1019 Senate Bill 24--protect, promote or deny free speech?

A male student who worked for me at Ohio State in the early 90s was taking a women's studies course as a humanities requirement in his senior year. He was terrified to open his mouth in class, the atmosphere was so poisoned and hostile toward men--and he needed the credit to graduate. He even asked me if I thought it was OK to use the word "huMAN" in one of his papers. I recall a full professor of English driven out of his prestigious university, not because he was a conservative, but because he was an apolitical liberal and a threat to his more radical colleagues. He was a well-established scholar who graciously helped me with one of my publications. His department assigned him freshman English classes where he was to incorporate feminist principles into basic rhetoric. He lost grant money and assistants to help with research, and was ostracized by his colleagues. He left to teach at a branch campus of a state university in another state. Yes, it is indeed the new McCarthyism, but now it is used by the liberals.

Professor Lynne Olsen of Ohio State said in a TV interview tonight that Senate Bill 24 isn't necessary--there are already laws in place that prevent professors from promoting their political viewpoints. Not so says some OSU students who support the bill. One complained that over one-half of her theater class time was spent on the topic of homosexuality. She believes her tuition money and time was wasted on this course. Another said that in one of his classes last fall the professor used up the students' time to denounce and ridicule President Bush. I'm not a bit surprised by this, but I agree with Dr. Olsen, how will this be policed--there are already rules (not being followed--my thought).

The first section of Bill 24 reads:

"The institution shall provide its students with a learning environment in which the students have access to a broad range of serious scholarly opinion pertaining to the subjects they study. In the humanities, the social sciences, and the arts, the fostering of a plurality of serious scholarly methodologies and perspectives shall be a significant institutional purpose. In addition, curricula and reading lists in the humanities and social studies shall respect all human knowledge in these areas and provide students with dissenting sources and viewpoints."

The bill also specifies that professors wouldn't be denied tenure for their political views, but that's pretty hard to prove. There are many ways "colleagues" can sabotage someone on his/her way to tenure--it takes a long time. Committee appointments. Student assistants. Grant applications. Rumors. Cliques.

"Faculty and instructors shall be hired, fired, promoted, and granted tenure on the basis of their competence and appropriate knowledge in their field of expertise and shall not be hired, fired, promoted, granted tenure, or denied promotion or tenure on the basis of their political, ideological, or religious beliefs.

Faculty and instructors shall not be excluded from tenure, search, and hiring committees on the basis of their political, ideological, or religious beliefs."

Liberal faculty, who would be the first to holler if a conservative tried to promote intelligent design or different brain development of the sexes, see this bill as a terrible threat to their free speech. And it is. They've had the freedom to undercut conservative values and faculty on the campus for the last 25 years. And I think that is the point. I wouldn't be surprised to see faculty unanimously oppose this bill in Ohio--I doubt that there are enough conservative faculty present on any campus to even wave a white flag.