Conservative Collegians Put Liberal Bias on the Longhorns of a Dilemma
by Jim Brown
November 12, 2003
(AgapePress) - A conservative student group at the University of Texas has developed a unique method to hold liberal professors accountable for using their classes to indoctrinate students.Convinced they are not "receiving a fair and balanced education," members of the university's chapter of the Young Conservatives of Texas have been putting together a professor "watch list." According to the group's chairman, senior government major Austin Kinghorn, the list provides students with information about any professors who use the classroom as a launching pad for their own political crusades.
Although critics of the watch list might suggest that the conservative students have their own bias, Kinghorn says their agenda is "different from saying any liberal professor that we disagree with belongs on the list -- that's not the case. There are honest liberal professors out there, just as there are probably some dishonest conservative professors -- although conservative professors are much harder to find in the university setting."
"We're trying to address professors who twist reality or revise history to present only half the story in hopes of indoctrinating students to their own political beliefs," the Young Conservatives chairman says.
Also, Kinghorn says the watch list is designed to give incoming students more control in choosing what their degree plan will look like and to keep them from being steered into a left-tending path against their will.
The conservative student leader says what the Young Conservatives were hoping to address and what has frustrated them is "professors who push an ideological agenda on their students and aren't concerned about educating or giving their students the resources and tools to determine the truth." He says the list is meant to warn students about professors that tend to present only selected information so students will "end up leaving the class believing what the professor wants them to believe whether [the students] like it or not."
Kinghorn says some professors on the watch list have discussed it in class in an attempt to explain their teaching philosophy and to justify their curriculum. He also notes that one professor on the list has contacted the Young Conservatives of Texas and advanced the idea of having a panel discussion on the relationship between scholarship and politics.
