THERE ARE TEN BIASES (via David Hill, The Bronx):

These Courses Are Condemned:
"Christian Morality in American Literature" is biased. "Feminine Perspectives in Literature" is not. (NAOMI SCHAEFER RILEY, October 28, 2005, Opinion Journal)

Most California high-school students who apply to the university submit their grades as a part of their application. But the university must deem their high-school classwork to be sufficiently demanding for the grades to mean anything. And lately the university's officials have looked upon the classes in California's Christian schools with suspicion--even as they wave through lighter-than-air classes from public schools. [...]

A year ago, Calvary Chapel sent a description of some of its new courses to UC for review and inquired about a couple of others. Sue Wilbur, the university's director of undergraduate admissions, rejected three of them as insufficiently rigorous.

Calvary officials sat down with Ms. Wilbur and her colleagues to contest the decision--joined by representatives of the Association for Christian Schools International--but the university wouldn't budge. So Calvary took a bold step. Together with the association, it filed a discrimination suit in district court. The university is filing a motion to dismiss the case today. Whatever the outcome, the complaint makes for fascinating reading.

A proposed English class, "Christian Morality in American Literature," included readings from Mark Twain, Stephen Crane and Nathaniel Hawthorne, but it was judged unworthy because, according to the university, it "does not offer a non-biased approach to the subject matter." So what does a nonbiased class look like? The university has deemed acceptable such public-school courses as "Feminine Perspectives in Literature" and "Ethnic Experiences in Literature."

A history course, "Christianity's Influence on America," was rejected by the university because its focus was "too narrow" and because it was "not consistent with the empirical historical knowledge generally accepted in the collegiate community." But even people who don't like Christianity's effect on U.S. history don't find that it has been "narrow." And the curriculum of the course seems broad enough--covering the role of Christianity in the Founding, abolition, the civil-rights movement and the fall of communism. The course seems downright all-encompassing when compared with approved classes at other schools, like "Modern Irish History" and "Armenian History."

It's in no small part because Academia disapproves of the moral bias that Americans distrust intellectuals.

Posted by Orrin Judd at October 28, 2005 9:57 PM