(Colorado) Bill would protect college faculty's speech

[Crackingham]

A leading Democratic senator is pushing legislation to protect college faculty members who discuss their political or religious views in the classroom.

Democratic Sen. Bob Hagedorn of Aurora said Friday that he filed the bill because he's worried that last year's push to protect conservative college students will stifle free and open discussion on university campuses.

"What we don't need in the 21st century are McCarthy-era witch hunts. Neither students nor faculty members should be intimidated in any manner from expressing his or her right to free speech on our college campuses," he said.

Last year, then-Rep. Shawn Mitchell, a Broomfield Republican, pushed legislation to protect the political views of conservative college students, several of whom said they had been discriminated against.

http://www.denverpost.com/Stories/0,1413,36~61~2654669,00.html

[Buddyblazon]

1. I took a Poli Sci class with Hagedorn years ago at...

Metro (Metropolitan State).

He was a great prof. Fun class. He's one of the good ones.

I met a girl in the class, introduced her to my friend, they got married, had three kids...and now...they're divorced.

So because of Hagedorn's class...I introduced my friend to years of heartache. What a fun class.

[imenja]

2. that is supposed to be what tenure is for

To guarantee freedom of speech. Without tenure, college faculty have no first amendment rights, but that mostly relates to insidious university politics rather than issues that really matter. I'm not concerned about what I say in the classroom, in the sense I'm afraid I'll feel persecuted for it, but I do my best to keep my mouth shut at faculty meetings. That's where the real danger lies.
There is the oft repeated statement: academic politics are so petty, because the stakes are so small.

[Voltaire99]

3. Nice post.

Yes, the real snake pits seem to be of the faculties' own devising. I've heard such stories...

Still, I applaud the bill--anything to put the brakes to this latest round of McCarthyism. This sort of thing is necessary if institutions are to avoid the types of abuses that occurred in the 50s and (in the case of the infamous University of Minnesota purges) earlier.

[imenja]

4. I agree

The faculty who have serious first amendment issues these days are the experts on the Islamic world who don't fall in line with the US government, pro-Israeli position. We had a visiting Fulbright scholar at our university, a Palestinian, who had been cleared by the state department. The New York Post and a local paper spread charges initiated on that website (I can't remember the guy's name right off) who implicates professors whose ideas on Israel he disagrees with. The charges were that the man had "ties with Hamas," whatever that meant. They also noted a reference he made that was critical of Israel as evidence of his "terrorist sympathies." Of course it turned out there was nothing to the story. More than a year later, there is a faculty member who refuses to speak to me because I confronted him on spreading the story around. He claimed it had been written in The Times, which implied a level of authority no NY Post article caries.

[Supersedeas]

5. and this is what the fascist skanks in the WH have brought this country to