AAUP Letter to the Missouri Senate

Dear Missouri Senator:

We are very concerned by the recent passage of HB 213, the so-called “Intellectual Diversity” bill in the Missouri House of Representatives.  We hope that the Missouri Senate realizes that the bill, if passed, would do more harm than good and that the results will be the opposite of its intentions.  Similar bills have been introduced and defeated in twenty-eight other states over the past four years.  Not a single state has passed such legislation into law, and we enumerate below some of the reasons why.  We urge you to consider these points carefully and vote against this bill for the good of Missouri’s students and institutions of higher education. 

1. HB 213 would curtail academic freedom and free expression by imposing restrictions on what can or cannot be taught.  Faculty members are trained to evaluate information through critical inquiry and devote years to examining all available information in their area(s) of expertise.  Attempts to legislate “balance” in classrooms could require that opinions be given equal weight with facts, and imply that all theories about a given topic have equal legitimacy, regardless of expert consensus within a discipline.  The best way to ensure a wide variety of opinions and ideas is to have a classroom free of restrictions where open discussion and debate are valued and where all participants—students and professors alike—feel free to bring up relevant arguments.  This legislation would stifle debate and inquiry.  
2. There are already mechanisms in place at Missouri colleges and universities to address grievances in the rare cases that occur.  Apart from one terrible, but isolated incident at Missouri State, there is not evidence that students lack means to address grievances.  These procedures work well, and legislation in this case is an unnecessary attempt to fix an unbroken system.  The process worked in the Brooker case as well once the administration was informed. The matter would have been settled even faster had the student gone through those channels initially instead of outside of the university system. 
3. Creating legislative oversight of curriculum threatens to open the learning process to partisan battles that have no place in the classroom.  HB 213 literally mandates that there will be a yearly scrutiny over the classroom.  Rather than protecting students from unnecessary politicization, such oversight would insert politics into every classroom.
4. Please consider the source of these campaigns.  The main proponents of these proposals, the American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA) and David Horowitz, claim to be defending students from “indoctrination”, but present precious little evidence of this problem.  Pennsylvania, for example, held statewide hearings on the issue in 2006 and after hearing extensive testimony on four separate occasions, concluded that legislation was not necessary and that academic freedom violations are rare. 

We hope that Missouri will not have the dubious distinction of being the only state to pass such dangerous and unnecessary legislation. As terrible as the Emily Brooker case was, the situation has been dealt with and there is no evidence that a widespread problem exists outside the Missouri State Social Work Program.  Institutions have well-documented grievance procedures to address problems that arise, and the Brooker case was no exception.  As soon as university officials were informed of the nature of her complaint, the issue was settled swiftly and to the satisfaction of all parties.  The system works precisely as it was designed.  Legislating as prescribed in the “Intellectual Diversity” and ABOR bills would only create more of these cases in the future, rather than prevent them.  We therefore urge you to reject HB 213.