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https://captimes.com/news/local/govt-and-politics/uw-student-alleging-bias-in-political-science-profs-syllabus-now-expects-class-to-be-objective/article_d9b28a33-a596-5617-a130-c470eb34a090.html
UW student alleging bias in political science prof's syllabus now expects class to be objective
By Steven Elbow
Jan 25, 2019
A University of Wisconsin-Madison student whose Facebook post alleging liberal bias by a political science professor went viral this week said that after attending two lectures, she doesn’t think the class will be slanted.
“I’m not concerned with the course itself being biased,” McKenna Collins told the Daily Cardinal on Thursday. "(Professor Ken Mayer) reassured me that my viewpoints, regardless of what they are, will be welcomed in the class.”
Collins' Facebook post Monday unleashed a national backlash against Mayer and landed her a spot on Fox News on Wednesday to air her complaint.
Collins posted the first page of the syllabus for "The American Presidency," a class taught by Mayer, a well-respected instructor. In the syllabus, Mayer states that the presidency of Donald Trump offers a good opportunity to study the office “with a president who gleefully flouts the norm of governing and presidential behavior that have structured the office since George Washington.”
He adds: “To his supporters, this is not a bug, but a feature, and they rejoice in his contempt for what they insist is a corrupt D.C. establishment. If elites are against it, Trump’s supporters are for it.”
He devotes more words to Trump’s critics and the controversies clouding the presidency.
“To others, he is a spectacularly unqualified and catastrophically unfit egomaniac who poses an overt threat to the Republic,” Mayor writes, going on to describe Russian operatives working to help Trump’s campaign, several Trump campaign officials pleading guilty to “lying to the FBI or to other crimes,” Trump allegedly directing his attorney, Michael Cohen, to buy silence from women who said they had affairs with Trump, and Cohen’s lies over efforts during the campaign to build a Trump Tower in Moscow.
“Other shoes are almost certain to drop, and evidence continues to emerge of ongoing contacts and engagement between Trump Campaign officials and Russian intelligence assets and government officials,” he writes.
He says he plans to teach the class, in part, in real time, leaving space in the schedule in case the report on Russian campaign interference from special counsel Robert Mueller is released during the semester.
In her Facebook post, Collins, a conservative student and former Miss Wisconsin, complained: “He didn’t even try to offer an opposing argument in favor of the President or explain why the President’s supporters actually support him.”
On Wednesday, Collins appeared on Fox News’ Tucker Carlson Tonight, telling a national audience that she felt she would suffer repercussions for taking Mayer to task for what she perceived as his liberal bias.
“I’m sure that I would be penalized for that,” she said.
She also contended that a liberal bias permeates the university, forcing her and other students to compromise their views to achieve good grades.
“Students have messaged me and said that they have had to change their opinions just to get an A in a class,” she said, “so I’m certainly not the first person that this has happened to.”
The post also prompted a letter to Mayer Wednesday from state Rep. Dave Murphy, R-Greenville, chairman of the Assembly Committee on Colleges and Universities, in which Murphy said he was “appalled by your politically polarized characterization of the Trump presidency.”
“Placing hyper-partisan value judgments on contemporary actions of the president, as an introduction to a course in a syllabus, has a chilling effect on any future class discourse,” he wrote.
He called the course description a “slap in the face to the sort of academic rigor that should be a central focus at an institution such as UW-Madison.”
Murphy has previously taken the university to task for what he and other Republicans say is a liberal bias, blasting a course entitled “The Problem of Whiteness” and vowing to hunt for other course offerings that might be inappropriate, and pushing legislation to punish students who disrupt campus speakers, a response to disruptive protests of controversial conservative speakers.
Mayer didn’t respond to messages seeking comment.
On Friday, contact information for Mayer was removed from his profile on the political science department's website and he was removed from the UW Experts Database, which is often used by reporters seeking comment on specific subjects.