Much commotion has been made about Ohio State Senator Larry Mumper's SB 24, "To enact sections 3345.80 and 3345.81 of the Revised Code to establish the academic bill of rights for higher education."

Part of the reason that this is a cause for concern is that SB 24 is practically a duplication of Students for Academic Freedom's Academic Bill of Rights. SAF, along with Young America's Foundation, is a David Horowitz organization devoted to the indoctrination of young conservatives. Horowitz is a crazy conservative who goes to cocktail parties with Ann Coulter and Sean Hannity. He is famous as a ridiculous right-winger who believes that the Israelies can do no wrong and the Palestinians can do no right. To lift whole phrases from Horowitz's Academic Bill of Rights and insert them into a bill that would govern all of the public universities of the state of Ohio and claim that this is all in the name of being "fair and balanced" is disingenuous at best.

Most universities already have such policy statements. Miami University's Values Statement affirms Miami defends "the freedom of inquiry that is the heart of learning and combine that freedom with the exercise of judgment and the acceptance of personal responsibility."

Miami's Policy and Information Manual also affirms the right to "academic freedom." Section 5 of the policy details the "Rights and Responsibilities of the Instructional Staff" (PDF). From the policy:

Institutions of higher education are conducted for the common good and not to further the interest of either the individual teacher or the institution as a whole. The common good depends upon the free search for truth and its free exposition. (The word "teacher" as used in this document is understood to include the investigator who is attached to an academic institution without teaching duties.)

Academic freedom is essential to these purposes and applies to both teaching and research. Freedom in research is fundamental to the advancement of truth. Academic freedom in its teaching aspect is fundamental for the protection of the rights of the teacher in teaching and of the student to freedom in learning. It carries with it duties correlative with rights.

Tenure is a means to certain ends, specifically: (1) freedom of teaching and research and of extramural activities, and (2) a sufficient degree of economic security to make the profession attractive to men and women of ability. Freedom and economic security, hence tenure, are indispensable to the success of an institution in fulfilling its obligations to its students and to society.

No faculty member shall be obliged to make her or his nonpublic work available for inspection by a second party in the absence of compulsory legal process.

Additionally, "The teacher is entitled to freedom in the classroom in discussing his or her subject, but should be careful not to introduce into his or her teaching controversial matter that has no relation to the subject."

Is there a need for a state law governing professors in this matter? Definitely not. I have never met a professor who evaluated student performance subjectively (that is, according to whether or not the professor agreed with it, not whether or not it was good work) or attempted to indoctrinate students with his or her own beliefs. The Academic Bill of Rights is the work of a few disgruntled people who are upset that their unpopular and unsupportable ideas are not being taught in universities.

Do you want to teach Samuel Huntington seriously in a Latin-American Studies course? Not possible. Latin-American Studies necessitates a Marxist analysis of Latin American/United States relations, something with which Huntington would never agree. But no serious LAS scholar would ever dream of utilizing Huntington seriously. Similarly, communism is not seriously taught in any economics course. You'll have to go to the philosophy department for that. An Academic Bill of Rights would require that every professor constantly look over his or her shoulder, giving the nervous thumbs-up to a staunchy bureaucrat overseeing the teaching.

Decisions about teaching practices are not to be made by politicans, especially those who are obviously terrifically biased (as Larry Mumper is). Let individual institutions determine the quality of their teaching and keep David Horowitz out of our universities. His assertions about liberal professors and indoctrination are just as applicable to him. "Academic freedom"? How about "freedom to institutionalize and mandate the teaching of conservative philosophy"?