Candace’s post below on the small number of formal grievances for political discrination filed in Pennsylvania is on the mark. That relatively few numbers of overt actions take place in the classroom is a good thing, of course, but it’s not a reliable measure of bias on campus. Bias in education can appear in many forms, and direct acts is just one of them. Another form occurs when a particular bias has become so widespread and longstanding that it seeps into the discourse, values, and norms of the system. At that point, its overt expression is redundant.If a student enrolls in a class on “protest poetry,” for instance, and all the readings come from Left-wing positions, the student isn’t going to file a complaint. That’s just the nature of the course, and the student hasn’t been singled out for any reason. If the student does try to complain, he will look like he’s interfering with the academic freedom of the professor, who can point to the readings as legitimate subjects and deny any discrimination against the student individually. The only way the complaint will make any sense is to put it in the context of the entire curriculum of the department–an impossible task for the student. I actually believe that most professors do try to be fair and open-minded with students. But if they’re working in a system that does favor only a portion of ideological spectrum, if the books chosen, the traditions studied, and the theories assumed tend to fall into liberal and progressivist outlooks, they can’t help but be partial and partisan in their teaching. Unfortunately, this is a case no student can make.