Provost critical of bias investigation

A high-ranking Pitt administrator defended the University’s policy on protecting students from… A high-ranking Pitt administrator defended the University’s policy on protecting students from liberal biases yesterday at the second part of a two-day hearing on bias at state-funded schools in Pennsylvania.

Provost and Senior Vice Chancellor James V. Maher told members of the state House of Representatives select committee on academic freedom in higher education that Pitt already has a functional system to ensure intellectual freedom and diversity.

Maher began the session by giving a PowerPoint presentation on Pitt’s policies regarding informal resolution procedures. He explained that whenever a student has a complaint regarding a professor, the student begins by speaking with a faculty member, before bringing his or her complaint to the department.

One of the last resorts for students is to have a formal review – something that has never happened at Pitt for political orientation reasons, Maher said.

“If you asked [students] their rights, they would know them,” he said, adding that students are given a copy of the Student Policy in their summer orientation and taught it in freshman studies classes.

Maher also said many students participate in active discussions (predominantly in health and social science classes) and, while he has heard that students have disagreed with what their professors have said, the students were treated fairly.

“We try to teach students that when you are angry and want to insult someone, that’s when you need your intelligence the most,” Maher said.

Later in the session Maher said that there were times when it is fine for professors to express their own viewpoints.

“There are fields of study where the subject of the course doesn’t have a societal consensus and they have to express their viewpoints,” he said.

Maher added that the entire faculty has an obligation to be fair and make ethical decisions by not grading students based on their race, religion, sex, sexual orientation, age and political or cultural affiliations.

He also said that Pitt faculty members cannot use the University’s name to support any political members, and that Pitt faculty are not asked their political affiliation when interviewed.

The hearing at Pitt is the first of four across the state being held by the committee from the House of Representatives under House Resolution 177, which gave the committee the power to investigate bias at state-funded and state-related universities.

After Maher finished speaking to the committee, Professor Burrell Brown, from California University of Pennsylvania, began.

Brown said that student performance is evaluated solely on the basis of academics, and that the resolution might force professors to teach “unscientific” viewpoints.

State Rep. John Pallone, D-Armstrong and Westmoreland counties, agreed with other committee members who started to say that they didn’t see a problem within the current system.

“It’s a plain-and-simple witch hunt,” Pallone said. “Looking for a problem so that we can find the solution.”

After the academic experts finished speaking, the committee listened to comments from the public.

Rachael Dizard, a senior at Pitt majoring in politics and philosophy, said that she supported the resolution’s goal to protect academic freedom and diversity in colleges, but disagreed with the resolution itself because it would censor professors.

“If professors must work under the constant threat of being reported for revealing one ideological bias or another, I fear that they will reveal nothing at all to their students,” Dizard said.

Dizard also said that she had never been penalized for disagreeing with one of her professors, nor did she ever feel targeted for her beliefs.

“The best professors that I have had here at the University of Pittsburgh are also the ones with whom I have argued the most,” she said.

Dizard felt concerned that with the resolution, future students wouldn’t have the opportunities to argue.

“Part of the academic experience [is] to be exposed to biases, ideologies or even partisan philosophies, so that students can make up their own minds about what they do or do not agree with,” Dizard said.