Political Bias on Campus: Understanding the Student Experience

Abstract

The role ideology plays in the university classroom has been debated since the publication of Buckley’s God and Man at Yale (1951). The Chronicle of Higher Education’s Special Report (2004) found that more than half of United States citizens polled felt that U.S. colleges and universities improperly introduce a liberal political bias into the classroom. A number of states have proposed legislation aimed at increasing ideological diversity in state-supported institutions of higher education. The American Association of University Professors (2008 ) reported nearly two dozen such bills since 2004; and while none have passed, they illustrate the concern many have over the issue of politics-centered ideological bias in higher education. Student populations have also felt the effect of this issue. Student groups such as Students for Academic Freedom and its parent foundation, The Horowitz Freedom Center, have advocated that students have the “academic freedom” to be exposed to a wide spectrum of scholarly viewpoints. Central to this group’s mission is their proposed Academic Bill of Rights (Students for Academic Freedom, 2009). This document advocates for the purposeful promotion of intellectual pluralism in academia through curriculum development, funding given to invited speaker programs and student organizations, as well as the hiring and promotion of faculty. The Academic Bill of Rights has been modeled in much of the state legislation which has been proposed. While there is clear value in presenting students with a broad range of viewpoints and ideas, many feel that academic decision-making should be left solely to education professionals: Minnich (2006) writes that the risk to higher education in such legislation is that intellectual judgments may be “discredited wholesale as ‘bias’ and rendered irrelevant in favor of a mindless ‘impartiality’” (p. 20).