Word: hagedorn
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Colorado legislator Bob Hagedorn admits that when he proposed Senate Bill 85 in December, he was thinking of himself. In the wake of last fall's polarizing race for the White House, Hagedorn, a Democrat who is also a political-science professor at Metropolitan State College in Denver, grew more and more worried about saying the wrong thing as his students debated contentious issues like George W. Bush's No Child Left Behind initiative and the teaching of creationism in schools. Earlier in the year, students had filed bias complaints against a colleague who had criticized Republicans. "I'm thinking...
Lawmakers left and right say freedom is exactly what they want to safeguard. "We are having witch hunts," says Hagedorn. A Metro State colleague, ethnic-studies professor Oneida Meranto, came under attack last winter after clashing with Republicans in her class. (She was later reprimanded not for her political views but for breach of privacy when she said that one of the complainants was going to flunk her class...
...lawmakers approach academic freedom from different angles but end up in a similar place. The Hagedorn bill and the Horowitz-based bills cover the rights of faculty and students, although Hagedorn emphasizes professors' rights while the others focus on students'. They all trumpet the primacy of "intellectual independence." And they all reject political and religious views as grounds for hiring, firing, reward and punishment. Students on Horowitz's side have even supported the Hagedorn bill, "particularly as it talks about the need for multiple viewpoints," says Ryan Call, Denver-based regional director of Students for Academic Freedom, which is allied...
...fair-mindedness in education can be legislated. "Legislators are acting out of frustration, with no great tools at their disposal," says David French, president of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, a nonpartisan civil-liberties group. "How do you mandate balance?" It's unclear, for instance, how either Hagedorn's bill or the Horowitz version would have made a difference in the case of Metro State's Meranto; neither prescribes penalties. Even if the bills passed, "there's a risk that [they] may set a precedent of legislators becoming micromanagers," says Robert O'Neil, director of the Thomas Jefferson...
...oversight role, giving the university the chance to look into Churchill's case, his credentials (he lacks a Ph.D.) and his research (other academics accuse him of doctoring facts about Native American history, a charge he has not answered). An investigative panel expects to issue its findings this week. Hagedorn believes he has the votes in the Democrat-controlled legislature to pass his bill, but Governor Owens is considered unlikely to sign it. Hearings on the bill probably will not begin until later this month, by which time, Hagedorn says, "we're hoping tempers will have quieted...