Anyone who cares about higher education in this country should be looking with interest and horror at the Florida state legislature's Student & Faculty Academic Freedom Bill, which among other things gives students the right to sue professors and universities if they feel their ideological beliefs are not being represented in a class.

How hard is it to see what a disaster this would be for everyone involved if it were somehow able to pass? Every single good professor I've ever known (myself, I hope, included) would get sued instantaneously, most of them from both the left and the right (myself, I hope, included). Challenging students, whoever they are and regardless of what they believe, is part of what college is for.

So this bill effectively outlaws college. Super.

The Panda's Thumb has the frightening details. MetaFilter has also been talking about this, as well as a similar, even worse bill currently under discussion in Ohio, which in part forbids professors from "persistently introducing controversial matter into the classroom or coursework that has no relation to their subject of study and that serves no legitimate pedagogical purpose."

Who determines "relation to their subject of study"? Who adjudicates "legitimate pedagogical purpose"? And somebody better tell Case Western to shut down its English, philosophy, comparative literature, political science, classics, and mathematics departments, because I think nearly every single course I took there in four years fails to meet this standard in way or the other.

And the MFA Program in Writing at UNCG is even worse. We're there to learn spelling, punctuation, and syntax, not what Brian Crocker thinks about poverty. Keep on task, people!

Call me crazy, but I just don't think you go to college to have your preconceived notions ratified. You go to college to learn. If you already knew the Absolute Truth about Everything, you wouldn't have to go to college.

And I'm so incredibly tired of Newspeak. Just call it the Ruin Higher Education Act. At least that would be honest.