Academic Bill of Rights - SUNY Plattsburgh

It's nice to read that SUNY Plattsburgh faculty rejected the so-called Academic Bill of Rights.

The American Association of University Professors reject the bill.

The AAUP has sharply criticized the so-called academic bill of rights as unnecessary and almost certain to compromise academic freedom rather than defend it. At their core, its measures would place decisions about faculty appointments and the content of academic programs in the hands of political officials, thereby jeopardizing not only the independence of faculty members and their institutions but also their capacity to advance knowledge and educate our students. More here.

College professors have been shown to be largely liberal in their views. The questions are why and what effects does this have on students.

Prof. Paul Krugman attempts to answer the why.

One answer is self-selection - the same sort of self-selection that leads Republicans to outnumber Democrats four to one in the military. The sort of person who prefers an academic career to the private sector is likely to be somewhat more liberal than average, even in engineering.

I think I can tell you why most scientist tend to be liberal. We believe that evolution is a fact and that global warming has a man-made component to it. It's hard to be a conservative these days when you believe those two things.

What effect do all these liberal professors have on students. Well, it must not be a very big concern since conservative elites send their children to Yale, Harvard, Princeton, Duke, Berkeley, UCLA etc rather than Bob Jones University.

Penn. State University system did a study over 5 years to determine the number of students with complaints about liberal or conservative bias in their classrooms. The result? Thirteen complaints out of 83,000 students. Over 177,000 courses were taught over that period.

To me liberalism is all about questioning everything. A judge sends jurors in to deliberate. Think carefully and formally discuss prior to making a decision. Don't be afraid to change your mind if presented with a convincing argument.