Print

Email story

Comment

Email editor

Education

Lawmaker takes his complaints to the top

Rep. Dennis Baxley asks university presidents to protect conservatives from ridicule.

By DAVID KARP
Published April 22, 2005

TALLAHASSEE - From his seat on a key education committee, Rep. Dennis Baxley helps shape the budget of every public university in Florida.

But when he appeared Thursday before the state's university presidents, Baxley portrayed himself as a victim.

"I have not come with a set of demands," he said in a soft voice. "I have come with a burden."

The Ocala Republican told the presidents he has been humiliated for his conservative views. He showed them a cartoon published in the University of Florida student newspaper that depicted a naked Baxley crawling behind a monkey in the evolutionary chain.

Baxley's request: Protect conservatives like him from ridicule by the "liberal elite" on Florida campuses.

The presidents nodded politely, but didn't agree to do anything specific. Instead, they told Baxley about policies already in place to protect students treated unfairly for any reason.

"It's our job to make sure that those policies work," said University of West Florida president John Cavanaugh, who chairs the state association of university presidents.

The compromise seemed to satisfy Baxley, who is pushing legislation that would give students the right to object if professors repeatedly discuss controversial issues irrelevant to a class.

The compromise should also satisfy professors, many of whom saw Baxley's bill as a threat to academic freedom and their control of the classroom.

Though he got no specific concessions, Baxley said after the meeting that he thinks the presidents "have embraced my intentions."

His conciliatory stance also reflects political reality: His bill is on life support. Gov. Bush doesn't support it, and it has made no progress in the Senate.

"It may still have a feeding tube in," said Baxley, who fought to prolong the life of Terri Schiavo.

Baxley has considerable clout with universities because he sits on a committee that controls education spending. Members of the state Board of Governors, which oversees Florida's university system, reminded the presidents of that Thursday when Baxley appeared before them, too.

Board chairwoman Carolyn Roberts told the presidents to work with Baxley, though she did not give them a specific charge.

"I hope you are comfortable that they are taking this very seriously," Roberts told Baxley.

None of the presidents said at the meeting what actions - if any - they will take. None promised to change grievance procedures, which Baxley said don't work. Conservatives feel the procedures are "pretty much there to back the professors," he said.

In an interview later, University of Florida president Bernie Machen said he would publicize UF's existing policies. Machen said he gets hundreds of e-mails daily, but hasn't heard complaints from victimized conservatives.

"At Florida, I just don't sense it's a problem," Machen said.

T.K. Wetherell, the president of Florida State University, agreed. "I don't think you have this bastion of liberalism that people think," he said.

University of South Florida president Judy Genshaft said she talks with students often, but hasn't heard any complaints. USF recently reviewed its grievance procedures, but she is open to looking at them again.

"I care about fairness," Genshaft said.

Baxley's bill has become a part of a national debate over whether university faculties are hotbeds of radicalism. Before filing his bill, Baxley consulted conservative activist David Horowitz, who is pushing similar legislation in other states.

A former Marxist turned conservative, Horowitz has traveled the nation speaking about bias on college campus, he is author of Hating Whitey: And Other Progressive Causes and How to Beat the Democrats: and Other Subversive Ideas.

Horowitz argues that at many universities, conservative thinkers are shut out of tenure, graduate programs and classroom discussions.

A recent study published in The Forum, a political journal, supports that view. The survey of 1,643 professors at 183 institutions found that academics do appear tilted toward liberal positions. It also acknowledged that many complaints are based on student perceptions of their own grades and views.

Here are some examples from Florida schools:

Pedro Armada, who chairs Students for Academic Freedom at Florida International University, said a "liberal" professor gave him a poor grade on a paper because he didn't like his views about the international criminal court.

He said another professor teaching U.S. foreign policy assigned a book written by a socialist, but didn't assign books by "conservative" authors.

F. Michael Hallenstein, a Florida Atlantic University graduate, said an English professor teaching women's literature did a lot of "male bashing" in class.

Angela Rivera, a University of North Florida student, said a professor showed the anti-Bush movie Fahrenheit 911 in her first-year English class just before the election. When she objected, he let her show a film to counter the movie, but turned it off after a while. Rivera still got an A in the class.

The examples actually show how Baxley's complaints distort what happens in classrooms, said Tom Auxter, a UF professor who heads the Florida faculty union. He said Baxley's bill would reduce classes to stark political debates between liberals and conservatives, rather than inquiries into truth.

"The mission is not to reduce everything to conservative vs. liberal," Auxter said. "The mission is discovery."

Officials at each of the universities cited in the complaints said they have received no student reports of political bias.

Baxley brought up a complaint of his own Thursday, about an FSU professor who supposedly told a Tallahassee police officer taking a graduate course: "I don't give Republicans A's."

Wetherell, the FSU president, pressed for details, including a name.

"I have not seen many tentative Tallahassee police officers that don't speak up," he said.

David Karp can be reached at 1-800-333-7505, ext. 8430, or karp@sptimes.com

[Last modified April 22, 2005, 00:43:11]