My Professor Is a Partisan Hack

The Chronicle of Higher Education reports on legislative hearings at Millersville U concerning indoctrination by left-wing professors at public universities in Pennsylvania. Some highlights:

Students' perceptions of their professors' political views affect whether students consider the professors to be good teachers, two academics who have studied the issue told Pennsylvania lawmakers on Wednesday.
The scholars, Matthew Woessner and April Kelly-Woessner, testified before a state legislative committee that gathered here at Millersville University of Pennsylvania for its third round of public hearings to investigate whether Pennyslvania's public colleges indoctrinate students in left-wing ideology and discriminate against those with conservative views...In the study ["My Professor Is a Partisan Hack: How Perceptions of a Professor's Political Views Affect Student Course Evaluations"], which was based on responses from 1,385 undergraduate students in political-science classes at 29 colleges and universities, they found that most students think they know their professors' politics. Of those surveyed, 15 percent reported they were "positive" of their professor's ideology, 32 percent were "very confident," and 40 percent were "somewhat confident." Only 11 percent were "not at all confident."
...The study also found that students were more likely to perceive professors as "less caring and less objective" when they believed their professors' political views to be different from their own, and to regard professors more favorably when their views coincided. So faculty members who overtly express their political ideology in the classroom risk alienating students who may "tune out or attempt to discredit course material," Ms. Kelly-Woessner said.
Students, therefore, "may not be the sponges that some people have suggested," she said, adding that claims of students being indoctrinated may be overstated.
Regardless, she and Mr. Woessner said, professors should leave their politics at the classroom door. They should present both sides of an argument to their students without taking sides, the scholars said.
Another speaker, Alan H. Levy, a professor of history at Slippery Rock University of Pennsylvania, told the committee that colleagues at his university, particularly in women's studies, were incapable of doing just that. Mr. Levy testified that political correctness has restricted the free exchange of ideas on his campus.
Mike Ratliff, a senior vice president at the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, blamed liberal bias in the academy for what he called a decline in the quality of civics instruction students are getting in American-history courses. Mr. Ratliff, who is a retired rear admiral, said his organization was developing a way to measure what students are learning in "those fields central to citizenship," such as history, economics, and political science....

The typical student at Gettysburg College, I think, comes to us with a basically conservative belief system inherited from family, heretofore never seriously challenged. One role of a college education is to have one's beliefs challenged at a very fundamental level. By the time a student graduates, he or she ought to be able to defend his or her beliefs and critique the views of others. Above all, the student should learn that one's belief system needs to be grounded in reason. Professors need to challenge students beliefs; one way to do that is to lay out the liberal point of view, which conservative activists label indoctrination. It's not indoctrination - it's pedagogy. Now, there's a right way and a wrong way to do this. You do not quash dissent - you encourage students to argue back, criticize your argument, defend their position. You appeal to reason, not emotion. You treat both sides of the issue fairly, even if ultimately your argument is that one is right and the other is wrong. But you don't just present political positions as a menu from which students are free to choose depending on their taste or mood. You encourage students to take ideas seriously, and to do that you often have to take sides.

Do professors sometimes overstep? Sure they do; I'm sure I do from time to time. But surely conservative students are not so fragile that they need to be protected from opinions that differ from their own by David Horowitz and the Pennsylvania State Legislature. If your professor is a partisan hack, argue with him or her - don't cover your ears and wait to take out your frustrations on the course evaluation.