Huntington News

Issue date: 9/13/07 Section: News

Media Credit: News Staff Illustration/Brendan Totten

Correction: An earlier version of this article called former governer Michael Dukakis a two-term governor. Dukakis served three terms, though not consecutively.

Amanda Eggers, a junior psychology and elementary education major, was looking for some advice. She got some, but not the kind she was hoping for.

It happened the first semester of her freshman year, just before the 2004 presidential election. Eggers, then a political science major, had spent the first weeks of the fall campaigning for the Republican Party.

After a day of door-to-door canvassing in New Hampshire, Eggers said she went to her advisor's office for help planning her next semester's course load.

She entered his office, she said, sporting several campaign buttons, including one that read "Bush/Cheney 2004" and another from the College Republicans.

Eggers said she had done little more than introduce herself when her advisor, who was seated with another student, handed her several packets of what Eggers called "liberal literature."

"He saw my pins and said, 'Why don't you educate yourself while you wait,'" Eggers said.

She took the packets and waited.

Shortly after, the advisor, a political science professor whom Eggers did not name on the record, called Eggers into his office, where she said he "lectured me on his political views" and urged her to reconsider her work with the Republican Party.

"I was completely taken aback," Eggers said. "[What he said] attacked my character and really questioned my morals and maturity all in a roundabout way- for choosing one political party over another."

Cases like Eggers' call into question the extent to which college professors are free to be candid with their students about their political leanings, in and out of the classroom.

In recent years, the issue has gained momentum on a national scale. Independent academic organizations have begun to address students who say they have felt marginalized in class for disagreeing with a professor, and several universities have adopted measures designed to ensure safer and more equitable dialogue on campus.

James Stellar, dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, said the problem is minimal at Northeastern.

"This has not been a huge preoccupation of mine since I've been dean here," he said. "I find the students and faculty to be of pretty good will here. They want to deliver what they've promised to deliver. If someone only had a political ax to grind, we wouldn't approve of it."

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