Indiana Professor Accused of Bias, Intolerance of Non-Pacifist Ideology
by Jim Brown
October 6, 2004
(AgapePress) - A conservative student at Ball State University is accusing the school of ignoring his complaints of liberal bias in the classroom.Senior political science major Brett Mock says the "Introduction to Peace Studies and Conflict Resolution" course he took last spring amounted to indoctrination rather than education. Mock contends Professor George Wolfe offered a one-sided approach to teaching conflict resolution, and had no tolerance for dissenting views.
Despite his complaints, Mock says university officials have refused to address the problem.
"The administration has spoken with Professor Wolfe to get his side of the story, looked at documents that he's shown them, and they have also listened to students that support his class or liked his class or said that I was misrepresenting his class," the student explains. "And yet they haven't given any time to me at all -- they haven't asked me what my experiences are [or] what is the basis for my claim."
According to Mock, Wolfe had no tolerance for students who disagreed with the argument that all violent military actions are unjustified.
"One of the biggest problems I had was whenever I would not show or agree with the extreme pacifist nature that the professor's personal ideology was, I would actually be challenged for my ideology with my grading on papers, even opinion papers," he says.
Mock says Wolfe once told him he had to lower the grade on a paper he wrote advocating corporal punishment, since peaceful methods of disciplining children are non-negotiable and 100 percent effective.
Wolfe, a professor of music performance, is the director of the Center for Peace and Conflict Studies on the Muncie, Indiana, campus.
