I trust the universities and their internal
FARS … a form of psychosis induced by the false reality created by the media. In its most general form FARS can be seen like a religion, a false reality that becomes as real as the perceptual world. Goebels, Stalin, Joe McCarthy, the Castros, and today Putin, Trump and Xi are all very successful in creating their versions of FARS.
oversight to root out professors or teaching staff that misinform students, falsify data or otherwise violate the ethics of the teaching profession.
However , I don’t trust these “watch lists” as I suspect that they are agenda driven and seek to impose a conservative bias on professors, not simply identify and eliminate a liberal one.
Anyone as well informed as a professor presumably is, will have formed strong opinions on core issues that may align with either conservative or liberal politics. They may even declare themselves explicitly aligned with either Conservative or Liberal principles.
That is not the same as “bias” in the sense that we normally understand it, at least in academia.
A core academic principle is tolerance of and respect for differing opinions (when they are informed and reasoned) ,. and intolerance towards bad reasoning, false data, confirmation bias and anti-intellectual approaches to the subject,.
A professor isn’t biased when he makes it clear that his own views and approach is aligned with either conservative or liberal values.
He is biased when he omits important information for political reeasons and when he refuses to accept fact based, well reasoned opinions because he doesn’t like the conclusions.
Et cetera.
These types of biases would undermine the credibility of his research and reduce his effectiveness as a teacher and would be an issue for the University’s Human Resource department.
However, given the strong sense of anti-intellectualism on the Right and the disregard for facts and proper methodology in news sources and movements that align with conservatives, I fear that a lot of these allegations of liberal bias is simply about the conservative bias of students and critics, as well as a lack of understanding of academic methodology and academic freedom.
I know that as a High School teacher in Norway, I was taught to tread very carefully in terms of addressing students’ opinions in the classroom, and I know a lot of students mistake comments about fact checking their claims for a political bias, or they’re worried about voicing unpopular opinions and it’s our job as teachers to create a safe space for them to do that.
And I don’t mean that in the sense that “safe space” is often ridiculed, An example would be that I, as a “leftist” teacher, need to establish a safe space so that for instance a very conservative student feels that he can write a paper in which he expresses conservative views without worrying that his political positions will give him a bad grade even if his work is otherwise excellent.
A problem we encounter is that students in researching arguments for a paper, of course look at what professional politcians say about the issue, and when they use talking points that are false or msileading, as politicians often do, that hurts the student’s work.
For instance, with the heavy scientific consensus that climate change is affected by human actions, it would be very difficult for a conservative student to write a paper on the issue where he says climate change isn’t real and still get a good grade.
And if he fails he might complain about the teacher showing a liberal bias.
But is that really the case?