- Joined
- Apr 3, 2019
- Messages
- 22,341
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- Location
- Alaska (61.5°N, -149°W)
- Gender
- Male
- Political Leaning
- Conservative
The university is free to establish whatever rules they desire concerning guest speakers, but once those rules are established they are required to apply them equally to everyone.The universities are administered by people who voluntarily institute internal regulations on speech and who prefer to ban guest speakers than to get violent protestors arrested. They might be individually well intended, but it doesn't seem like they will do an unbiased job.
That is why proof of bias is required. Merely making an allegation means nothing. I'm certain everyone who has ever received a unsatisfactory grade would like to dispute it, but unless they have actual evidence of bias they have no grounds to be making any claim.Moreover, every dispute concerning grades will at best lead to the administration asking another professor from the same department to grade the paper a second time -- usually without appeal.
I recall one professor I had for a Political Science course was extremely biased toward the left. So much so that he was deliberately distorting historical events. When I confronted the professor with a number of glaring historical errors, not just in his lectures but also in the text that he required, I was given my choice of three different texts from which to choose. I would also interrupt his lectures whenever he made an historical error and point out his error in front of the rest of the class. My grade in that class did not suffer as a result, and I did learn something from the text I was able to choose myself.
However, I did have the advantage of being an older student at the time. I served in the military for 8 years before attending the university at age 26. So I was not exactly fresh out of high school. I also perform "due diligence" when learning something new by cross-referencing what I've learned with other sources.
This is why actual evidence is crucial. The sheer number of disgruntled students who did not fair well must be staggering for any administration. So unless there is a preponderance of the evidence showing bias by the professor, the administration is doing the right thing by ignoring the complaint.I would not be surprised if accusations of political bias toward his colleague or the additional workload put the professor in a bad mood and I would question the chance of coming across a fair judgement from a department who hired someone who was so biased it was obvious in how they graded the paper. And, if it wasn't enough, all disputes that lead to a second grading means the entire paper or exam is graded again: the grade may end up being lower, in other words.
In short, you only have the semblance of fairness in some departments.
Every professor that I had had their own rules for how they issued grades. They typically informed the class of thier process very early in the course. So the first step would be to hold the professor to their own rules. If they don't explain how they grade papers or issue grades for the class, ask them directly. More often than not it is a teaching assistant who reads and issues grades for papers, and not the actual professor.