But None Dare Call It Bias

National Assoc. of Scholars Prez Peter Wood had a blog post at the Chronicle of Higher Ed yesterday in which he posts that Ohio State prof Brian McHale

invited his colleagues to open their classrooms in the weeks ahead to organizers in the Obama campaign. They would first encourage students to register to vote and then, if the instructors were willing, encourage students to volunteer for the Obama campaign.

McHale was gracious enough to add that using class time for the pitch for volunteers was strictly optional. (And hey, kids, there wouldn’t be any pressure to volunteer for these nice folks that your senior prof has brought in for a few minutes of the class time for which you spent money. Nope, no pressure at all to go along with the partisan advocates to whom the guy who grades you has given a soapbox. And junior faculty wouldn’t feel any reason at all to go along with a distinguished senior professor who might be voting on your tenure bid one day.)

Of course as Wood notes, four years ago, Team Obama tried to get professors to award academic credit to students who volunteered for Obama’s campaign. Perhaps this is simply the next logical step. Of course, given that these are public employees using public resources (classrooms and class time) for political organizing, there might be legalities involved in some places, but hey! It’s for the President, the embodiment of all that is good!

Judging from his faculty bio, Dr. McHale has had a distinguished career, with significant scholarly work. It’s a pity he decided to add “Party Hack” to his curriculum vitae. As a professor, I’m disgusted. Were I an Ohio taxpayer, I’d be outraged.

H/T: Stanley Kurtz at The Corner.