Bias In Academe

I don't know what biases the American Council of Trustees and Alumni are, but they've issued a report that, in its first paragraph, substantiates what conservatives inside and outside of education have been saying for years--there's a liberal bias in our universities. Here's a summary from their website (see May 12, 2006 entry):

As the University of Colorado prepares to issue a report on tenured ethnic studies professor Ward Churchill, a new study by the American Council of Trustees and Alumni concludes that professors like Churchill are systematically promoted by colleges and universities acros s the country at the expense of academic standards and integrity. Focusing on U.S. News & World Report's top 25 private colleges and universities, and the Big 10 and Big 12 conference schools, the report examines departmental websites, on-line course descriptions, electronic course syllabi, and faculty home pages in a wide range of liberal arts disciplines. From this broad survey of publicly available materials, ACTA finds that “the kinds of politically extreme opinions for which Ward Churchill has become justly infamous are not only quite common in academe, but enthsuiastically embraced and rewarded by it.” The study concludes that “throughout American higher education, professors are using their classrooms to push political agendas in the name of teaching students to think critically.”

Update, 5/24/06 12:20 pm: I don't go looking for this stuff, yet I find it so often that it must be prevalent. From Erin O'Connor's blog:

But not all of Purdue's courses live up to the standards the university
sets for them. Consider Purdue University -- Calumet's spring 2006 edition of Sociology
100 (Introduction to Sociology). A student in the class describes it at
NoIndoctrination.org, noting that until the last month of the term, Soc 100 was
a thoroughly respectable course. At that point, however, the student notes that
the test became "very PC and biased." Describing study sheets on "Race &
Ethnicity" that the professor distributed, the student notes that

For that test, the teacher handed out stapled sheets of notes to the
students. Each sheet had 6 squares of information, 2 columns down, and 3
rows across. On the second sheet, two squares contained biased political and PC messages. The first one on the top left corner reads
=====================================================
Minority and Dominant Groups
* Minority Groups - people who are singled out for unequal treatment-regard themselves as objects of collective discrimination
* Dominant groups - those who do the discriminating-have the
greatest power, most privileges, & highest social status-Privileged position attributed to superiority
========================================================
What these notes imply is that dominant groups are the only ones who discriminate against people, and that minorities are defined by unfair treatment instead of a simple case of lower population.

The other square of notes appears on the second sheet at the bottom right corner which reads:
=====================================================
Old-fashioned racism vs. modern racism
-Old-fashioned racism: overtly expressed prejudice

* KKK
-Modern racism: prejudice that is expressed more subtly
* Opposing affirmative action
=====================================================

There you have it. There can be no principled opposition to affirmative action; it's all racist.