Extremists on the March in Ohio

The proposed academic "Bill of Rights" in Ohio, a brainchild of David Horowitz, isn't about rights at all. It's about enforcing political conformity on professors. An academic setting is didactic in nature: the professors teach and the students learn. It is not a free speech forum, although the professor may lead students through a limited amount of open discussion:

The proposal ... would prohibit public and private college professors from presenting opinions as fact or penalizing students for expressing their views. Professors would not be allowed to introduce controversial material unrelated to the course.

Who decides what is "controversial material unrelated to the course?"

Some classes are necessarily political in nature: education and political opinion are deeply intertwined (example: classes in Middle East studies). Getting a balance there is difficult, and professors often fail. Employing "minders" in the student body or from the state legislature is the wrong way to go, however, since they have little or no committment to the body of learning, as teachers do. The faculty and the professors must have the freedom to get that balance right.

"It doesn't matter a professor's viewpoint," Horowitz said in an interview. "They can be a good professor, liberal or conservative, provided they pursue an educational mission and not a political agenda."

Who decides what a "political agenda" is? Does a political interest in "climate change" among climatologists, for example, constitute a "political agenda?" Where does the aggrandizement of the state legislature stop? Who said professors had to surrender their opinions to teach anyway? Why does America have to embrace fascism and tyranny in order to operate public or private colleges or universities? Is it a matter of "values," or is it really about enforcing political discipline? Remember, professors are generally not hired to teach "values," but rather bodies of knowledge and expertise. The idea is that students should become active adults who can decide for themselves, without minders, what public policies they wish to support:

[State Senator Larry] Mumper said he is concerned universities are not teaching the values held by taxpaying parents and students.

He questioned why lawmakers should approve funding for universities with "professors who would send some students out in the world to vote against the very public policy that their parents have elected us for."