In an interview with conservative talk radio host Dana Loesch yesterday, Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson repeated his plan to have the federal government monitor college campuses for “extreme bias,” explaining that he would have “very strict guidelines” that would ensure that his plan wouldn’t hurt conservatives.
“What I would do is I would solicit examples of extreme bias and I would use those as the basis for helping to determine which places need to have their federal funding cut,” he said.
As an the example, Carson cited the story of a Florida college professor who supposedly told students to “stomp on” a piece of paper with the word “Jesus” written on it — a story unsurprisingly manufactured by Fox News’ Todd Starnes. In reality, the professor, a “very religious” Sunday school teacher, was using a lesson on the importance of symbols included in a textbook written by an instructor at a Christian college and reported a student who physically threatened him after the exercise.
Loesch agreed with Carson’s accusations of liberal bias on college campuses, but said, “There are some who would say that it’s kind of like monitoring political speech. Do you agree with their assessment of that?”
“No, I don’t, I think it’s a very big difference,” Carson responded. “But, of course, that would be the first thing that the left would claim because they want to be able to continue to do this. And it’s not appropriate for public funding to be used to indoctrinate students in one direction.”
Loesch pressed on: “I just worry whether or not the pendulum would swing the other way and we would see sort of like monitoring of political speech for conservatives.”
“I think we would have to put in very strict guidelines for the way that that was done,” Carson explained. “And that’s why I used the word ‘extreme.’ I didn’t just say ‘political bias,’ I said ‘extreme political biases.’”
