I read an interesting discussion of professorial advocacy. It is clear that the article is written from a liberal standpoint because it says that conservatives don’t like it when liberals use the classroom to discuss religious and moral questions but are okay with advocacy when they are promoting humanitarian values.
First, for the educator to take a neutral stance on such issues would tend to give students the relativistic message that no answers are better or closer to the truth than any others regarding moral, political, and religious questions.
Basically this article argues that is good for my students to know where and why I stand where I do on controversial issues that are touched on in class. It’s an interesting idea.