No Class

On the heels of their controversial immigration bill, Arizona has passed a new law that bans schools from having ethnic studies classes that promote resentment or advocate ethnic solidarity.

This is a horrible law. Have some courses been hijacked by partisan professors and turned into little more than excuses for them to teach radical politics, turning their backs on their educational mission? Yes. But this law isn't the solution. Any study of history or sociology or political science, if looked at close enough, can seem to have a political bent. Even if you scrupulously try to avoid partisanship, there'll be some people who aren't happy. The last thing we need is government snooping inside classrooms to determine what is politically correct. We get enough of that from the professors.

I realize some people, like Elena Kagan, believe direct government action can help level the playing field and create fairer public discourse when there's an overabundance of certain ideas crowding out others, but the proper way is to call out the people responsible for the lack of balance and challenge their ideas. Could a strategy of free and open discourse work? Only if colleges unlearn their opposition to free and open discourse. But until then, it's still better than government deciding what people should say.