Seriously. This Tuesday, March 29, Graham Larkin (Department of Art, Stanford University) will face CA Senator Bill Morrow (R-Oceanside) in a nationwide debate on FoxNews Live (I believe that’s the FoxNews Channel, not regular Fox) at 2:48pm EST / 11:48 PT.

The exchange will be a follow-up to their March 22 debate at Cal State San Marcos over Morrow’s proposed ‘Student Bill of Rights’ legislation, as reported the next day in the San Diego Union-Tribune and the North County Times (Morrow’s local paper):

http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/northcounty/20050323-9999-1mi23freedom.html

http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2005/03/23/news/inland/23_41_263_22_05.txt

On April 15, Larkin will confront FrontPage Magazine editor David Horowitz on the half-hour program Uncommon Knowledge, where they will discuss Horowitz’s proposal for an ‘Academic Bill of Rights’. The broadcast date is not set, but the program will eventually be archived on the Uncommon Knowledge web site at:

http://www.uncommonknowledge.org/900/default.htm

Earlier this year, Larkin and Horowitz engaged in a vigorous online debate, available here:

http://aaup-ca.org/larkin_horowitz.html

But what about countersuits? If my creationist classmate makes my biology class unpleasant and disrupts my learning because of their suit against our professor, do I have the right to sue them for irreparable harm to the educational process that I’ve shelled out a load of cash for?

If you don’t want your teachers to maybe teach you about things that you didn’t already know when you went in, stay the **** home and get a McJob. Or if you already know everything there is to know about the subjects you’re taking, save yourself the baksheesh and skip straight ahead to a career in punditry.

That pretty much shuts down the law schools, too. So—where will anyone get lawyers in Florida to represent them in their suits against professors?

Of course, with “tort reform,” a student suit against a professor might have difficulty getting heard in court, and a student who prevailed against a professor would receive lower damage awards. The student would need money to initiate and pursue the wuit, because fewer attorneys would be willing to chance working on a contingency basis for a reduced percentage of the lower damages award.

On the other hand, if the student has the right connections, the Florida legislature just might pass a statute to force an outcome in the student’s favor. And if that fails, there’s always the U.S. Congress…

I can’t recall ever having a politically intolerant lefty prof. (though I went to a very conservative back-water school for undergrad, so that skews things). But, after hearing some of my colleagues in other departments talk, it doesn’t seem far-fetched to me that their politics might come out in class in inappropriate ways. So I’m hesitant to dismiss these worries too quickly.

And, let me add, I had an undergrad prof. literally scream at me in class once because he thought I was about to say something critical of Darwin. He was insisting that “evolution is a fact, not a theory,” and a creationist student was questioning him in a misguided but respectful manner. I was about to point out that it was, in fact, both a fact and a theory, but I got no farther than “Well, I agree with Darwin, but…” Before he screamed “HAVE YOU READ THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES???” Although I knew a good bit about evolution, I admitted that I hadn’t read Darwin himself, whereupon the prof. screamed something else—somethng I don’t remember word-for-word, but clearly indicating that I should shut the hell up. (Um, this was not a class full of bio majors or anything. I knew more than most of the kids in there, so it wasn’t like I was wasting air time with ignorant comments.)

An isolated incident you might say, but I wonder how good your evidence would be for that. Is there any empirical data on this? (Yes, of course it would be hard to get, blah blah blah.)

This is great for students, in the short run, because it means that they will all pass. Unfortunately in the long run it suggests that they won’t learn anything. So far as I can see, if this bill succeeds it means the end of tertiary education. And why stop at tertiary education? Let the kids who are expected to spell “cat” with a C sue their teachers! Let the toddlers who want to smear themselves with shit sue their caregivers! Down with education! Long live Terri Schiavo, role-model for Republican intellectuals everywhere!

Thankfully I’m not an American, so I can sit back and laugh loudly at this stupidity without fear of being branded a traitor. And, spread the meme!

I used to work at a state-funded community college that had two biology professors, one of whom was a creationist and was very active in several creationist organizations. Two of the students who worked in my department took his class because they didn’t want to take biology from someone who “teaches evolution.” His class was, in fact, very popular, and nobody I talked to seemed to find it inappropriate for a state school to be teaching religion in freshman biology.

The guy left eventually; I don’t know if it was voluntary or not. I was gone by then.