scholars have provided based on years of empirical evidence.  They have not demonstrated that they have learned anything, which is the point of receiving an education, right?  However, if that first student had shown that they understood all the theories, but then expressed the opinion - in a well thought out response - that they found the theory of poverty based on individual choices to be the most compelling explanation, they'd receive a good mark for that question, despite any disagreement I might have with their interpretation.  Such an answer would show engagement with the material and actual thought being put into the answer - it would show the student had not only learned something, but had also integrated it with previously held beliefs.

At any rate, if Mr. Malone wants to champion the cause of the poor oppressed students who are forced to listen to their professors, take notes, and demonstrate that they understand the lectures and other course materials, he can have at.  The rest of us will be focusing our attention on issues that really matter. 

In a finding that shocks absolutely no one Stateside, an Australian parliamentary committee found that claims of systemic leftist bias in Australian universities was somewhat - wait for it - exaggerated:

The committee received 69 such submissions and concluded that if there were examples of bias, it was because of poor teaching rather than a result of a broad-based left-wing conspiracy. The panel's chairman, a member of the Labor Party, called the inquiry a waste of time.  

Neither the CHE short take or the Australian article make clear how many of the 69 complaints were legitimate examples of poor teaching and how many were cases of students complaining about not being spoonfed what they wanted to hear, but if the Australian experience is similar to our own, it's probably light on the former and heavy on the latter.

Here's what drives me a little batty.  Everyone in a campus community has a vested interest in making sure that classroom teaching is of the highest quality.  The conservative campaign to ferret out "indoctrination" and "bias" actually makes it more difficult to identify where classroom instruction can be improved.  Like the little boy who cried "Wolf!", the sheer volume of complaints makes it more difficult to separate legitimate complaints from political grandstanding.  But the hunt to find leftist monsters in every classroom really isn't about improving the quality of education so much as it's about imposing politics on the classroom.

The solution to the "problem" presented by the reports findings would appear to be the introduction of an elementary civics course to each student's college education.

Jake is being far too kind here.  The solution to the "problem" presented by the report would appear to be the introduction of an ideologically-slanted elementary civics course to each student's college education.  The ISI (and by extension, O'Connor) packages this ideological agenda in faux concern about civic literacy.

more on the flip...

It's a rare set of proposed policies where the inclusion of the Academic Bill of Rights is the least objectionable piece in an avalanche of doozies.  But the policy changes recommended by the College of DuPage's Board of Trustees certainly drags us kicking and screaming into such a twilight zone.

Yes, ABOR is one of 230 (mostly non-controversial) policy changes that the DuPage board is considering, slipped in to the policy recommendations as a statement of "Educational Philosophy."  The Board goes much further, however, in restructuring how the College is run, essentially allowing the Board to control all decisions concerning the curriculum and programming.  These measures include:

• Giving the Board of Trustees exclusive control over the curriculum, which eviscerates any sort of notion of shared governance and places academic decisions in hands of political appointees rather than academic experts;
• Granting the Board the ability to approve or reject all outside speakers and the right to control how these events are planned; and
  
• Authorizing the college president to approve the content of the student-run newspaper

To put it bluntly, these proposals are a naked power grab which will seriously impact the free exchange of ideas at the College of DuPage.  The college's faculty and students are not taking this lying down, and we'll certainly see a spirited struggle to prevent such an egregious attempt to clamp down on open intellectual discourse at DuPage.

You can see the complete list of proposed policy changes here.  You may submit comments on the proposed policy changes to bdpolicy@cod.edu.  If you do submit comments, remember to keep it polite and professional.