An open letter to the House Judiciary Committee in support of HB23-1019. Are academics neutral sources? Speak up for lower property taxes.
An open letter to the House Judiciary Committee in support of HB23-1019.An open letter to the House Judiciary Committee in support of HB23-1019.
There is a need for transparency in the Judiciary in this state. There is a need for accountability.
I posted about the bill linked below previously. It is (finally) up for committee in the near future--it will be in the House Judiciary Committee on March 15th, a week from today.
Wed afternoons are tough, so I'll be unable to testify remotely at the hearing. I do want to speak up about it, however, so I wrote the email below and sent it just this morning. If any part of the email is helpful to you, please feel free to use any or all.
An open letter to the sponsors of HB23-1019, Judicial Discipline Procedures And Reporting, and the members of the House Judiciary Committee,
My name is Cory Gaines. I am a resident of Logan County. I am writing today in support of HB23-1019. I had hoped to testify in person, but this hearing conflicts with my schedule.
If any recipient of this letter would like to read any part of this letter into the record of the committee, you have my permission.
We are in desperate need of transparency and accountability for the judiciary in Colorado. This has been the case for a long time now. Recent events have thrown this into sharp relief.
I do want our courts to be independent. I do want them to be apolitical. In order for them to be credible as an institution, in order for the public to have trust in them, they must also be transparent and accountable to the people that allow them to be in power.
So far them have shown themselves to be unable (unwilling?) to hold themselves to this standard.
I understand and am a fan of the separation of powers, so I have a sense of the limitations of what the legislative body can do with regard to the judiciary. While I wish there were more we could do in this state to provide oversight of the judiciary, I think this bill is a step in the right direction and I support it.
I urge you to vote yes and continue the important work of shining some sunshine into our state's judicial branch.
Thank you for your time.
C
https://leg.colorado.gov/bills/hb23-1019
When you see a professor quoted as an expert in an article, do you stop to consider their perspective? Do you suppose they might have an ideological bent?
I was recently listening to a podcast (linked first below if you're curious) and a question occurred to me. When you hear professors quoted as a source in podcasts or articles, how much could you depend on them not having a bias?
I did some reading on the topic and thought I'd share. There were several news articles I found but finding an actual study was a little harder. I linked one that I thought both pretty recent and reliable below.
**A quick note in the interest of fairness. This is acknowledged in the method section of the study below, so I don't feel bad about mentioning this: a common way to assess ideological bias in studies like these is to measure the party registration of professors. This does have the fault that you'll miss a great number of professors (some aren't registered voters, some CAN'T be registered voters and etc.). The thing I like about this study is that they triangulate their findings with federal election contribution activities.
So what do you find? As should likely not be a surprise, the results vary. Before looking at the numbers, however, let's take a second and talk about why this matters.
Pretend that 95% of professors in a given discipline were ideologically liberal, the remaining 5% would be conservative. Such a situation is in screenshot 1 attached. The black marbles are conservative professors and the whites are liberals. Even if the reporter picked a professor at random for their story (which doesn't happen), what are the chances you'd have a liberal reporter giving their opinion vs. a conservative? Exactly.
Screenshots 2 through 4 give a breakdown of professor ideology/partisan registration by discipline, region, and gender. I circled the biggest ones in blue. Clearly a female sociology professor from a college back east is going to likely be liberal.
What does this mean in terms of trustworthiness? That's a tougher question to answer.
Don't get me wrong. I'm not going to tell you that a liberal professor vs. conservative would be more or less likely to lie. I've not seen studies, but I imagine the rate of lying and twisting facts is likely the same across disciplines--it's more a human thing than a liberal/conservative one.
You cannot separate ideology from what people pay attention to, however. As I have written about before, we are creatures who love to see what we agree with, hate to see what we don't, and have finite attention to spread around. Even a well-intentioned professor cannot help but have a limited perspective that informs their scholarship.
When you hear a professor of history talk about the history of guns in the old west, when you hear a sociology professor talk about major movements in society in an article, be aware that you are almost certainly hearing something that has a lean to it. Even if that professor is citing journal articles or other sources you can check, it is still valid to ask the questions: what is he or she not telling me, what has he or she ignored or downplayed?
One last thing to take note of, take note of the party registration/contribution split in the "hard sciences" and math in screenshot 2. Yes, there still can be bias in chemistry and math. It's harder to do since those fields have rigorous rules and standards, it is less likely by the numbers that you'd have one who felt strongly enough about either party to register and/or contribute, but it is still possible.
The ultimate takeaway here, the thing I'd want you to know regardless of whether or not you heard any of the rest is twofold:
--Do not assume that professors have no stake in what they say or that they are neutral, unbiased sources of information
--It is incumbent upon you, the media consumer, ultimately to make sure that what you consume is balanced. Spread out your consumption.
https://www.cpr.org/podcast-episode/how-colorados-gun-laws-have-changed-from-frontier-days-to-today/
https://www.nas.org/blogs/article/partisan-registration-and-contributions-of-faculty-in-flagship-colleges
Speak up for lower property taxes.
Concerned about a big hike in your property taxes? There is something you can do. Testify in support of the bill linked below.
It's up for committee tomorrow (Thursday 3/9) and you have a chance to support it.
I've written about it before, but the short version is this: if this bill passes, it puts a pause on your property valuation and gives lawmakers a chance to think through how to best solve the coming tax problem.
I hope you join me in supporting it.
**Note: The committee is meeting "Upon Adjournment" which means they'll convene after the House does its initial business for the day. That's usually around 10 AM, but you can't ever be sure. If you want to watch for when the House adjourns, check this link:
https://www.coloradochannel.net/