By Plain Dealer guest columnist
Cleveland.com
Political discussions in the college classroom are nothing new. There are, however, ethical lines that ought not to be crossed when it comes to professors wielding influence to push their personal politics on captive students or subordinate colleagues.
Recently a memorandum was sent by Professor Brian McHale to all instructors in the English Department at Ohio State University. The memorandum states that McHale, a distinguished professor of humanities, had "been in touch with a couple of organizers for the Obama campaign, who have asked me to pass along to all of you a request for access to your classes" in order to "make a pitch to your students about registering to vote." It continues, "If you were willing, the volunteers could also take a couple of extra minutes to see whether they could interest any of your students in volunteering for the Obama campaign themselves."
This is a blatant violation of Ohio State University rules, which require the university's teachers to "differentiate carefully between official activities as teachers and personal activities as citizens, and to act accordingly."
The University's Guidelines Regarding Political Activity by Employees of the University state: "As an employee of the university, it is inappropriate to either participate in political activities or solicit participation of others in political activities, either during normal business hours or at any time when using university assets."
Professor McHale's memo would intimidate untenured instructors, whose careers Professor McHale is in a position to influence. The action the memorandum requests would also make a captive audience of students for a political message and make them fear that they must volunteer for the Obama campaign or risk reprisals in their grades.
It seems most unlikely that Professor McHale is the only person in the Ohio public university system who was approached by Obama campaign organizers. In 2008, there was a controversy when Obama operatives induced the University of Massachusetts at Amherst to offer students course credit for working for the Obama campaign. Apparently, the Obama campaign is trying once again to turn public universities into partisan political brigades.
After learning of the McHale memorandum, E. Gordon Gee, president of Ohio State University, spoke with OSU Provost Joseph Alutto, who sent a message to the university community reporting the incident (without naming Professor McHale) and forbidding partisan political activities -- including inviting political organizers into classrooms -- by OSU employees on campus.
Jim Petro, chancellor of the Ohio Board of Regents, must also address this incident.
State university personnel will be looking to see whether any sanctions are imposed on Professor McHale. If none are, the lesson will be that he broke the rules and got away with it.
At the least he should be required to apologize and should be removed from any role in determining the fates of subordinate instructors who would fear adverse consequences if they have not acted in accordance with Professor McHale's political views.
President Gee and Chancellor Petro cannot punish the Obama campaign, but they should at least protest its improper conduct and insist that it apologize for this incident, fire those responsible and promise not to do such things again. If the Obama campaign refuses to do this, Ohio voters should make the same demand themselves.
Ohio taxpayers support our public universities for the purpose of educating our young people. We should not tolerate efforts to turn them into tools of partisan politics.
George W. Dent Jr. is a professor at the Case Western Reserve University School of Law.
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