Arizona Bill Would Let College Students Appeal Grades If They Allege Political Bias

[Dill]

(03-15-2024, 07:37 PM)GMDino Wrote: https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaeltnietzel/2024/03/07/arizona-bill-would-let-college-students-appeal-grades-if-they-perceive-political-bias/?sh=76c9db8110b6

Second, who exactly would the Grade Change Department volunteers be? How would they be selected? What qualifications, if any, would they need to have to judge the presence or influence of political bias, let alone the quality of a student’s work in question? Is it not likely that strongly held viewpoints would motivate political partisans to step forward for such duty? That’s exactly the type of person who should not be weighing the merits of alleged political bias.

This reminds me a bit of the kurfuffle over Horowitz' Academic Bill of Rights" and FIRE (Freedom for Individual Rights and Expression) back in 2005-06.
https://www.thefire.org/about-us/mission

He pushed it in various states to get legislators to public universities to adopt it as policy, arguing that "conservatives" were sadly lacking in such schools
and needed a kind of affirmative action to create political instead as well as racial "diversity."  Further, students also had rights to academic freedom of speech and thought. Especially conservative students.  https://studentsforacademicfreedom.org/actions-nationwide/a-campus-movement-is-born/

He came to Pennsylvania with claim that over 100 students had been discriminated against in various institutions by "Marxist" professors who, for example criticized Bush's rush to war in Iraq and ask students to explain Marx without treating his theories as failed.  He moved the legislature to begin examining the question. As they began demanding names and tracking down incidents, the list was quickly reduced to 2 or 3 very questionable, ambiguous stories, and mostly from one private university.  Nothing came of the "real life" examples, but Horowitz did manage to get the PA legislature to push universities to produce statements protecting the academic freedom of students, which he considered a great victory.  https://studentsforacademicfreedom.org/reports/pennsylvanias-academic-freedom-reforms/

I see this as part of a long historical battle over university autonomy which began back in 18th century Germany, where the notion of "Academic freedom" was first elaborated.  It's of a piece with other such moves, like DeSantis' in Florida to control university curricula and teaching from the legislature on the Orban/Hungary model.

That said, I do think that a changing student body is, in some places, challenging traditional notions of academic freedom in harmful ways. But this is not a problem that can be changed through legislation. I think some of its roots are in the K 12 process, as well.