Conservative and Libertarian Students at George Washington Law ‘Fear Grading Bias’
“Despite the growing intolerance on many campuses, conservative and libertarian students need to speak out and to report any faculty members who show intolerance for opposing views.”
Based on everything we know about higher education in America, don’t you think their fears are justified?
The College Fix reports:
Conservative GWU law students fear grading bias from professors
Conservatives and libertarian students at George Washington University Law School increasingly fear that sharing their views during class will result in lower grades, GWU Law Professor Jonathan Turley reports.
The concern of speaking freely never came up until the past few years, Turley noted, though it is “now routine.”
“With the start of classes at George Washington Law School, I have already had visits to my office of conservative and libertarian students asking if I thought they could speak freely in other classes without being penalized by professors,” he reported Aug. 30.
Asked by The College Fix what he tells them in response, Turley said he tells them to stand firm.
“The growing orthodoxy and intolerance on campuses creates a chilling effect on speech where students self-censor. Students should not yield to such pressure and lose a vital aspect of their undergraduate and graduate education,” he told The Fix via email Sept. 20.
“Life is not like a Monopoly game where you get to go around the board repeatedly. You go around once and need to make the most of this experience,” he said. “To remain silent (or even worse to mouth expected viewpoints) is to surrender an essential part of your education.”
“Free speech values atrophy and die from lack of use. Despite the growing intolerance on many campuses, conservative and libertarian students need to speak out and to report any faculty members who show intolerance for opposing views.”
The problem is not unique to GW Law.
A recent survey of University of North Carolina students, for example, found 42 percent of conservatives worry that their professor’s ideology may impact their grade, versus just seven percent of liberal students.
For Turley, the problem boils down to a lack of ideological diversity among faculty, perpetuated by hiring committees who tend to “replicate their own viewpoints and bias.”
“It is not just students but faculty who face this pressure to self-censure,” he wrote on his blog. “Faculty members risk cancel campaigns that threaten publications, conference invitations, and even their employment if they voice dissenting views.”
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Comments
I’m a GW Law Alum who long ago stopped financially supporting the school. Initially the problems lay primarily at the University level, but “progressive” intellectual rot has been growing in the law school If I thought we needed intellectually and ethically crippled lawyers, I would still be supporting GW Law.
Not at all an unwarranted fear
Conservatives shouldn’t be afraid to play the “liberal faculty is creating an unsafe environment for people in our community” card. That’s the Get Out of Jail Free card for Intersectional Monopoly.
Of course they will get grade slammed. The left is nothing if not professionally childish. You can see it in their “arguments,” if they can manage one without the usual flurry or ad hominems when the thin veneer of their certainty is invariably scratched with truth.
You can see it in action with the tech midgets, who have self appointed themselves the arbiters of what is “acceptable” and what is not.
“Asked by The College Fix what he tells them in response, Turley said he tells them to stand firm.”
So-o-o easy for the good Professor Turley to say.