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Accountability, Mediocrity, Snobbery
Montana state legislator Roger Koopman has some uncompromising thoughts on the recent defeat of HB525, a bill that would have required Montana state universities to report on the measures they are taking to ensure intellectual diversity on campus:
If you want to see members of the university community have a total meltdown, start asking questions about their toleration of differing points of view, and their safeguards against political and ideological indoctrination.My House Bill 525 posed those questions, based on the Legislature's legitimate interest in encouraging a learning environment that is open, unbiased and intellectually diverse. You would have thought I set off the world's largest stink bomb, from the reactions I got!
In a free society, two over-arching principles apply to public life: transparency and accountability.These are democracy's insurance policies, nourishing and protecting the people's right to know, insisting that our public servants and governmental institutions operate in the light of day, their actions open to healthy public scrutiny.
Accountability is grounded in the belief that democratic governments do not write their own performance reviews. They are employed by the people, and their work must be judged by the people they serve.
Public institutions -- all public institutions -- are ultimately accountable to the taxpayers who underwrite them. I would submit that if a person working in the public sector has a "problem" with this principle, they are probably in the wrong line of work.
But recently, I made a startling discovery while attempting to introduce more transparency into our state university system. Apparently the virtues of an open and free government do not apply to public higher education.
Reacting like a roomful of scorched cats, tenured educators protested as unthinkable, any effort to track the fairness and professionalism of university policies and instruction.
Koopman explains how mild the bill really is -- it does not attempt to tell individual schools what they should be doing to encourage intellectual diversity, and it does not even tell them how to define it. All it requires is that they do attend to the matter, and that they do devise some means of making themselves publicly accountable for enacting those means. The bill would not have intruded in any way on the autonomy of Montana's state institutions -- it simply stipulated that, however individual schools run themselves, they should make their procedures transparent and they should show themselves to be responsive to the public on an issue of genuine concern.
"Throughout America, the overwhelming leftward tilt of university faculties is well documented," Koopman writes. "This imbalance not only runs the risk of ideological indoctrination, but even more concerning, it can effectively suppress competing points of view -- as evidenced in the books never read, the ideas never discussed, the courses never offered, the speakers never heard and the professors never hired." Koopman goes on to summarize the speech code at the University of Montana: "Outlawed at UM, for example, are (1) comments about women's bodies, (2) sexist jokes, (3) inappropriate gifts, (4) hooting, whistling or lip-smacking noises, (5) statements like 'hey, baby, give me a smile,' (6) 'exaggerated courtesy,' and so forth." Montana State is no better. It outlaws all verbal and nonverbal activity that might cause e a member of the opposite sex "embarrassment or discomfort."
Summarizing the intransigent and unreasonable resistance of a host of university administrators, Koopman concludes on a chilling note:
Reasonable people will recognize that daylight and accountability do not destroy academic freedom — they strengthen it.That public universities are not sacred cows, removed from all public scrutiny, simply because their calling is educational. But the most disconcerting aspect of this is the anger and paranoia that radiates from the Ivory Tower when someone suggests turning the flashlight on.
Why the fear of public exposure? Why the indignation over the slightest hint of public accountability? Why the obsessive claims to privileged secrecy? Is the truth so incriminating that it must stay hidden?
Lest we forget, this is America, where governmental openness, transparency and accountability walk hand in hand with liberty itself.
They are the hallmarks of all our public institutions.
Once we accept the elitist notion that state universities are governments unto themselves, freed from any linkage between public funding and public accountability, on that day we will have sentenced those institutions to the static, mushy mediocrity that protectionism and arrogance always produce.
He's right. But at least in Montana, it seems, no one's listening.
Posted by acta online on March 19, 2007 at March 19, 2007 08:52 AM
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Comments
he's right, but it's strange that he holds universities to higher standards than his own government and the actions of his own political party. his own party at the federal level has fought against "governmental openness, transparency, and accountability". the bush administration has treated any questioning of its policies with contempt. or if that seems to "liberal" for you (i'm more moderate in my politics than left or right) consider how the dep of agriculture published statistics about americans suffering from "low food security"--the previous term used for these statistics was "hunger".
again--i have no problem with the law as described or his description of accountability for university professors, but it seems a bit strange that we don't hear him speaking out about what, given his own emphasis on the importance of transparency and accountability in government offices, are much bigger problems. that's the problem with party politics, i suppose.
Posted by: jason at March 19, 2007 02:28 PM
I agree about 98% with this. If we are going to have publically funded schools, then we ought to make sure that they are not overly biased in one direction or another. It isn't about politics, in my opinion, its about the process of learning. You can not truly learn if free speech is stifled and diversity of opinion is not respected.
Instead of protecting our students from opposing ideas, we ought to encourage an environment where students opinions are challenged (whether conservative or liberal) and assumptions of "what everybody knows" are questioned. Think of the Socratic method of teaching. It is not adversarial, it is not alienating. It is productive. It is the meeting of minds in an environment free from sensationalism, hype, and fads.
In questioning ones assumptions and beliefs one is called on to either modify that which is erroneous, or one is vindicated in ones opinion. That is how we get closer to the truth, not in hothouse environments where students are exposed to 90% "liberal" and 10% "conservative" ideas because it is deemed politically correct.
Of course, all of the above is based on the idea that we ought to have government funding for state universities. I do not know that this arrangment is entirely wise because with government money comes government demands. The university is no longer free to pursue the truth, free from government interference.
Posted by: Emmy Bee at March 19, 2007 09:53 PM
His bill got defeated,right? -- "no one is listening".
There is a similar bill just introduced in the state where I live. It, too, is going to be defeated, badly. It was introduced by a legislator who in the past has had contact with faculty members concerned about issues such as this. However, this legislator made no effort, from what I can tell, to have any help of any kind from faculty who might be sympathetic.
How many defeats will it take before it occurs to these people that the tack they are taking is not working? And that maybe they should think about trying something a little different?
In any case, I doubt very much that the legislation, if passed, would make any real difference anyway. From what I have seen, the college administrators and faculty are experts at doing whatever they want, no matter what the legislature tries to decree.
Posted by: Mike at March 20, 2007 04:31 PM
I think we should work to carefully regulate what universities teach and what professors say in all 50 states. The problem is far too important to leave to individual legislators, and I believe it calls for a national thought police, perhaps run by the the FBI.
The job of this force would be to ensure intellectual diversity by monitoring classes and determining when a particular professor crosses the line (perhaps when half of those at his university have already expressed a bias to that side) and then to restrain him from tipping the balance.
A monetary fine should be a good first sanction, since we don't want to be jailing people on the basis of the content of their speech! That would be like Nazism, or something. I think fining people for their thoughts would be enough. Perhaps if the Montana bill is reintroduced it can at least call for a state-level thought police and we can take a small step toward making all universities accountable for what their professors say.
Posted by: Mark at March 23, 2007 08:11 AM
Jason, tarring a GOP state legislator with the brush of the present federal administration is absurd. So is expecting him to be as publically concerned with federal policies than with those of the state he actually legislates for.
Mark, do you honestly believe that public universities should have no accountability whatsover to the taxpayers that finance them? That simply because they're educational institutions they're above such petty things unlike other government agencies? Good grief: this bill wasn't about regulating speech; it was about transparency, something that all entrenched bureaucracies despise.
Posted by: Dave J at April 1, 2007 07:24 PM