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April 03, 2006
Letter to the editor on Horowitz
I had the following letter to the editor published today in the Daily Illini:
The Daily Illini's criticism of David Horowitz's proposed "Academic Bill of Rights" (The Professors: smart enough to police themselves) is not harsh enough.Horowitz is not only interested in stopping "indoctrination" in the classroom. Where implemented, his bill would also require "providing students with dissenting sources and viewpoints where appropriate," (www.studentsforacademicfreedom.org).
This sounds innocuous: teaching competing viewpoints is a pedagogical necessity for any controversial question. But Horowitz and his affiliates want their bill to become law, which means that government would become the arbiter of whether a dissenting viewpoint is "appropriate" to teach (eventually, perhaps, even in private schools accepting federal funding).
So if a conservative legislature or court decides it is "appropriate" to teach intelligent design creationism in college biology, this "dissenting viewpoint" would be required. If a liberal legislature or court decides the same about politically correct ethnomathematics in college calculus, it would also be required.
But college curriculum is too important to be determined by legislators and litigators. Yes, professors should teach the controversy. But they are the experts: they should be the ones to decide which dissenting viewpoints are appropriate.
Surely, some professors abuse the privileges flowing from their expertise, using their classrooms inappropriately as political platforms. If Horowitz wishes to expose these professors, more power to him.
But college students are not mindless drones. Students may decide that a professor speaks hogwash, and decide to drop the class. Or, they may decide the professor has a logical point, and change their minds. If students accept the professor's views uncritically, on authority, this is their own fault and they'll get what's coming to them for it.
No one is ever harmed by listening to a viewpoint contrary to his own, only by his own passive-mindedness. College students don't need special legal protection from "indoctrination." They need to think for themselves.
Ben Bayer
Graduate student
UPDATE: Comments left on the following blogs about this: 1, 2, 3, 4.
Posted by Ben at April 3, 2006 12:10 AM