Inside Higher Ed is reporting on a study that has not received much attention in the debate over the so-called academic bill of rights.  The study, conducted by researchers at the University of Nevada at Reno, makes it tempting to suggest that conservative bias is the problem since, as the authors point out, in disciplines favored by conservative students such as economics or business, liberal students seem to receive lower grades.

However, the report, entitled “What's in a grade?: Academic success and political orientation” published in the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, doesn’t really say that.  What it does say is that the connection being drawn between politics and grades in this debate is not substantiated by their findings.  As Inside Higher Ed reports:  “the research suggests that there is no widespread relationship between students’ political views and their grades.”

One of my favorite quotes in the debates over academic bill of rights legislation came from Rep. Dennis Baxley of Florida in the debate over legislation in that state.  In the St. Petersburg Times, Baxley said that “[c]onservative-minded students sit in silence because they are afraid to express their views. Students get F’s if they don’t write that President Bush should be charged as a war criminal. And professors are told to leave academia because their right-wing views are unacceptable. If you think those things don’t happen, you are either very naïve, or you haven’t talked to the students or faculty who live through subtle and sometimes not-so-subtle persecution every day.”