Unexplained course-content probe leaves uneasy feeling 






 By Gerry Doyle and Brandon Copple 

gdoyle@kansan.com 

bcopple@kansan.com 

Kansan staff writers 

Someone in the Kansas Legislature has requested a list of university 
courses with content directly related to homosexuality or bisexuality. 

The University must by law comply. But it does not have to like it. The 
source and the purpose of the request remain unknown, and the mystery 
may be feeding the fires of discontent. 

³Censorship does not work,² said Robert Anderson, professor of French, 
Italian and Western Civilization. ³The University is here to teach 
people to think. It“s like `Brave New World.“² 

The request was routed through the Board of Regents, which received it 
from the legislative research department in Topeka. It asks Regents 
institutions to compile the list. 

The University provost“s office conducted a search of course 
descriptions using the words homosexuality and bisexuality. The search 
found two courses: JOUR 605, Media Ethics, and HPMD 911, a medical 
ethics class at the University of Kansas Medical Center. 

John Ginn, Knight Distinguished Professor of Journalism, teaches the 
media-ethics class. 

³I have seen things like this come up in the past,² he said. ³It can be 
premature to get excited about it, but if someone starts campaigning 
about what we should and should not teach, it“s a clear violation of 
academic freedom.² 

Ginn“s class uses case studies that involve a moral dilemma. One case 
study involved the publication of a homosexual marriage announcement. In 
the course catalog, the word homosexuality is used to illustrate the 
kind of ethical dilemmas the course will address, Ginn said. 

Although the search found only two classes with course descriptions that 
mentioned homosexuality or bisexuality, other University courses deal 
with these issues. 

Dennis Daley, professor of social welfare, teaches graduate and 
undergraduate courses in human sexuality. Daley said his classes dealt 
frankly and explicitly with sexual issues, including those related to 
homosexuality and bisexuality. 

³I have two basic reactions,² he said. ³Sadness, as I keep thinking of 
people in this society who are gay and lesbian and are excluded on a 
regular basis. The second is that I“m not surprised. We live in a world 
that is remarkably intolerant, and this is another example of 
intolerance.² 

It may be premature to assume that intolerant or bigotry are behind the 
legislative request, said Laurence Draper, professor of microbiology and 
president of Faculty Senate. 

³There“s too much speculation out there,² he said. ³We don“t know who 
this is from or what it“s for. It gets people upset, but they don“t know 
why they“re upset.² 

Draper said that course content was determined almost exclusively by the 
faculty teaching the course and that neither the administration nor the 
legislature could dictate content to faculty. 

Reaction to the request has been strong statewide. News of the request 
appeared Friday on the Rainbow List, an electronic bulletin board geared 
toward homosexual issues. 

A web page has been created to provide information and discussion about 
the request. The site“s location is www.turnleft.com/witchhunt/ 







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