Liberal bias has been running rampant on college campuses for years, but one state is trying to give students the chance to fight back. Florida lawmakers are considering a bill to allow students to record their professors in class to expose possible bias. The bill would allow in-class recordings to be used in civil or criminal complaints, or for use by schools to determine if there is bias in the classroom. But it would not allow the recordings to be made public without the professor's consent.
Frederick Hess, Director of Education Policy at the American Enterprise Institute, understands why this type of legislation is happening. "We have way too many classrooms where students feel uncomfortable speaking their minds, where they feel that only certain perspectives are allowed," he tells KTRH. "When a law like this is considered, it says that there is a real problem in colleges, and nobody has any idea how to address it."
While Hess sympathizes with the plight of conservative students, he worries this bill could lead to more potential problems. "A snippet or brief clip of a recording can sound like bias, even if it's not," he says. "So it's a real concern if professors are going to constantly be nervous, thinking is this going to be misperceived."
A better solution to the problem of college bias and campus cancel culture is for school leadership to change that culture, according to Hess. "We need college leaders who stand fearlessly on behalf of free speech, of free inquiry, and who insist that no view will be canceled on their campus," he says. "If you do these things on the front end, you can stop it from ever getting to a point where people start talking about turning on recorders in classrooms."