CORRECTION: An earlier version of this article stated that the writer's POLI 100 professor cancelled his class following the election. The professor held a partial class and then cancelled the remainder of the lecture. He also did not actually scream into a pillow. The Daily Tar Heel apologizes for this error.
Daily, political science professors subtly indicate their views through jokes, sly comments and stabs at controversial politicians. It's rare, however, that they explicitly express their partisan bias. In political science, this incomplete conversation, aimed to preserve professors' commitments to scientifically impossible political objectivity, shelters them from fully defending their views. Students should trust their professors' opinions because of their argument's validity, not their degrees.
True open-mindedness means overcoming bias, right? Well, according to science, not all biases can be conquered, as they're biologically ingrained, linked with our anterior temporal lobes. On UNC’s Diversity and Inclusion website, psychology Professor Keith Payne explains, “Because the mind thinks in terms of established categories, it is virtually impossible to be completely open-minded.” Bias is scientifically proven, and science is objective. Politics, contrastingly, is not. Political science is a messy marriage of the two. Still, political science professors claim to objectively teach the subjective.
Political science is an inherently biased field. A 2016 study by the Econ Journal Watch found in UNC’s departments that teach political and social issues, there is only one registered Republican professor for every 23 registered Democrat professors. The subjective bias framing political science education is irrefutable — why don’t we acknowledge it?
“Because it’s political science! And science is completely unbiased!” They say. Exactly—which is why this subjective field, as is, doesn’t quite qualify.
Political science, unlike other sciences, is conditioned by variables like personal identity, basic worldly assumptions and bias. It's uniquely incumbent on these professors to admit their political bias to separate it from political science.
This does not currently happen. Following Trump’s election in 2016, my UNC political science professor partially cancelled his class, “Introduction to Government in the United States.” Last time I checked, an outcome is still an outcome even if the scientist doesn’t like it, and it serves as opportune teaching material. This was either bias or a commendable depiction of Newton’s first law of motion: an object in motion stays in motion—unless met with an opposing force (then it goes home to scream into a pillow). Moreover, it’s shameful that an “Introduction to U.S. Government” professor refused to work when his oppositional party enjoyed political victory, or maybe I just missed the genius behind his lesson on a government shutdown.
Since bias is inevitable, professors ought to explain it and own it. Political science classes should be classified according to the political bias they represent, partisan arguments must be labeled and professors need to justify their eye rolls with complete arguments.
Yes, the political science curriculum needs greater ideological diversity among professors. But it’s not liberalism itself that is the problem. It's liberalism posing as objective reality. When bias is marketed to the people as objective science, it's misleading at best and insurmountably dangerous at worst. It fuels unchallenged and impassioned groupthink based on mistruths and replaces the logical validity of science with the illogical falsehoods professed by the “enlightened ones.”
