As the school year begins and students choose new classes,
rumors about different courses and professors will abound.
Students hear countless stories from their peers, national
organizations and the media about university professors allegedly
using their classrooms as a forum to promote their personal agenda
and ideology.
Across the nation, many believe professor bias is rampant in
university classrooms, some even hint toward a liberal agenda to
keep conservative thought out of universities.
But for each person who states there is extensive professor
bias, there is someone else who will describe the classroom as a
fair learning environment and point to other reasons as for why
liberal thought has become dominant in university classrooms.
Sara Dogan, national campus director of Students for Academic
Freedom, a national organization that deals with issues of bias in
college classrooms, articulated one side of the discussion.
“Professors go into a classroom and force students to take
their point of view. … It’s very widespread. We’re in
touch with hundreds of students,” Dogan said.
Michael Davidson, state chairman of the California College
Republicans also believes that bias is an issue on campuses.
Professors can express their personal views through a variety of
mediums, including course curriculum, lectures and homework
assignments, Davidson said.
He described the behavior of many college professors as
“brainwashing” and “indoctrination.”
Such reports come from students as well.
Jeremy Evans, a member of Bruin Republicans and fourth-year
political science student, said he has experienced professor bias
in “every class,” in science and humanities alike.
But other students have a very different take on the matter of
professor bias.
“I can’t say I’ve had widespread experience
with that,” said Sadie Honey, a member of Activist Librarians
and Educators, a student group at UCLA that deals with education
issues both on and off campus.
Honey added that the matter of classroom bias would fall under
the umbrella of her organization’s work, but that neither she
nor other members of the group had found it to be a significant
problem worth addressing.
The existence of a personal bias among professors concerns many
students in regards to the possibility of being graded based on
their personal views rather than the quality of their work.
“The main thing, of course, is that students not feel that
they are going to be graded according to (the professor’s)
bias,” said Michael Lofchie, a professor and chairman of the
political science department.
Throughout the state, some students have reported being graded
unfairly and even receiving failing grades for expressing opinions
that conflicted with the professors views, Davidson said.
But Lofchie said in his five years as head of the political
science department, he had only received two complaints of unfair
grading and therefore does not see it as a significant problem.
Evans also said he had not experienced bias in grading to be a
problem, but rather believes that the issue is the one-sided
presentation of class material.
Evans qualified his statement by pointing out that he usually
did not set out his personal opinion or agenda in graded
classwork.
The climate on most university campuses, including UCLA, is
overwhelmingly liberal, Davidson said, and so accusations of
classroom bias are reserved almost entirely for the left.
Dogan made the same point and said it is “very, very
rarely the case” for a student to experience conservative
bias in the classroom.
Evans reported a similar opinion of UCLA professors.
“I’ve never had a conservative professor. All the
professors I’ve had and all the (teaching assistants)
I’ve had have been to the left,”
Still, though professors may be liberal in their personal views,
this does not necessarily translate to left-wing classrooms ““
Honey said she had rarely experienced any sort of politics entering
the classroom.
Yet Dogan stood by her point and blamed the imbalance in
professors’ political opinions on prejudice against
conservative thought at universities.
She also believes that there is a possibility that conservative
faculty members are openly discriminated against in the hiring
process.
But others deny that there is any sort of effort to exclude
conservative thought and, in fact, assert that the opposite is the
case.
“There’s not a liberal conspiracy among the faculty
at universities,” said Mark Peterson, professor and chairman
of the school of public policy. Peterson added that conservative
professors are actually sought after in the hiring process to
promote diversity of opinion, joking of a quasi “˜affirmative
action’ for right-thinking professors.
Rather than discrimination, there may be other, more subtle
factors which lead to the liberal climate on college campuses.
The political climate in American society may have contributed
to the academic shift toward liberalism.
“When the political structure of the country is
overwhelmingly dominated by conservatives … it is likely that
those outside will have a more liberal cast to them,”
Peterson said.
The nature of the teaching profession is another factor that is
used to explain the liberal domination of the field.
“I think it just kind of has to be the culture of
academia, it deals a lot in theory … If you deal a lot in theory,
it’s more liberal, in my opinion,” Davidson said.
Peterson similarly pointed to the nature of academia itself as
being more attractive to liberals than conservatives, citing low
pay in particular as a reason that conservatives are less likely
than liberals to choose the profession.
But even if liberal thought represents the majority opinion in
college classrooms at UCLA and across the nation, many believe that
this does not lead to the conclusion that students are receiving a
fundamentally flawed education.
“(Students) are being given something to think about.
Whether they agree with it in the end is up to them. … What
we’re trying to do is train students to evaluate what
they’re hearing,” said Cecelia Klein, a professor of
art history and chairwoman of the department.
Ideally, a professor should present various points of view,
Klein said, but a professor’s personal opinion will
inevitably enter the classroom.
“You are shaped to some degree always by your values …
what you feel people need to know,” Klein explained.
“In the end every professor does this because they have to
decide what topics to cover and not to cover,” she added.
But this behavior is not necessarily tantamount to unfair
teaching, and professors who have spent years in academia report
that they have never experienced a problem with bias.
“It has never been an issue in any faculty community of
which I have been a part,” said Peterson, who has worked on
the faculty at three separate universities.
The various conflicting experiences with professor bias on
university campuses, with some maintaining it is rampant and
others, like Lofchie, calling it a “misimpression,” one
has to wonder why there are such divergent views on the issue.
Certainly choice of classes and fields of study play a factor in
a students’ experience in the classroom, but some also put
forward that a student’s personal ideology is the most
important factor.
“A conservative is more likely to hear information that
the student will view as liberal,” Peterson said.
As a conservative, Evans said he has often felt uncomfortable in
the classroom and separated from professors who openly express
liberal views.
But Peterson also suggested a different reason of why professor
bias has become such a controversial issue.
“Part of what happens is there are always going to be
stories of things that happen to people … and always ways in
which you can make a picture which is larger than reality,”
Peterson said.
Perhaps the most relevant question to consider is how students
can respond to what they believe to be uncomfortable classroom
situations.
But many students believe they are unable, for various reasons,
to come forward about their problems with professors, Lofchie
said.
“The issue I think is that so many students feel that they
don’t have any recourse or opportunity to speak out,”
Lofchie said, emphasizing that this is not the case and that
students should voice their concerns if they believe a professor is
being unfair in his dealings with the student or the class
materials.
Dogan also pointed to other steps students can take if they
believe they are not being treated fairly: discussing concerns with
the professor, writing letters to the administration and joining
campus groups where they can make their opinion known.