House looks at diversity
Bill to eliminate political bias in classroom
By Kim Ha, contributing writer
Posted on January 16, 2007

Del. R. Steven Landes, R-25th District, introduced a House bill to protect political diversity in colleges and universities in Virginia at the start of the General Assembly last week.

“I’ve been concerned with the balance of academic and intellectual freedom around the country,” Landes said.

House Bill 1643 is designed to protect students’ and professors’ differing political views on campus. If passed, the bill will require public four-year institutions to file yearly reports with the State Council of Higher Education in Virginia on how the institutions are ensuring the protection of intellectual diversity on campus.

“There is apparently a perception outside many colleges and universities [that] faculty members routinely punish students whose views don’t conform with the views of the faculty member,” political science professor Robert Roberts said. “From my experience at James Madison, I don’t believe this is a problem.”

Said Landes: “We don’t really know what’s going on right now. We don’t know how and what the universities are doing related to this, and that’s why getting that information back to policy-makers is important.”

Landes said to date, Virginia has not had any instances of people’s views being infringed upon. “But in discussing this with parents and individuals, I represent there is concern in what’s happened in other parts of the country,” he said.

Sen. Emmett Hanger, R-24th District, will support the bill in the Virginia Senate.

“We hear that certain institutions develop some bias,” Hanger said. “What is represented to me more often than not [is] a tendency to present a more liberal view point.”

Through programs such as inviting speakers with opposing viewpoints to address campus, students will be presented with a range of thoughts instead of a one-sided viewpoint, Hanger said.

The bill also seeks to ensure that the faculties at educational institutions are protected from discrimination due to their intellectual views through certain hiring, tenure and promotion policies.

The bill’s goal is to eliminate any roadblocks to free speech in the classroom and to ensure that biases on the basis of political thought do not affect textbooks chosen for courses or the way courses are taught.

But some professors think the law is unnecessary due to university regulations and laws already in place.

“There are already existing hiring and employment laws that preclude us from asking someone their partisanship during a hiring process,” Sulfaro said, “And we are not permitted to deny someone tenure on the basis of their political beliefs.”

There is also concern about the specifics of the bill as well as its necessity.

“I don’t get the impression that such a bill, would promote free speech,” said political science professor Valerie Sulfaro. “Rather this seems to imply that faculty ought to be speaking in a very particular way.”

Said Roberts: “My major concern with the bill is that it really isn’t needed; students at all public universities already have the right to file complaints against faculty members.”