"When we talk about monitoring what faculty say, people get nervous about that."

By Kavita Kumar

Students at the University of Missouri's four campuses soon will be able to lodge complaints on university websites about professors who they think have discriminated against them based on their viewpoints.

Ombudsmen have been designated at each campus to help resolve such issues and keep a record of all grievances to be compiled in an annual report.

University of Missouri academic leaders briefed the Board of Curators on these efforts at its meeting Thursday [October 4, 2007]. Some curators have been asking questions in the last year about how the campuses handle intellectual diversity in light of national and local media reports about academic freedom.

The issue became a hot-button topic in the Missouri Legislature last spring following a well-publicized incident at Missouri State University in which a student, Emily Brooker, said she faced hostility from her professor when she refused to sign a letter supporting gay adoption. The case became the subject of a lawsuit that the university settled out of court almost a year ago.

In response, the Missouri House passed the "Emily Brooker Intellectual Diversity Bill" that would have required universities to report annually to the Legislature about how they teach all sides of controversial issues. But the bill never made it to the Senate floor.

The bill listed almost a dozen ways in which colleges can increase intellectual diversity, including tracking grievances against professors.

Curator David Wasinger, who has been prodding the university to address intellectual pluralism, hailed the efforts outlined Thursday as a "great start" to addressing the "deep-seated problem." He said it also sends an important message to the Legislature that "we can mind our own score."

Faculty leaders questioned whether a problem existed but said professors are mostly open to the reporting mechanism.

Tim Farmer, president of the Faculty Senate at the University of Missouri-St. Louis, said there such efforts have had a slight chilling effect on some professors who worry they may get in trouble for what they say in class.

"When we talk about monitoring what faculty say, people get nervous about that," he said. But he added, "I think people are taking an open-minded view on it as long as it doesn't change what they teach in their class."

The MU Faculty Council passed a resolution last week that suggests boilerplate language about intellectual pluralism and where students can go to lodge complaints that could be printed on course syllabi.

Frank Schmidt, president of the Faculty Council, said he hopes that doing so will help diffuse the controversy. Moreover, he said he thinks it will show that viewpoint discrimination is not much of an issue in the classroom — and that if it does happen, there are steps being taken to address it.

"I don't think it's a problem at all," he said. "If it were, I'd hear about it."

A report to the Board of Curators several months ago said there had been just one recorded grievance at UMSL, in which a student complained that a faculty member did not value his work because of his politics. In that case, a grievance officer ruled in favor of the student. The report added that most complaints are handled more informally by department chairs or deans and are resolved before coming to a formal grievance.

Reprinted with permission of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch © 2007