Academic Bill of Rights in New York

AN ACT to amend the education law, in relation to creating an academic bill of rights

The People of the State of New York, represented in Senate and Assembly, do enact as follows:

An adjunct professor at SUNY Farmingdale, Phil Orenstein, and I have been lobbying for a version of the Academic Bill of Rights. A copy of the prosposed bill is on my blog (URL listed and below). I am an associate professor at Brooklyn College. I would like to ask all social conservatives, libertarians, free marketeers and classical liberals who reside in New York State to contact their State Assembly and Senate members in Albany in support of the bill.

The purpose of the bill is to redress discrimination against conservatives, libertarians, social conservatives and pretty much anyone else who isn't a leftist in universities. For example, last year a student at a public university in New York was harassed by his professors because he objected to watching "Farenheit 9/11" in class. It turns out that the accreditation agency for teacher education, that accredits the majority of education programs in America, advocates a left wing approach to indoctrination called "dispositional assessment." This kind of 1984-ish extremism is all too common, and too many students have suffered.

The best evidence that the Academic Bill of Rights, S 6337 is at least somewhat effective is that the two chief public university faculty unions, the Professional Staff Congress and the United University Professions have begun an intense lobbying campaign against the bill, which to Phil amd my surprise has been referred to the State Senate higher ed committee as S 6337.

We are at a juncture now where letters from people who are tired of seeing conservatives mistreated, expelled and given low grades for disagreeing with their professors would count very much.

Would you kindly consider contacting your State Senators and Assembly people on behalf of S 6337 and let the left wing extremists in the faculty unions know that you are concerned about bias in universities?

Best Wishes,

Mitchell

http://www.democracy-project.com/archives/002245.html

I will write my lib representatives and I completely support your goal but you realize 1) this will not pass and 2) leftist university professors utilize tactics like using mob mentality smearing and ridiculing in the open classroom and grading a student based on their viewpoint- regardless of the quality of their work on a final.

The #1 act that will improve conditions is undergraduate programs adopting anonymous grading... like they do in law school.

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