Editor’s Note: This article was originally published by the College Fix on December 13, 2024. With edits to match Minding the Campus’s style guidelines, it is crossposted here with permission.
A University of Illinois student reported his accounting professor to the school’s bias team after she made a “passive-aggressive” comment concerning student course evaluations.
The College Fix discovered the complaint after recently obtaining bias response team reports from the university via a public records request.
Professor Li Zhang told one of her classes at the end of last semester that course evaluations can be biased against racial minorities and women. She reportedly said this in an email asking students to evaluate her course. The professor appears to have copied over sample language from a study she cited.
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“Student evaluations of teaching play an important role in the performance review of faculty,” Professor Zheng wrote, according to the bias report. The cited study used similar language—Zhang simply added “performance” to her wording. “Student evaluations of teaching play an important role in the review of faculty,” the sample language stated.
The study specifically says a “simple intervention” can boost scores for female instructors.
“Your opinions influence the performance review and promotion of instructors that takes place every year,” she wrote. In comparison, the study’s phrasing was “Your opinions influence the review of instructors that takes place every year.”
“These evaluations concern our instructional team (myself, Prof. Chen, and Prof. Chatterton)’s performance in not only live sessions, but also office hours and Q&A on the discussion board,” Zhang wrote.
“It’s been well-documented that student evaluations of teaching are often influenced by students’ unconscious and unintentional biases about the gender and race of the instructor,” she wrote. “Prior research suggests that women and instructors of color are systematically rated lower in their teaching evaluations than white men, even when there are no actual differences in the quality of instruction.”
“As you fill out the course evaluation, please keep this in mind and make an effort to focus on your opinions about the content of the course and not unrelated matters (such as gender and race),” she wrote, again plagiarizing language from the study.
“As you fill out the course evaluation please keep this in mind and make an effort to resist stereotypes about professors,” the study’s sample language stated. “Focus on your opinions about the content of the course (the assignments, the textbook, the in-class material) and not unrelated matters (the instructor’s appearance).”
The student criticized the “passive-aggressive” nature of the email.
He wrote:
[T]his announcement can be interpreted in two ways:
1) It implies that I am a bigot, incapable of providing honest feedback without my opinions being negatively influenced by the professor’s race or sex. It suggests that any negative feelings I have towards the professor or the course are more influenced by personal, subjective feelings regarding race and sex than by any objective facts.
2) It suggests that I should provide high evaluation scores, regardless of my actual feelings, in order to atone for past actions taken by others.
Both interpretations are unacceptable and represent a passive-aggressive method to artificially inflate course evaluation scores. This approach is highly unprofessional and creates an “othering” effect, implying that white males are incapable of making objective decisions that are not influenced by race or sex.
The Fix reached out to Professor Zhang and two other professors in the accounting department mentioned in the announcement, over phone, and email, asking what the intentions of the announcement were. None responded in the past three weeks. Zhang also did not respond to an email and voicemail on Dec. 11 specifically asking about the apparent plagiarism and if there were any repercussions after she was reported.
The head of the accounting department did not respond to a Dec. 3 email and Dec. 4 voicemail asking for comment.
The media team initially told the Fix on November 26 it would provide comment. However, it has yet to do so.
Experts: Comments ‘unprofessional’ but protected speech
Several higher education experts said Zhang’s comments are protected speech but appear “unprofessional.”
The announcement “appears to be an attempt to influence students’ reviews and to preemptively dismiss any bad evaluations as ‘racist’ or ‘sexist,’” according to Chance Layton, spokesman for the National Association of Scholars.
“Dr. Zhang is free to share her opinion that bad reviews must be due to racism or sexism rather than mediocre teaching,” he told the Fix via email. “The students are free to share in their evaluations the extent of that mediocrity. The email, while unprofessional, falls within bounds.”
A research fellow for the American Council of Trustees and Alumni provided similar comments via a media statement.
Justin Garrison said he “can’t speculate on the professor’s goal in this situation, but the timing of the announcement appears to have struck at least one student as inappropriate.”
Garrison says, “this doesn’t appear to be a violation of student free speech rights.”
“The timing of the announcement and the corresponding complaint suggests that there may have been a better time and place to raise this issue,” Garrison said. The problem “might be closer to a question of professionalism rather than speech rights.”
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The Fix asked Garrison about Li Zhang’s statement in the announcement “that student evaluations of teaching are often influenced by students’ unconscious and unintentional biases about the gender and race of the instructor,” and that women and professors of color are rated lower than white male professors “even when there are no actual differences in the quality of instruction.”
Garrison says that, in general, “student evaluations are fraught with problems.”
Professors use different tactics to manipulate their student’s course evaluations, such as “bringing in food treats” or “offering extra credit,” according to Garrison. The research fellow said “some research suggests this works.”
While “some research does indicate women and minority instructors receive lower course evaluations. What is not clear is why this is the case” Garrison said.
“When it comes to teaching evaluations of minority instructors, the relatively small number of such instructors makes it more difficult to draw firm conclusions from the data.”
Image of Professor Li Zhang on the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Gies College of Business website