“Bias” Reporting as Social-Credit Scheme. Repurposed technologies are allowing UNC-System schools to maintain troubling records.

James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal ^ | September 18, 2023 | Magdalene Horzempa

[karpov]

Digital-reporting systems on college campuses are not a new concept. Yet they are currently being manipulated, even exploited, to fuel a campus culture in which peers and even faculty patrol each other for “biased” speech and activities.

In recent years, colleges and universities across the United States have proven that maintaining free speech, academic freedom, and the pursuit of truth is low on their list of priorities. Instead, allegedly “inclusive” and “diverse” university environments regularly fall prey to a single political narrative, often accompanied by the silencing of those who do not agree. As colleges and universities have pursued this goal, an alarming repurposing of technology has emerged: so-called bias-reporting systems such as those designed by tech-firm Maxient. The practice of digitally reporting and cataloging “bias incidents” raises not only legal questions but also questions concerning the individual due-process rights of students. Yet, despite these concerns, Maxient-designed systems have already made themselves at home on college campuses, among them North Carolina State University and the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill.

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The biggest problem with bias reporting is that it can be an assault on free speech. In the past, students and faculty with dissenting opinions worried about being ostracized by their peers, making lower grades in certain classes, or suffering from the lack of viewpoint-diversity on campus. Now, students and faculty who think against the grain must worry about being reported to administrators who, in turn, provide echo-chamber punishments and arbitrary consequences to ideological nonconformists.

The system also operates on the logic that every student reported is guilty until proven innocent. Embedded in all bias-reporting forms is the assumption that the reporting party is being honest and is not falsifying or dramatizing the account in question. Because reports are frequently anonymous, there is little accountability for the reporting party.

[moovova]

Marxient?