The Academic Bill of Rights Debate: A Handbook

THE ACADEMIC BILL OF RIGHTS DEBATE A Handbook Edited by Stephen H. Aby

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data The academic bill of rights debate : a handbook / edited by Stephen H. Aby. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978–0–275–99244–6 (alk. paper) 1. Academic freedom—United States—Handbooks, manuals, etc. 2. Teaching, Freedom of—United States—Handbooks, manuals, etc. I. Aby, Stephen H., 1949– LC72.2.A286 2007 2007022764 378.10 2130973—dc22 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data is available. c 2007 by Stephen H. Aby Copyright  All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, by any process or technique, without the express written consent of the publisher. Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 2007022764 ISBN-13: 978–0–275–99244–6 First published in 2007 Praeger Publishers, 88 Post Road West, Westport, CT 06881 An imprint of Greenwood Publishing Group, Inc. www.praeger.com Printed in the United States of America The paper used in this book complies with the Permanent Paper Standard issued by the National Information Standards Organization (Z39.48–1984). 10 9

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CONTENTS

Acknowledgments

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ACADEMIC FREEDOM IN PERILOUS TIMES Stephen H. Aby

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ACADEMIC FREEDOM AND THE ACADEMIC BILL OF RIGHTS The More Things Change? Academic Freedom Then and Now Lawrence Poston What’s to Fear: The American Right, Anti-Intellectualism, and the ABOR Kevin Mattson

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Academic Freedom, Fragile as Ever Michael B´e rub´e

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THE AAUP–DAVID HOROWITZ EXCHANGE

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Academic Bill of Rights American Association of University Professors

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The Professors’ Orwellian Case David Horowitz

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THE GRAHAM LARKIN–DAVID HOROWITZ DEBATE

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An Introduction to the Debate Marcus Harvey

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What’s Not to Like about the Academic Bill of Rights Graham Larkin

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AAUP Dishonesty David Horowitz

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Larkin Responds to Horowitz Graham Larkin

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My Reply to Graham Larkin and the AAUP David Horowitz

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Academic vs. Horowitzian Truth Standards Graham Larkin

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Relatively Unbalanced: Reply to Larkin II David Horowitz

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ARE FACULTY TOO LIBERAL? ARE UNIVERSITIES TOO CORPORATE? Faculty Liberalism and University Corporatism Rudy Fenwick and John Zipp

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Higher Education in the Time of the Corporate University: Repeating the Call for Faculty Activism David D. Witt

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STATE LEGISLATION AND REACTION

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Is the Pope Catholic? The Strange Case of the ABOR Debate in Ohio Rodger Govea

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In Search of a Problem: The Student Academic Freedom Hearings in Pennsylvania Mark Smith

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A Case Study: The Colorado Experience Dana R. Waller APPENDICES

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Academic Bill of Rights

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AAUP 1940 Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure with 1970 Interpretive Comments

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Why an Academic Bill of Rights Is Necessary to Ensure That Students Get a Quality Education David Horowitz

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Contents

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Testimony by Professor Joan Wallach Scott before the Pennsylvania General Assembly’s House Select Committee on Student Academic Freedom

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Ohio Senate Bill 24

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American Council on Education: Statement on Academic Rights and Responsibilities

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Annotated Selected Bibliography

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Index

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About the Editor, Contributors, and Reproduced Authors

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

An edited collection such as this requires the assistance of numerous individuals, over and above the contributions of the authors. I extend my thanks to Elizabeth Potenza of Praeger Publishers, Suzanne Bergmiller of Greenwood Publishing Group, and Susan Slesinger of Praeger and Greenwood Publishing Group for their prompt and valuable assistance in bringing the project along and preparing it for final production. Greenwood Publishing Group graciously gave permission to reprint selective annotations included in the annotated bibliography from Academic Freedom: A Guide to the Literature (Compiled by Stephen H. Aby and James C. Kuhn IV; Copyright  c 2000 Stephen H. Aby and James C. Kuhn IV). Wendi Maloney and Gwendoyn Bradley (AAUP), Sara Dogan (Students for Academic Freedom), Elizabeth Ruiz (Center for the Study of Popular Culture), Heather Hillard (Pennsylvania House of Representatives Archives), and Sara Haywood (American Council on Education) were very helpful in obtaining permissions to reprint various documents. I also thank Graham Larkin and David Horowitz for granting me permission to publish most of their exchange. Although space limitations prevented publishing all of it, the full exchange, with various embedded links to other sources, can be found at the Web site for the California Conference AAUP at http://www.aaup-ca.org. State legislative documents and testimony were reproduced as part of the public domain, although I thank Aleah McDonald of Ohio State Senator Joy Padgett’s office for providing the David Horowitz testimony. Renee Wilson provided invaluable assistance in formatting parts of the manuscript. Finally, I thank Martha McNamara, Jim Kuhn, and Julie Schmid for providing feedback on the introduction, whose remaining defects are my responsibility alone.

CHAPTER

ACADEMIC FREEDOM

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PERILOUS TIMES

Stephen H. Aby

In 2003, David Horowitz, former student leftist and current activist for the conservative right, launched Students for Academic Freedom, an organization devoted to exposing alleged liberal bias in academia and promoting the academic freedom rights of students. Horowitz wrote and distributed an Academic Bill of Rights (ABOR), as well as a Student Bill of Rights, which he hoped would be championed by students, university administrations, and politicians. The stated goals of the movement were to force colleges and universities to provide balance in the viewpoints expressed in classrooms; to diversify the faculty, who Horowitz believed to be predominantly liberal; and to grant conservative-thinking students the academic freedom he said they were being denied. In just three short years, the debate over the ABOR has become one of the most controversial issues in America’s colleges and universities. By November of 2006, it had already generated 74 articles in major newspapers, at least 143 articles in all newspapers nationwide, 54 television and radio broadcasts, 47 news wire articles, 20 articles in The Chronicle of Higher Education, 73 articles in InsideHigherEd.com, dozens of articles in major magazines, and some 154,000 hits in the obligatory Google search.1 Few academic topics have created such a furor in so short a time. One would have to go back to the debates over political correctness on campuses or the publication of The Bell Curve to find a similar flurry of popular debate over a seemingly academic subject. Although the ABOR is a recent and controversial attack on traditional notions of academic freedom rights and protections, it is not new. Indeed, proponents of the traditional values and institutions of academic freedom have seen the ABOR as merely the latest in a long series of threats to the independence and openness of the academy. At its core, the ABOR rests on a disarmingly simple contention that conservatives have been arguing for at least the last two decades—that is, higher education has been overtaken by ‘‘tenured radicals’’ who skew the knowledge that is taught in an attempt to indoctrinate students.

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The Academic Bill of Rights Debate

Literature from the early 1990s, such as Roger Kimball’s Tenured Radicals or Dinesh D’Souza’s Illberal Education (see the annotated bibliography), capture the tenor of this critique. An initial effort in the 1980s by the organization Accuracy in Academia attempted to capitalize on and further this view of higher education. It supported the idea of students spying on professors and gathering purported evidence of faculty bias, a practice recently revived, albeit briefly, by the Bruin Alumni Association at UCLA.2 As mechanisms to promote or enforce institutional change, however, these efforts did not accomplish much. Enter David Horowitz. His ABOR has become a template for legislation that has now been introduced in more than 20 states. The proposed legislation assumes that the charges of faculty bias and the indoctrination of students are correct, and its intent is to impose an ideological balance and political diversity in higher education, as policed by state legislatures or university administrations.

Threats to Academic Freedom: Historical Perspective The history of attacks on academia, and on academic freedom, is longer still. Lawrence Poston, in his article ‘‘The More Things Change? Academic Freedom Then and Now’’ (chapter 2), demonstrates that academic freedom has been at risk off and on since its inception in this country. The founding of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) in 1915, and the subsequent development of its standards on academic freedom, was the first effort to provide systematic protection for faculty. The history of academic freedom since then has by no means been an ever-upward trajectory of increasingly more freedom. The AAUP was founded on a wave of capricious faculty dismissals at the hands of intrusive boards of trustees, university administrators, politicians, and industrialists. In the early twentieth century, faculty members were atwill employees whose employment was jeopardized if they, in their professional capacity or private speech, offended the political or economic interests of any of the above groups. Faculty were fired, or their academic freedom was abridged, during World War I (for example, if one opposed the war or was of German heritage), during the Palmer raids and the Depression, during McCarthyism and the accompanying period of loyalty oaths, and during the Vietnam War and student movements.3 Currently, the national AAUP office receives approximately 1,000 faculty requests for assistance with violations of academic freedom each year. This most likely underrepresents the actual number of violations committed annually, because many are engaged by faculty at the campus or state level and more are never reported at all. The importance of Poston’s piece is its reiteration that academic freedom is and continues to be contested terrain, both legally and politically, and that it

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is a collective, social benefit and not just an individual right. His article reviews not only the political history, but also some of the key court decisions that have framed academic freedom thus far. The ABOR is the latest attack on academic freedom. The slipperiness of this particular attack is that it comes under the guise of promoting academic freedom, diversity, balance, and the contingent nature of knowledge.

Are Faculty Democratic or Liberal and Why Does It Matter? A stated goal of the ABOR is to ensure neutrality in the hiring, promoting, and tenuring of faculty, without any imposition of political, religious, or ideological orthodoxies. This may sound like a worthy goal until the motivation behind it is examined. ABOR supporters contend that higher education is dominated by liberal faculty who espouse a liberal bias in their teaching. One of the fundamental sources of data for this assertion is the political party registrations of faculty. Horowitz cites more than one study claiming that Democrats far outnumber Republicans among faculty in universities (see, for example, Klein and Western, ‘‘Voter Registration of Berkeley and Stanford Faculty,’’ in the annotated bibliography). This, he suggests, is evidence of bias in hiring and, related to this, a lack of diversity in the ideas presented in classes. In their article ‘‘Faculty Liberalism and University Corporatism’’ (chapter 5), Rudy Fenwick and John Zipp draw on national data sets to tackle the data and assumptions underlying the studies conservatives cite regarding Democratic overrepresentation among higher education faculty. Fenwick and Zipp carefully distinguish between party affiliation and personal values. On the former measure, they note that the conservative studies of faculty party registrations have, in many cases, cherry-picked departments and institutions that would tend to be more Democratic and therefore less representative of higher education as a whole. On the latter measure, faculty values, national data indicate that faculty members are decidedly less liberal and more mainstream than might be supported by the data on party registrations. Fenwick and Zipp point out that faculty are not a liberal monolith but rather vary widely in their values across disciplines and institution types (for example, research universities and community colleges), as well as by age and gender.4 Although Horowitz uses the overrepresentation of Democrats among faculty as prima facie evidence of bias in hiring, he has not as yet provided any credible evidence to prove that one’s party affiliation is a basis for hiring decisions. In one of the concluding chapters of The Professors: The 101 Most Dangerous Academics in America (2006), Horowitz cites the late Italian Marxist theorist Antonio Gramsci as providing a possible rationale for bias in hiring as part of a radical march through the institution of higher education. He quotes an unnamed faculty member saying that, in his or her experience, such

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The Academic Bill of Rights Debate

bias is routine in hiring.5 Pairing up this anecdotal assertion with the accompanying theoretical rationale, however, does not in any way prove that hiring bias exists.6 Nor does Horowitz provide any explanation as to why faculty would hire colleagues simply because they might vote along Democratic Party lines every couple of years, a political act completely unrelated to demonstrable excellence in the teaching, research, and service required to perform well in one’s discipline. Furthermore, we are left to wonder how party affiliation translates into classroom practice among disciplines. How, for example, do Democrats teach archaeology, or instructional design, or survey research methods, or any other discipline, in a way that is different from Republicans? The theories and methods that constitute a field of study do not lend themselves to a cavalier breakdown between Democrat or Republican, or even liberal versus conservative (see the Larkin–Horowitz exchange in chapter 4). Finally, there is the even more problematic implication that being Democrat equates to being a ‘‘leftwinger,’’ as Horowitz said in one of his exchanges with Larkin (see chapter 4).7 The 50 million Americans who voted Democratic in the last few elections may be surprised to learn that, according to some, this choice brands them as extremists. The facile equating of Democratic Party registration with being a left-winger is most graphically illustrated by a quote from Larry Mumper, sponsor of Ohio’s ABOR legislation. In a Columbus Dispatch article, he was quoted saying that ‘‘80 percent or so of them (professors) are Democrats, liberals or socialists or card-carrying Communists.’’8 This slippery and not-toosubtle equating of Democrats or liberals with socialists and Communists is the subtext of all of the critiques of faculty party registrations.

Balance and Diversity Horowitz’s argument about a biased professoriate is flawed not only because of the alleged correlation between party affiliation and teaching perspective, but also on a deeper, more dangerous level. For as the AAUP counters in its exchange with Horowitz (see chapter 3), there is no way to impose balance or diversity or viewpoint neutrality in academia, by any definition, without infringing on academic freedom rights that are rooted in the standards of the profession. These standards include rigorous peer review and the evaluation of faculty by fellow scholars based on accepted criteria within a given field. In place of these standards, the ABOR and its legislative initiatives would mandate political criteria to ensure diversity of ideas in higher education. How else could one redress Horowitz’s alleged grievances without imposing such diversity from the outside, based on criteria external to one’s discipline or the academic freedom of the faculty? Horowitz demurs, saying his ABOR makes no such demand. But as Michael B´erub´e illustrates in his article ‘‘Academic Freedom, Fragile as Ever’’ (chapter 2), Horowitz’s legislative devotees are not quite so squeamish.

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The extent to which Horowitz, his ABOR, and any resulting legislation represent attempts to impose ideological diversity and political balance on faculty and their teaching surfaced clearly in an Internet debate between Larkin, then of Stanford University, and Horowitz. (see chapter 4). The debate, which ignited after Larkin wrote a critique of the ABOR, proved to be much more than academic pyrotechnics. Among the critical issues discussed are Horowitz’s efforts to regulate the ideological diversity and political balance among the faculty. As Larkin argues, if Horowitz distrusts faculty to exercise academic freedom over the ideas present in higher education, then who exactly will make such decisions, and what will their criteria be? Horowitz counters that his ABOR makes no such claims for interference. Larkin suggests, however, that Horowitz feigns lack of concern about such details and implies that the devil—and the infringement of academic freedom—is, as the expression goes, in the details. The second round of their debate focuses more specifically on the issue of left-right balance or equal representation in higher education, and whether Horowitz or his ABOR demands it. As Larkin argues and documents, Horowitz uses the words ‘‘balance’’ and ‘‘imbalance’’ repeatedly, showing that he really does want balance and encourages students and others to demand it. A supportive state legislator is quoted as saying that the ABOR asks universities to ‘‘even out the imbalance between liberal and conservative influences in higher education.’’ How does one ‘‘even out’’ a purported imbalance without taking from one and adding to another? Furthermore, Larkin notes an article by Horowitz that promotes the idea of students demanding balance. Horowitz counters that his ABOR says nothing about balance, nor do the various pieces of state legislation. As Larkin argues, however, don’t all of the cited examples suggest that Horowitz indeed wants to legislate balance? Like Fenwick and Zipp, Larkin questions the adequacy of categories like liberal and conservative, at least as used by Horowitz. Such crude categories do no justice to the subtleties and complexities of faculty views in their disciplines.

Legislative and Other Purported Remedies How would a legislature or university administration effect any change in the alleged imbalance or lack of diversity of faculty and their ideas if it did not, in fact, interfere in the academic decisions regarding who should teach and what should be taught? Citing examples from his own state of Pennsylvania, as well as from Florida and Ohio, B´erub´e documents in chapter 2 how numerous legislators supporting the ABOR in their state seem perfectly willing to have the legislature decide what can be taught, who should teach, and what balance and diversity should exist in the college curriculum. In Pennsylvania, an early version of the legislation suggested state oversight into curriculum content and faculty hiring. Even conservative academics who might be

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The Academic Bill of Rights Debate

expected to distrust an activist government, such as Stephen Balch of the National Association of Scholars, seemed perfectly content to have the state intrude, if other measures failed, into academic freedom to reach some desired, politically determined outcome for viewpoint balance. As B´erub´e notes, the paradox of these legislative ‘‘academic bills of rights’’ is this: they claim to defend academic freedom precisely by promising to give the state direct oversight of course curricula, of departmental hiring practices, and of the intellectual direction of academic fields. In other words, by violating the very principle they claim to defend.

The root of academic freedom is peer review and the evaluation of faculty and scholarship based on standards within a discipline. Horowitz clearly does not like the outcomes of this process, which he claims to support in theory. He has stated that he supports AAUP principles, but then argues that the organization has abandoned them. So, how would one mandate change? Hire more Republicans? Tape record faculty search committee or tenure committee hearings? Require faculty to have diverse reading lists, as decided by administrators or legislators outside of the discipline? Allow outsiders to edit faculty course syllabi? Instead of relying on expertise as determined by faculty members and their scholarly colleagues, the proponents of these suggestions would use political criteria as a basis for hiring or dictating classroom content. Basing pedagogy and faculty hiring on political criteria is the very outcome that Horowitz allegedly claims to be fighting against. As for Horowitz’s suggestion that campus administrations adopt his ABOR (thus eliminating the need for state legislation), how is administrative interference in academic freedom any better than political or legislative interference? In fact, most campuses, as outlined in faculty handbooks or contracts, have adopted some version of the de facto standard on academic freedom, the AAUP’s 1940 Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure (see the appendices). As for protecting the rights of students, the AAUP’s Joint Statement on Rights and Freedoms of Students, endorsed by four other organizations, has stated that students should be protected ‘‘against prejudiced or capricious academic evaluation,’’ and in fact, campuses have grievance procedures for just such eventualities.9 It states further that students’ academic freedom should include the right to ‘‘reserve judgment about matters of opinion.’’ Additionally, students may take ‘‘reasoned exception to the views or data offered in any course,’’ but they are obliged to master the course content as set forth by the instructor. Student academic freedom does include numerous rights, but students do not have the right to avoid having their preexisting beliefs, political or otherwise, challenged by course material. Nor does student academic freedom mean that student beliefs should have equal weight in the curriculum, although this assumption seems to have inspired some state legislation.

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Searching for a Problem For a state legislature to pass a version of the ABOR, lawmakers must be convinced that something needs to be legislated. Chapter 6 of this volume presents three case studies of how ABOR-inspired legislation has been battled in Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Colorado. For these three states, and others, the search is still on for a problem to fix. Rodger Govea discusses Ohio’s Senate Bill 24, legislation that was ultimately withdrawn after it became clear to the Republican-controlled legislative committee that there was no fundamental problem with student academic freedom in Ohio. The charge of liberal bias against conservative students was defused when it was revealed that the complaining students who testified had not taken advantage of existing grievance mechanisms. Therefore, as Govea notes, how can one contend that the mechanisms do not work and require legislative supplement? In the end, the state’s InterUniversity Council, made up of the state’s presidents of public universities, agreed to ensure that their institutions would communicate existing procedures to students who might have a grievance against a faculty member. Because all of the institutions had such procedures in place, however, there has been no change in the higher education institutions in Ohio. Nor was any change needed. In Pennsylvania, an even more elaborate set of hearings was conducted around the state to see whether there was a problem with bias in higher education. Arguably, this was the most in-depth consideration of the alleged problem in any state legislature to date. In his essay, Mark Smith reviews the issues in Pennsylvania and the progress of the legislation. After four hearings in different locations around the state, and testimony by dozens of interested parties (see Joan Scott’s testimony in the appendices), the legislative committee concluded that there was no serious problem in state universities and, therefore, no legislation was required. This was, in effect, the same outcome as in Ohio. Yet how this result was achieved was the most interesting development. Smith notes that most of the legislators were sincere in their sometimes-conflicting motivations for supporting or criticizing the legislation. Ultimately, what carried the day was the testimony of academics calmly addressing the issues, not witnesses who were more inflammatory. In the end, the legislature again saw the communication of available grievance procedures to students as the issue, and they determined that no legislation was required. As for enforcing political diversity among the ranks of faculty or in the content of their courses, the legislators were, in the final analysis, rightfully averse to such actions, apparently seeing them as the threat to academic freedom that they are. According to research by Neil Gross and Solon Simmons (see ‘‘Americans’ Views of Political Bias in the Academy and Academic Freedom’’ in the annotated bibliography), the public at large is also rightly skeptical of such interference.

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The Academic Bill of Rights Debate

Dana Waller’s case study on the Colorado ABOR legislation provides a compelling and detailed analysis of how such legislation was fought by faculty behind the scenes. It recounts how faculty supportive of academic freedom rights engaged the legislature, marshaled the resources of faculty, and even enlisted the support of university presidents to battle what could have been legislation severely compromising academic freedom. A key lesson here, which was also true in the Ohio and Pennsylvania cases, is that faculty activism and involvement in support of academic freedom matters. Legislative initiatives, such as those for an ABOR, are not a fait acompli. They depend on the support of various institutions and constituencies in those states. If enough of those stakeholders point out the deficiencies and dangers of such political meddling in academic freedom, these efforts can continue to be fought off. As Waller demonstrates, success requires the involvement of academics who know the issues and are able and willing to engage the politicians who are considering the proposed legislation. The faculty activists in Colorado, Waller among them, did what faculty do best: They educated their audience by presenting sound arguments with credible evidence. They were mindful of the key issues and considerate of their legislators. These factors, combined with their tireless activism, led to their success. Two primary outcomes seem clear from these efforts to legislate the ABOR. First, legislatures seem to find the obvious: that most institutions of higher education have mechanisms in place to handle legitimate student grievances against faculty who may treat them in a biased or discriminatory manner. These procedures typically involve due process to ensure fairness in the consideration of the allegations. It also seems clear from the hearings that many, if not most, of the complaining students who testified did not avail themselves of such mechanisms, as a number of students acknowledged. Therefore, there is no way of verifying whether there was any truth to the charges. We do know, according to Horowitz, that at the Student for Academic Freedom Web site there is no effort made to validate the legitimacy of all of the student allegations cited there.10 Therefore, mechanisms in place at universities provide what prove to be the only due process protections guaranteeing the rights of all parties concerned. Second, it seems clear that legislatures are sometimes rightfully concerned about the prospect of outside or political or legislative interference in academic decisions, such as who should be hired to teach and what should be taught. As B´erub´e notes in his article, although taxpayers (and their representatives) have every right to know how their tax dollars are being spent in state institutions, they have no right to dictate how or what professors should teach. Legislators are capable of recognizing and being convinced of the slippery slope of having politicians and nonacademicians controlling academic appointments or course content and reading lists. In short, all three of these case studies, and the experiences in other states, confirm the premise of Smith’s article: the Academic Bill of Rights is a solution in search of a problem.

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Relativism of Knowledge In the final exchange between Graham Larkin and David Horowitz (see chapter 4), Larkin tackles an issue that proved contentious in the Horowitz exchange with the AAUP and in the Kevin Mattson article (discussed below). Specifically, Larkin argues that the ABOR statements about the ‘‘unsettled character of all human knowledge’’ and assertions that there is ‘‘no humanly accessible truth that is not in principle open to challenge’’ amount to radical relativism. That is, they suggest that all knowledge is more or less equal and that one person’s truth is as good as another’s. Larkin also argues that Horowitz does not carefully adhere to standards of truthfulness in his own published statements, as reflected in his denials that he desires and argues for balance in higher education. Horowitz responds that a number of academic theories, such as postmodernism, suggest that knowledge is relative. He wonders why this doesn’t disturb Larkin. More fundamentally, Horowitz suggests that in a free society knowledge must always be considered unsettled, and that this notion should not be controversial. As Lawrence Poston notes in chapter 2, One must, however, concede a degree of shrewdness to those proponents of the Academic Bill of Rights who avail themselves of the cloak of post-modernist rhetoric to suggest that all knowledge is provisional, and seem to proceed from that to the quite un-post-modernist and unprofessional view that therefore it must all be given equal weight.

In his article, Kevin Mattson provides a critical history of the more recent conservative critique of higher education, Horowitz’s place in this history, and, most important, his radical views on knowledge. Going back to William F. Buckley’s God and Man at Yale, and Allan Bloom’s more recent Closing of the American Mind, among others, Mattson notes that conservatives were historically critical of the growing relativism in higher education, and the demise of universal values and fixed standards dictating what knowledge should be of most worth. The Great Books and the Western canon were perfect examples of this belief in the fixity of worthwhile knowledge. Yet, as Mattson argues, Horowitz roots his critique of higher education in a relativism that is reminiscent of the 1960s, a period savagely criticized by other conservatives for this very relativism. The purpose of Horowitz’s ironic embrace of the relativism of knowledge is, as Mattson notes, to enable a conservative win in the decadeslong culture wars in academia. What is the practical consequence of this dispute over knowledge and who gets to decide what knowledge is of greatest worth in the classroom? These questions were addressed by the AAUP in its exchange with Horowitz. What, in fact, are the assumptions and implications of the ABOR’s requirement that universities prohibit the political, religious, or ideological indoctrination of students by faculty? Horowitz cites a number of alleged instances of such

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The Academic Bill of Rights Debate

abuse in his piece, and elsewhere, although this evidence is not undisputed. The AAUP opposes faculty indoctrination, but it strongly disputes the ABOR rooting a prohibition against indoctrination in ‘‘the uncertainty and unsettled character of all human knowledge.’’ Not all knowledge is equally valid, nor does the faculty member take ‘‘unfair advantage’’ of students by using his or her professional judgment and expertise to assign and evaluate student work. This is the faculty member’s responsibility. As the AAUP argues, pedagogy is not indoctrination, and it must remain a fundamental feature of academic freedom that faculty members decide what to teach and how to teach it. Ultimately, at issue is not the epistemological claim that knowledge is open to challenge. Fundamentally, this dispute is about who decides which knowledge is more accepted in a discipline, what theories and views are more central at any point in time, and whether faculty have the freedom to teach and research from certain theoretical perspectives as their specialties. Neither Larkin nor the AAUP dispute that knowledge can—and should—be challenged. But they would most assuredly contend that it is academics within their fields who should make these determinations, not administrators or legislators. Nor does the students’ academic freedom give them the right to declare that their view of knowledge, because of the alleged unsettled character of all knowledge, deserves an equal place in the curriculum with what instructors intend to teach. If it did, one would end up with the Arizona legislature’s proposal, reported from Inside Higher Education in Kevin Mattson’s article, which would have allowed students to choose alternative coursework if they found a course personally offensive or in conflict with their own core beliefs. Or one might end up with a caricature of knowledge, as reflected in B´erub´e’s examples that some students, and others, believe that there are two, and only two, sides to every issue.

The Conservatives’ Real Concern Throughout this essay, I have alluded to the contradictions that permeate the ideas of Horowitz and other ABOR supporters. How can they call for neutrality in the hiring, tenuring, and promoting of faculty without providing credible evidence of bias in these processes? How can one provide more alleged balance in the faculty ranks without engaging in affirmative action for Republican academics, rooted in political criteria? How can they support academic freedom while proposing that professors’ reading lists and course syllabi include all points of view as determined by an outsider? They say they believe in academic freedom, and yet the implications of their criticisms and proposals seem to undermine it. So, what do they really want? The conservatives’ real concern is the battle over what knowledge is taught in higher education, and who should decide. This is one of the oldest questions in academia: What knowledge is of most worth? The complaint over too many registered Democrats in the faculty is a surrogate for this more fundamental

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concern—namely, how to attack ideas that Horowitz, the American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA), and other conservatives abhor. This is clearly seen in Horowitz’s book, The Professors: The 101 Most Dangerous Academics in America (see the annotated bibliography). His focus throughout, as he identifies the 101 most dangerous professors, is on their ideas within their disciplines and their extramural utterances (that is, free speech). As it turns out, he could not care less about their party registrations, or about who they might have voted for in the last statewide or national election. Similarly, ACTA’s ‘‘How Many Ward Churchills?’’ (see the annotated bibliography) analyzes and criticizes faculty course descriptions, without a word about party affiliation. Instead, among neoconservatives, there is great concern about the theories and ideas that faculty members might be teaching in their classes. ‘‘Might’’ is the key here, because primarily course descriptions are listed, for example, in ACTA’s ‘‘How Many Ward Churchills?’’ (see B´erub´e’s article in chapter 2, or Facts Count in the annotated bibliography). And both the Horowitz and ACTA books identify liberal, critical, progressive, or radical theories and analyses as the problem. While teaching critical theory, poststructuralism, multiculturalism, sensitivity training, diversity, African American studies, or peace studies might land one on the ACTA or Horowitz list of radical or dangerous teachers, teaching free market capitalism in an economics class, or genetic explanations for social differences, would not. In fact, faculty should be free to teach, research, and criticize all of these perspectives, and this kind of variety and diversity does exist within and across campuses in higher education. Joan Scott’s testimony on the ABOR before the Pennsylvania legislature lays out exactly how this diversity currently manifests itself (see the appendices). This diversity exists because faculty members, not outsiders, decide on curricula and research topics based on their interests and the disciplinary standards within their own fields. Furthermore, if political bias or party imbalance or threats to academic freedom in higher education are such a concern, why have conservatives not taken exception, for example, to the practice of political appointees to board of trustees positions at public universities? In Ohio, for example, every single board member at every state institution of higher education has been appointed by a Republican governor. Furthermore, the Toledo Blade, in an investigative news article, showed that donating to the party in substantial amounts seemed to be a key factor in being appointed to a public university board position.11 Why is this not a concern? Because board members are not in the classroom? Board members hire university presidents and upper-level administrators, and they or their appointees make or endorse policy decisions as to where to allocate resources; which departments to support, eliminate, or allow to languish; what faculty positions to fill and which to reassign; and even how many part-time faculty members to hire, among other things. These administrative decisions can have a profound impact on

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the intellectual climate of a campus and on the issues of who decides what can or should be taught. As Todd Gitlin argues in an essay in Mother Jones, after a number of years in which the conservative right has had complete control of all branches of government, it now has set its sights on the ‘‘knowledge industry.’’12 The current instrument of this effort is the ABOR, which purports to desire simple diversity in higher education. Its real agenda, however, is to win, by political intervention, a battle over ideas, and to bring about the potential privatization of a public good. And this focuses the spotlight on the real problem in higher education today.

Corporatization Contrary to the claims of conservative critics who allege that higher education has been hijacked by tenured radicals, the real problem is nothing of the sort. In fact, a compelling case can be made that the biggest current challenge to higher education is the increasing domination of its core values and mission by corporate interests. This threat can be seen in the increasing exploitation and utilization of cheap part-time and adjunct (contingent) faculty, and in the commandeering of publicly supported research by private economic interests, among other things. It is also reflected in the accompanying acceptance of higher education as less a public good than a consumer option, thus easing the way for decreased state support of higher education and the concomitant rise in tuition, fees, and student debt. The threats alleged by the ABOR, and made operational by its legislative proposals around the country, are a distraction from the worst threats faced by higher education. This argument follows two separate lines of analysis. First, the composition of the faculty in higher education is changing. The increasing reliance on part-time faculty, nontenure-track faculty, and graduate student teaching assistants reflects the effort to lower labor costs and create a more flexible workforce. The expansion in the number of contingent faculty (part-time and nontenure track) is striking.13 David Witt notes in chapter 5 that upwards of 50 percent of all faculty members now are part time, and fully 65 percent are part time or nontenure track. While tuition goes up and up, so does the number of contingent faculty. And, as Witt also mentions, precarious academic appointments like these make academic freedom more a wish than a reality.14 The second line of analysis relates to the privatization of the knowledge created in the academy. What once was considered part of the intellectual commons, that is, knowledge created for and accessible by the academic and research community, has now increasingly become proprietary, corporately owned, and privately controlled knowledge. This has led to increasing corporate control over the nature of research undertaken, the control and distribution of results, and the ultimate unavailability of knowledge to the research community. In their article, Fenwick and Zipp document in chapter 5 the

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myriad ways that publicly supported academic research has come to be funded and controlled by private economic interests. As they document, this has had a demonstrable effect on the findings of that research, showing a disturbing trend of favoring the interests of corporations funding research. Furthermore, once privately controlled research is generated, the corporate funders can limit access to those findings by the rest of the research community. By removing chunks of academic research from the intellectual commons, those economic interests harm the broader social good of widely accessible research that can be critiqued, revised, and expanded. The books by David Bollier and Jennifer Washburn, described in the annotated bibliography, provide lengthy analyses of this very problem. The trends toward corporatization filter down into the day-to-day life of the university in other ways as well, as David Witt explains in chapter 5. The language and values of university administrators and trustees increasingly reflect a corporate mentality. This affects policies and priorities for curricula, campus construction, academic planning, faculty incentives (for example, the relative valuing of grants versus noncommercial knowledge), the vocationalization of the curriculum, the treating of students as consumers, and much more. In such an atmosphere, the liberal arts and humanities become less valued, and the commercial and vocational orientation of the university becomes ascendant. These trends, and related ones, are well illustrated in the articles by Witt and Fenwick and Zipp, as well as in many of the books and articles discussed in the annotated bibliography. The rise of corporate influence is arguably one of the most profound changes in higher education in the last century. Yet, interestingly, conservative critics seem unconcerned that higher education instruction is becoming a just-in-time enterprise undertaken by at-will employees. Part-time faculty, nontenure-track faculty, and graduate teaching assistants now constitute about two-thirds of the instructors on campuses nationwide, yet their guarantee of academic freedom is tenuous. One searches in vain for concern over such developments on the Web site of ACTA, another prominent party in the ABOR-led critique of university faculty, or at Horowitz’s Students for Academic Freedom. Furthermore, nowhere in the recently released draft of the Spelling’s Commission on the Future of Higher Education does it identify the privatization of knowledge or the growth of a contingent faculty as problems facing higher education.15 One could see how such an appointed board, under the auspices of a Republican administration, would not balk at the privatization of university-based research knowledge. But no one can credibly ignore the incontrovertible evidence of the increasingly contingent and temporary nature of university teaching. To connect this back to the ABOR, why does a document claiming to seek improved academic freedom not express the slightest alarm at the real risk to all part-time faculty members’ ability to exercise academic freedom given the constant threat of not being rehired?16 If Horowitz truly cared about academic freedom, this would

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alarm him as much as it alarms the AAUP. The fact that it does not gives some indication of what has to be considered his underlying political agenda. The politicization of academic freedom is, at root, what this controversy is about. Hopefully, this volume will assist readers in gaining insight not only into the debate over the ABOR but also into the importance of protecting the fragile right of academic freedom. It has been a hard won right, one that is constantly at risk, and we infringe upon it at our peril. These essays illustrate what is best about higher education in the United States. Given time, important issues like this receive the kind of wide-ranging scrutiny and scholarly analysis they deserve, which is a hallmark of our academic culture. Hopefully, at the end of the day, our view of academic freedom and the ABOR will not be based on the incendiary accusations that initially ignited the debate but rather on a thoughtful review of all of the evidence.

Additional Resources A selective, annotated bibliography of books and articles for further reading and a list of relevant Web sites appears at the end of this volume. The selected titles and Web sites address not only the ABOR debate and its precursors, but also issues related to the alternative theme raised in this book—that is, the threat of the increasing corporatization of higher education. Space limitations have forced the bibliography to be selective. The first entry in the bibliography (Academic Freedom: A Guide to the Literature) does identify numerous readings on various sides of the debate on the culture wars and political correctness in higher education. The Web sites relate to the debate over the ABOR and corporatization in universities. This, too, is a selective list, although it does include major sources on different sides of the debate. The appendices include copies of the Academic Bill of Rights; the AAUP’s 1940 Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure; testimony by David Horowitz on behalf of the Ohio ABOR legislation; Joan Scott’s testimony before a Pennsylvania legislative hearing, supporting traditional academic freedom rights and criticizing the ABOR; the Ohio Senate Bill 24; and the American Council on Education’s Statement on Academic Rights and Responsibilities.

Notes 1. These numbers resulted from a November 10, 2006, search of the Lexis-Nexis Academic database and its various subfiles on the phrase ‘‘Academic Bill of Rights,’’ as well as searches in Google, InsideHigherEd.com, Academic Search Premier, and Education Research Complete. Lexis-Nexis subfiles searched included major papers; Midwest, Northeast, Southeast, and Western regional [news] sources; news wires; news transcripts; and university news (for example, The Chronicle of Higher Education). 2. Scott Jaschik, ‘‘The New Class Monitors,’’ InsideHigherEd.com, January 18, 2006. Available at http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2006/01/18/ucla (accessed November 20, 2006).

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3. See, for example, Ellen W. Schrecker, No Ivory Tower: McCarthyism and the Universities (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986); Lionel S. Lewis, Cold War on Campus: A Study of the Politics of Organizational Control (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Books, 1988); and Seth Rosenfeld, ‘‘The Campus Files: Regan, Hoover, and the UC Red Scare,’’ San Francisco Chronicle, June 9, 2002, F1. Available at http://www.sfgate.com/campus/ (accessed October 10, 2006). 4. John F. Zipp and Rudy Fenwick, ‘‘Is the Academy a Liberal Hegemony: The Political Orientations and Educational Values of Professors,’’ Public Opinion Quarterly 70, no. 3 (Fall 2006): 304–26. 5. David Horowitz, The Professors: The 101 Most Dangerous Academics in America (Washington: Regnery Publishing Inc., 2006), 375. 6. See John Lee, The ‘‘Faculty Bias’’ Studies: Science or Propaganda? (included in the annotated bibliography). Lee reviews the scientific rigor of eight studies purporting to show liberal bias among faculty, the indoctrination of students, and liberal bias in the hiring and tenuring of conservative faculty. 7. In ‘‘AAUP Dishonesty,’’ Horowitz equates Democratic party registration with ‘‘left-wing’’ politics: ‘‘In fact they are dominated to such an extreme degree that among junior faculty at Larkin’s university left-wingers outnumber conservatives by a ratio of 30:1—a skew that at the very least raises questions about a political blacklist.’’ 8. Kathy Lynn Gray, ‘‘Bill Could Limit Open Debate at Colleges; Lawmaker Says Profs are Pushing Agendas,’’ The Columbus Dispatch, January 27, 2005, 01C. 9. ‘‘Joint Statement on Rights and Freedoms of Students,’’ in Policy Documents & Reports, 9th ed. (Washington, DC: American Association of University Professors, 2001), 262. The statement was developed and endorsed by the AAUP, the United States National Student Association (now the United States Student Association), the Association of American Colleges (now American Association of Colleges and Universities), the National Association of Student Personnel Administrators, and the National Association of Women Deans and Counselors (now the National Association for Women in Education). 10. See, for example, Thomas Bartlett, ‘‘Breaking Bread: Horowitz vs. B´erub´e,’’ The Chronicle of Higher Education, December 8, 2006, Available at http://chronicle.com/ weekly/v53/i16/16a00801.htm (accessed January 22, 2007). See also the stenographic report of David Horowitz’s testimony before the Pennsylvania legislature, ‘‘Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, House of Representatives, Select Committee on Academic Freedom in Higher Education, Public Hearing: Academic Freedom in Higher Education,’’ Tuesday, January 10, 2006, 9:00 a.m., 185–186. See also Mark Smith’s article in chapter 6, quoting the Students for Academic Freedom Web site to this effect. 11. Steve Eder, ‘‘College Trustees Shell Out Millions in Contributions: Cash Goes to Taft, Voinovich, Gubernatorial Hopefuls,’’ Toledo Blade, December 30, 2005. Available at http://www.toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20051230/NEWS24/ 51230001&SearchID=73231379173974 (accessed November 30, 2006). 12. Todd Gitlin, ‘‘Permission to Speak Freely,’’ Mother Jones, March/April 2005. Available at http://www.motherjones.com/commentary/gitlin/2005/03/03_2005_Gitlin.html (accessed July 5, 2006). 13. AAUP Contingent Faculty Index 2006. Available at http://www.aaup.org/AAUP/ pubsres/research/conind2006.htm (accessed December 12, 2006). 14. In Pennsylvania, for example, the problems in community colleges are even more pronounced. Fully 82.5 percent of faculty members are part time, and their academic

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freedom is compromised through lack of control over their course syllabus or textbook selection, as well as a fear for one’s job if they teach controversial material. See ‘‘Written Testimony of Karen Schermerhorn, Co-President, Faculty and Staff Federation of Community College of Philadelphia. Presented to the: Pennsylvania House of Representatives Select Committee on Academic Freedom in Higher Education. Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, May 31, 2006.’’ Available at http://www.aft.org/topics/academicfreedom/SchermerhornTestimony.pdf (accessed December 8, 2006). 15. William G. Tierney, ‘‘DOA: The Spellings Commission,’’ Academe 92, no. 6 (November–December 2006): 80–81. 16. Keith Hoeller, ‘‘An Adjunct Bill of Rights,’’ The Chronicle of Higher Education, November 29, 2006. Available http://chronicle.com/jobs/news/2006/11/2006112901c/ careers.html (accessed November 30, 2006). See also, Alison Schneider, ‘‘To Many Adjunct Professors, Academic Freedom Is a Myth,’’ The Chronicle of Higher Education, December 10, 1999. Available at http://chronicle.com/free/v46/i16/16a01801.htm (accessed November 30, 2006).

CHAPTER

2

ACADEMIC FREEDOM AND THE ACADEMIC BILL OF RIGHTS

THE MORE THINGS CHANGE? ACADEMIC FREEDOM THEN AND NOW Lawrence Poston Is anything new under the sun in matters of academic freedom? Or do such recent phenomena as Accuracy in Academia (AIA) and the Academic Bill of Rights (ABOR) represent an entirely different kind of challenge to the professoriate? Helpful preparation for an answer may come from a survey of the development of both professional and legal definitions of academic freedom in the United States. In this survey of the historical landscape, both faculty and students have their say, for although their rights are not coterminous, their interests to a very considerable extent do overlap. Certain features of that landscape do not necessarily anticipate all challenges to academic freedom, but may suggest that the fundamental ways of meeting them have not necessarily changed.

Laying the Foundations For more than half of our country’s history, both during the colonial period and after independence, the dominant model of higher education as represented by the old Ivies was driven by the need to produce educated young men for the (mostly Protestant) ministry. At the liberal arts colleges that sprang up across the country before the Civil War—of which the Midwestern colleges in particular often had their roots in New England, Protestant abolitionism—residually moral if not distinctly theological overtones persisted. College presidents, at both the Ivies and the newer liberal arts colleges, very likely might teach courses in ethics and take their turn at the pulpit of the college chapel. The dominant, if implied, metaphor for how such institutions operated was that of the college as a family. Depending on the local administrative style, the family might either thrive under a benevolent and

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beloved strong father, or become dysfunctional under a parental tyrant. Although there was no formal acknowledgment of faculty tenure in our modern sense, the reality of indefinite reappointment might well be, after an initial period, a settled expectation at many such institutions. Two developments altered this landscape after the Civil War. The first was the Morrill Act (1867), establishing land-grant universities. The second was the rise of the research university, usually associated with the founding of Johns Hopkins University, which marked the increasing professionalization of the faculties and their allegiance to disciplines transcending campus boundaries. The first of these developments positioned the public university as a source of useful knowledge and service in the public interest, a quite un-European notion in its origins, and one that could garner widespread public support under favorable conditions. Conversely, the tendency to make public service an instrumentalization of servanthood, to see the university as an arm of society to the exclusion of its role as a critic of society, often meant its politicization, whether from the right or left. Nor was this phenomenon confined to public higher education. Three notable cases of faculty termination at the turn of the last century—Richard Ely, at the University of Wisconsin; Edward Bemis, at the University of Chicago; and Edward Ross, at Stanford—show that whether the termination came from a public governing board or the implied threat of a wealthy donor, the effect was the same. The founding of Johns Hopkins coincides with the post–Civil War period leading up to about 1900, when nearly 8,000 American college graduate students attended German universities for advanced studies. This number, which seems modest by today’s standards, exercised a great, perhaps disproportionate, influence over the shape of higher education. Advanced study in Germany did not merely mean pursuit of an academic specialty; it meant that these students returned with a different attitude toward the university itself. German university life was dominated by the interrelated concepts of Lehrfreiheit, Lernfreiheit, and Freiheit der Wissenschaft, all of which have rather simple root meanings—teaching freedom, learning freedom, and freedom of knowledge— but which in fact are rather more complex.1 Lehrfreiheit meant much more than the absence of classroom censorship. It referred rather to the statutory right of full and associate professors, who were civil servants, to discharge their professional functions outside the normal government-service chain of command, still bound by loyalty to the state, but in effect, enjoying lifetime tenure, accorded to no other branch of the German civil service. Lernfreiheit meant much more than freedom to learn. It was a disclaimer by the university of any control over the individual student’s curriculum other than what might be required for professional licensure, and it absolved the university of any responsibility for the student’s private conduct. Finally, Freiheit der Wissenschaft set out the rights of the university to organize itself into faculties and of the senate to control its own internal affairs. This meant that freedom of learning and research was additionally protected by institutional autonomy.

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The American climate was quite different, and this difference was reflected in the deliberations of a committee of 15 members of the fledgling AAUP, who were appointed in January 1915 to formulate a declaration of principles on academic freedom and tenure. American faculties, except where by custom or quiet concession, did not enjoy German protections. American colleges and universities were not autonomous institutions, and the level of college or university control of student life was much higher. In Germany, general education had been relegated to the Gymnasium, and universities were research institutions at which students were free agents with respect to attendance at lectures. In the United States, the older ‘‘pastoral’’ model was still dominant, even in some cases at institutions that had evolved in a research direction, and with some exceptions (for example, the University of Chicago) American universities had not distinguished formally between two faculties, one serving an undergraduate residential community and the other the work of a graduate school. For all these reasons, as well as, perhaps, the level of investment in student support services characteristic of American institutions, the 1915 committee excluded Lernfreiheit from the scope of the document, and it was not until more than 50 years later that the AAUP was to revisit the question of student freedoms. Threats to academic freedom do not observe disciplinary boundaries. In the last quarter of the just-departed century, it has been the humanities (in particular, departments of English) allegedly spreading the pandemic viruses of poststructuralism, New Historicism, gay and lesbian studies, and popular culture that have been singled out for attention and often censure. But recent attacks on evolution and stem-cell research, as well as federal research restrictions increasingly driven more by bad theology than by good science, have put the scientific disciplines equally on the defensive. In 1915, it was the social scientists who were under attack, and more particularly the economists. Ross’s attacks on railroad monopolies and immigrant labor practices attracted the wrath of Mrs. Leland Stanford, and Bemis’s public statements on the Pullman strike (although he condemned some aspects of the labor stoppage as he did management practices) drew the ire of President William Rainey Harper, operating in the shadow of John D. Rockefeller. During the debates over the gold and silver standard, some governors took it upon themselves to view the faculties of their state universities as, in effect, personal appointees, and the lot of a conservative gold-standard economist at a state university under a crusading populist silver-standard governor might not be a happy one. The group appointed to write what has come to be known as the 1915 Declaration of Principles on Academic Freedom and Academic Tenure was brought together as a result of discussions in 1913 at the annual meetings of the economists, political scientists, and sociologists. Of its 15 architects, 9 were social scientists of one stripe or another. Not surprisingly the resulting Declaration set forth the proposition that, in the political climate of the time, the social sciences were particularly sensitive to attack. ‘‘No person of intelligence believes that all of

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our political problems have been solved,’’ wrote its framers, ‘‘or that the final stage of social evolution has been reached.’’2 The statement implied that the researches of the social scientist were uniquely at risk of alternatively affronting, or conceding to, the political and economic ‘‘powers that were.’’ The 1915 Declaration is the first document, endorsed by a representative group of faculty members from several disciplines and institutions, to set forth the concept of academic freedom in the American context. It defined academic freedom as comprising freedom of inquiry and research; freedom of teaching within the university or college; and freedom of extramural utterance and action. With what now may seem premature optimism, its authors argued that freedom of inquiry was so well safeguarded at most institutions as to run only a slight risk of infringement. The second and third freedoms—freedom of teaching, freedom of extramural utterance—were closely related, and out of the five investigations the fledgling organization had already conducted, all had involved the right of teachers to express freely their political and other opinions outside the university setting. The 1915 Declaration accepted the fact that in the United States governing boards held ultimate power. The existence of these boards distinguished American from German institutions and stood as the principal obstacle to asserting that the American professoriate constituted a self-governing guild. This proposition, however, was never defended by the formulators of the statement; little support seems to have existed in the academic universe for the proposition that universities ought to cast off the shackles of governing boards and go it alone. German universities did, at least, have Mother State behind them. The emphasis on boards as the locus of authority meant that the 1915 Declaration did not really speak to the issue of abuses of power in the hands of a chief administrator. In distinguishing the run of American institutions from the handful of proprietary schools designed to promulgate a particular religious or secular set of doctrines, the 1915 Declaration argued that trustees of public institutions were trustees for the public and that the situation was not really different in the private sector when a private institution appealed to the public for support. Hence, trustees could not morally place constraints on professorial reasoning or conscience. Surveying the academic landscape of 1915, the writers deplored the evidence that, in many institutions bound by such a trust, the trustee-professor relationship resembled that of an employer to his employees. By intervening to censor, control, or in any way discipline the faculty for its own legitimate exercise of teaching authority, a governing board acted as if the institution over which it exercised oversight was proprietary—and while the Committee did not discountenance such institutions, it declared they should not pretend to be havens of free inquiry. Why, according to the framers of the 1915 Declaration, was academic freedom in the public interest? First, it was necessary to attract professors of the highest ability and character to a profession not distinguished for its

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monetary emoluments. Second, it was necessary to guarantee that the fruits of research could be imparted freely to students and the general public, uncontaminated by attempts by interested parties (or, more broadly, by public opinion) to influence the findings of the researcher. The profession could not afford to be perceived as thus contaminated. Why were professors not just another kind of employee? Here again the Committee was explicit: ‘‘[O]nce appointed, the scholar has professional functions to perform in which the appointing authorities have neither competency nor moral right to intervene.’’3 The analogy drawn, one that simultaneously though tacitly sanctioned an analogue to judicial tenure, was to the role of the American president in naming judges of the federal court and the free and independent action of those judges once appointed. The threefold function of the academic institution that the 1915 Declaration outlines tracks the themes we have been exploring thus far: ‘‘to promote inquiry and advance the sum of human knowledge; to provide general instruction to the students; and to develop experts for various branches of the public service.’’4 In the second and third of these functions, as well as the first, academic freedom was absolutely necessary if students were not to suspect that the objectivity of the teacher had been impaired by his or her subservience to extraneous pressures. It was also necessary if legislators (or other recipients of the benefits of such public service) were not to have faith in the professor as a source of disinterested advice based on sound facts and independent reasoning. In short, academic freedom was defended, not as the sole enclave of a privileged professional caste, but as a protection for society as a whole. Although the 1915 Declaration recognized the dangers of both untrammeled corporate and state power, it also took the view, reminiscent of John Stuart Mill, that ‘‘particular dangers’’ to academic freedom were ‘‘connected with the existence in a democracy of an overwhelming and concentrated public opinion,’’ from which a university should serve as ‘‘an inviolable refuge.’’5 The metaphor used to describe this refuge was strikingly American: paradoxically democratic in its origins but elitist in its implications. It bore the earmarks of the very circumstances that had given rise to the Morrill Act. That is, the university should be an intellectual experiment station, where new ideas may germinate and where their fruit, though still distasteful to the community as a whole, may be allowed to ripen until finally, perchance, it may become a part of the accepted intellectual food of the nation or of the world.6

The horticultural metaphor (florid in more ways than one), though redolent of the service functions of the land-grant university with its agricultural extension stations, nonetheless implied a Millite suspicion of the majority. Universities must be the brakes on a society too prone to embrace short-term or fashionable solutions; their function was to ‘‘make public opinion more selfcritical and more circumspect.’’7

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The Declaration, however, did not hesitate to pronounce certain obligations and checks on the professoriate. Its drafters were realists and knew that the gospel of academic freedom, if it had any chance of being palatable to a larger audience, needed to be framed in the necessary context of academic responsibility. A scholar-teacher’s liberty must be premised on adherence to standards of competent and patient inquiry, and the scholar’s findings must be promulgated in a dignified, temperate, and courteous manner. A classroom instructor should not, to be sure, labor under the spurious requirement of pretending to have no opinions at all, but was obligated to present divergent findings on the subject and to train students to think for themselves. Allegations that a faculty member had violated these principles, however, should be tested by a hearing body composed of fellow academics who possessed the competence to establish the extent of deviation, if any, from professional standards. This was not an obligation the profession could evade. Thus, the 1915 Declaration enunciated the now familiar principle of peer review. With respect to the controversial area of a teacher’s extramural utterances, the Committee concurred that any faculty member was obligated, when speaking to a larger public, to observe appropriate self-restraint. Nonetheless, faculty members should not be deprived of the freedom of speech enjoyed by the citizenry at large. Broadly philosophical in its approach, the 1915 Declaration treated procedural standards in a brief concluding section that called for action by faculty committees on reappointment, definition of tenure of office (calling for a 10year probationary standard), formulation of grounds for dismissal, and judicial hearings before dismissal. Many subsequent AAUP documents develop these procedural protections in great detail, and although the detail is everything to an embattled professor seeking a fair hearing, it cannot be given space here. Although in some ways very much the product of its time, the 1915 Declaration laid out in broad outline principles that were to govern the development of the professional theory of academic freedom over the next 90 years and that were gradually to be extended from eminent institutions associated with its formulation to encompass two- and four-year colleges generally. Its betterknown successor, the 1940 Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure, more concisely sets forth both the special freedoms and the special responsibilities of faculty members. The 1940 Statement has been widely incorporated either by direct reference or paraphrase into numerous faculty handbooks, institutional statutes and bylaws, and collective bargaining agreements. Its force derives in large measure from the fact that it is the joint pronouncement of the AAUP and the Association of American Colleges (now the Association of American Colleges and Universities) and thus reflects a faculty-administration consensus—at least as of the date of its framing. From the AAUP’s point of view, the academic freedom of students is heavily implicated in the question of professional ethics. Thus, the 1966 Statement on Professional Ethics obligates professors to ‘‘encourage the free pursuit of

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learning in their students,’’ to ‘‘demonstrate respect for students as individuals,’’ to ‘‘foster honest academic conduct,’’ and to provide evaluations reflecting ‘‘each student’s true merit.’’8 Just as tenured faculty are expected to defend the academic freedom of the nontenured, so, too, are they expected to defend the academic freedom of their students. A year later, in 1967, the AAUP, in conjunction with representatives of the National Student Association, the Association of American Colleges and Universities, and the two leading organizations of student personnel professionals, met to formulate the Joint Statement on Rights and Freedoms of Students. This statement, as much as those of 1915 and 1940, reflects its own time. In the 1960s, there was an unusually high level of sympathy between faculties and students growing out the circumstances of the Vietnam War and the tendency, particularly of many younger faculty, to ally themselves with student causes. The statement, however, though rooted in a particular climate, succeeds in speaking beyond it by enunciating principles of due process both on- and off-campus. These freedoms were appropriate to a student body that, in the post-GI era, probably was much more mature than many beginning American college students in 1915.9

Courts and Campus The developments I have described amount to a brief history of the professional definition of academic freedom. Both the 1940 Statement and the First Amendment in their different ways have produced case law. The former has done so through the AAUP investigations of situations on specific campuses that appear to present violations of AAUP policy, the later through litigation. These two different approaches, to adopt Duke law professor William Van Alstyne’s terminology, could respectively be called ‘‘soft’’ and ‘‘hard’’ law.10 In practice, there has been frequent overlap, with the 1940 Statement and other AAUP documents leeching out of academe proper into the citations of legal briefs and judicial decisions. What was to be applied as part of the prevailing view of ‘‘academic freedom’’ was classically enunciated in another context by Justice Holmes, when he was the Chief Judge of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court. Holmes heard a case in which a New Bedford, Massachusetts, policeman had engaged in public criticism of the operations of his department. Holmes wrote in defense of what, dating back to Blackstone, has been called the ‘‘bad tendency’’ argument—that is, that the state may place restrictions on speech that may be offensive or contrary to community tastes, inasmuch as public employment is not a right but a privilege. ‘‘The petitioner,’’ Holmes famously wrote, ‘‘may have a constitutional right to talk politics, but he has no constitutional right to be a policeman.’’11 Behind this lay the then-entrenched view that the First Amendment protects citizen liberties solely against state action, and that the state itself may place conditions on those whom it employs. A

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similar rationale prevailed in the famous Scopes case, involving the teaching of evolution, when the Tennessee Supreme Court declared that any state employee, at whatever level, held his or her position subject to whatever restrictions the state, unhampered by the Fourteenth Amendment, saw fit to impose. Fortunately the courts, and most prominently Holmes in his later years, moved beyond the rather narrow limits envisioned by the Massachusetts decision. This led the way for what has come to be known as the doctrine of unconstitutional conditions: that is, the theory that government, in the words of Lawrence Tribe, ‘‘may not condition the receipt of its benefits upon the nonassertion of constitutional rights even if receipt of such benefits is in all other respect a ‘mere privilege.’’’12 In one key case, actually falling outside the province of higher education, Justice Sutherland found that one could not be discharged for failing to honor a condition that should not have been imposed in the first place. ‘‘It is inconceivable,’’ he wrote, ‘‘that guaranties embedded in the Constitution of the United States may be . . . manipulated out of existence’’ in exchange for a privilege awarded by the state.13 In the famous Pickering case in 1968, in which a high school teacher criticized the board of education and the district superintendent of Will County in a letter to a local newspaper, the Supreme Court unanimously overruled the finding of the Illinois State Supreme Court that a teaching position could be subject to limitations barring him or her from public criticism of the handling of revenues by the administration. The doctrine of unconstitutional conditions requires the government (at any level) to defend the constitutionality of any employment conditions on the merits, not on the mere grounds that by purchasing the services of the employee, it bought the right to impose the restriction. Under this standard, even the intemperance or inaccuracy with which a view may be expressed by a dissenting employee does not necessarily warrant dismissal on its own terms. The view recognizes, as Van Alstyne has put it, that the government is never merely one of two private parties to a contract; it itself is subject to constitutional restraints. It remains the case, however, that there are presumably cases in which the government can be held by a court to have met the burden of justification for a decision to dismiss one of its employees. Academic freedom as such was not invoked expressly in Supreme Court decisions until the McCarthy era. A watershed case involved the dissent of Justice Douglas in Adler v. Board of Education (1952), Justice Black concurring, involving a New York statute (the so-called Feinberg Law), which provided for the disqualification from public employment of any person espousing violence to change the form of the government of the United States, and also for disclaimer (‘‘loyalty’’) oaths and investigative hearings in instances of seemingly disloyal or otherwise recalcitrant faculty. Douglas found the employment disqualification inconsistent with academic freedom because it was aimed at those holding a specific ideological position, and because it served to intimidate other teachers by providing for spying and surveillance.

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Later in the same court term, Justice Frankfurter in Wieman v. Updegraff, which involved an Oklahoma statute requiring compliance with a broadly worded disclaimer oath as a condition of public employment, agreed with the majority in holding the statute unconstitutional under the Fourteenth Amendment. He went further, writing in a separate opinion that the statute was invalid especially as it applied to teachers, inasmuch as it had ‘‘an unmistakable tendency to chill that free play of the spirit which all teachers ought especially to cultivate and practice.’’14 This decision marked a decisive moment of convergence between the idea of academic freedom as it had been developed in its professional context and First and Fourteenth Amendment law. Together with other decisions of the same period, most particularly Sweezy v. New Hampshire, these cases paved the way for the ultimate striking-down of the Feinberg Law in Keyishian v. Board of Regents (1967), and a common theme is precisely that of the ‘‘chilling effect’’ on the ability of teachers and scholars to function in their professional capacity. Yet despite the promise of Pickering and Keyishian, the relationship of academic freedom to First Amendment rights cannot be judged entirely secure, particularly with respect to the question of workplace-related speech. The courts have not, overall, been sympathetic to the claims of speech that involve intramural criticism of institutional policies. First, such speech may not be regarded as involving matters of public concern. Second, even where it may, it can still be weighed against the counterbalancing principle of workplace discipline or ‘‘disharmony’’—that is, damage caused by the airing of views hostile to the employer. Inasmuch as a large number of AAUP cases have turned on the ability of faculty members to speak critically of administrative policies, a more robust defense of the right to criticize the governance of one’s own institution would seem to lie in the 1940 Statement’s assertion that college and university teachers are ‘‘officers of an educational institution.’’ This claim has remained largely opaque not only to large sections (perhaps the majority) of the public, but also to many in the legal profession. In the general wave of judicial revulsion against the surviving relics of the McCarthy period, it was not uncommon for young, activist faculty to seek remedy in the courts for perceived violations of academic freedom. Impatient with the slow wheels of the AAUP (although whether those wheels have been invariably slower than those of the courts is at least debatable), and believing that the remedy offered by law was more exigent than what one might obtain through negotiation, they preferred the legal route, even with its attendant risks and expenses (the AAUP has never, after all, charged for its services). Yet much depends on the extent of judicial understanding of, and deference to, the rather special nature of academic freedom claims, for finally these are pinioned by a certain set of assumptions not in all respects germane to claims under the First Amendment. The professional defense of academic freedom has always rested on the special responsibility of the faculty member. Although a college or university teacher has the right to speak as a citizen, he

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or she must observe a standard of utterance not incumbent on the citizen at large, as well as be vigilant in dissociating his or her personal position from that of the institution at which he or she serves. To appeal from professional norms to the somewhat happenstance make-up of the court before which the claims might come is arguably riskier to the complainant than disposition of the case intramurally. Given the increasingly conservative nature of appointments to the courts in many jurisdictions, most visibly in the ongoing restructuring of the Supreme Court (as I write) by the second President Bush, too promiscuous a resort to the ‘‘see you in court’’ defense may have the unintended consequence of weakening a claim or of allowing the disposal of the litigation on secondary grounds. The gravamen of my argument, therefore, is that there is no substitute for strong mechanisms internal to the university or college to provide for faculty peer review in cases in which conditions violative of academic freedom (or, more broadly, improprieties of procedure or prejudicial treatment) may be alleged. Pari passu, the same case must be made for students. At this point, a third form of academic freedom comes into play: The freedom of institutions themselves to develop structures of governance for internal discipline as well as for curricular renewal and revision, or the organization of the faculty into component groups. ‘‘Hard law’’ may sound reassuring, but ‘‘soft law’’ over the long haul may prove to be the more resilient if—and it is a big ‘‘if ’’—colleges and universities are permitted to enjoy the kind of institutional autonomy that serves to protect the academic freedom of its students and faculty. But some would find my argument in want of deepening, for behind it lies a more fundamental premise, articulated by Thomas Haskell, that only a limited overlap exists between academic freedom and First Amendment liberty and that it would be a grave error to assimilate the former to the latter. ‘‘Historically speaking, the heart and soul of academic freedom lies not in free speech but in professional autonomy and collegial self-governance.’’15 It is for this reason that Robert Post, most recently among legal scholars, has argued vigorously that academic freedom is not a matter of individual rights, but, rather, inextricably caught up with professional self-regulation, which justifies the award of certain privileges.16

Ethics and Excesses Alleged professorial irresponsibility is, and historically has been, held to justify public critiques of academic freedom and administrative attempts to rein in campus dissidents. Our topic requires that we address the question of what might be permissible limits on academic freedom, and to that end, two passages from the 1940 Statement of Principles are frequently quoted. The first is a single sentence: ‘‘Teachers are entitled to freedom in the classroom in discussing their subject, but they should be careful not to introduce into their teaching controversial matter which has no relation to their subject.’’

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The second, like the first, suggests a balancing act, but in still more cautionary terms: College and university teachers are citizens, members of a learned profession, and officers of an educational institution. When they speak or write as citizens, they should be free from institutional censorship or discipline, but their special position in the community imposes special obligations. As scholars and educational officers, they should remember that the public may judge their profession and their institution by their utterances. Hence they should at all times be accurate, should exercise appropriate restraint, should show respect for the opinion of others, and should make every effort to indicate that they are not speaking for the institution.17

I think it important to clarify first of all what these statements do not enjoin. They are not intended to exclude controversy relevant to the subject matter or to hold a teacher to some fictitious standard of neutrality in which his or her personal opinions or commitments are flatly prohibited (even if this were possible) from ever coming into play. A classroom should provide space for spontaneous exchanges, and inherent in that spontaneity is the possibility of either party’s making mistakes. The occasional aside, the playing with a daring hypothesis to ignite a classroom discussion, the juncture in a discussion in which a teacher or a student feels called upon to reveal his or her deepest values can all be not only important but indeed defining moments in the educational experience. Forty years in the classroom have taught me that students, by and large, are not particularly drawn to the timid, the hesitating, the self-suppressing, or the intellectually disembodied teaching persona. They respect candor, and they will listen patiently to a point of view contrary to their own if the case is presented in a way that respects and gives full weight to opposing claims. Nor does the question of professional ethics entirely settle the matter of the student’s academic freedom. It is instructive here to advert to another case from the McCarthy era. In Baggett v. Bullitt (1964), 64 members of the faculty, staff, and student body at the University of Washington sought declaratory relief from two state statutes: one requiring a broad affirmative oath purporting to enshrine the principle of respect for the flag and American institutions, and the other imposing a disclaimer oath on all public employees requiring, as a continuance of employment, the denial that one was a subversive person, defined as someone who knowingly joins or remains in any group advocating the overthrow of the federal or state government by force or violence. A majority of the Supreme Court held the statutes void because of their immediate as well as long-range effects. The special interest of Baggett lies in the fact that, although not directly affected by the statutes, the student parties claimed separate standing on the grounds of the law’s potential impairment of their own academic freedom, because it might inhibit faculty members in their professional interactions with students. To abridge the academic freedom of faculty, in short, was to abridge their own.

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To move from 1964 to the first stirrings of such movements as AIA 20-plus years later is to chart a disturbing and dismal change in climate. Although no one would declare that the classroom is entirely privileged from external scrutiny—a peer visit to evaluate the teaching of a candidate for promotion and tenure is a common practice in American higher education that does not on its face appear to violate any fundamental principle of academic freedom— in the course of classroom interactions, teachers and students alike have a legitimate claim to some degree of privacy as part of their freedom of discussion. A campaign encouraging students to write down and report all instances in which they feel the professor is inculcating a certain political orthodoxy is uncomfortably reminiscent of Soviet attempts to compel doctrinal orthodoxy by encouraging members of the same family to spy on each other. (One such attempt recently made at UCLA to offer ‘‘bounties’’ to students who engage in this reporting pushes this intrusiveness even further.) Where there has been a real abuse of faculty discretion or power, such as the public humiliation of a student with opinions contrary to the teacher’s own, it is incumbent on the institution to provide channels for the student to register a complaint without fear of reprisal, and equally incumbent on faculty peers to review the situation and make whatever recommendations may flow from their examination. Conversely, the 1940 Statement does have an edge that we should not seek to blunt. Faculty, according to the second passage, should be ‘‘free from institutional censorship or discipline; but their special position in the community poses special obligations.’’18 Here lies something of a paradox in the concept of academic freedom itself. With the exception of those who teach in that handful of outlaw institutions on the AAUP list of censured administrations, professors in America for the most part have a degree of freedom within their institutions virtually unknown in any other work environment. But in asserting their First Amendment freedoms as citizens, they shoulder an ethical burden from which most other citizens are entirely free, and they do so subject to the scrutiny—if the system is working—of their faculty peers. And here it must be confessed, with the caveat ‘‘if the system is working,’’ that perhaps one reason public confidence in the professoriate seems to be lower than it once was is that there is considerable skepticism that we faculty are ready to police ourselves. It is not a pleasant task to be asked to engage in an inquiry that may result in sanctions against a colleague. But to hand the task over to an administration is to abdicate the responsibility assigned to the faculty corporately by the framers of the 1915 Declaration, and to undercut if not abandon the claims of the faculty to self-government.

On ‘‘Balance’’ In posing these historical remarks primarily in terms of faculty and their relationship to students, the institution, and the larger public, I do not intend to suggest that we have exhausted the subject, or that apparently novel

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challenges to academic freedom never arise. Most publicly of late, recent government actions under the U.S. Patriot Act have made clear the need for eternal vigilance against the tendency of outside agencies to intrude on academic policy. The delay or denial of visas to foreign scholars on what may be only the most palpably slender, if not nonexistent, grounds of national security, or the barring of foreign graduate students on the same grounds from American science and engineering programs (a move that threatens to undercut further American scientific leadership) in the name of antiterrorist measures, are features of the present landscape with which we are becoming all too familiar. But the generally intramural limits of my own treatment of this subject will be more than counterbalanced by the other contributors to this volume. Here a very few words will suffice. The argument for an ABOR in higher education is analogous to that for the inclusion of Intelligent Design in biology courses, which it most closely resembles in its speciousness. Who could possibly defend professors who attempt to inculcate mindless orthodoxies rather than expose their values to open scrutiny? Certainly not the AAUP. Who could possibly object to the presentation of two points of view? Again, not the AAUP. But the mandating of a spurious ‘‘balance’’ on the grounds, as the Bill puts it, of ‘‘the uncertainty and unsettled character of all human knowledge’’ is no basis for arguing that, for example, Intelligent Design—certainly an appropriate subject in religion courses—should be turned into an alternate scientific theory. Professional competence, after all, includes the ability to reach a judgment (based on the standards of a particular discipline) that while some questions are indeed unsettled, others are as settled as they are ever likely to be. One must, however, concede a degree of shrewdness to those proponents of the ABOR who avail themselves of the cloak of postmodernist rhetoric to suggest that all knowledge is provisional, and who seem to proceed from that position to the quite un-postmodernist and unprofessional view that therefore it must all be given equal weight. We can concede that the humanities and at least some forms of social science do not involve the same kind of hypotheses that a physical or natural scientist would test for scientific verifiability. Does this mean that no questions have been settled in them? In my own field, debates between proponents of various literary theories are not necessarily interminable; the marketplace of ideas, to which any votary of free enterprise surely would subscribe, eventually sorts out winners and losers. No British historian would turn to Macaulay to find out about England in 1685; she might turn to Macaulay to find out about the Whig perspective in the writing of history. And no one I know of in an English department would now align himself with the New Humanists and stake his critical practice on the examples of Irving Babbitt or Paul Elmer More, although these figures may and do serve as legitimate objects of study in literary and cultural history. In the classroom, the call for balance, wrongly interpreted, can be pressed to ludicrous extremes. Those of us who teach literature read student papers

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with an eye on such questions as: Has this student read the text carefully? Does what he or she says conform to reasonable criteria of probability based on what we know of the author and the time in which the author wrote, as well as what the text itself says and does not say? If a politically conservative student presents me with a paper on Moby Dick which argues that Melville’s novel is an unapologetic brief for nineteenth-century robber barons and an anticipation of Social Darwinism, am I barred from evaluating that paper because my politics may be different? Can the student hold me accountable for political bias under a law enacted by people who do not understand what criteria govern the analysis of literary texts? Or, to pose the question in terms of institutional development, if a department of anthropology decides to build on its strengths, which happen to lie in social anthropology, at the cost of a moratorium on further appointments in physical anthropology, should this first be submitted to the guardians of ‘‘academic balance’’ on the grounds that social anthropologists are far more likely than people who study bones to undermine the safety of the Republic? ‘‘Teaching the conflicts,’’ as my colleague Gerald Graff has called it, presupposes that the conflicts are between disciplinary professionals who share underlying premises even if they differ on the interpretation and application of those premises.19 That sound pedagogical idea was first famously enunciated by Henry Adams, who thought that his own shortcomings as a medievalist teaching at Harvard ought to be remedied by ‘‘a rival Assistant Professor opposite him, whose business should be strictly limited to expressing opposite views.’’20 But I am dubious that such an opposition should or could be legislated, even in the unlikely event that universities were willing to foot the bill. If it could be, I would be prepared to wax indignant about the underrepresentation of Marxists and Green Party members in business schools, or welfare state proponents in the University of Chicago Department of Economics. My indignation does not, however, wax. More disturbing are the claims that there is a verifiable convergence between leftist orthodoxies and disloyalty to the administration post-9/11, as if the utterances of a handful of irresponsible academics were prima facie evidence of the corruption of an entire profession. The AAUP statement on the ABOR puts it soundly and, in my view, unexceptionably: ‘‘It is the responsibility of the professoriate, in cooperation with administrative officers, to ensure compliance with professional standards.’’21 In that sense, the AAUP has never abandoned the spirit of its 1915 Declaration, and neither should we.

Notes 1. Richard Hofstadter and Walter P. Metzger, The Development of Academic Freedom in the United States (New York: Columbia University Press, 1955); Walter P. Metzger, ‘‘The 1940 Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure,’’ in Freedom and Tenure in the Academy: The Fiftieth Anniversary of the 1940 Statement of Principles, ed. William W. Van Alstyne, Special Issue, Law and Contemporary Problems 53, no. 3 (1990): 3–77.

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2. AAUP, 1915 Declaration of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure, in AAUP Policy Documents and Reports, 10th ed. (Washington, DC: American Association of University Professors; Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006), 291–301 (quotation at 296); cf. 1940 Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure, with 1970 Interpretive Comments, ibid., 3–7 (the Statement proper is at 3–5). 3. AAUP, 1915 Declaration of Principles, 295. 4. Ibid., 296. 5. Ibid., 297. 6. Ibid. 7. Ibid. 8. AAUP, Statement on Professional Ethics, ibid., 171–72. 9. AAUP, Joint Statement on Rights and Freedoms of Students, ibid., 273–79. 10. William W. Van Alstyne, ‘‘Academic Freedom and the First Amendment in the Supreme Court of the United States: An Unhurried Historical Review,’’ in Freedom and Tenure in the Academy, ed. Van Alstyne, 79. 11. McAuliff v. Mayor of New Bedford (1892), quoted by Van Alstyne, Freedom and Tenure in the Academy, 84. 12. Laurence Tribe, American Constitutional Law 681, 2nd ed. (Mineola, NY: Foundation Press, 1988), quoted by Van Alstyne, Freedom and Tenure in the Academy, 93. 13. Frost & Frost Trucking Company v. Railroad Commission (1926), quoted by Van Alstyne, Freedom and Tenure in the Academy, 93. 14. Quoted by Van Alstyne, Freedom and Tenure in the Academy, 108. 15. Thomas L. Haskell, ‘‘Justifying the Rights of Academic Freedom in the Era of Power/Knowledge,’’ in The Future of Academic Freedom, ed. Louis Menand (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), 54. 16. Robert W. Post, ‘‘The Structure of Academic Freedom,’’ in Academic Freedom after September 11, ed. Beshara Dounian (New York: Zone Books, 2006), 61–106. 17. AAUP, 1940 Statement, AAUP Policy Documents and Reports, 3–4. 18. Ibid., 3. 19. Gerald Graff, Beyond the Culture Wars: How Teaching the Conflicts Can Revitalize American Higher Education (New York: Norton, 1992). 20. Henry Adams, The Education of Henry Adams, ed. Ernest Samuels (Boston: Houghton-Mifflin, 1974), 303–4. 21. Available at http://www.aaup.org/AAUP/About/Committees.

WHAT’S TO FEAR: THE AMERICAN RIGHT, ANTI-INTELLECTUALISM, AND THE ABOR Kevin Mattson The conservatives, as a minority, are the new radicals. The evidence is overwhelming. —William Buckley1

There’s a reason that the recent (at the time of this writing, at least) Arizona version of the Academic Bill of Rights (ABOR) received so much attention.

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It’s particularly egregious. The legislation would, in the words of Inside Higher Education, ‘‘require public colleges to provide students with ‘alternative coursework’ if a student finds the assigned material ‘personally offensive,’ which is defined as something that ‘conflicts with the student’s beliefs or practices in sex, morality, or religion.’’’2 Even the national leader of the movement for the ABOR, David Horowitz, has opposed this particular version. But no matter Horowitz’s opposition, the Arizona ABOR is emblematic of a worldview that the American right has been pushing and that ABOR and Horowitz’s own arguments help nurture. Although the right has always distrusted the professoriate, the recent attack changes things dramatically. What’s so strange about it is just how postmodernist and relativistic the right has become in waging it. The ABOR is clearly on the cutting edge of a wider set of culture wars that the right is fighting today. Consider, for instance, the defense of Intelligent Design—a perspective to be taught just like any other perspective, as many proponents have argued—or the attack on objectivity in journalism— now seen as so dubious and impossible that citizens need only consult overtly political press sources like Fox, Limbaugh, or opinionated Web sites to become informed. Keeping these other areas in mind, the ABOR stands as one of the most important developments in the American right’s cultural warfare. To understand the right’s worldview and its implications requires a brief trip through a strange and often overlooked chapter in American intellectual history—the relationship between American conservatives and academia. American conservatives have always distrusted modern intellectuals (consider Whittaker Chambers’s derision of the ‘‘poisonous puddles of the intellectuals’’).3 Intellectuals represent the much-maligned tradition of Western Enlightenment; they live deracinated lives and criticize the religious and traditional beliefs of ordinary citizens. The modern university simply focuses on the conservative critique of the mind. But now the suspicion has changed—reflecting certain developments during the 1960s—and has become increasingly destructive. By exploring the relationship between conservatives and academe during the postwar period in American history (1945 to the present), we will get a much better understanding of the Student Bill of Rights sponsored by David Horowitz. We will be able to notice what has changed in conservative attitudes about academe and what has not over the course of the last 50 years. We will also move the debates from being just about higher education to being about the wider world of politics and intellectual life. The Student Bill of Rights has both a longer history behind it as well as wider ramifications than just for America’s colleges and universities. Understanding this helps us understand the high stakes of the debate that this book prompts.

The Uber-Text: God and Man at Yale The history of the American right and academe would have been very different indeed if William F. Buckley had not attended Yale University. But, of

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course, Buckley’s pedigree demanded a Yale education. As his biographer points out, Buckley’s father had made the decision for him to attend Yale ‘‘a decade earlier’’ than when the young man entered. After Buckley served in the Army during World War II, he walked into the hallowed halls of America’s premiere Ivy League institution and sought the sort of education his family expected.4 He recoiled at what he saw here. For sure, he enjoyed cutting his teeth in the debating club and on the university’s newspaper. But when he walked into his classes, he drew aghast at what he found. Throughout the courses he took, Buckley was confronted over and over by teachers who tried to ‘‘subvert religion and individualism.’’5 Part of his reaction might have been due to being a lonely Catholic in a sea of Protestants. It was also, undoubtedly, Buckley’s youthfulness—his biographer called him an ‘‘obnoxious brat’’—that spurred him on to make fierce criticisms of his elders.6 He thrilled at the youthful rebellion of lambasting his professors, calling out, for instance, one history professor for his ‘‘bigoted atheism.’’7 He enjoyed thumbing his nose at the administration for lying to the alumni about what was being taught at Yale. And he wanted to cause a sensational splash in making his criticisms known not just to Yale-ies but to the wider world. This became the basis for Buckley’s first book, God and Man at Yale. The book’s fame and sensation were due in part to its simplicity. Nowhere did Buckley explain why he thought Yale should be teaching its students two key cornerstones of his own personal faith—entrepreneurial, free market capitalism (what he labeled ‘‘enterprise’’ and ‘‘self-reliance’’) and Christianity.8 He just asserted that the institution should, no questions asked. Any teacher of good character would recognize this. What shocked Buckley, as he poured through class content and textbooks and lecture notes and exams, was just how many of his professors embraced Keynesian economics and atheism instead. The logic of the argument was airtight, especially evidenced in the concluding policy suggestions. The president of the university, Buckley reasoned, should see teachers as ‘‘intermediaries.’’ Because the ‘‘president of a university cannot transmit to the students his own values directly,’’ professors must ‘‘do the job.’’9 Alumni should pressure the president to see to this task. If professors refused to serve as intermediaries of the alums or the president, well, then, Buckley argued, they ‘‘ought to be discharged.’’10 The idea that professors could or should be protected by some conception of academic freedom was absurd. All of this came down to Buckley’s own version of conservatism—the ideology that he would take with him to form the National Review a few years later. The real culprit—the culprit of other conservatives like Richard Weaver and Whittaker Chambers, too—was a radical relativism that was creeping into the American consciousness and that grew out of a liberal and Enlightenment tradition. Buckley called this the ‘‘widespread academic reliance on relativism, pragmatism, and utilitarianism,’’ especially the dangerous thinking of John

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Dewey.11 Believing in a universal and objective theory of values, Buckley situated his critique of Yale within the much more important battle of the Cold War, which was erupting everywhere around him. Only an objective faith in free markets and Christianity could serve as the requisite ammunition capable of doing battle not just against the atheistic Keynesians at Yale but Communism abroad. Reactions to God and Man at Yale were, not surprisingly, critical. Liberals didn’t like the book for obvious reasons. But surprisingly enough, Buckley found attacks coming from his right flank as well. Russell Kirk, editor of the Modern Age and eventually a contributor to the National Review, would take issue with Buckley’s conception of the professor as servant to the president. This offended Kirk’s conception of the scholar as standing independent from political pressures. The scholar didn’t have all the rights in the world but certainly had the right to self-governance. After all, ‘‘scholars and teachers are not traffickers in a market, but members of the clerisy.’’12 They shouldn’t be seen, as was obvious from Kirk’s belief in the godliness of academic work, merely as ‘‘intermediaries.’’ But there was another reaction to Buckley, one a bit more predictable. It was mostly heard from other Yale-ies, especially the top administrators recoiling at the young hotshot making news. As Buckley explained it, many at Yale characterized him as a ‘‘black reactionary.’’13 Although a self-professed conservative, he was perceived as a radical who shook up the status quo. At first, Buckley might have been shocked to learn that the leftist Dwight Macdonald celebrated his ‘‘brisk, brash, indecorous’’ style and saw, in the words of Macdonald’s biographer, ‘‘the earmarks of the campus radical’’ in Buckley.14 But if Buckley was surprised by this praise from the left, he didn’t show it. After all, Buckley pronounced conservatives like himself as the ‘‘new radicals’’ on America’s campuses.15 He had hit on a conceptualization that would come back in spades decades later: The Conservative as Cutting-Edge Radical.

The 1960s as Time of Woe It wasn’t the Bill Buckleys of the world who stormed the university during the decade after his book appeared. It was the New Left. Even though the scraggly students of the New Left and Bill Buckley didn’t look or sound the same, they did in fact share a mutual enemy: the federal government. It wasn’t the size of the federal government (or the belief that power should reside in the states making up the American union) that upset the New Left the way it did conservatives; rather, it was the government’s decision to embark on the Vietnam War and create the sort of ‘‘war machine’’ necessary to do so. Here’s where the modern university came in. Universities pursued research for the war machine and provided cover—in the form of ‘‘expertise’’—to fight what was perceived as an unjust war on the part of a growing number of students throughout the 1960s.

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When students took over Columbia University in 1968, inhabiting the president’s office and numerous other buildings, they expressed anger at the university’s plan to expand into a poorer neighborhood. But they also demanded that the university ‘‘disaffiliate from a defense institute involved in research on the Vietnam War.’’16 As their occupation heated up before the police were finally called in to clear out the buildings, a local leader, Mark Rudd, explained that the students were putting the New Left principle of ‘‘participatory democracy’’ into ‘‘practice.’’17 Sometimes this radicalism took on even more desperate and frustrated tones. Two years after Columbia, for instance, bombs went off at ‘‘an Army math research project’’ located at the University of Wisconsin. Chaos had come to the ivory tower.18 Conservatives looked aghast, but it’s important to remember that so, too, did liberals. Richard Hofstadter, a prominent historian and liberal critic of the New Left, sympathized with some of his students’ demands at Columbia, but he chastised their style of protest (which he believed to be therapeutic and dramatic rather than effective or reformist). In the campus takeover, he saw a dangerous incivility, a pathological outcome of the ideal of participatory democracy. The university needed to preserve its autonomy from political pressures—no matter if they came from the right or left. As Hofstadter’s biographer described his attitude, ‘‘In the nation’s present crisis [of the late 1960s], universities were needed more than ever as voices of reason. At their best, they offered sanctuary to intellectual heretics wary of popular prejudices and suspicious of concentrated power.’’19 Carving out a middle ground between far right and far left, Hofstadter upheld a liberal ideal of the university’s independence from political pressures and a defense of its professional standards that stood above the pressures of mob rule. The stance won him few friends among the New Left; one student compared him to ‘‘the French aristocrats’’ during the French ‘‘revolution.’’20 Hofstadter’s concern would soon be crowded out by a chorus of neoconservative voices. This group of predominantly Jewish and once-liberal intellectuals recoiled at the excesses of the 1960s, including student protest and disobedience. They explained student unrest as part of a wider social breakdown. For neoconservatives, higher education had helped nurture a ‘‘new class’’ of educated people who constituted what was called an ‘‘adversary culture.’’ In the words of the leading neoconservative Irving Kristol, the ‘‘new class,’’ educated at America’s premier institutions, wound up developing ‘‘hedonistic life styles’’ and ‘‘emphasized individualistic self-expression which undermined communal and personal restraints, the essential elements for an orderly society and social progress.’’21 The new class simply emulated the counterculture and campus rebels of the 1960s, as they lived on into the 1970s and 1980s. Neoconservatives developed a long-range view of politics and cultural transformation. But at no point, no matter how far history proceeded from the time, did the 1960s drop out of the picture for them. Perhaps the clearest

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expression of this was Allan Bloom’s book, The Closing of the American Mind, which came out almost 20 years after the Columbia takeover. During the late 1960s, Bloom was teaching at Cornell University where he grew shocked at the powerful influence of black students and feminists. He moved onto the University of Chicago, and it was here that he wrote his book. It was written as if the decade of the 1960s was still playing itself out. Bloom described the 1960s as an ‘‘unmitigated disaster.’’22 Indeed, he compared the student protestors of the 1960s to the student fascists of 1930s Germany. Bloom believed the New Left’s protests prompted ‘‘the same dismantling of the structure of rational inquiry as had the German university in the thirties.’’23 Following Buckley (who himself had followed Richard Weaver), Bloom lashed out at a pervasive relativism that was the source of all things bad in America’s colleges. He described the threat of ‘‘openness.’’ The philosophy guiding American higher education was ‘‘open to all kinds of men, all kinds of lifestyles, all ideologies. There is no enemy other than the man who is not open to everything. But when there are no shared goals or vision of the public good, is the social contract any longer possible?’’24 The question might have been intended as rhetorical, but the answers were extremely straightforward. The New Left had destroyed the academy. So, too, had the counterculture and its love of rock music, free love, and drugs. Bloom sought out the philosophical roots for these movements, and he found them in the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. Bloom’s students had embraced a Dionysian lifestyle. For sure, student protests had died out by the time Bloom wrote the book, but he believed students were still self-centered and lacked any sense of commitment to universal values that transcended their personal desires. Their politics were a simplistic expression of what became known during the late 1980s as ‘‘political correctness.’’ Students learned to question any claim to truth as simply a smokescreen for self-interest and domination. Scratch the claims of the founding fathers or Western philosophers declaring truth, for instance, and Bloom’s students would always find racism or power or some other evil. Bloom sounded like an old-fashioned reactionary. His story about American higher education was a tale told by many neoconservatives—one of decline. He wanted a return to a tradition of the Great Books, hoping his students might once again pursue a close reading of Plato and other classics in the Western canon. The battle could be won by changing reading lists. Bloom personified the conservative as crusty curmudgeons in the realm of ideas (his own colorful personality suggested otherwise). His reaction against the culture of the American academy was a powerful tendency in neoconservative political thinking. But it was only one reaction and certainly not the most important.

The Other 1960s The conservative as curmudgeon had its limits for those wanting to win political influence. Besides, during the 1990s, growing numbers of

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conservatives started to think of themselves as hip and cool, far from stuffy and curmudgeonly. They wanted to be seen as something more than just the defenders of an older society that the New Left had torn down. As David Brooks put it in his anthology of mid-1990s conservative thinking, Backward and Upwards, conservatives didn’t need to be ‘‘the heavies’’ nor did they need to embrace ‘‘puritanism.’’ He recounted how he tried to refuse having his picture taken with his arms crossed and looking tough and sinister, because that wasn’t the impression he wanted to make. And the social criticism he became known for—Bobos in Paradise, for instance—was more funny than stern or moralizing.25 Conservatives were quickly becoming hip—referring to themselves as ‘‘South Park conservatives’’ (those who enjoyed watching the television show by that name) and ‘‘crunchy cons’’ (shopping at organic food chains and dressing like hipsters).26 Conservatives even thought of themselves as rebels, as Fred Barnes explained in his celebration of George W. Bush’s presidency. Barnes described Bush as ‘‘edgy, blunt’’ and ‘‘scornful of the conventional wisdom.’’ No longer, for Barnes, did the conservative have to appear like William Buckley, who defined conservatism as the need to ‘‘stand athwart history, yelling, ‘Stop.’’’ Instead, the conservative could be the defiant rebel—much in the mold of the rebels of the 1960s.27 It’s here where we must locate the leading exponent of the ABOR, David Horowitz. I have no idea if he’s a crunchy con or hip conservative. And one thing’s for certain, he has made a reputation for attacking the ‘‘destructive generation’’ of the 1960s. In a book with Peter Collier, he sounded much like other neoconservatives by associating ‘‘feminized poverty, AIDS, drugs, and drug related crime’’ of the 1980s with ‘‘the heedless assault on The System that took place in the Sixties.’’28 But after trying to purge his soul of the bad things he personally did in the 1960s, including associating with the Black Panther Party that might have had something to do with the murder of one of his friends, the 1960s style still lives on in him. Or so he claims. In The Art of Political War, one of Horowitz’s most provocative books, he cites his ‘‘fellow columnist at Salon,’’ Camille Paglia. Paglia seemed to be a creature of the 1960s with her celebrations of the Rolling Stones (a band that Bloom detested). But she also became known for her staunch criticism of the feminist movement’s political correctness. And in this, she’s the perfect champion of Horowitz. Paglia writes that she respects Horowitz ‘‘as one of America’s most original and courageous political analysts. He has the true 1960s spirit—audacious and irreverent, yet passionately engaged and committed to social change.’’29 Horowitz proudly accepted this line of praise. Horowitz has taken the political content out of the 1960s protest movements—a critique of American power abroad and an alliance with the voices of America’s minorities—and has whittled the decade’s legacy down to style. This is what Paglia means by his inheritance of the ‘‘true 1960s spirit.’’ So when he calls for students to take up the ABOR, he cites historical

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precedence: ‘‘I encourage [students] to use the language that the left has deployed so effectively on behalf of its own agendas. Radical professors have created a ‘hostile learning’ environment for conservative students. . . . The university should be an ‘inclusive’ and intellectually ‘diverse’ community.’’30 Here’s where the ABOR comes in. It successfully grafts his 1960s style to his conservative politics. In taking this tack, Horowitz has decided to leave behind any claim to objective, universal knowledge—the sort that Buckley, Weaver, and Bloom defended. Instead, Horowitz now sounds a note of postmodernism, if we associate that academic term with contemporary theories about the indeterminancy of knowledge (for instance, poststructuralism and the French philosopher Michel Foucault’s radical critique of knowledge and power always working in tandem). Take the original ABOR statement: ‘‘Human knowledge is a never-ending pursuit of the truth,’’ because ‘‘there is no humanly accessible truth that is not in principle open to challenge, and that no party or intellectual faction has a monopoly on wisdom.’’31 It’s in this language that you hear the 1960s spirit swallowing up the right’s older faith in objective truth. Buckley, after all, knew just what he wanted taught and how, and so, too, did Bloom. What carries over from the older conservative tradition is the distrust of intellectuals and the professoriate. But while carried over, it too has changed form. In the past, the right chastised intellectuals for standing in the Western tradition of the Enlightenment, with its break from religious tradition and its critique of organic social hierarchy. Horowitz (an intellectual through and through) distrusts the professoriate for imposing its own political views on college students. In the original words of the ABOR, there is a need for the ‘‘protection of students’’ from ‘‘the imposition of any orthodoxy of a political, religious or ideological nature.’’32 Here is another radical shift in conservative logic and another inheritance from the 1960s. The ABOR distrusts the authority and competence of the professoriate. How else to explain why Horowitz took the ABOR to state legislatures and supported politicians calling for the monitoring of America’s classrooms?33 A radical distrust of the professoriate—similar to the attacks made on Hofstadter in the late 1960s by his New Left critics—seems to have taken on new form. To a large extent, Horowitz did inherit the ‘‘spirit of the 1960s.’’ The question remains what to make of that spirit. When students of the New Left took over buildings during the late 1960s, they may have had legitimate concerns, but they had also rejected the central principle of political compromise. That’s why liberals like Richard Hofstadter criticized them. Liberals pointed out that the university could not become a political football or a battleground for political ideologies. The university would collapse under such pressure. What’s so worrisome about Horowitz’s claims today is how much they mirror the radical sentiments of the New Left protestors. Students (or, more accurately, politicians purporting to speak for them) who demand that the

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curriculum better reflect their own ideological orientation and those who believe they deserve immediate alternatives if offended are remarkably similar to the uncompromising students of the 1960s. The spirit of demanding one’s ‘‘rights’’ and of participatory democracy live on in their demands (or, again, in the demands their surrogates make for them). Both sets of students exert a pressure on an institution that is truly unmanageable. Just try to imagine a university functioning if each professor had to please each student and create a tailor-made curriculum. Imagine a university opening up its classrooms to political legislatures inquiring about ‘‘diversity’’ in political opinion. These new student demands threaten to make worse one of the most troubling features of higher education today. Since the 1960s, universities have acted like corporations that market themselves to students who act increasingly like consumers. For instance, universities build student fitness centers and then quickly advertise them in publicity literature. Students ‘‘shop’’ for the right college, and in filling out course evaluations, they think of themselves as filing consumer reports about what they liked and didn’t like. The modern university looks like a shopping mall. Is it any surprise that conservative students feel empowered to complain about courses in which they have their opinions challenged? The ABOR simply extends these students’ logic. And today’s conservative viewpoints seem remarkably similar to the feel-good therapeutic politics in which New Left student protestors engaged. This gives you a sense of just how dangerous the ideology surrounding the ABOR really is. It’s especially ironic because the conservative voice in higher education debates has historically been in opposition to relativism. Today, conservatives are increasingly the party of relativism and perspectivism. And if these debates come down to political power—as Horowitz seems to desire in handing the ABOR over to state legislatures—then we’re in real trouble. Horowitz takes Buckley’s love of the university presidents’ executive power—their ability to fire professors at will—without taking any of his language about objective theories of truth. He transfers that power from the university’s president and places it into the hands of state legislatures. There is no conception of truth operating here, just political power. Although conservatives once warned about the dangers of relativism, they now seem willing to use it for the sake of winning the culture wars. Why would anyone want an education system run on the whims of young people determining their individualized curricula or on the decisions of political officials snooping around in America’s colleges? Why would anyone want a culture that gives up on the ideal of professional competence and the authority of the professoriate and instead embraces the idea that since truth is so hard to determine, it’s best to turn education matters over to state legislatures? We should be asking those questions today, because the ABOR naturally prompts them. The answers to them should terrify anyone concerned with the future of higher education and the future of democracy in this country.

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Notes 1. William Buckley, God and Man at Yale (Chicago: Regnery, 1951), 107. 2. ‘‘Avoid Whatever Offends You,’’ Inside Higher Education, available at www. insidehighered.com/layout/set/print/news/2006/02/17/ariz (accessed February 17, 2006). 3. Whittaker Chambers, Cold Friday (New York: Random House, 1964), 7. 4. John Judis, William F. Buckley, Jr.: Patron Saint of the Conservatives (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1988), 52. 5. Buckley, God and Man at Yale, xiii. 6. Judis, Patron Saint of the Conservatives, 50. 7. Buckley, God and Man at Yale, 13. 8. Ibid., 45. 9. Ibid., 172. 10. Ibid., 197. 11. Ibid., 25. 12. Russell Kirk, Academic Freedom (Chicago: Regnery, 1955), 122. 13. Buckley, God and Man at Yale, 106. 14. Michael Wreszin, A Rebel in Defense of Tradition: The Life and Politics of Dwight Macdonald (New York: Basic Books, 1994), 274. 15. Buckley, God and Man at Yale, 107. 16. James Miller, Democracy is in the Streets: From Port Huron to the Siege of Chicago (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1987), 290. 17. Rudd quoted in Miller, Democracy is in the Streets, 291. 18. David Farber, The Age of Great Dreams: America in the 1960s (New York: Hill and Wang, 1994), 211. 19. David Brown, Richard Hofstadter (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006), 184. 20. Quoted in Brown, Richard Hofstadter, 185. 21. Kristol quoted in Murray Friedman, The Neoconservative Revolution: Jewish Intellectuals and the Shaping of Public Policy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 188. 22. Allan Bloom, The Closing of the American Mind (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1987), 320. 23. Ibid., 313. 24. Ibid., 27. 25. David Brooks, ‘‘Introduction,’’ in Backward and Upward (New York: Vintage, 1995), xi. For more on Brooks, see my ‘‘What’s the Matter with David Brooks,’’ Common Review (Summer 2005): 22–29. 26. Brian Anderson, South Park Conservatives (Washington, DC: Regnery, 2005) and Rod Dreher, Crunchy Cons (New York: Crown, 2006). 27. Fred Barnes, Rebel-in-Chief (New York: Crown, 2006), 13, 21. 28. Peter Collier and David Horowitz, Destructive Generation (New York: Summit Books, 1990), 266–67. 29. Paglia quoted in David Horowitz, The Art of Political War (Dallas: Spence, 2000), 96. 30. Horowitz quoted in Stanley Fish, ‘‘‘Intellectual Diversity’: The Trojan Horse of a Dark Design,’’ Chronicle of Higher Education (February 13, 2004): B14. 31. Academic Bill of Rights, available at http://www.studentsforacademicfreedom. org/abor.htm (accessed 2005). 32. Ibid. 33. For more on this, see my ‘‘A Student Bill of Fights,’’ Nation (April 4, 2005): 16–17.

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ACADEMIC FREEDOM, FRAGILE AS EVER Michael B´e rub´e In recent years I’ve come to realize that few people know what academic freedom is, or why it matters. Perhaps that’s not surprising at a time when all too few Americans know what the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution is, or why it matters. But what I’m going to argue here is not only that academic freedom is under attack, but also that we are dealing with a coordinated program of obfuscation about just what academic freedom means. I’ll make the obvious argument first. Academic freedom is under attack for pretty much the same reasons that liberalism itself is under attack. American universities tend to be somewhat left of center of the American mainstream, particularly with regard to cultural issues that have to do with gender roles and sexuality: The combination of a largely liberal, secular professoriat and a generally under-25 student body tends to give you a campus population that, by and large, does not see gay marriage as a serious threat to the Republic. And after 9/11—again, for obvious reasons—many forms of mainstream liberalism have been denounced as anti-American. There is now a cottage industry of popular right-wing books in which liberalism is equated with treason (Ann Coulter), with mental disorders (Michael Savage), and with fascism (Jonah Goldberg). Coulter’s book also mounts a vigorous defense of Joe McCarthy, and Michelle Malkin has written a book defending the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II.1 In this climate, it should come as no surprise that we are seeing attacks on one of the few remaining institutions in American life that is often—although not completely—dominated by liberals. In 2005–2006, Pennsylvania was treated to four hearings held by a body known as the House Select Committee on Academic Freedom. Its hearings were largely uneventful; one of the Democrats on the committee, Dan Surra, even described them as a ‘‘colossal waste of time.’’2 But it’s worth noting that HR 177, which created the committee, actually stipulates that if an individual makes an allegation against a faculty member claiming bias, the faculty member must be given at least 48 hours’ notice of the specifics of the allegation prior to the testimony being given and be given an opportunity to testify at the same hearing as the individual making the allegation.3

I think some people read that paragraph in July 2005, when it passed the Pennsylvania House, and imagined a dramatic scenario in which outraged conservative undergraduates would stand up and say ‘‘J’accuse!’’ at hapless liberal faculty members who’d had but 48 scant hours to get their act together and haul themselves before a board of inquiry. Happily, things haven’t unfolded in quite that way. There doesn’t really seem to be a flood of students complaining about their liberal professors; at Penn State, it turns out, we’ve

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had 13 complaints over the past five years, in a statewide system involving 177,000 courses and 83,000 students. And those 13 complaints don’t fit any clear pattern, either; in one such complaint, a Muslim student suggested that a professor was opposed to Islam; another student charged that a professor was too conservative.4 Pennsylvania is the only state to have passed one of these laws. But thanks largely to the efforts of David Horowitz, bills like HR 177 have been introduced in about 20 states so far. It’s clear that, in many cases, the legislators sponsoring them are doing so in the name of preserving academic freedom— but without having any clear idea what academic freedom might be. In Florida, for instance, State Representative Dennis Baxley insisted, upon introducing a similar bill and successfully shepherding it through committee on an 8–2 party-line vote, that the legislation would help to combat ‘‘leftist totalitarianism’’ on the part of ‘‘dictator professors,’’ by allowing students to sue professors whenever they felt their beliefs were not being ‘‘respected.’’ At the University of Florida, James Vanlandingham of the Independent Florida Alligator reported the following: Students who believe their professor is singling them out for ‘‘public ridicule’’— for instance, when professors use the Socratic method to force students to explain their theories in class—would also be given the right to sue. ‘‘Some professors say, ‘Evolution is a fact. I don’t want to hear about Intelligent Design [a creationist theory], and if you don’t like it, there’s the door,’’’ Baxley said, citing one example when he thought a student should sue.5

In January 2005, Ohio state senator Larry Mumper introduced a similar bill, and was asked by a Columbus Dispatch reporter what he would consider ‘‘controversial matter’’ that should be barred from the classroom. ‘‘Religion and politics, those are the main things,’’ he replied.6 Over the course of that year, I learned something of the back story on the legislative history of Pennsylvania’s HR 177, and I discovered that the bill that was passed was significantly different from the bill that was first proposed. In the spring of 2006, as David Horowitz was visiting the Penn State campus, I was a guest on a conservative radio talk show hosted by Penn State students. They wanted to know, among other things, just what was so bad about a House committee being convened with the purpose of making sure that universities were abiding by their stated grievance procedures for students who felt they had been discriminated against on political grounds. I replied that while it was perfectly legitimate for the state to ensure that universities have adequate grievance procedures for students, Representative Gibson Armstrong’s proposal for such a committee said no such thing; on the contrary, the original bill called for the creation of a committee that would investigate everything from reading lists to hiring practices and that would travel throughout the state holding 15 to 20 hearings on liberal

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bias—hearings in which accused professors would have no opportunity to face their accusers (that bit about the ‘‘48 hours’ notice’’ was an especially late revision). Furthermore, the original language of HR 177 sought to ensure that students would be graded on (among other things) their ability to defend their perspectives. Now there’s a recipe for relativism—in which you have to give a student an A for his or her dogged insistence on citing the Book of Genesis in a class on evolutionary theory. Fortunately, between the first draft and the version that passed the House, the remaining adults in Pennsylvania took over, and revised the charge of the committee so that its focus lay largely on the viability of universities’ internal grievance procedures. But that was not what the far-right culture warriors wanted; they wanted a much more wide-ranging and intrusive committee. And in a weird way, the outcome of those revisions to the bill, welcome as they were, helped to confuse the public understanding of academic freedom still further. After all, here was a House committee investigating ‘‘academic freedom’’ by ensuring that students had every opportunity to speak their minds.

The David Horowitz Freedom Center The principle of academic freedom stipulates that ‘‘teachers are entitled to full freedom in research and in the publication of the results, subject to the adequate performance of their other academic duties.’’7 It insists that professors should have intellectual autonomy from legislatures, trustees, alumni, parents, and ecclesiastical authorities with regard to their teaching and research. In this respect it is one of the legacies of the Enlightenment, which sought— successfully, in those nations most influenced by the Enlightenment—to free scientists and humanists from the dictates of church and state. And it is precisely that autonomy from legislative and religious oversight that helped to fuel the extraordinary scientific and intellectual efflorescence in the West over the past two centuries. It has also served as one of the cornerstones of the free and open society, in contrast to societies in which certain forms of research will not be pursued if they displease the general secretary or council of clerics. But, today, the paradox of these legislative ‘‘academic bills of rights’’ is this: They claim to defend academic freedom precisely by promising to give the state direct oversight of course curricula, of departmental hiring practices, and of the intellectual direction of academic fields. In other words, they do so by violating the very principles they claim to defend. Horowitz claims that the Academic Bill of Rights (ABOR) does no such thing; he points out that it includes a great deal of language from the American Association of University Presidents (AAUP) Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom, and he insists that it would forbid the hiring or firing of any faculty member on the basis of his or her political beliefs. But that’s just what David Horowitz says for public consumption. Here’s Horowitz in his

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2000 book, The Art of Political War and Other Radical Pursuits: ‘‘[y]ou cannot cripple an opponent by outwitting him in a political debate. You can only do it by following Lenin’s injunction: ‘In political conflicts, the goal is not to refute your opponent’s argument, but to wipe him from the face of the earth.’’’8 There should be no question about this: David Horowitz was a member of the extremist fringe 30 years ago when he was hanging out with the last remnants of the Black Panther Party, and he’s a member of the extremist fringe now. He’s merely exchanged fringes. And he’s notoriously slipshod in everything he does, right down to his claim that, on the eve of the 2004 election, a Penn State biology professor showed his class Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11, which is compounded by his admission that he had no proof of this claim despite making it throughout the latter half of 2005, and compounded still further by his claim that he was holding himself to ‘‘a higher standard of honesty’’ for dropping the original claim when he was challenged on it by Pennsylvania Democrat Lawrence Curry in the January 2006 hearing.9 So why are 20 states considering legislation written by this man, legislation that claims to defend academic freedom by placing professors directly under the control and oversight of the state? Horowitz has managed to pull off this rhetorical and political feat by confusing the definition of academic freedom and construing it as a property of students rather than teachers. Basically, he has managed to convince many Americans, including many American students, that ‘‘academic freedom’’ means, among other things, ‘‘freedom from the preponderance of liberal professors.’’ You can find a neatly condensed form of this confusion in Horowitz’s Students for Academic Freedom handbook. It’s a little red book of some kind, but I don’t rightly know what to call it. And it includes a handy section of frequently asked questions: VI. Frequently Asked Questions 1. Question: Is there a conflict of interest in appealing to the legislature for help in the case of public universities, since the principles of academic freedom seek to protect the university from political interference? Answer: There is no conflict. The state legislatures and publicly appointed boards of trustees have a fiduciary responsibility to taxpayer-funded institutions and their tax-paying supporters. Among them is the responsibility to insure that these institutions serve the whole community and not just a partisan political or philosophical faction. If public universities become politically partisan they act to subvert the democratic process, which is not what their creators intended. It is illegal under state patronage laws to use state-funded institutions for partisan purposes. No one has the right to create a closed political fiefdom at public expense. Such exclusionary practices are the very opposite of academic freedom. Most importantly, there is a world of difference between asking the legislature to defend principles of academic freedom, intellectual diversity and student rights, and asking them to interfere with the universities’ proper academic functions.10

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If you’re familiar with the game of three-card monte, you’ll notice that by the time you’ve gotten to that final sentence, that little red book has done a fine job of hiding the little red card: ‘‘academic freedom’’ has now become ‘‘academic freedom, intellectual diversity and student rights,’’ while professors who teach about the history of race or gender in ways Horowitz does not like have become ‘‘partisan’’ members of a ‘‘political fiefdom’’ that works to ‘‘subvert the democratic process.’’ The first seven sentences of this answer are minor marvels of obfuscation, each one building on the previous one until entire departments and disciplines are in violation of state patronage laws and we have reached ‘‘the very opposite’’ of academic freedom, such that state intervention is not merely salutary but mandatory. A more sophisticated version of this argument can be found in Emory University professor Mark Bauerlein’s testimony to the Georgia state legislature on behalf of that state’s version of the Horowitz bill of rights: for faculty to hire only Left-leaning faculty, teach only Left-leaning thinkers, and explore only Left-leaning opinions is to substitute advocacy for inquiry. For administrators to discourage conservative speakers, while paying radical Leftists five-figure fees, is to throw a mainstream aura around but one narrow range of belief. The educational costs of such bigotry are obvious, and the ethical example it sets is deplorable. Such behaviors belong outside the campus, not inside, and there is no reason why outsiders should countenance universities that break the terms of the social contract. To be sure, academic Leftists will perceive outside pressure as an infringement of academic freedom. They think that the university is an independent enclave accountable only to itself, and that any incursions from beyond by definition threaten the integrity of higher education. But, in truth, outside pressure arises precisely in order to do the opposite. It is the faculty who have abandoned the ideal, who stifle dissent no matter how learned, who under the guise of a rearguard, adversarial, protest posture rule the campus intellectual world and apportion its many comforts and securities to a slim ideological spectrum. This is what we must demonstrate to trustees, alumnae, politicians, and parents. Academic freedom isn’t the property of the faculty. It is the responsibility of campus dwellers, yes, but the property of all citizens.11

The first thing to be said about this definition of academic freedom is that it is precisely wrong. The second thing to be said about it is that it is catching on. In the fall of 2005, some students at Penn State picked up on the idea in a striking and dramatic manner. Under the banner of promoting ‘‘academic freedom,’’ the Young Americans for Freedom erected a little mockup of the Berlin Wall to symbolize their oppression at the hands of their liberal professors. One student was quoted in the Penn State Daily Collegian as saying, ‘‘communism was pretty much dead,’’ but at Penn State, ‘‘it’s still one of the most heavily taught subjects.’’ Another agreed that ‘‘there were many liberal

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courses at Penn State, especially in sociology, his minor.’’12 Quite apart from the question of whether communism is ‘‘heavily taught’’ at Penn State, or whether it is synonymous with liberalism, perhaps it’s worth pointing out to conservative students (at Penn State and elsewhere) that the people of the Eastern bloc, the people on the other side of the Berlin Wall, suffered mightily and died in great numbers under Communist rule, from the forced collectivization of the farms through the show trials and purges, the jailing and exile of dissidents, the invasions of Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and Afghanistan, and the crackdown in Poland. Surely, then, one liberal response to Penn State’s Berlin Wall is that such gestures actually trivialize the very history to which they appeal. It is one thing to experience political oppression at the hands of Stalin, Khrushchev, or Brezhnev. It is quite another thing to have a liberal sociology professor in a course you have chosen to take at a university you have chosen to attend. I can’t imagine that Vaclav Havel or Lech Walesa would be terribly impressed with Penn State’s Berlin Wall, or the bravery of those who built it. Nor can I imagine that they would think much of a putatively ‘‘conservative’’ movement whose goal it is to place education institutions directly under the control of the state. Yet this kind of thinking is now taken for granted in some quarters of the right. Last November, National Association of Scholars president Stephen Balch testified to the Pennsylvania House Committee on Academic Freedom that because of the number of faculty members at state-funded universities in Pennsylvania who identify with ‘‘a particular political group,’’ state legislatures should make sure that no ‘‘advocacy’’ exists. I want to call attention to the evidentiary standard here: A preponderance of registered Democrats among the faculty, in and of itself, is grounds for state action. According to the National Association of Scholars transcript of Balch’s testimony, the state of Pennsylvania must pursue ‘‘intellectual diversity’’ in hiring—meaning, of course, a redress of the shortage of conservatives in academe. The legislature, Balch argued, should expect to see the problem of intellectual pluralism addressed with the same vigor that the state’s universities are already addressing what they take to be the problem of a lack of ethnic and gender diversity. . . . The legislature must expect a full accounting of progress made toward these goals each time the state’s universities seek new statutory authority and renewed financial support. If a good-faith effort is being made to overcome these problems, it should leave the remedial specifics to the universities’ own decision making. If a good-faith effort isn’t made, it should urge governing boards to seek new leadership as a condition of full support. Failing even in that, it might, as a last resort, consider a full-scale organizational overhaul, to design governance systems and institutional arrangements better able to meet the obligations that go with academic freedom.13

What can ‘‘full-scale organizational overhaul’’ mean? I don’t know, but it doesn’t sound good. And while I don’t want to say that it sounds, well,

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Stalinist, exactly, I’m told that it was more elegant in the original Russian, when it had the secondary connotation of ‘‘let’s party like it’s 1929.’’ More seriously, Balch is drawing on the history of affirmative action and employment discrimination law to argue that universities should make ‘‘good faith’’ efforts to hire people more to his ideological liking. This is a common theme in right-wing attacks on universities, especially among those critics who have become alarmed that affirmative action has gone too far, insofar as fully 5 percent of all doctorates are now awarded to black people. In 2002, attorney Kenneth Lee, a member of the far-right Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies, made the case in so many words. ‘‘The simple logic underlying much of contemporary civil-rights law,’’ said Lee, ‘‘applies equally to conservative Republicans, who appear to face clear practices of discrimination in American academia that are statistically even starker than previous blackballings by race.’’14 ‘‘Even starker than previous blackballings by race.’’ According to Lee, conservative scholars have it worse than did African Americans under segregation and Jim Crow. Conservative is indeed the new black. (This would mean, I imagine, that on some campuses there are fewer than zero conservatives.) It is a fantastic and deeply offensive claim in and of itself, but it becomes all the more offensive if you look at the history of conservatives’ opposition to affirmative action programs in American higher education.

Enter ACTA Lately the American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA) has gotten in on the act. Although the organization and its president, Anne D. Neal, typically present themselves as being considerably more respectable and reliable than Horowitz, in the summer of 2006 ACTA published the thoroughly Horowitzian report ‘‘How Many Ward Churchills?’’ which consists largely of course descriptions adduced by ACTA as evidence that American universities are, in fact, infested by Ward Churchills. As the report says, ‘‘it is important to explore just how widespread the Ward Churchill phenomenon’’ really is. Indeed, the first subheading, ‘‘Ward Churchill Is Everywhere,’’ would seem to suggest, at least on one reading, that Ward Churchill is everywhere. I can’t say much about most of the courses ACTA flags, because I know no more about them than ACTA does. All we have are the course descriptions, and it’s hard to say on the basis of those descriptions that the professors who designed the courses are really willing to blame the attacks of September 11 on those who died that day. But there is one course description I recognized when I read through the report: Penn State University offers ‘‘American Masculinities,’’ which maps ‘‘how vexed ideas about maleness, manhood, and masculinity provided rough-riding presidents, High Modern novelists, Provincetown playwrights, queer regionalists, star-struck

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inverts, surly bohemians and others with a means to negotiate—and gender—the cultural and political turmoil that constituted modern American life.’’15

I happen to know who taught that course. He is a brilliant young professor, and, thank goodness, he is nothing like Ward Churchill. In fact, I don’t see anything objectionable about this course description, regardless of who taught the course. On the contrary, I suggest that anyone who tries to claim that such a course has no place at an American university has no business commenting on American universities. And because ACTA, Horowitz, and company are fond of telling people that courses like this are not only evidence of the corruption of the university but also a disservice to students, perhaps it’s germane that the student evaluations of this course, and of this professor, have been off-the-charts spectacular. Two more kinds of confusion lie behind the attacks on academic freedom. The first is that most critics of universities don’t seem to distinguish between unconscious liberal bias and conscious liberal convictions. But the language of bias is not well suited to the work of, say, a researcher who has spent decades investigating American drug policy or conflicts in the Middle East and who has come to conclusions that amount to more or less ‘‘liberal’’ critiques of current policies. Such conclusions are not bias; rather, they are legitimate, wellfounded beliefs, and of course they should be presented—ideally, along with legitimate competing beliefs—in college classrooms. Recently, I was asked by a member of the Penn State College Republicans whether I taught ‘‘both sides’’ in my graduate seminar on disability studies. In response, I mentioned the debate over the ethics of selective abortion of fetuses with disabilities and briefly sketched out four or five positions on the question. My point, of course, was that just as it is a mistake to think that there are two sides to every question, it is also a mistake—and a pernicious one, encouraged by Horowitz, Balch, and company—to think that there are only two sides to every question. But some of our students now enter the classroom with this idea; it comes from mass-media simulacra of ‘‘debate.’’ There is one side, and then there is the other side. That constitutes balance, and anything else is bias. A second confusion has to do with ‘‘accountability.’’ The argument goes like this: ‘‘We pay the bills for these proselytizing faculty liberals—we should have some say over what they teach and how they teach it. Public universities should be accountable to the public.’’ At first blush, the argument sounds kind of reasonable. The taxes of the people of Pennsylvania do go to support Penn State, and I take the mission of the public university very seriously. From Virginia to Illinois to dear old State, I have spent my adult life at public universities, and I will be happy to explain my teaching and writing to any member of the public who wants to learn more about it. But let’s look more closely at that funding, and at what forms of ‘‘accountability’’ are appropriate to an education institution. Only 20 years ago, 45 percent of Penn State’s budget was provided by public funds; back then, in-state tuition was $2,562 per year.

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Our level of state support is now down to 10 percent, and, not coincidentally, in-state tuition has risen to $11,508. So perhaps it’s worth pointing out that state support has declined as state demands for accountability have increased. Or, to put this more dramatically, I sometimes find myself faced with people who say, in effect, ‘‘I pay 10 percent of your salary, and that gives me the right to screen 100 percent of your thoughts.’’ Now, Penn State as an institution is accountable for that 10 percent of its budget. We should—and we do—make every effort to ensure that our funds are spent responsibly, and I think everyone who’s dealt with a university purchasing system will know what I’m talking about. But that does not mean that legislators and taxpayers have the right, or the ability, to determine the direction of academic fields of research. And I say this with all due respect to my fellow citizens: You have every right to know that your money is not being wasted. But you do not have the right to suggest that the biology department should make room for promoters of Intelligent Design; or that the astronomy department should take stock of the fact that many people believe more in astrology than in cosmology; or that the history department should concentrate more on great leaders and less on broad social movements; or that the philosophy department should put more emphasis on deontological rather than on utilitarian conceptions of the social contract. The people who teach these subjects in public universities actually do have expertise in their fields, an expertise they have accumulated throughout their lives. And this is why we believe that decisions about academic affairs should be conducted by means of peer review rather than by plebiscite. It’s a difficult contradiction to grasp. On the one hand, professors at public universities should be accountable and accessible to the public; but on the other hand, they should determine the intellectual direction of their fields without regard to public opinion or political fashion. This is precisely why academic freedom is so invaluable: It creates and sustains education institutions that are independent of demographic variables. Which is to say, from Maine to California, the content of a public university education should not depend on whether 60 percent of the population doubts evolution or whether 40 percent of the population of a state believes in angels—and, more to the point, the content of a university education should be independent of whatever political party is in power at any one moment in history. Would I say this if Feingold Democrats were in power in every state house from sea to shining sea? Absolutely. Without a moment’s hesitation. Legislative interference by Democrats would violate the principle of academic freedom just as surely as would interference by Republicans, although I suppose the interference would take a somewhat different form. To understand this principle, we have to make an important distinction between substantive liberalism and procedural liberalism. For one of the things at stake here is the very ideal of independent intellectual inquiry, the kind of inquiry whose outcomes cannot be known in advance and cannot be measured in terms of efficiency or productivity. There is no mystery why

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some of our critics loathe liberal campuses. It is not simply that conservatives are striking out at the few areas of American cultural life they do not dominate. That much is true, but it fails to capture the truly radical nature of these attacks on academe. For these attacks are not simply on the substance of liberalism (in the form of specific fiscal or social policies stemming from the Progressive era, the New Deal, and the Great Society) but on procedural liberalism itself, on the idea that no one political faction should control every facet of a society. There is a sense, then, in which traditional conservatives are actually procedural liberals, as are liberals themselves, while members of the radical right, and the radical left, are not. The radical right’s contempt for procedural liberalism, with its checks, balances, and guarantees that minority reports will be incorporated into the body politic, can be seen in recent defenses of the theory that the president has the power to set aside certain laws and provisions of the Constitution at will, and in the religious right’s increasingly venomous and hallucinatory attacks on a judicial branch whose members were, in fact, mostly appointed by Republicans. What animates the radical right, in other words, is not so much a specific liberal belief about stem-cell research here or gay civil unions there; on an abstract level, it’s not about any specific liberal issues at all. Rather, it’s about the very existence of areas of political and intellectual independence that do not answer directly and favorably to the state. So, for example, when in April 2005 Alabama State Representative Gerald Allen proposed a bill that would have prevented Alabama’s public libraries from buying books by gay authors or involving gay characters, he wasn’t actually acting as a conservative. Real ‘‘conservatives’’ don’t do that. He was behaving like a member of the radical right. Indeed, his original intent was to strip libraries of all such works, from Shakespeare to Alice Walker. Of course, it could be argued that to enforce such a law, the state of Alabama would have to hire dozens of queer theorists to determine what counts as a ‘‘gay author’’ or a ‘‘gay character.’’ As he put it, ‘‘I don’t look at it as censorship. I look at it as protecting the hearts and souls and minds of our children.’’16 Thankfully, relatively few public officials see it as their job to protect the children of America from the heritage of Western culture. But some do, and that’s why academic freedom is so important. It may not be written into the Bill of Rights—the real one, the one in the Constitution. It is far younger than the rights enumerated there, and more fragile. But together with freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of assembly, freedom of the press, freedom to petition the government for a redress of grievances, and the freedom of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects against unreasonable searches and seizures, academic freedom is an aspect of procedural liberalism that is one of the cornerstones of a free society. If you believe in the ideals of the open society and the intellectual legacies of the Enlightenment, you should believe in the ideal of professors’ intellectual independence from the state—and you should believe that it is an ideal worth defending.

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Notes Some of the material in this essay, particularly the discussions of Representatives Baxley and Mumpers, is drawn from my book, What’s Liberal about the Liberal Arts? Classroom Politics and ‘‘Bias’’ in Higher Education (New York: Norton, 2006). 1. Ann Coulter, Treason: Liberal Treachery from the Cold War to the War on Terrorism (New York: Three Rivers Press, 2004); Michael Savage, Liberalism Is a Mental Disorder: Savage Solutions (Nashville, TN: Nelson Current, 2005); Jonah Goldberg, Liberal Fascism: The Totalitarian Temptation from Mussolini to Hillary Clinton (New York: Doubleday, 2007); Michelle Malkin, In Defense of Internment: The Case for ‘‘Racial Profiling’’ in World War I and the War on Terror (Washington, DC: Regnery, 2004). 2. Dan Surra, quoted in ‘‘AFT Testifies on Academic Bill of Rights,’’ AFT Higher Education News, January 13 2006, available at http://www.aft.org/higher_ed/news/ 2006/testimony_ pa_abor.htm (accessed July 18, 2006). 3. General Assembly of Pennsylvania, House Resolution 177, July 5, 2005, available at http://www.legis.state.pa.us/WU01/LI/BI/BT/2005/0/HR0177P2553.HTM (accessed January 20, 2006). 4. See, for example, Bill Schackner, ‘‘Rightists Love to Hate Him,’’ Pittsburgh PostGazette, November 26, 2006, B1–B2. 5. James Vanlandingham, ‘‘Capitol Bill Aims to Control ‘Leftist’ Profs,’’ Independent Florida Alligator, March 23, 2005, available at http://www.alligator.org/pt2/ 050323freedom.php (accessed June 14, 2005). 6. David Steigerwald, ‘‘The New Repression of the Postmodern Right,’’ Inside Higher Ed, February 11, 2005, available at http://www.insidehighered.com/views/ 2005/02/11/steigerwald1 (accessed February 12, 2005). What makes Mumper’s statement all the more remarkable is that he was referring to a clause in his bill that was drawn from the AAUP’s 1940 Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure, advising teachers that ‘‘they should be careful not to introduce into their teaching controversial matter which has no relation to their subject.’’ American Association of University Professors, AAUP Policy Documents and Reports, 10th ed. (Washington, DC: AAUP, 2006), 3. 7. AAUP, 1940 Statement, 3. 8. David Horowitz, The Art of Political War and Other Radical Pursuits (Dallas: Spence, 2000). See also Graham Larkin’s interpretation of Horowitz in Inside Higher Ed: What, exactly, is he getting at in this passage? Since, on the home front, it would be illegal to actually liquidate the enemy, Horowitz does not want us to take Lenin’s apocalyptic injunction too literally. Instead, he believes you should drown your political opponents in a steady stream of bullshit, emanating every day from newspapers, TV and radio programs, as well as lavishly funded smear sites and blogs. He also thinks you should go on college lecture circuits where you can use incendiary rhetoric to turn civilized venues into the Jerry Springer show, and then descend into fits of indignant self-pity when someone responds with a pie to your face. Graham Larkin, ‘‘David Horowitz’s War on Rational Discourse,’’ Inside Higher Ed, April 25, 2005, available at http://insidehighered.com/views/2005/04/25/larkin (accessed April 25, 2005).

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9. Scott Jaschik, ‘‘Retractions from David Horowitz,’’ Inside Higher Ed, January 11, 2006, available at http://insidehighered.com/news/2006/01/11/retract (accessed January 19, 2006); David Horowitz, ‘‘Berub ´ e´ Takes Off the Gloves and Shows His Hands Are Empty,’’ David’s Blog, FrontPage Magazine, February 11, 2006, available at http:// www.frontpagemag.com/blog/BlogEntry.asp?ID=610 (accessed February 11, 2006). About his questioning by Curry, Horowitz said to USA Today, ‘‘These underhanded, devious, malicious, dishonest tactics. I gave 45 minutes of testimony, a half-hour of questions, and I never once mentioned the incident they’re referring to. . . . Curry saved it to the very end of the hearings and rammed it to me.’’ According to Horowitz, it was underhanded, devious, malicious, and dishonest of Lawrence Curry to ask him about a claim he had not made at the hearing, but had made repeatedly for six months before the hearing. Mary Beth Marklein, ‘‘An Ex-Liberal Navigates Right: Activist Defends Students From ‘Leftist’ Professors,’’ USA Today, June 1, 2006, available at http://www.usatoday.com/printedition/life/20060601/d_cover01.art.htm (accessed June 2, 2006). 10. David Horowitz, Students for Academic Freedom (Los Angeles: Students for Academic Freedom Information Center, 2003), 19. 11. Mark Bauerlein, ‘‘Securing Academic Freedom on Campus,’’ FrontPage Magazine, March 3, 2004, available at http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp? ID=12452 (accessed June 8, 2006). 12. Ryan Pfister, ‘‘Wall Stands for PSU Divide,’’ Daily Collegian, November 11, 2005, available at http://www.collegian.psu.edu/archive/2005/11/11-11-05tdc/11-11-05dnews-12. asp (accessed November 12, 2005). 13. Stephen Balch, ‘‘Report to the Select Committee of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives,’’ available at http://www.nas.org/reports/Balch_PA_Reps/pa_legisl_ statmt.pdf (accessed June 7, 2006). 14. Kenneth Lee, ‘‘Time to Fight Back,’’ The American Enterprise Online, September 2002, available at http://www.taemag.com/issues/articleid.16857/article_detail.asp (accessed March 11, 2006). 15. American Council of Trustees and Alumni, ‘‘How Many Ward Churchills?’’ May 2006, available at http://www.goacta.org/whats_new/How%20Many%20Ward%20 Churchills.pdf (accessed June 7, 2006). 16. ‘‘Alabama Bill Targets Gay Authors,’’ CBS News, April 27, 2005, available at http://www. cbsnews.com/stories/2005/04/26/eveningnews/main691106.shtml (accessed June 28, 2005).

CHAPTER

3

THE AAUP–DAVID HOROWITZ EXCHANGE

ACADEMIC BILL OF RIGHTS American Association of University Professors The statement that follows was approved for publication by the Association’s Committee A on Academic Freedom and Tenure. Comments are welcome and should be addressed to the AAUP’s Washington office.

The past year has witnessed repeated efforts to establish what has been called an ‘‘Academic Bill of Rights.’’ Based upon data purporting to show that Democrats greatly outnumber Republicans in faculty positions, and citing official statements and principles of the American Association of University Professors, advocates of the Academic Bill of Rights would require universities to maintain political pluralism and diversity. This requirement is said to enforce the principle that ‘‘no political, ideological or religious orthodoxy should be imposed on professors and researchers through the hiring or tenure or termination process.’’1 Although Committee A endorses this principle, which we shall call the ‘‘principle of neutrality,’’ it believes that the Academic Bill of Rights is an improper and dangerous method for its implementation. There are already mechanisms in place that protect this principle, and they work well. Not only is the Academic Bill of Rights redundant, but, ironically, it also infringes academic freedom in the very act of purporting to protect it. A fundamental premise of academic freedom is that decisions concerning the quality of scholarship and teaching are to be made by reference to the standards of the academic profession, as interpreted and applied by the community of scholars who are qualified by expertise and training to establish such standards. The proposed Academic Bill of Rights directs universities to enact guidelines implementing the principle of neutrality, in particular by requiring that colleges and universities appoint faculty ‘‘with a view toward fostering a plurality of methodologies and perspectives.’’2 The danger of such guidelines is that they invite diversity to be measured by political standards

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that diverge from the academic criteria of the scholarly profession. Measured in this way, diversity can easily become contradictory to academic ends. So, for example, no department of political theory ought to be obligated to establish ‘‘a plurality of methodologies and perspectives’’ by appointing a professor of Nazi political philosophy, if that philosophy is not deemed a reasonable scholarly option within the discipline of political theory. No department of chemistry ought to be obligated to pursue ‘‘a plurality of methodologies and perspectives’’ by appointing a professor who teaches the phlogiston theory of heat, if that theory is not deemed a reasonable perspective within the discipline of chemistry. These examples illustrate that the appropriate diversity of a university faculty must ultimately be conceived as a question of academic judgment, to be determined by the quality and range of pluralism deemed reasonable by relevant disciplinary standards, as interpreted and applied by college and university faculty. Advocates for the Academic Bill of Rights, however, make clear that they seek to enforce a kind of diversity that is instead determined by essentially political categories, like the number of Republicans or Democrats on a faculty, or the number of conservatives or liberals. Because there is in fact little correlation between these political categories and disciplinary standing, the assessment of faculty by such explicitly political criteria, whether used by faculty, university administration, or the state, would profoundly corrupt the academic integrity of universities. Indeed, it would violate the neutrality principle itself. For this reason, recent efforts to enact the Academic Bill of Rights pose a grave threat to fundamental principles of academic freedom. The Academic Bill of Rights also seeks to enforce the principle that ‘‘faculty members will not use their courses or their position for the purpose of political, ideological, religious, or antireligious indoctrination.’’3 Although Committee A endorses this principle, which we shall call the nonindoctrination principle, the Academic Bill of Rights is an inappropriate and dangerous means for its implementation. This is because the bill seeks to distinguish indoctrination from appropriate pedagogy by applying principles other than relevant scholarly standards, as interpreted and applied by the academic profession. If a professor of constitutional law reads the examination of a student who contends that terrorist violence should be protected by the First Amendment because of its symbolic message, the determination of whether the examination should receive a high or a low grade must be made by reference to the scholarly standards of the law. The application of these standards properly distinguishes indoctrination from competent pedagogy. Similarly, if a professor of American literature reads the examination of a student that proposes a singular interpretation of Moby Dick, the determination of whether the examination should receive a high or a low grade must be made by reference to the scholarly standards of literary criticism. The student has no ‘‘right’’ to be rewarded

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for an opinion of Moby Dick that is independent of these scholarly standards. If students possessed such rights, all knowledge would be reduced to opinion, and education would be rendered superfluous. The Academic Bill of Rights seeks to transfer responsibility for the evaluation of student competence to college and university administrators or to the courts, apparently on the premise that faculty ought to be stripped of the authority to make such evaluative judgments. The bill justifies this premise by reference to ‘‘the uncertainty and unsettled character of all human knowledge.’’4 This premise, however, is antithetical to the basic scholarly enterprise of the university, which is to establish and transmit knowledge. Although academic freedom rests on the principle that knowledge is mutable and open to revision, an Academic Bill of Rights that reduces all knowledge to uncertain and unsettled opinion, and which proclaims that all opinions are equally valid, negates an essential function of university education. Some versions of the Academic Bill of Rights imply that faculty ought not to be trusted to exercise the pedagogical authority required to make evaluative judgments. A bill proposing an Academic Bill of Rights recently under discussion in Colorado, for example, provides: The general assembly further declares that intellectual independence means the protection of students as well as faculty from the imposition of any orthodoxy of a political, religious or ideological nature. To achieve the intellectual independence of students, teachers should not take unfair advantage of a student’s immaturity by indoctrinating him with the teacher’s own opinions before a student has had an opportunity fairly to examine other opinions upon the matters in question, and before a student has sufficient knowledge and ripeness of judgment to be entitled to form any definitive opinion of his own, and students should be free to take reasoned exception to the data or views offered in any course of study and to reserve judgment about matters of opinion.5

On the surface, this paragraph appears merely to restate important elements of AAUP policy.6 In the context of that policy, this paragraph unambiguously means that the line between indoctrination and proper pedagogical authority is to be determined by reference to scholarly and professional standards, as interpreted and applied by the faculty itself. In the context of the proposed Colorado Academic Bill of Rights, by contrast, this paragraph means that the line between indoctrination and proper pedagogical authority is to be determined by college and university administrations or by courts. This distinction is fundamental. A basic purpose of higher education is to endow students with the knowledge and capacity to exercise responsible and independent judgment. Faculty can fulfill this objective only if they possess the authority to guide and instruct students. AAUP policies have long justified this authority by reference to the scholarly expertise and professional training of faculty. College

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and university professors exercise this authority every time they grade or evaluate students. Although faculty would violate the indoctrination principle were they to evaluate their students in ways not justified by the scholarly and ethical standards of the profession, faculty could not teach at all if they were utterly denied the ability to exercise this authority. The clear implication of AAUP policy, therefore, is that the question whether it is indoctrination for teachers of biology to regard the theory of ‘‘evolution’’ as an opinion about which students must be allowed ‘‘to reserve judgment’’ can be answered only by those who are expert in biology. The whole thrust of the proposed Colorado Academic Bill of Rights, by contrast, is to express distrust of faculty capacity to make such judgments, and to transfer the supervision of such determinations to a college or university administration or to courts. The proposed Colorado bill thus transforms decisions that should be grounded in professional competence and expertise into decisions that are based upon managerial, mechanical, or, even worse, overtly political criteria. The proposed Colorado bill also facilitates the constant supervision of everyday pedagogic decision making, a supervision that threatens altogether to undercut faculty authority in the classroom. It thus portends incalculable damage to basic principles of academic freedom. Skepticism of professional knowledge, such as that which underlies the Academic Bill of Rights, is deep and corrosive. This is well illustrated by its requirement that ‘‘academic institutions . . . maintain a posture of organizational neutrality with respect to the substantive disagreements that divide researchers on questions within . . . their fields of inquiry.’’7 The implications of this requirement are truly breathtaking. Academic institutions, from faculty in departments to research institutes, perform their work precisely by making judgments of quality, which necessarily require them to intervene in academic controversies. Only by making such judgments of quality can academic institutions separate serious work from mere opinion, responsible scholarship from mere polemic. Because the advancement of knowledge depends upon the capacity to make judgments of quality, the Academic Bill of Rights would prevent colleges and universities from achieving their most fundamental mission. When carefully analyzed, therefore, the Academic Bill of Rights undermines the very academic freedom it claims to support. It threatens to impose administrative and legislative oversight on the professional judgment of faculty, to deprive professors of the authority necessary for teaching, and to prohibit academic institutions from making the decisions that are necessary for the advancement of knowledge. For these reasons Committee A strongly condemns efforts to enact the Academic Bill of Rights. The AAUP has consistently held that academic freedom can only be maintained so long as faculty remain autonomous and self-governing. We do not mean to imply, of course, that academic professionals never make mistakes or act in improper or unethical ways. But the AAUP has long stood for the proposition that violations of professional standards, like the principles of

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neutrality or nonindoctrination, are best remedied by the supervision of faculty peers. It is the responsibility of the professoriate, in cooperation with administrative officers, to ensure compliance with professional standards. By repudiating this basic concept, the Academic Bill of Rights alters the meaning of the principles of neutrality and nonindoctrination in ways that contradict academic freedom as it has been advanced in standards and practices which the AAUP has long endorsed.

Notes This statement is reproduced with permission from the January–February 2004 (vol. 90, no. 1) issue of Academe, the magazine of the American Association of University Professors. 1. This language derives from a Concurrent Resolution (H.Con.Res. 318) proposed in the House of Representatives by Jack Kingston during the 108th Congress. It also appears in a proposed amendment to Article I of Title 23 of the Colorado Revised Statutes, 24-125.5. Both pieces of legislation grow out of a version of the Academic Bill of Rights originally drafted by columnist David Horowitz. See http://studentsforacade micfreedom.org/. 2. H.Con.Res. 318. We note, parenthetically, that, while this embrace of diversity may be reasonable in some circumstances, it may make little academic sense in other contexts, as, for example, when a department wishes to specialize in a particular disciplinary approach. 3. H.Con.Res. 318. 4. H.Con.Res. 318. 5. Proposed amendment to Article I of Title 23 of the Colorado Revised Statutes, 24-125.5. 6. ‘‘Some Observations on Ideology, Competence, and Faculty Selections,’’ Academe: Bulletin of the AAUP (January–February 1986):1a–2a. 7. H.Con.Res. 318.

THE PROFESSORS’ ORWELLIAN CASE David Horowitz This article is a response to a statement made by the AAUP’s Committee A on Academic Freedom and Tenure denouncing the Academic Bill of Rights and calling it a ‘‘grave threat to fundamental principles of academic freedom.’’ The author wishes to thank Professor Philip Klinkner and Stephen Balch for advice on this text.

The American Association of University Professors prides itself on being a guardian of academic freedom. There is a sound historical basis for this pride beginning with its famous report of 1915, which launched the academic freedom tradition. Through the 1970s its Academic Freedom Committee

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developed principles and guidelines that have been adopted by American universities to protect the intellectual independence of their faculties. As early as the 1915 report, the AAUP also recognized the academic freedom rights of students. However, as a guild organization whose members are professors, it is not surprising that the AAUP has not been so mindful of the academic rights of students, although these rights are mentioned in its pronouncements going to back to the original report. Again, not surprisingly, the same is true of university administrations, whose academic freedom policies are generally modeled on AAUP guidelines. Worse, when student rights have been widely infringed by faculty and university administrations, the AAUP has tended to overlook the infringements and even defend them. This is not a small problem. Under the name ‘‘political correctness,’’ student speech rights have been curtailed and students’ academic freedoms abused on an unprecedented scale. Courses of indoctrination masquerading as education have spread through the curriculum and become familiar objects of public ridicule. Outrage over political correctness and ‘‘speech codes,’’ however, did not come from the AAUP or academic faculties, but from the public at large. Moreover, curbing these excesses has been the work of legislatures and the courts, more than academic institutions or associations. Nor are the problems of professorial excess absent to day. This year, for example, a criminology class at a Colorado university was given an assignment to write a paper on ‘‘Why George Bush Is A War Criminal.’’ Bad enough. But a student who chose to submit a paper on ‘‘Why Saddam Hussein Is A War Criminal’’ received a failing grade (for political incorrectness). At Augustana University, a Lutheran private college, a student was attacked by his own professor and called a ‘‘neo-fascist’’ in front of his classmates for the sin of inviting a FoxNews Channel host to speak on the campus. At Metro State College in Denver, a student who was a Special Forces instructor and had served his country in Panama, the Gulf War, Somalia, Afghanistan and Iraq was told by his professor that he was a ‘‘racist’’ and ‘‘violent’’ and that his uniform was an ‘‘offense to the class.’’ At Texas University, students complained about professors who used their classrooms as political soapboxes, including one journalism professor who instead of teaching journalistic methods lectured on racism, the war in Iraq and ruling class control of the media. I myself attended a class in ‘‘Modern Industrial Societies’’ at Bates College a few years ago, in which the sole text was a 500-page tract put together by the editors of New Left Review with a range of authorities restricted to Marxists. When I asked the professor about the educational appropriateness of so onesided a text, she replied ‘‘They get the other side from the newspapers.’’ Finally, a series of recent studies by independent researchers has shown that on any given university faculty in America, professors to the left of the political center outnumber professors to the right of the political center by a factor of 10-1 and more. At some elite schools like Brown and Wesleyan the ratio

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rises to 28-1 and 30-1. Even assuming a skew resulting from the career choices of individuals who share certain values along this spectrum, a 10-1 ratio indicates a greater bias than any random process would lead one to expect. But even if one were to accept the 10-1 ratio as indication of a fair hiring process, how would one then explain the 30-1 figure at Brown, without reference to hiring bias? Yet neither the Brown Administration nor the American Association of University Professors, nor any academic association has thus far indicated the slightest interest in—let alone concern about—these troubling facts. In this educational climate, it seemed like a reasonable idea to devise an Academic Bill of Rights that would focus on student academic rights, while protecting the integrity of academic institutions. Consulting with several academics, both conservative and liberal, therefore, I drew up a formal bill based on the tradition of academic freedom that had been articulated by the American Association of University Professors in its better days. The bill, which is sponsored by the national organization of Students for Academic Freedom, emphasizes the importance of intellectual diversity to a free education and codifies protections for students that are currently being systematically neglected. The bill was initially designed for adoption by university administrations but was also made available to legislators, several of whom— including Colorado Senate Majority Leader John K. Andrews and U.S. Representative Jack Kingston, R-GA—have taken steps to make the bill law. About all these developments the AAUP remained silent until I recently contacted them to solicit their support. Their statement in response airbrushes me out of the picture and addresses the issue of pending legislation based on my bill without distinguishing the two or mentioning my role. What I submitted was not proposed legislation—as their statement suggests—but a bill that could be adopted by any university or by the AAUP itself. I had previously submitted a draft of the bill to four noted liberal academics—Stanley Fish, Michael Berube, Todd Gitlin and Philip Klinkner, as well as to Stephen Balch the head of the National Association of Scholars and to Alan Kors a noted professor and defender of individual rights. Each suggested amendments to the original draft and the bill was edited and altered to meet their concerns. With this revised bill in hand, I contacted Mary Burgan, the head of the ‘‘Committee A’’—the AAUP’s Committee on Academic Freedom—and was told that they were considering it, but never heard from back from her. Finally, in response to a repeated request, I received a curt email from Jonathan Knight referring me to the AAUP website, where an official AAUP statement on the bill had already been posted. A scholarly body might have been expected to respond to my request for support in the spirit it was offered, suggesting amendments to any formulations in the bill it found wanting or objectionable. The AAUP could have suggested different wordings of the text, or suggested that specific clauses

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be dropped. (In response to concerns expressed by Professor Todd Gitlin, I had dropped an entire provision from the original draft). Instead the AAUP responded with the ferocity of a partisan political body. In the words of the AAUP statement, the Academic Bill of Rights was, ‘‘a grave threat to fundamental principles of academic freedom,’’ and to be ‘‘strongly condemn[ed].’’ Instead of a reasoned, fair-minded response, the American Association of University Professors had issued an intemperate, misleading and at times incoherent denunciation of the bill itself. If any act might serve as a symbol of the problems that have beset the academy in the last thirty years—its intense politicization and partisanship and consequent loss of scholarly perspective— it is this unscholarly assault on a document whose philosophy, formulations and very conception are drawn from its own statements and positions on academic freedom arrived at over nearly a century. Ironically, it is the AAUP’s own unprincipled behavior that demonstrates the need for a constitutional restraint. The AAUP’s statement begins by attacking what it calls the bill’s requirement that ‘‘universities . . . maintain political pluralism.’’ Bad way to start. The Academic Bill of Rights calls for no such requirement and does not employ the term ‘‘political pluralism.’’ This is not merely a careless reading of the text; it is a substantive misrepresentation. The Academic Bill of Rights does refer to ‘‘intellectual diversity’’ and does so more than once. ‘‘Political pluralism’’ implies political balance, while ‘‘intellectual diversity’’ describes an attitude towards truth and the principle of free speech. The difference is crucial. Political balance implies political interference (to correct any imbalance); by contrast, intellectual diversity calls for intellectual standards to replace the existing political ones. Having thoroughly confused the principle that the Academic Bill of Rights proposes, the AAUP characterizes the proposal as ‘‘an improper and dangerous method for [the] implementation’’ of the principle. It then dismisses the problem of infringements on academic freedom by declaring that current protections ‘‘work well’’ and therefore the bill is ‘‘not only . . . redundant, but also infringes academic freedom in the very act of purporting to protect it.’’ In other words, we already have the protections you are proposing and, by the way, as proposed by you these protections are actually threats. The AAUP then elaborates its conclusion by continuing to distort what the bill actually says. The proposed Academic Bill of Rights directs universities to enact guidelines implementing the principle of neutrality [the AAUP’s own term, not one found in the bill] by requiring that colleges and universities appoint faculty ‘‘with a view toward fostering a plurality of methodologies and perspectives.’’ The danger of such guidelines is that they invite diversity to be measured by political standards that diverge from the academic criteria of the scholarly profession.

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The Academic Bill of Rights does no such thing. It expressly rules out measuring anything in the university by political standards. Article 1 of the bill states quite clearly, ‘‘No faculty shall be hired or fired or denied promotion or tenure on the basis of his or her political or religious beliefs.’’ In other words, the bill forbids use of the very political categories that the AAUP claims it invites. Having created this straw man, the AAUP then proceeds to demolish it: ‘‘No department of political theory ought to be obligated to establish ‘a plurality of methodologies and perspectives’ by appointing a professor of Nazi political philosophy, if that philosophy is not deemed a reasonable scholarly option within the discipline of political theory.’’ But Article 1 of the Academic Bill of Rights explicitly states, that ‘‘all faculty should be hired, fired and promoted and granted tenure on the basis of their competence and appropriate knowledge in their fields of expertise.’’ There is no excuse for such slovenly reading of a text under attack. If even the AAUP can’t be counted on to fairly represent a viewpoint with which it disagrees, how can it be so sanguine that the faculty it represents can be relied on to police itself ? Over and over, the AAUP statement implies that political standards are going to be substituted for academic standards under the Academic Bill of Rights. ‘‘Advocates for the Academic Bill of Rights . . . make clear that they seek to enforce a kind of diversity that is instead determined by essentially political categories, like the number of Republicans or Democrats on a faculty, or the number of conservatives or liberals.’’ But as already noted, this is categorically false. The first article of the Academic Bill of Rights explicitly forbids the use of political categories in appointing faculty, which rules out enforcing diversity through such standards. The AAUP argument stands the reality on its head. The reality is that the Academic Bill of Rights is an anti-quota bill; its intention is to remove the political quotas that exist at the present time, not to institute new ones, which it expressly forbids. The Academic Bill of Rights does not threaten true academic standards or decision-making. It merely codifies the principles of academic freedom with which the AAUP says it agrees. Here is the way the Academic Bill of Rights formulates faculty responsibility for establishing a pluralism of views, for example: ‘‘Exposing students to the spectrum of significant scholarly viewpoints on the subjects examined in their courses is a major responsibility of faculty.’’ The operative phrase is ‘‘significant scholarly viewpoints.’’ What is it that the AAUP doesn’t understand about these words? And why does it insist on representing the Academic Bill of Rights as advocating the opposite of what it says? The distortion continues and is compounded: ‘‘Because there is in fact little correlation between these political categories and disciplinary standing, the assessment of faculty by such explicitly political criteria, whether used by

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faculty, university administrations, or the state, would profoundly corrupt the academic integrity of universities. Indeed, it would violate the neutrality principle itself.’’ In addition to misrepresenting what the Academic Bill of Rights proposes—the bill does not promote the assessment of faculty by political criteria but forbids it—the AAUP statement ignores its own reality. In American universities today there is actually a huge correlation between political categories and academic standing. The Academic Bill of Rights is designed to correct this corruption of academic integrity, which the AAUP has been content to preside over and defend. The AAUP indictment goes on, as repetitious as it is inaccurate, asserting that ‘‘the bill seeks to distinguish indoctrination from appropriate pedagogy by applying principles other than relevant scholarly standards, as interpreted and applied by the academic profession.’’ The short answer is that it does not, and no evidence is supplied by the AAUP to suggest that it does. Repetition does not make a fiction true. In addition to its false allegation that the Academic Bill of Rights attempts to introduce political criteria into academic judgments, the AAUP statement charges that it would transfer existing academic responsibilities to college administrators and the courts. But the Academic Bill of Rights does not do this any more than is already done through existing employment contracts and affirmative action procedures. Any contested tenure decision is likely to wind up in the courts, while a vast apparatus of quasi-judicial procedures involving university administrations in oversight of the classroom has been set up to comply with federal laws on discrimination and ‘‘diversity’’ imperatives adopted under pressure from special interest groups. Has the AAUP declared that racial diversity programs are a ‘‘grave threat to fundamental principles of academic freedom,’’ because they remove some autonomy from academic faculties? More disconcerting than its inconsistency on basic issues of academic governance, is the AAUP’s incoherence on the philosophical underpinnings of academic freedom. The AAUP statement singles out a phrase in the Academic Bill of Rights which refers to ‘‘the uncertainty and unsettled character of all human knowledge,’’ and claims that ‘‘this premise . . . is antithetical to the basic scholarly enterprise of the university, which is to establish and transmit knowledge.’’ This statement is a puzzling to say the least. Major schools of thought in the contemporary academy—post-modernism, deconstructionism, and pragmatism to name three—are anti-foundationalist in their epistemologies and build their disciplines on exactly the premise that knowledge is uncertain and even relative. Has the AAUP condemned post-modernism as a threat to scholarship? Why, moreover, should there be a conflict between regarding knowledge as ‘‘unsettled’’ and also transmitting it? Does knowledge have to reflect absolute truth in order to be knowledge? Doesn’t the purpose of the university encompass the pursuit of knowledge in addition to its transmission? Can it be said

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that scholars in any field agree on all issues in their field? On most issues? What interpretive issues in the field of English literature, History, Sociology, the Law—for example—could be said to be universally agreed on by scholars in the field? Probably none. Are there no outstanding unsolved issues even in the scientific disciplines, to take the most difficult case. What can the AAUP be thinking? The AAUP statement continues with a hairsplitting distinction and another false assertion: ‘‘Although academic freedom rests on the principle that knowledge is mutable and open to revision, an Academic Bill of Rights that reduces all knowledge to uncertain and unsettled opinion, and which proclaims that all opinions are equally valid, negates an essential function of university education.’’ First the split hair: What is the difference between the statement that ‘‘knowledge is mutable and open to revision’’ (the AAUP’s formulation) and the Academic Bill of Rights statement that human knowledge is unsettled, i.e., that claims to absolute truth are to be treated with skepticism? There is none, and the AAUP’s assertion of the contrary is nothing more than sophistry. Now the falsehood: ‘‘[The Academic Bill of Rights] proclaims that all opinions are equally valid.’’ It absolutely does not proclaim any such thing— another pure AAUP invention. Nor does the statement that human knowledge is open to challenge imply that every challenge is worthy of consideration, as the AAUP states. That would be absurd and there is nothing in the Academic Bill of Rights to suggest it. In fact, as already noted, the Academic Bill of Rights states quite the opposite: ‘‘Exposing students to the spectrum of significant scholarly viewpoints on the subjects examined in their courses is a major faculty responsibility.’’ In other words, the Academic Bill of Rights specifically states that the opinions that ought to be considered should be drawn from the spectrum of significant scholarly viewpoints, not polls taken of the man in the street. Since this is explicitly stated in the Bill of Rights, one wonders again how the AAUP Academic Freedom Committee—employing scholarly and fairminded criteria—could have arrived at such a preposterous conclusion. Moreover, the AAUP’s claim that academic standards and established disciplines rule the academic world and that the AAUP supports them does not stand up to the slightest scrutiny. The AAUP is not on record, for example, as objecting to fields that are overtly political such as Women’s Studies, Queer Studies and Labor Studies—each of which emerged by overtly rejecting the judgments of its academic superiors and peers. If the AAUP’s standards had prevailed, programs like these, not to mention African-American studies, would never have gotten off the ground. The AAUP’s statement also analyzes legislation that is either pending or shortly to be pending in Colorado and other state legislatures, and in the U.S. Congress, which is based on the Academic Bill of Rights. The AAUP is concerned about a possible threat this legislation might pose to academic autonomy. The short answer to this is that if they or any academic institution

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are so concerned, there is an available remedy. By incorporating the Academic Bill of Rights into their own academic freedom guidelines, they would obviate the need for legislation and preclude any possible governmental intrusion (or, more accurately, further governmental intrusion) into academic life. Presently, however, universities to whom the Academic Bill of Rights has been proposed are taking the position that their existing academic freedom policies (which are in conformity with AAUP’s own guidelines) duplicate the protections provided in the Academic Bill of Rights, which is therefore redundant. The fact that universities like Duke and the University of Illinois, and throughout the state of Colorado, are claiming this redundancy refutes the AAUP’s argument that the Academic Bill of Rights is a threat to academic freedom. Why would universities claim to be embracing its tenets if that were the case? However, the universities are wrong in making this claim, because their academic freedom guidelines do not adequately protect students—a fact remarked on at the beginning of this argument. Moreover, since they are indeed making the (unsupportable) claim that they do include such protections—and thus refusing to consider even adopting the Academic Bill of Rights—legislators have no choice if they would defend these rights but to impose them on the universities through the law. The resistance of universities to the academic freedom protections for students guaranteed in the bill is an expression of the fundamental problem at the heart of this issue. Universities have become so ideologically conformist— both in their faculty and their administration—that they have undermined their public credibility on these matters. If a prospective professor with politically left views has ten- or thirty-to-one advantage of being hired over a conservative, what does that say about the ability of faculties to judge in a fair-minded manner what constitutes indoctrination versus what constitutes education? How can faculties which have demonstrated such bias in the selection of their academic peers be presumed to be fair-minded in their treatment of students who are their academic inferiors? Notwithstanding this problem, the Academic Bill of Rights does not call for interference by legislatures in these matters. What it does is to set down guidelines for faculty and administrators in making such judgments. Its guidelines as the AAUP statement itself acknowledges are drawn explicitly from the AAUP’s own academic freedom policies but are extended to cover students as well. If the AAUP wishes to preclude legislative intrusion into these matters, it has a simple remedy readily available and already noted, which is to urge its members to adopt the Academic Bill of Right’s protections for students as official university policy. That would take the entire question of legislative remedies off the table. As a final matter, the AAUP statement finds article 8 of the Academic Bill of Rights especially objectionable. Article 8 states that ‘‘academic institutions and professional societies should maintain a posture of organizational

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neutrality with respect to the substantive disagreements that divide researchers within or outside their fields of inquiry.’’ The AAUP finds ‘‘the implications of this requirement . . . truly breathtaking.’’ It is hard to see why. What academic rationale can there be for a university or an academic association declaring itself against the war in Iraq for example, as more than few have done? In fact the AAUP comments on Article 8 hide through ellipses the fact that it refers to academic institutions and professional societies (rather than academic departments) and refers to disagreements within ‘‘or outside’’ professors’ scholarly fields of expertise. It further distorts what the bill actually says by suggesting that Article 8 refers to ‘‘judgments of quality,’’ which it absolutely does not. It refers only to ‘‘substantive disagreements.’’ This dishonest presentation of what Article 8 says is actually what is breathtaking. What the AAUP’s distortion of the article is intended to obscure is that it refers to issues that are politically divisive. Article 8 was actually inspired by Stanley Fish’s essay, ‘‘Save The World On Your Own Time,’’ which appeared in the Chronicle of Higher Education, and which argues that there is a conflict between political concerns and professional inquiry and that to protect the latter universities should remain institutionally neutral on controversial questions of the day. Perhaps Article 8 should have explained further what it mean by ‘‘substantive disagreements,’’ and issues ‘‘outside’’ the fields of professors’ scholarly expertise. If so, this could be easily fixed by revisiting the wording of the text and revising it. But the AAUP has not suggested that. Instead it has distorted the meaning of the text to suggest that decisions about academic quality should be taken away from faculties or universities. This is just another in the series of straw men that the AAUP has found it necessary to create in order to reach its Orwellian conclusion that ‘‘the Academic Bill of Rights undermines the very academic freedom it claims to support.’’ On the contrary, it is the partisan dishonesty of the AAUP’s assault on these missing protections that does just that. No better case could be made as to the need for academic reform than the AAUP’s own behavior in this matter.

Note Reproduced with the permission of David Horowitz.

CHAPTER

4

THE GRAHAM LARKIN–DAVID HOROWITZ DEBATE

AN INTRODUCTION TO THE DEBATE Marcus Harvey When Graham Larkin arrived in California to take up a humanities fellowship in Stanford University’s Department of Art and Art History, I was one of the first people to greet him. ‘‘Welcome to California,’’ I said. ‘‘No rush on joining the AAUP—you can send me a check later this week.’’ As it turned out, my old friend was good for much more than just his dues and, in very short order, became one of the association’s statewide vice presidents. From this vantage, Larkin spent the better part of a year skirmishing with David Horowitz over the latter’s campaign to promote the so-called Academic Bill of Rights. The AAUP’s west coast office had been monitoring Horowitz’s efforts since the release of a study early in 2002 that purported to show that America’s faculty members were culturally and politically out of sync with the American public. The study, commissioned by Horowitz’s lavishly funded Center for the Study of Popular Culture (now the David Horowitz Freedom Center), was conducted by Republican pollster Frank Luntz and claimed, among other things, that disproportionately few academics favored tax cuts, education vouchers, or federal spending on missile defense systems.1 In commenting on the study, Horowitz maintained that the results reflected the deliberate exclusion of ‘‘conservatives’’ by academia’s ‘‘one-party system.’’2 It was not especially difficult to see the straw tiger lurking in this particular thicket and the Luntz study established the framework of left-right opposition and ‘‘balance’’ upon which the ensuing debate would hang. There were some quick and salutary responses to this Horowitzian shot across the bow. A senior analyst with the Statistical Assessment Service, Howard Fienberg, detailed a number of methodological problems with the Luntz/Horowitz study. For one thing, Fienberg argued, the survey did not pose the same questions to its sample of Ivy League professors that had been put to the broader public. Nor had their study contrasted professorial attitudes

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with public opinion on every question posed in the survey. They had ignored geographic and other factors in accounting for voting and party affiliation trends in the data. And, finally, the study’s small sample group left a wide margin for error and—being confined to the humanities and social sciences— did not yield a complete or accurate picture of the range of political opinions in the academy.3 All of these criticisms, though helpful, skirted the larger problem which, of course, was the fact that Horowitz was waging political war, not engaging in serious scholarship.4 A significant strategy in the neoconservatives’ war on the academy has been to develop a populist stance and lament the disjunction between academicians and the common people: ‘‘diversity at Harvard obviously does not reflect the diversity of America. It just mirrors the leftwing worldview.’’5 Although a plebiscite professorate would be unlikely to cure many diseases, decode ancient languages, or measure the universe, demands for an academy that reflects public opinion resonates with the lingering strains of antiintellectualism in American culture. After all, why should conclusions based on a lifetime of devoted research, study, and contemplation be afforded any more weight than the glib and ephemeral pronouncements of Limbaugh, Savage, Coulter, and the myriad other mouthpieces of the resurgent Right? Call me a simple foreigner, but—despite the millions of Americans who believe that Creation took six days, that man awoke 6010 years ago in the sunshine of Eden, and that woman sprang from a borrowed rib—I earnestly hope that precisely zero percent of our biologists subscribe to such ideas. Surely, the more reasonable conclusion to be drawn from the Luntz study—if one were to regard the data as at all reliable—would be to suspect that Americans need to spend more money on public education. A lot more money. As I argued in a talk to faculty and students at Irvine Valley College, where a strong unanimity of opinion exists on particular issues amongst social science and humanities faculties—that is, amongst those members of our society who have dedicated their lives to the study of human interactions and behavior— such unanimity might be evidence of valid, as opposed to spurious, bias.6

From the moment that we heard that first salvo, several of us on the AAUP’s national staff anticipated where Horowitz’s campaign was headed and began working to decode the seductive rhetoric of diversity and inclusiveness being cynically deployed by Horowitz and Co. We also began mobilizing to defeat the inevitable legislative push that would follow identification of the ‘‘problem’’ of academic balance, or—to put it in Horowitz speak—the difficulty of getting a good education when you’re only getting ‘‘half the story.’’ Meanwhile, Larkin agreed to tackle the formidable task of exposing Horowitzian logic to the light and heat of reason and did so with gusto. Rejecting the false dichotomies (left/right, Democrat/Republican) that had been established by Horowitz’s initial framing of the issue, Larkin argued that such a

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simple schema obscured more than it revealed. He also realized, and rightly stressed, Horowitz’s motivations and history as they related to these matters: ‘‘This view of an ideological yin and yang works just fine for Horowitz, who has enjoyed remarkable political and financial success at being first a left-wing radical, and then a professional hard-line Republican.’’ By appropriating the language of ‘‘academic freedom,’’ proponents of Horowitz’s ABOR sought shelter under a mantle of respectability; however, their rhetoric was self-defeating as it would be logically impossible to implement Horowitz’s agenda. As Larkin points out, ‘‘to meaningfully ‘foster’ the kinds of ‘diversity’ it [the ABOR] purports to defend, one would first have to come up with objective or reasonable parameters for ideological stock-taking and policing—or, if one prefers, proactive anti-ideological diversity fostering.’’ The chilling effect of any such effort to assess and police academic content would be immense and, ironically enough, would necessitate a vast meddling by governments in the minutiae of the academy. The immediate context for Larkin’s initial foray, ‘‘What’s Not to Like,’’ was a piece of legislation sponsored by California Senator Bill Morrow and modeled on Horowitz’s ABOR. That bill, SB-1335, had been making its way under the radar, but once we drew Horowitz into open debate on the Web site of the AAUP’s California Conference, the Association gained traction and visibility on the issue. In fact, we watched our Web site moving up the Google hit list daily as Larkin’s efforts to take our campaign into the blogosphere paid their dividends. In addition to the online exchanges, Larkin and I debated Horowitz on Air America’s affiliate in San Diego; we engaged Senator Morrow on a panel at California State University, San Marcos; and, ultimately, Horowitz found himself seated across from Larkin to tape an episode of ‘‘Uncommon Knowledge’’ at the Hoover Center on Stanford’s campus. Although we would later come to a new appreciation for the perils of taped shows and video editing, the net effect of all this activity was to put the AAUP where it belonged, at the frontline in the fight for the academy. In an entertaining piece written for InsideHigherEd some months after the exchange reproduced in this collection, Larkin assayed Horowitz’s methods according to Harry G. Frankfurt’s little essay On Bullshit. The only honorable way to combat Horowitz’s bullshit is by fully repudiating his modus operandi, and depending instead on the very wits, arguments and refutations that the Leninists repudiate. Indeed, these methods prove optimal for exposing any number of Horowitzian techniques, ranging from cooked statistics, race-baiting and guilt by association to editorial foul play and baffling logorrhea. But refuting Horowitz is not simply a matter of observing the tide and eddies in an unending stream of bullshit. It also means trawling through that same discharge in order to extract any number of dangerous lies.7

Happy sailing.

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Notes 1. Horowitz’s Center has been primarily funded by large conservative foundations since 1989 when it received grants from the John M. Olin, Sarah Scaife, and Lynde and Harry Bradley foundations. Between 1989 and 2005, contributions to the Center from these and similar organizations totaled $15,194,000. The Media Transparency Web site lists these grants at www.mediatransparency.org/recipientgrants.php? recipientID=63. Luntz’s study is available online from the Students for Academic Freedom Web site at http://cms.studentsforacademicfreedom.org/index.php?option=com_ content&task=view&id=1902&Itemid=40. 2. Scott Smallwood, ‘‘Commentator’s Survey of Ivy League Professors Finds Few Conservatives,’’ Chronicle of Higher Education, January 15, 2002. 3. Howard Fienberg, ‘‘Looking for Liberals in the Ivy League,’’ Common Dreams Newscenter, March 7, 2002. Available at www.commondreams.org/views02/0307-10.htm (accessed November 27, 2006). 4. See David Horowitz, The Art of Political War and Other Radical Pursuits (Dallas: Spence, 2000). 5. David Horowitz, ‘‘Harvard U: No Republicans or Conservatives and (Few) White Christians Need Apply,’’ Front Page Magazine, September 5, 2002. Available at www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=2741 (accessed May 24, 2007). 6. Marcus Harvey, ‘‘On Academic Freedom,’’ remarks made to faculty and students of Irvine Valley College, Irvine, CA, November 13, 2003. 7. Graham Larkin, ‘‘David Horowitz’s War on Rational Discourse,’’ Inside Higher Ed, April 25, 2005. Available at http://insidehighered.com/views/2005/04/25/larkin (accessed October 10, 2006).

WHAT’S NOT TO LIKE ABOUT THE ACADEMIC BILL OF RIGHTS Graham Larkin Locking up my bike on the way to the office on May 3, 2004, I noticed that events were underway in the large pavilion pitched in front of the Hoover Center, the right-wing think tank overshadowing my office in the Nathan Cummings Art Building at Stanford University. The voice on the microphone was introducing prominent ultra-conservative intellectual David Horowitz. As the representative for private universities on the steering committee of the California Conference of the American Association of University Professors (CA-AAUP), I had recently taken a pressing interest in Mr. Horowitz’s activities. He is, after all, the brains behind the mischievously-named-and-crafted Academic Bill of Rights—a document which co-opts post-modern ideas on the situated nature of truth and knowledge, along with politically inclusive language, to counteract what Horowitz depicts as the stranglehold of progressive politics on university campuses.1

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Thanks in part, perhaps, to the protestations of the CA-AAUP, a version of this bill (CA Senate Bill 1335) died in committee, with only one vote cast in its favor. And yet, prior to this, another version had actually been passed as law in Georgia with a 41–5 vote, and it is making the rounds elsewhere. Clearly the battle is only beginning. I wanted to see this guy. By the time I had dropped off my bag and returned to the doorway of the climate-controlled pavilion, Horowitz was already speaking, to a packed audience consisting mainly of white-haired men with Hoover Center tote bags. To my disappointment, the parts of the speech that I stayed for were not about the university at all. Instead they amounted to a generalized rant about the war in Iraq. What’s Not To Like About This War? the speaker intoned repeatedly, with shrill voice and sweeping gestures. With each re-utterance he would offer more proof of how great the invasion has been in every respect. Looking smaller and angrier every minute, Horowitz went on to lash out at the portrayal of the war in the major American media, which he characterized as nothing more than a ‘‘megaphone’’ for ‘‘neo-communist’’ viewpoints. It is disheartening to see such an intelligent man resort to such reckless overstatement, even when he’s preaching to a choir in need of a little martial uplift. (Nor did his audience seem especially receptive; I was impressed by their somber lack of reaction to his more strenuously ‘‘funny’’ digs at the war’s detractors.) Realizing that I had not garnered a single piece of substantive knowledge after ten minutes of attentive listening, I returned to my office to check the online news, and to prepare for my afternoon class. The news was more of the same—the siege of Falluja, the Bush government’s efforts to suppress any mention of the embarrassing tide of American casualties, and revelations of the Abu Ghraib brutalities. I thought about how Horowitz, whose words were still echoing outside my window, would view these demonstrations of What’s Not To Like About This War. More evidence of the same old neo-communist, anti-American media conspiracy, no doubt. It also struck me that the readings for my afternoon art history seminar, Towards the Modern Museum, could easily be marshaled to support his image of left-dominated American university campuses. The more overtly political of these readings (written in 1980 by two leftists) proposes that the Louvre’s ultimate aspirations to an even-handed inclusiveness belie an inescapable ritual ‘‘script’’ of Western triumphalism. The second reading was not unsympathetic to this view.2 In the class I openly critiqued the hyperbole of the first article, while applauding its attention to the fact that the museum is, indeed, an ideological space. (With Horowitz’s lurid performance fresh in my mind, I even compared the article’s overstated thesis to the conviction—equally widespread among left- and right-wing extremists—that the mainstream American media is simply the mouthpiece of the enemy within.) According to the way of thinking promoted by Horowitz and the Students for Academic Freedom, however, my forbearing critique would hardly have been enough to absolve the stain of the

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readings. Their embattled, politicized conception of intellectual diversity would require that any such left-wing content be balanced out by readings fostering a divergent ideological agenda.3 In other words, I would be required to find readings that were openly antileftist, and which espoused conservative ideas about the neutrality of the great western museums, the sanctity of nationhood, the superiority of classic Western art, and so on. Even if I could find readings intelligently defending such notions, I doubt that they would profitably advance the thinking in the seminar, given that the leftist critique was explicitly dissecting these received ideas. Although I love museums, I designed the class in order to subject ideas and institutions to critical scrutiny—not to perpetuate their uncritical celebration. Another Horowitz-approved corrective would be to ensure that for every art historian inclined to assign ‘‘leftist’’ material, the department hire a person who tends toward right-wing thinking. And reading lists are only one of the places in which Horowitz and his followers think university or government administrators should ‘‘protect’’ such ideological ‘‘diversity.’’ His Academic Bill of Rights also tries to ensure a greater spectrum of opinions (by which he invariably means left-to-right political positions) in matters of grading, curriculum development, selection of invited speakers, allocation of university funds, hiring, firing, promotion and tenure review. Such legislation would be a very dangerous incursion on academic freedom, for all kinds of reasons. To begin in the broadest terms, I don’t think anyone should ever be forced to conform to the kind of simplistic, two-sided worldview that Horowitz is, in effect, trying to pass into law. Such Manicheanism famously led George W. Bush, in an address to a joint session of Congress and the nation on September 20, 2001, to declare that ‘‘either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists.’’ Although nominally a defense of freedom, these words are really just a heavy-handed effort to force every American citizen (if not the whole world) to acquiesce to the terms of a perilously reductive world-picture. Faced with such radically restrictive alternatives, any free-thinking person should, at the very least, resent the lack of a third radio-button that would allow her to opt out of both choices. In a free country, the decision not to consent to the conditions of either Button A or Button B—the decision to actively abstain from any directives to declare one’s loyalties, or categorize one’s self, according to such limited terms—should always be available. This freedom to resist anyone else’s ideological categorization is a fundamental democratic principle. It makes no difference whether the purported opposites are Bush Loyalists and Terrorists, Good and Evil, Freedom Lovers and Freedom Haters, Christians and Non-Christians, Pro-Family Values Folks and Anti-Family Values Folks, or People Who Liked Kill Bill and People Who Didn’t. The two kinds of people in David Horowitz’s world-picture are alternatively described as members of the Left and the Right, or as Democrats and

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Republicans. This view of an ideological yin and yang works just fine for Horowitz, who has enjoyed remarkable political and financial success at being first a left-wing radical, and then a professional hard-line Republican.4 But what about those of use who feel we have little to gain—intellectually, professionally, or financially—by accommodating ourselves to either of Horowitz’s two stifling compartments? The real issue here is not how two people happen to feel about one method of carving up the world. It is, rather, the fact that I am working to preserve (and Horowitz is working to undermine) the liberty of belief and speech implicit in the Constitution and the First Amendment. As justices Roberts and Reed marvelously put it in 1943, ‘‘[i]f there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein’’ (West Virginia State Bd. of Educ. v. Barnette, 319 U.S. 624, 642 (1943)). Despite his claim to be a defender of freedom, David Horowitz reveals an unnerving lack of regard for the kind of ideological abstention that the Virginian judges were working to defend. This disregard is glaringly evident in the way he arrives at the ‘‘statistics’’ which he regularly evokes as the very reason for implementing the Academic Bill of Rights. In a recent response to the AAUP’s condemnation of the Bill and the thinking behind it, Horowitz baldly asserts that a series of recent studies by independent researchers has shown that on any given university faculty in America, professors to the left of the political center outnumber professors to the right of the political center by a factor of 10–1 and more. At some elite schools like Brown and Wesleyan the ratio rises to 28–1 and 30–1.

He goes on to contend that this ‘‘huge correlation between political categories and academic standing’’ amounts to a ‘‘corruption of academic integrity.’’ Because he doesn’t resort to his opponents’ tactic of supplying footnotes, I cannot be certain which ‘‘independent studies’’ produced the ‘‘10–1’’ left-right ratio, but all the circumstantial evidence points to two studies. These are the loopy 2001 ‘‘survey’’ by the Frank Luntz Research Center and the Horowitzrun Center for the Study of Popular Culture, and the complementary study, co-authored by Horowitz and Eli Lehrer, titled Political Bias in the Administrations and Faculties of 32 Elite Colleges and Universities. In a declaration very similar to the one in his retort to the AAUP, Horowitz contends in the latter study that ‘‘[t]he overall ratio of Democrats to Republicans we were able to identify at the 32 schools was more than 10 to 1.’’ This also seems to be the source of the more extreme ‘‘statistics’’ for Brown and Wesleyan. If these are indeed the ‘‘independent’’ studies Horowitz has in mind, then the ‘‘Democrats’’ and ‘‘Republicans’’ mentioned in Horowitz’s AAUP retort are the 1,431 professors of Economics, English, History, Philosophy, Political

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Science and Sociology in various subjectively-selected ‘‘elite colleges and universities,’’ mostly in the Northeast, whose names seem to match up with those of registered party members in voter records. Even if one were able to reasonably extend the resulting findings to represent the ratio of Democrats to Republicans ‘‘on any given university faculty in America,’’ the question remains of how one could possibly use the exact same statistics to ‘‘show’’ just how much ‘‘professors to the left of the political center outnumber professors to the right.’’ Easy! All you need to do is ignore the existence of the 1,891 professors in the same departments who you estimate to be ‘‘unaffiliated’’ in their party loyalty. I can think of only two ways of coherently defending such a move. On the one hand, one could argue that the unaffiliated majority simply doesn’t matter, thereby leaving Horowitz free to concoct his 10–1 generalizations about all professors on the basis of less than half his dubious little data sample. On the other hand, one could simply assume that the unaffiliated majority must ‘‘really’’ break down into exactly the same left/right proportions as the cardcarrying Democrats and Republicans, leaving us with a 10–1 statistic that reasonably represents everyone. Take your pick. Whether Horowitz is declaring the political irrelevancy of the inconveniently-unaffiliated majority, or whether he is presuming to represent their unstated affiliations, his fundamental disregard for their abstention from self-definition is obvious, and his ‘‘10–1’’ ratio is ludicrous. This is the kind of ‘‘statistic’’ you pray your opponents will use. And they do. The Students for Academic Freedom take their endorsement of Horowitz’s tactics to the limit by earnestly disclosing his patented technique of ‘‘How to Research Faculty Bias’’ as a link on their home page.5 Using this simple recipe, even the most clueless ideology buffs can now manufacture impressive-looking facts about professorial politics in no time. The problem with such quantification goes beyond the deficiency of Horowitz’s particular method of data fabrication. It is hard to think of any method that would provide us with reliable statistics about such a subtle and complex phenomenon as personal ideology—not least in environments, such as elite humanities departments, which actively cultivate ideological subtlety and complexity. The inherent absurdity of any claim to objective ideological profiling raises the issue of how one could possibly go about implementing the kind of diversity that the Academic Bill of Rights is aiming to institute in the university. After all, to successfully foster ‘‘a plurality of methodologies and perspectives’’ and ensure against ‘‘political, ideological, religious or anti-religious indoctrination,’’ one would first have to develop a sufficiently broad and clear model onto which to map these differences and deviations, and then keep very close tabs on the professors. How does Horowitz think one should go about gauging and administering the desired spectrum of opinion? He tends to avoid the subject, although when pressed on the matter in an online forum hosted by the Chronicle of Higher

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Education, Horowitz chillingly asserted that such details of implementation are not a problem, or at least not his problem.6 Well it should be his problem. It seems to me morally repugnant to promote the legislation of substantial executive powers—powers which could seriously affect the careers of countless individuals—without caring about how (or even whether) such powers could be fairly exercised. Anyone who wants to make professors stick to the ‘‘appropriate knowledge’’ of their respective fields had better lay down some explicit guidelines detailing exactly (1) who’s doing the fostering, (2) what invests them with the special knowledge to have this authority, (3) where their standards of appropriateness are coming from, and (4) how these standards will be implemented. Horowitz’s academic interlocutors in the Chronicle forum were absolutely right to worry about these details of ‘‘appropriateness’’ assessment and enforcement, and he was wrong to dismiss them. Horowitz argues that such worries are misplaced, because these details of implementation only have a bearing on the enforcement of ideological appropriateness, which has nothing to do with his own purely negative project of making sure every professor and student is free to pursue his or her own thing. Don’t believe it. Despite all his mollifying talk of freedom and fostering and diversity, it is clear that Horowitz would just love to see knowledge policed, and that he knows how to get it done. Witness the recent Chronicle article in which he takes deep offense at the UC-Denver political-science department for having ‘‘office doors and bulletin boards . . . plastered with cartoons and statements ridiculing Republicans.’’ In an effort to demonstrate why this material should not be up there, Horowitz asserts that ‘‘[w]e do not go to our doctors’ offices and expect to see partisan propaganda posted on the doors, or go to hospital operating rooms and expect to hear political lectures from our surgeons. The same should be true of our classrooms and professors, yet it is not.’’ Excuse me? Even as someone who’s generally bored by propaganda, I would be delighted for my doctor to post political cartoons on his door. Why not give me something to look at, besides faded Norman Rockwell reproductions, while I’m waiting around on a vinyl slab in an over-ventilated smock? I would grant exactly the same cartoon-posting privileges to anyone—even professors in a political science department! As for the cartoons’ criticism of Republicans, what would you expect in early 2004, when Republicans are running the country? Nostalgic Clinton-bashing? It’s not as if we’re talking about kiddie porn here, Mr. Horowitz, and it’s not as if anyone is trying to make you clear the propaganda out of your office. And what’s the point of the analogy about ‘‘political lectures from our surgeons’’? Surgeons are not lecturers, and surgery is not politics, so yes, a political lecture from a surgeon might be a little weird, at least in the context of an operating room. But professors are lecturers, and one of the things they habitually lecture about is politics—a deeply human enterprise with a bearing on many scholarly domains, including my

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own. So why do you want to start cleaning off my door and policing my lectures? The real reason, at least in the examples regularly provided by Horowitz and the Students for Academic Freedom, is that certain thin-skinned ideologues don’t like the message. This is not a good enough reason to go around rewriting the laws. And in any case, the whole Academic Bill of Rights project is utopian, or dystopian. In order to meaningfully ‘‘foster’’ the kinds of ‘‘diversity’’ it purports to defend, one would first have to come up with objective or reasonable parameters for ideological stock-taking and policing—or, if one prefers, proactive anti-ideological diversity fostering. Whatever you want to call it, this monitoring would deprive people of fundamental liberties of expression, and legislating it would lead to an ethical and administrative quagmire. Don’t believe the doubletalk; Mr. Horowitz and the so-called Students for Academic Freedom are enemies of free thought and free speech.

Notes Reproduced with the permission of Graham Larkin. 1. For unguarded critiques, see Horowitz’s articles in Front Page Magazine, such as ‘‘The Battle for the Bill of Rights,’’ or ‘‘Missing Diversity on America’s Campuses,’’ where he writes: ‘‘Not only are the overwhelming majority of college professors fashionably ‘liberal,’ most faculties have a strong contingent of hard leftists whose views are extreme, and whose concentrated numbers make it possible for them to dominate (and even define) entire academic fields.’’ As evidence that things have gotten completely out of hand, Horowitz regularly offers the same few outlandish examples of ‘‘typical’’ left-wing behavior. He refers to a peculiar criminology assignment on ‘‘Why George Bush Is a War Criminal’’ with a compulsiveness not seen since the anti-PC ‘‘Jane Austen and the Masturbating Girl’’ rants of the early ’90s. 2. The leftist article is Carol Duncan and Alan Wallach, ‘‘The Universal Survey Museum,’’ Art History 3, no. 4 (December 1980); The first footnote of the book from the other reading is taken (Andrew McClellan, Inventing the Louvre, 1994) describes Duncan and Wallach’s article as ‘‘persuasively argued.’’ 3. General comments about reading lists in the Students for Academic Freedom Complaint Center (a place for anonymous students to denounce named professors) invariably point to the unhealthy preponderance of leftist material. 4. See Scott Sherman, ‘‘David Horowitz’s Long March’’ (The Nation, July 3, 2000), which traces Horowitz’s success from the 1962 book titled Student, which sold 25,000 copies, to his enormously well-funded career as a reactionary. 5. As a rule, Americans don’t like this kind of snooping into public records, as the media-savvy Horowitz clearly senses when pressed on the matter by Alan Colmes in a Fox News interview: ‘‘COLMES: Here’s what concerns me, David. Is it true, as the Denver Post claimed, that you are encouraging students on your web site to go to use public records, to go to the county clerk’s office to find teachers’ political affiliations and then create a spreadsheet to have a list of teachers and where they stand politically? Is that accurate? HOROWITZ: Alan, look, I spent many years . . . you know, I actually was on this show. We had . . . COLMES: Is that accurate? That’s all I’m

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asking. HOROWITZ: No, I’m not encouraging people . . . I have one student who has gone to primary registrations just to show the skew.’’ 6. Faced with a very articulate question that begins ‘‘How would an Academic Bill of Rights be enforced on a campus level?’’ Horowitz—a bitter opponent of affirmative action—responds: ‘‘There is no enforcement proposed in the Academic Bill of Rights. This would be up to the institutions that adopt it. The university seems to have no problem promoting skin diversity. Why should intellectual diversity pose a problem?’’ To the next question (which, similarly, ends by asking ‘‘on what basis is ‘intellectual diversity’ to be assessed and with what expertise’’) Horowitz simply replies: ‘‘No one is suggesting that an outside authority make these judgments. Read the Academic Bill of Rights.’’

AAUP DISHONESTY David Horowitz I had a conversation over the weekend with the two representatives of the American Association of University Professors. One was Graham Larkin a professor of art history at Stanford and the other was Marcus Harvey, the AAUP’s West Coast field representative. Our debate took place on a San Diego affiliate of Air America. The show was hosted by Craig Elsten whom I salute as one of the few self-styled ‘‘liberals’’ I’ve encountered who was actually fair-minded and tolerant. Unfortunately, fair-mindedness was not much in evidence in the debate itself. Both Larkin and Harvey dug in their heels to deny the obvious, that liberal arts faculties in America are dominated by the political left. In fact they are dominated to such an extreme degree that among junior faculty at Larkin’s university leftwingers outnumber conservatives by a ratio of 30–1—a skew that at the very least raises questions about a political blacklist. Marcus Harvey attempted to explain this fact away by suggesting that professors vote Democratic because Democrats support education funding. Perhaps he failed to notice that George Bush signed the largest education bill in American history recently. But even to argue this is to indulge the absurdity. A look at any college catalogue, a perusal of the curriculum of any Black Studies, Women’s Studies or Peace Studies department—let alone history, sociology or anthropology—at any major university in America would reveal a leftwing agenda that only dishonesty could deny. If university professors are only left in their support of education bills, why were there no professor teach-ins in support of the Iraq war, since there were hundreds of opposition teach-ins featuring faculty speakers? Why didn’t Larkin himself reel off half a dozen conservatives in his own department to refute the contention (instead he challenged the methodology of the studies that have been done)? The answer is obvious and the fact that faculty leftists like Larkin deny it only makes it that much more difficult to respect their intellects.

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Larkin has written a 3,500-word attack on me on the California AAUP website called What’s Not To Like about the Academic Bill of Rights. Not a word of this diatribe mentions an actual statement from the Academic Bill of Rights. Instead it is an attack on me personally and on imaginary demands of the academic freedom movement for ‘‘balance’’ and equal representation (there are no such demands). Larkin even claims that the academic freedom movement is proposing an affirmative action program for conservatives that would force him to hire his ideological enemies. This is also pure invention. The Academic Bill of Rights specifically forbids hiring faculty on the basis of political viewpoint. How does one deal with dishonesty at this level? Most of Larkin’s attack is on my alleged compartmentalization of all ideas into only two categories, left and right. Again this is pure invention. It is worse than that because nowhere in the Academic Bill of Rights or in any of the literature put out by Students for Academic Freedom and available on its website is there the slightest suggestion that there are only two points of view or that they have to be balanced. The studies conducted used the categories Democrat and Republican only to have tangible categories to demonstrate that there was indeed a problem (and the studies said this explicitly)—not to suggest that they exhausted the possibilities of intellectual discourse. Larkin happened by a talk I gave to Hoover Institution funders about the war in Iraq. Being an ideological leftist, he could only handle a few minutes of my talk. Even reporting that honestly was too much for him. He suggests that my audience was bored. In fact, I got a standing ovation. But this has nothing to do with the Academic Bill of Rights. Larkin’s ad hominem attack is just one form of leftist denial of the one-party state it has created in the university. And this is just the beginning of its denial of the abusive situation it has created for many students which the Academic Bill of Rights is designed to correct. The AAUP was once an institution with a proud tradition of defending academic freedom. All that is left of that tradition is its determined defense of academic terrorists like Sami al-Arian and anti-Semitic supporters of terrorists like Tariq Ramadan. The AAUP was absent from the fight against speech codes in the 1990, the greatest infringement of academic freedom in fifty years. The AAUP has declared war on the Academic Bill of Rights by grossly misrepresenting it as an attempt to impose political standards on the university. There is not a word in the Academic Bill of Rights that suggests the imposition of political standards on the university. Moreover, nothing prevents universities from adopting the Academic Bill of Rights and thereby preempting any legislation. I have dealt with the AAUP’s deliberate misrepresentations of the Academic Bill of Rights here and there is no need to repeat them. The AAUP is not acting in good faith because it is defending an entrenched bureaucracy which is responsible for the abuses the Academic Bill of Rights is designed to correct. The AAUP opposes the Academic Bill of Rights because it has no interest in protecting students’ academic freedom. It

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is a professorial guild with a political agenda, and this agenda is threatened by intellectual diversity and a pluralism of ideas.

Note Reproduced with the permission of David Horowitz.

LARKIN RESPONDS TO HOROWITZ Graham Larkin Letter from Graham Larkin (Department of Art, Stanford University) to David Horowitz

January 20, 2005 Dear Mr. Horowitz, Thank you for joining me and AAUP Associate Secretary, Marcus Harvey, in last Saturday’s exchange on 1360 AM KLSD (Air America Radio, San Diego). I’m glad that you feel you fared so well in that exchange. In the interests of furthering the conversation, I would be delighted to have another live discussion with you, or with any of the so-called Students for Academic Freedom. Perhaps, in the interests of balance, any future debate can be held in a conservative venue. To the extent that it continues the dialogue, I also welcome your blog response to our debate, and to my article ‘‘What’s Not to Like about the Academic Bill of Rights.’’ Given your many misconstruals of my own position, I feel compelled to respond. To keep it relatively brief, I will confine myself to some remarks on the central issue of left-right balance. In your blog you describe my article as ‘‘. . . an attack on me personally and on imaginary demands of the academic freedom movement for ‘balance’ and equal representation (there are no such demands).’’ Your insistence that the supporters of the ABOR make ‘‘no such demands’’ for left-right ‘‘balance’’ (a claim that I think you also made in the radio interview) is bizarre, since from the start you have successfully framed the whole issue in terms of the need for intellectual or ideological balance, equity and diversity. Whatever else you might have said, you have persistently used the very term ‘‘balance’’ when promoting the ABOR. For instance in your article ‘‘The Campus Blacklist’’ (April 18, 2003), you note that I have encouraged students to demand that their schools adopt an ‘‘academic bill of rights’’ that stresses intellectual diversity, that demands balance [my italics] in their reading lists, that recognizes that political partisanship by professors in the classroom is an abuse of students’ academic freedom, that the inequity in funding

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of student organizations and visiting speakers is unacceptable, and that a learning environment hostile to conservatives is unacceptable.

I’m assuming that this is not a casual phrase, given that you quote a version of this passage, complete with the reference to ‘‘balanced’’ reading lists, in a later article. There, you also note that the ABOR will ensure that ‘‘[s]election of speakers, allocation of funds for speaker activities and other student activities will observe the principles of academic freedom and promote intellectual balance [my italics].’’ Just last month, in your article ‘‘It’s Time for Fairness and Inclusion in Our Universities,’’ you opened a defense of the ABOR by pointing to the ideological ‘‘imbalance’’ among American university faculty. Later in that article you refer again to ‘‘the faculty imbalance.’’ The repetition of these key terms is no mere semantic detail, given that politicians and the press have followed your lead in construing the Bill as means of ensuring balance, or correcting imbalance. To confine myself to a few examples republished on your FrontPage Magazine and Students for Academic Freedom websites, the New York Times reports that your movement was inspired by ‘‘political imbalance on faculties,’’ and a Washington Times editorial supporting the ABOR concludes that ‘‘[t]he issue here is balance.’’ A press release by Rep. Walter B. Jones (R-NC) states that the Bill ‘‘encourages university and college officials to even out the imbalance between liberal and conservative influences in higher education.’’ These examples are taken at random. There are at least a hundred more pleas for ‘‘balance’’ or denunciations of ‘‘imbalance’’ scattered throughout articles describing the ABOR on the Students for Academic Freedom website. This is not to mention the repeated calls, by the Bill’s supporters, for ‘‘equality,’’ ‘‘equity,’’ ‘‘evenhandedness,’’ ‘‘fairmindedness,’’ and other terms implying balance. How, in the face of all this evidence, can you claim that your movement makes ‘‘no demands’’ for balance and equal representation? No amount of retroactive spin can reverse the fact that the ABOR’s supporters have campaigned relentlessly to legislate ideological ‘‘balance’’ in American universities. In the same blog, you ask why I didn’t ‘‘reel off half a dozen conservatives in [my] own department’’ in response to your allegations of faculty imbalance. The answer should be obvious to anyone who has actually read my article. It explicates, in meticulous detail, the deficiencies of your jaundiced habit of labeling everyone as either ‘‘leftist’’ or ‘‘conservative.’’ I really mean it when I write that ‘‘[i]t is hard to think of any method that would provide us with reliable statistics about such a subtle and complex phenomenon as personal ideology—not least in environments, such as elite humanities departments, which actively cultivate ideological subtlety and complexity.’’ You dismiss as ‘‘pure invention’’ my claim that you compartmentalize (as you put it) ‘‘all ideas into only two categories, left and right.’’ And yet, in the space of the same few paragraphs, you repeatedly brand me as a ‘‘leftist.’’ I

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would prefer for you to have acknowledged my self-characterization, in the very article you are critiquing, as one of the people ‘‘who feel we have little to gain—intellectually, professionally, or financially—by accommodating ourselves to either of Horowitz’s two stifling compartments.’’ As a self-appointed authority on freedom and diversity, you would do well to respect peoples’ right to resist your labels. Now let’s imagine, for the sake of argument, that I were to correspond to one of your imagined ‘‘two sides.’’ What makes you think I would end up in the ‘‘leftist’’ camp in my opposition to the ABOR? Wouldn’t it more likely be the conservative in me who resents your radical efforts to enforce a ‘‘diversity of approaches’’ and ‘‘appropriate knowledge’’ in the academy? After all, as the libertarians have been quick to point out, such efforts at diversity legislation are little more than a sick parody of political correctness. Thankfully, no such legislation has yet taken root in our own state of California, although it might in the coming months. Until such time as the opponents of academic freedom succeed in their devious campaign to prevent me from ‘‘[taking] unfair advantage of a student’s immaturity by indoctrinating him or her with the teacher’s own opinions,’’ I will continue to treat my students like grown-ups, with the blessing of the First Amendment and the sane precepts of the AAUP. Thank you for your attention. In the interest of promoting ‘‘both sides’’ instead of just ‘‘half the story,’’ I hope you will be kind enough to link to this letter, or to republish it complete with my links, alongside your own postings on the FrontPage Magazine and Students for Academic Freedom websites. Sincerely, Graham Larkin Stanford University, Department of Art & Art History CA-AAUP VP for Private Colleges and Universities

Note Reproduced with the permission of Graham Larkin.

MY REPLY TO GRAHAM LARKIN AND THE AAUP David Horowitz Thank you for responding (sort of ) to my blog response to your original attack on me and the Academic Bill of Rights. In the blog entry, I pointed out that while you titled your piece, ‘‘What’s Not to Like about the Academic Bill of Rights?’’ it was really an attack on me personally and did not address a single statement or tenet of the Academic Bill of Rights itself. I added that you

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had gone on to invent some imaginary ‘‘demands,’’ which you attributed to the Academic Bill of Rights (with no quotes from the text itself) and used these as a straw man target for your attack. Your failure to address the specifics of the Academic Bill of Rights was important because your article, which is little more than an extended defamation of me and the academic freedom movement, has been cited and reposted on the internet by academics who don’t want to confront the abuses of academic freedom that the bill is designed to address. In your reply you do little to remedy the regrettable situation your distortions created. You fail to acknowledge your refusal to address the substantive articles of the Academic Bill of Rights, nor do you seem to regret any of the ad hominem argument you used to distract attention from the substantive issues in this debate. Instead you escalate the attack by taking liberties with a phrase in my blog that provides you with the pretext for reiterating your false claim, which you go on to make the substance of your letter. The phrase you attack is my reference to the ‘‘imaginary demands of the academic freedom movement for ‘balance’ and equal representation.’’ You then devote your letter to challenging my assertion that, in fact, there are no such demands. (BTW: Why would I deny them if there were?) The demands of the academic freedom movement are contained and articulated in the Academic Bill of Rights. There are no other formal demands of the academic freedom movement apart from this document. The word you single out—‘‘balance’’—does not in fact appear in the Academic Bill of Rights. For the second time you choose to ignore this, and thus the plain meaning of the text, to write: ‘‘Your insistence that the supporters of the ABOR make ‘no such demands’ for left-right ‘balance’ (a claim that I think you also made in the radio interview) is bizarre, since from the start you have successfully framed the whole issue in terms of the need for intellectual or ideological balance, equity and diversity.’’ Well, ‘‘balance,’’ ‘‘diversity,’’ and ‘‘equity’’ are not the same thing, are they? Balance can only be established by strict adherence to a one-for-one standard: a liberal on this side, a conservative on that, for example. Diversity carries no such connotation. Nor does equity. Equity (like diversity) can refer to opportunity rather than result, which is its clear meaning in the Academic Bill of Rights. We want students to have access to more than one side of the political spectrum, which is pretty much the current state of affairs. We want students to be aware that controversial questions do not have only one answer, that other perspectives exist. We want them to have an opportunity to express themselves in an atmosphere where they are not punished, verbally or otherwise, for doing so. The AAUP calls these demands ‘‘a grave threat to academic freedom.’’ No wonder AAUP members like yourself need to make up threats to respond to. Or to make up claims that these basic rights for students already exist; they don’t. You and the AAUP defend this status quo. That is the issue between us. Instead of confronting the real issue as it has been presented, you choose to go behind its back, as it were, and distort its agendas in order to discredit it.

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Hence, you make up an agenda that will be convenient to attack: a demand that university faculties be strictly balanced between left and right. There is no such demand. In order to defend the indefensible, you have to ignore the actual words in the Academic Bill of Rights and instead refer to a single article I wrote about the campus blacklist, in which I say that I have encouraged students to push an Academic Bill of Rights that ‘‘demands balance in their reading lists.’’ My bad; the Academic Bill of Rights demands no such thing. Here’s what the Academic Bill of Rights does say about reading lists: 4. Curricula and reading lists in the humanities and social sciences should reflect the uncertainty and unsettled character of all human knowledge in these areas by providing students with dissenting sources and viewpoints where appropriate. While teachers are and should be free to pursue their own findings and perspectives in presenting their views, they should consider and make their students aware of other viewpoints. Academic disciplines should welcome a diversity of approaches to unsettled questions.

Do you have an objection to this? If so, we might have a discussion that is worth having. As to the discrepancy between what the Academic Bill of Rights says and what I wrote in my article, my response is simple: The article is wrong. In writing articles—particularly as many as I do—it not possible to avoid an occasional careless expression or an injudicious word or phrase. If I had to write the article again, I would have said, ‘‘an Academic Bill of Rights that provides students with dissenting sources and viewpoints where appropriate.’’ Do you object to that? There is really no excuse, on the other hand, for a writer who has both texts in front of him, not to compare them, then to exploit a minor error like this. I don’t believe I have ever used the phrase ‘‘left-right balance’’ to which you refer. I certainly haven’t made it a central issue of the academic freedom campaign. You insist I have, and refer to a later article, in which you say I quote the same passage. In fact, the text you cite is not an article but very obviously a direct mail solicitation and was written not by me by but by a direct mail firm I hired to raise money for my Center. I plead guilty to not paying more attending to my fund-raising mail. The obvious question remains: If ‘‘left-right balance’’ were the agenda of the Academic Bill of Rights, or the academic freedom campaign, why wouldn’t it be at the center of both? Why wouldn’t the demand have been explicitly written into the Academic Bill of Rights, and why would you have to reach so far in order to come up with a relevant example? Moreover, why would I be denying that balance is my chief demand if it were? You go on to other examples, which are equally spurious, including a second quotation from the same direct mail solicitation to the effect that the

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Academic Bill of Rights will require colleges to ‘‘promote balance’’ in regard to the allocation of funds for speakers. But this is what the Academic Bill of Rights actually says on this issue: Selection of speakers, allocation of funds for speakers programs and other student activities will observe the principles of academic freedom and promote intellectual pluralism.

Do you object to this? You should probably read the U.S. Bill of Rights and the Supreme Court decision regarding student fee funds, which requires that these funds at state universities be used strictly for purposes that are viewpoint neutral—in other words that they be strictly balanced. If you have a quarrel with the First Amendment, you should say so, but you should also acknowledge that the Academic Bill of Rights is more liberal (or loose) in this regard than the Constitution. You also cite a New York Times report that we reproduced on FrontPage that our movement was inspired by ‘‘political imbalance on faculties,’’ as though this proved anything. Am I to be held responsible for every word that the New York Times prints? Am I to censor every passage or phrase in a Times article that I disagree with? Let me say categorically, that neither I nor the movement behind the Academic Bill of Rights was inspired by ‘‘political imbalance on faculties,’’ as the Times—no political friend of ours—puts it. Moreover, the Academic Bill of Rights specifically forbids redressing any such imbalance by hiring new faculty on a political basis or firing old. In all probability what you are referring to are the studies we conducted of Democratic and Republican Party registrations among university professors. We did this not to establish a principle for balancing faculties or even because we believed that these categories provided a useful intellectual standard—and we made this clear in our introduction to the studies we published. We were forced to conduct these studies because of the brazen denial of left-wing academics like you that there is any problem of ideological screening taking place on academic hiring committees. You continue to deny this, yet you are part of a faculty (Stanford) where junior professors with self-acknowledged left-wing views already outnumber junior professors with self-acknowledged conservative views by a ratio of 30–1. This study was conducted by Professor Daniel Klein of Santa Clara University. If you or the AAUP had the slightest concern about intellectual diversity or academic freedom, you would be concerned about this, but you are not. Your expertise is art history, so I will forgive you for not understanding the meaning of words, and in particular the fact that ‘‘equality,’’ ‘‘equity,’’ ‘‘even-handedness,’’ and ‘‘fair-mindedness’’—even ripped out of context—are not identical or the same as ‘‘balance,’’ as you so facilely imply. There is a reason that that word ‘‘balance’’ does not appear in the Academic Bill of Rights and that is because to insist on strict ideological or political balance would

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destroy the academic enterprise, and our intention is exactly the reverse: to restore it. We oppose ‘‘balance’’ sensu strictu. We do wish, on the other hand, to promote ‘‘fairness’’ and ‘‘diversity.’’ Balance implies quotas, and we are against quotas. But fairness implies, well, fairness, and we like that. We want to restore respect for the educational process. We don’t want students to be subjected to political harangues in completely inappropriate contexts whose purpose is to isolate them, make them feel like second class citizens in their own universities, and put them on notice that their professors can, should they so desire, punish them for their political beliefs. The system that you and the AAUP are defending is an intolerable one, and you would be the first to make a protest if these abuses were being inflicted on liberal students by conservative professors. (Or maybe not.) We have taken up the cause of liberal students abused by conservative professors, but you have yet to offer us any help. Here is a preposterous sentence from your text, which reveals the magnitude of your bad faith: ‘‘No amount of retroactive spin can reverse the fact that the Academic Bill of Rights’ supporters have campaigned relentlessly to legislate ideological ‘balance’ in American universities.’’ This is utterly false and easily refuted. The legislation that has been proposed and approved by supporters of the Academic Bill of Rights is posted at http://www.students foracademicfreedom.org/reports/NationalandStateLegislation.htm. There are several bills in several states listed. You will not find a word or phrase in any of them that can be interpreted as legislating ideological balance. Your ‘‘fact’’ is a falsehood. The rest of your letter is merely an exercise in sophistry and denial. Therefore, I will deal with it only briefly. You don’t like political labels—when they are applied to you. In your original attack on me on the AAUP website (where you seemed especially resentful that I have been successful and received economic support for my efforts), you dismiss me as a ‘‘reactionary.’’ This from someone who wants me to ‘‘respect peoples’ right to resist (other people’s) labels.’’ Well, sorry, this street runs both ways. I prefer to think of you as the reactionary—someone who will defend an entrenched class of privileged academics with lifetime tenure from intellectual challenge by those they have politically excluded; who turns a deaf ear to the abuses and injustices committed by faculties that stifle students’ speech, grade them politically and make them feel unwelcome because of their dissenting views. I prefer to regard myself as the progressive in this argument—and in all the others that you and I might have. Sincerely, David Horowitz

Note Reproduced with the permission of David Horowitz.

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ACADEMIC VS. HOROWITZIAN TRUTH STANDARDS Graham Larkin An Open Letter from Graham Larkin to David Horowitz

January 28, 2005 Dear Mr. Horowitz, Thank you for your response to my recent investigation of your interest in promoting left-right balance. In it, you urge me to comment more on the specific contents of the Academic Bill of Rights, rather than on your statements in defense of the Bill. While I’m more than happy to share my thoughts on the Bill’s contents, it is not easy, in the context of our exchange, to separate this material from your own arguments. Indeed, I think it would be very enlightening to show how your own way of thinking epitomizes many of the things that most trouble me about the Bill. A consideration of competing concepts of truth (or, as some would have it, ‘‘truth’’) should make the case. To my mind, one of the ABOR’s most unsettling features is its encouragement of epistemological relativism. For instance it states that human knowledge is a never-ending pursuit of the truth, that there is no humanly accessible truth that is not in principle open to challenge, and that no party or intellectual faction has a monopoly on wisdom.

Further down, the Bill refers to ‘‘the uncertainty and unsettled character of all human knowledge.’’ My gut reaction to this kind of radical relativism is a pragmatic one. As the saying goes, it’s good to keep an open mind, but don’t keep it so open that your brain falls out. Unlike those people who only ever put the word ‘‘truth’’ in quotation marks, I feel that some principles, ideas and conventions are more right than others, even in cases when their truth-value is not categorically demonstrable. Otherwise, what is to prevent us from slipping into a dangerous moral relativism? When it comes to loosening prevailing standards of truthfulness, you certainly practice what you preach. For instance, in paragraph 11 of your latest response, you imply that you had not read a document which is written in the first person, and published in your magazine, complete with your name and an image of your signature at the bottom. After insisting that the piece was entirely ghostwritten, you go on (in the interest of denying that you never talk about balance) to disclaim any knowledge of the statement that the ABOR ‘‘demands balance in reading lists,’’ even though you cannot deny my observation that this very passage is actually an unsourced quotation (or variation of a quotation) of something you wrote elsewhere. You wrap up this prodigious little nugget of indirection by simply ‘‘plead[ing] guilty to not paying more attending [sic] to my fund-raising mail.’’

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To those of us who don’t share your ABOR-endorsed relativism, you’re guilty of a lot more than neglecting to check your mail. By the measure of the enduring civil standards upheld in reputable academic research, this kind of double- or triple-dealing is simply inexcusable. Like every academic I know, I personally make a habit of reading all first-person statements that I authorize to bear my signature. Indeed, I go so far as to actually write any such statements myself. After that, I stand behind my words. In my profession, writing one’s own material, and standing behind it, is nothing short of an ethical imperative. For academics, serious writing is properly viewed as an outward sign of inner integrity—or, as the case may be, lack of integrity. That’s why we consider plagiarism and ghost-writing to be such grave offences. (Another practice that keeps us honest is linking readers to our sources by means of footnotes or other citation methods, even when these sources complicate our argument.) In short, by academic standards, your cavalier practice of allowing your name to be attached to an influential document that you didn’t write (even if it is ‘‘very obviously a direct mail solicitation,’’ as if that matters) and your subsequent effort to shirk responsibility for the content, amount to a serious abuse of your readers’ trust. Given the discrepancy between the standard academic reverence for truthfulness and your own more nonchalant attitude, is it any wonder that academics question your motivations when you try to force us to submit to ‘‘the uncertainty and unsettled character of all human knowledge?’’ This phrase, coupled with your own instrumental view of truth, makes me worry about how moral relativists might act on the idea of the ‘‘neverending pursuit of the truth,’’ or on the phrase that ‘‘there is no humanly accessible truth that is not in principle open to challenge.’’ Let’s see how this last pronouncement breaks down in real life, by applying it to the following truth-claim. People should always strive to be honest and free from delusion.

Does anyone care to challenge this? This statement is certainly not ‘‘open to challenge’’ according to my principles. I believe it to be both ‘‘humanly accessible’’ and absolutely, categorically true. Anyone who wants to pass blanket legislation suggesting otherwise had better come up with a pretty good explanation of what could possibly be wrong with my truth-claim, or my principles, in this particular instance. On the subject of truth and delusion, I continue to be astonished by your persistent denial of the fact that the ABOR movement has repeatedly pushed for ideological ‘‘balance.’’ In the face of all my evidence, you have had little choice but to back down just a little, yet you now ask If ‘‘left-right balance’’ were the agenda of the Academic Bill of Rights, or the academic freedom campaign, why wouldn’t it be at the center of both?

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Given the facts of the matter, how can I respond, except by offering yet another example of the very term you initially denied using at all, and by choosing it from the ‘‘center’’ of your campaign? My latest example is a phrase in the Students for Academic Freedom Mission and Strategy statement. It asserts that [b]ecause the university is not the arm of any political party but an institution whose purpose is to promote learning and the exchange of ideas, student programs of a partisan nature should be fair and balanced [my emphasis].

There you have it. That pesky ‘‘b’’ word again, and once again in an explicitly political context. Are parts of the SAF Mission Statement also ghostwritten, and full of things that its authors (whoever they may be) didn’t mean to assert? Or is this sentence something that you’re willing to stand behind? If you do admit to the reality of this call for ‘‘balance,’’ how will you then reconcile it with your insistence that the ‘‘balance’’ issue isn’t (as you now rephrase it) ‘‘at the center’’ of your freedom campaign? If a ‘‘Mission and Strategy’’ statement isn’t ‘‘at the center’’ of the movement’s agenda, then it’s a funny kind of mission statement. Thank you for your attention. I look forward to any future responses. Graham Larkin Stanford University, Department of Art & Art History CA-AAUP VP for Private Colleges and Universities

Note Reproduced with the permission of Graham Larkin.

RELATIVELY UNBALANCED: REPLY TO LARKIN II David Horowitz Graham Larkin says that for him one of the Academic Bill of Rights ‘‘most unsettling features’’ is what he calls its ‘‘epistemological relativism.’’ He then quotes the passage in the bill that in his judgment expresses this relativism: ‘‘human knowledge is a never-ending pursuit of the truth, that there is no humanly accessible truth that is not in principle open to challenge, and that no party or intellectual faction has a monopoly on wisdom.’’ But, of course, this is not a statement of epistemological relativism. Epistemological relativism would be the claim that there is no truth that can be known, not that mortals have a difficult time arriving at it. The irony is that the dominant doctrines at Stanford and elite universities generally—post-modernism, deconstructionism, pragmatism—to name just three are indeed expressions of epistemological relativism. Why don’t these disturb Larkin?

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The view that the character of knowledge is unsettled should not only be uncontroversial, but is the very basis of a democratic pluralism and of the entire academic freedom tradition as defined by the organization to which Larkin belongs, which was honored by that organization until it was taken over by political ideologues (who of course have a stake in the idea that truth can be known and they are in possession of it). If the character of knowledge is settled and Truth is known then obviously both society and universities will—or should—be governed by an orthodoxy which recognizes the Truth. Surely Larkin doesn’t believe this. Or perhaps he does and that’s why he is so intent on defending an entrenched intellectual bureaucracy which refuses to honor the principle of intellectual diversity. If you think really believe is one truth and you are in possession of it, then all disagreement will look to you like ignorance or error—and why would you want to credential or hire the incompetent? As Larkin proceeds with his argument, he attempts to strengthen his position not with analysis or fact, but by escalating his rhetoric. By his third paragraph it is no longer merely ‘‘epistemological relativism’’ that concerns him but ‘‘radical relativism.’’ The example he provides however is no more a statement of relativism than the previous one. What sets Larkin off this time is the reference in The Academic Bill of Rights to ‘‘the uncertainty and unsettled character of all human knowledge.’’ This is pretty unobjectionable and generally accepted acknowledgement of the limits of human knowledge—not to the relativism of all its claims. What does it mean to say that ‘‘knowledge is advancing’’ if it does not mean that our present knowledge is unsettled? Does Mr. Larkin know with certainty that the universe began with a ‘‘big bang’’? If he does, he knows something that our physicists don’t. And if there is something so fundamental that the hard sciences cannot answer, is Mr. Larkin ready to claim that there are truths that our English literature professors possess that can’t be challenged? I think these examples make clear that Larkin’s position on ‘‘epistemological relativism and the state of our knowledge—and thus his criticism of the Academic Bill of Rights—is absurd. Far from being radical, the Academic Bill of Rights is entirely traditional and is merely an attempt to revive an understanding of academic freedom that the American Association of University Professors once held, but no longer does. Allow me this clarification, which is probably necessary, since the rest of Larkin’s response shows that he is eager to split hairs. Obviously there are many truths that are settled, e.g., statements of facts such as that Abraham Lincoln was born on February 12. Among the truths that are unsettled, on the other hand, are the large understandings we have of the world which we call ‘‘perspectives,’’ or philosophies, or ideologies. It is the attempt to make orthodoxies out of these perspectives, that the principles of academic freedom were designed to combat. Larkin now descends into the tedious and unproductive. He is upset by my claim that I didn’t read a fund-raising letter that bears my signature and that contradicts my statement that the Academic Bill of Rights does not seek to achieve balance in academic curricula or faculty hiring. The sentence in this

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fund-raising solicitation is said to outweigh the testimony of the Academic Bill of Rights itself (which contains no reference to ‘‘balance’’). My failure to read and correct this fund-raising solicitation is held to be a great intellectual sin which shows that I am unfit to debate academics like himself (who never fail to read every word that goes out under their name). The fact is that I run an organization with 17 employees situated in half a dozen states, manage two website and have overseen the two-year development of a third, make 50 speeches or appearances a year out of state, do 150 hours of radio and TV interviews, write approximately 100,000 words a year, edit several hundred thousand, put on a dozen or more events involving hundreds of individuals in two American cities and one abroad, authorize a dozen or more solicitation letters like the one in question, and much else besides. What is the momentous deal in the fact that I failed to read carefully enough one fund-raising letter which contains one phrase that is important to Larkin because it provides the flimsy basis for his attack? Like the conspiracy theorists who think George Bush was behind 9/11, Larkin refuses to acknowledge the obvious. If I have rejected balance publicly, as I have on many occasions, including in my reply to him, then the fact that a copy writer wrote the opposite on one occasion and I failed to catch it, means exactly nothing. Yet Larkin rambles on for a couple of ridiculous paragraphs trying to make an Everest out of this pathetic molehill. Larkin then repeats his previous unimpressive point with a different quote containing the dreaded word ‘‘balance.’’ Unfortunately his inability to understand the plain meaning of an English text gets him off on another irrelevant tangent. The passage he has found in an article I wrote is this: ‘‘[b]ecause the university is not the arm of any political party but an institution whose purpose is to promote learning and the exchange of ideas, student programs of a partisan nature should be fair and balanced [Larkin’s emphasis].’’ First, this is a passage about student activities programs—not academic faculty nor academic classes. Second, it specifically refers to student programs that are partisan—i.e., that are calculated political activities. It says that because the university is an educational not a political institution these should be fair and balanced. Does Larkin think they shouldn’t be? Notice that even though we have come to the end of Larkin’s commentary, and even though this is his third stab at critique of the Academic Bill of Rights, he still has not identified a single tenet of the actual Bill to which he objects. All he has done—besides picking phrases from other texts I have and have not written—is misconstrue a premise of the Bill, its relativism or lack thereof. And even in regard to this premise, he hasn’t demonstrated however mistaken he thinks it might be that the mistaken premise leads to a mistaken, or misguided, or dangerous conclusion.

Note Reproduced with the permission of David Horowitz.

CHAPTER

5

ARE FACULTY TOO LIBERAL? ARE UNIVERSITIES TOO CORPORATE?

FACULTY LIBERALISM AND UNIVERSITY CORPORATISM Rudy Fenwick and John Zipp The Threat: A Liberal Faculty? Over the past several years, there have been escalating and increasingly shrill attacks on American academia by conservative activists and groups, as personified by David Horowitz and the Center for the Study of Popular Culture (CSPC) along with its offshoot Students for Academic Freedom (SAF). The substance of these attacks is that American colleges and universities are increasingly dominated by radical, left-wing, liberal faculty, and that these faculty use their dominance to impose political correctness and a hegemonic left-wing, anti-American, antireligious (at least anti-Christian and anti-Jewish) ideology on their students and to suppress dissent among moderate and conservative students, faculty, and administrators. Stephen Balch, the president of the conservative National Association of Scholars (NAS), recently stated that liberals so dominate academia that they ‘‘grind down . . . opponents.’’1 George Will wrote that in American higher education there is ‘‘cultural diversity . . . in everything but thought.’’2 Newt Gingrich likened the threat to America of the ‘‘leftist professoriate’’ to that of terrorists. To the former Speaker of the House, ‘‘the anti-American civilization bias of our academic left . . . threatens to undermine and eliminate the history, language, and cultural patterns of American civilization in a secular, multicultural, politically correct, ethnic politician-defined new model.’’3 On his 700 Club television show, Pat Robertson referred to liberal professors as ‘‘termites that have worked into the woodwork of our academic society,’’ and later referred to them as ‘‘murderers,’’ sexual deviants, and terrorist supporters.4 The personification of this ‘‘terrorist’’-like threat has become Ward Churchill, the University of Colorado professor who is reported to have characterized some of the World Trade Center victims of 9/11 as ‘‘little Eichmanns.’’5

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For Horowitz and the CSPC the most immediate remedy to this threat is the Academic Bill of Rights. The ABOR, in various forms, has been introduced in 23 states (as of 2006) as legislation aimed at countering the alleged liberal bias of the academy. Its provisions include state- or university-mandated grievance procedures for students and faculty who feel they have been victims of liberal biases, either in the classroom or in hiring tenure and promotion decisions. Other provisions include the adoption of hiring quotas for conservative professors as well as ‘‘monitoring’’ the political inclinations of faculty. As introduced in the Arizona legislature in 2006, it would have allowed students to opt out of any course assignment that they felt was ‘‘personally offensive.’’ Although the ABOR has failed to pass in any of the state legislatures in which it was introduced, Pennsylvania did approve a resolution calling on stateaffiliated colleges to free their campuses from the ‘‘imposition of ideological orthodoxy.’’ And Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives have included a provision in the 2006 Higher Education Appropriation Act, which calls on publicly funded colleges and universities to ensure a diversity of ideas in the classroom.6 Despite the lack of legislative success for the ABOR, Horowitz’s tactics have gained national attention for his views. ‘‘The aim of the movement isn’t really to achieve legislation,’’ Horowitz stated. ‘‘It’s supposed to act as a cattle prod, to make legislators and universities aware.’’7 And, he might add, to influence the public’s image of academe. In a 2006 survey sponsored by the American Association of University Professors (AAUP), 38 percent of Americans thought that ‘‘political bias in the classroom was a very serious problem.’’ However, 57 percent did not feel that this political bias interfered with ‘‘how well university professors did their jobs.’’8 Nor is the ABOR the only tactic Horowitz has employed in his attacks on academe. In his 2006 book, The Professors: The 101 Most Dangerous Academics in America, he gets personal. In it, Horowitz profiles the professors he feels are the most threatening to American civilization and suggests that these 101 are representative of a much larger percentage of faculty. As the book jacket reads: ‘‘Coming to a campus near you: terrorists, racists and communists— you know them as The Professors.’’ It goes on: ‘‘Today’s radical academics aren’t the exception—they’re legion.’’9 At the same time Horowitz’s book was rolling off the press, Fox News commentator Sean Hannity urged students to record ‘‘left-wing propaganda’’ by professors so he could broadcast it on his show. Likewise, the Bruin Alumni Association offered students at UCLA $100 to tape ‘‘left-wing’’ professors at the university to ‘‘expose . . . their extreme views.’’ Shortly after the offer was made, it was withdrawn in the wake of a firestorm of negative press coverage. It turns out the Bruin Alumni Association is Andrew Jones, a 24-year-old UCLA alumni and Republican activist. In addition to offering this ‘‘bounty,’’ Jones mounted a Web site on which he compiled the ‘‘Dirty 30,’’ a list of UCLA faculty he considered to be the most dangerous radicals.10

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Publishing lists of supposed ‘‘subversives’’ and encouraging students to report the classroom statements of their instructors has reminded many observers of the ‘‘blacklists’’ and ‘‘witch-hunting’’ of the McCarthy era. There are, however, substantial differences as well. The recent attacks on academic freedom have been made by private individuals and groups, and have for the most part not involved state authorities. Nor, despite the perception among the American public that professors do introduce a political bias in their teaching, is there popular support for government action to correct the bias, as there was in the McCarthy era. In the 2006 AAUP survey, 80 percent of Americans were opposed to the idea that ‘‘government should control what gets taught in the classroom.’’11 But in other ways, the recent attacks are more pernicious. McCarthyism focused primarily on faculty’s off-campus activities and associations. In contrast, recent attacks on academic freedom focus on the core of academic work—classroom teaching. Moreover, whereas McCarthyism was about an individual’s political behavior—that is, association with the Communist Party—today’s attacks are aimed at thought—that is, one’s political attitudes and opinions. And, today’s attacks have substantially expanded the definition of ‘‘subversive’’ beyond ‘‘communists,’’ to include ‘‘radicals,’’ ‘‘leftists,’’ ‘‘liberals,’’ and Democrats. Beneath the obvious rhetorical excesses—and inaccuracies—of these accusations and characterizations lie two substantive charges: (1) that faculty are and are becoming increasingly leftist in their political outlook, and (2) that their political biases are pushed on their colleagues and students at the expense of the ‘‘objective’’ pursuit and transmission of knowledge. But, to what extent can these claims be validated? These claims are based on two types of so-called evidence: (1) accusations against particular faculty members and (2) generalizations that these particular faculty represent the ‘‘tip of the iceberg’’ of radicalism in American higher education. The ‘‘particular’’ is represented by the charges made against specific faculty, such as Ward Churchill, based on purported statements (in and out of class), readings and subjects in class syllabi, and activities outside the classroom, such as participating in antiwar teach-ins. This is the foundation of Horowitz’s claims against the 101 (or so) faculty discussed in The Professors. Because these ‘‘particular’’ claims have been addressed and effectively rebutted elsewhere, especially in Facts Count,12 we focus on the second, ‘‘general’’ type of evidence: that a substantial proportion, if not dominant majority, of faculty hold radical, left-wing, liberal political views. Evidence supporting this claim comes from a few methodologically flawed studies. In 2002, the CSPC studied voter registration records of faculty in humanities and social science departments in 23 ‘‘elite’’ colleges and universities and found that registered Democrats outnumbered registered Republicans by 10–1.13 Klein and Western tried replicating the CSPC results for faculty at the University of California at Berkeley and Stanford University, and found Democrats outnumbered Republicans 10–1 at Berkeley and 7.6–1 at Stanford.14

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The obvious limitations of these studies start with their highly selective samples: 23 ‘‘elite’’ schools plus Berkeley and Stanford are clearly not representative of the great breadth of types of higher education institutions in the United States, nor are humanities and social sciences representative of all academic departments. Excluded were such popular majors as business, engineering, biology, nursing, and computer science. Although the tilt of faculty party preference toward Democrats appears overwhelming, the studies did not include ‘‘independents,’’ which in many locales are a majority of registered voters, nor did they compare the orientation of college faculty with the orientations of the overall communities in which these schools are located. Nor is it valid to equate party registration or voting with political orientation. Although the Republican Party has increasingly become the party of ‘‘conservatives,’’ the converse cannot be said of the Democratic Party, where there is greater diversity of political orientations, and the dominant orientation remains ‘‘middle of the road.’’15 In The Professors, Horowitz claims that the 101 professors profiled are representative of the 5–10 percent of faculty in U.S. colleges and universities who are ‘‘radical.’’ Where does he get his estimate? It is based on the 218 Harvard faculty who voted to censure then-President Larry Summers. Because Harvard has roughly 2,100 faculty, the 218 represents 10 percent. Horowitz then assumes that because Harvard is probably more ‘‘radical’’ than most schools, the national figure may be closer to 5 percent. Although his methodology is at best problematic, the 5–10 percent turns out to be a far more accurate estimate of ‘‘radical’’ faculty than any of the studies cited above; that is, if one equates ‘‘radical’’ with faculty who self-identify as ‘‘far left.’’16 How do we know? Because that estimate is close to the numbers reported in the best data source currently available on faculty attitudes and values, ‘‘The American College Teacher.’’ This is a triennial national, representative survey of faculty attitudes conducted since 1989 by the Higher Education Research Institute (HERI) at the University of California, Los Angeles.17 Faculty respondents included in these surveys represent all academic departments and all types of higher education institutions, including two-year colleges. In HERI’s 2004–05 survey, 7.9 percent of college teachers self-identified as ‘‘far left.’’ Another 43.4 percent self-identified as ‘‘liberal.’’ In contrast, 0.7 percent identified as ‘‘far right,’’ and another 18.8 percent identified as ‘‘conservative’’; 29.2 percent identified as ‘‘middle of the road.’’ Combining ‘‘far left’’ with ‘‘liberal’’ respondents, slightly more than half of all faculty (51.3 percent) identified with left-of-center political orientations, while together ‘‘far right’’ and ‘‘conservative’’ faculty total 19.5 percent. Thus, it is true, as conservatives argue, that liberal faculty outnumber conservatives on campus, but only by a 2.6–1 ratio, not the overwhelming 10–1 or 7–1 reported by conservative commentators. Nor has the ratio of campus liberals to conservatives changed appreciably since the 1989 survey in which there were 2.3 liberals for every conservative,

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and there has been no change from 2001, when the ratio was also 2.6 to 1. The percentages of those identifying either left or right of center, however, have increased at the expense of those in the middle of the road. In 1989, 41.7 percent identified left of center, 18.2 to the right, and 40.3 percent in the middle. Using a second, similar source of national, representative data on faculty attitudes from periodic surveys conducted by the Carnegie Foundation through 1997, we can trace trends in political orientation back to the 1960s. In 1969, there were two liberals for every conservative.18 By 1984, that ratio declined to 1.2–1,19 then rose to 2.3–1 in 1997.20 Thus, while there has been some fluctuation in the numbers, there does not appear to be any sustained trend toward faculty radicalism or even liberalism over the past 35 years. The Carnegie surveys also provide data on the difference in political orientations by academic disciplines and by institutional types (such data are not publicly available from HERI). Data from the 1989 and 1997 surveys clearly refute any claims that academe is an increasingly ‘‘radical,’’ ‘‘liberal’’ monolith. Although there are substantial ‘‘liberal’’ majorities in some disciplines, particularly humanities (7–1) and social sciences (3.7–1), conservatives are prominent in others. Not surprisingly, conservatives are a majority in business schools (5 for every 3 liberals), but they are also a plurality in such popular fields as computer science and engineering. Likewise, although liberals outnumber conservatives in selective (Carnegie category I) liberal arts colleges (8–1), they are equal in number in the largest and fastest-growing segment of higher education—two-year colleges.21 These data point again to the selectivity bias of conservative claims: they find a liberal, radical academic monolith because they look only at the most liberal segment of academe—humanities and selective liberal arts colleges—to the exclusion of a vast majority of academic disciplines and institutions. The second conservative claim is that liberal faculty use their positions to indoctrinate their students and ‘‘grind down’’ their conservative colleges. As with the claim that academe is a liberal, radical monolith, this contention is based on both specific and general evidence. The specific evidence comes primarily in the form of student complaints of political bias in the classroom logged on conservative Web sites, such as that by SAF. These complaints have become the major justification used by Horowitz and CSPC in their push for ABOR legislation. The argument is that the number of such complaints is rising rapidly throughout the country and thus students are in need of legislative protections from liberal indoctrination. Regardless of the political orientations of faculty members, if these charges are true, then something is clearly wrong with how we teach. But is there any truth to these charges? Not according to the best available evidence. In their analysis of the charges made by Horowitz in The Professors, Free Exchange on Campus found that for only 13 of the 100 (not 101 as the book claims) professors profiled were there recorded student complaints. Of these 13 recorded complaints, 10 were found to be either irrelevant to charges of political bias or unsubstantiated by evidence, while the other 3 had been investigated by university officials and the

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professors had been cleared of the charges.22 During hearings on its version of the ABOR, the Florida legislature asked the state’s Office of Program Policy Analysis and Government Accountability to investigate whether there was a problem with political bias in college classrooms. In its report, the agency found that less than 1 percent of all student grievances concerned academic freedom issues. Moreover, all Florida colleges had academic freedom and student grievance and appeals policies already in place to protect students who felt their rights were being denied.23 Also absent is a national groundswell of concern from college students who feel they are the victims of political indoctrination by their professors. Although students tend to be more politically conservative than faculty and, according to one study by Kelly-Woessner and Woessner, perceive their professors to be more liberal, they are unlikely to change their political views because they differ and may even ‘‘push back’’ by giving these professors less ‘‘source credibility.’’ The Kelly-Woessner study of 1,385 undergraduate students in political science was presented to the Pennsylvania legislature during its debate on the ABOR. Students who perceived their politics as differing from those of their professors also rated those professors as ‘‘biased or uncaring,’’ but generally they rated those they perceived as conservative more favorably in presenting material objectively, and rated those they perceived as liberal more favorably in encouraging students to present their own viewpoints, grading fairly, encouraging a comfortable learning environment, and caring about the success of students.24 On the other side of the podium, evidence is lacking that college faculty in general feel strongly about pushing their political views on their students or colleagues, or that they are overtly political. In its 2004–05 survey, HERI asked faculty to evaluate the personal importance of a wide variety of educational and professional goals. At the bottom of that list was ‘‘influencing the political structure,’’ to which only 19 percent answered that this was a ‘‘very important’’ or ‘‘essential’’ goal. Only 37 percent thought ‘‘influencing social values’’ was ‘‘very important’’ or ‘‘essential,’’ which is down from 46 percent in 2001. In contrast, 43 percent valued the standard American value, ‘‘being well off financially,’’ and 70 percent valued ‘‘raising a family.’’ At the top of list of educational values were traditional academic values: helping students develop the ability to think critically (99 percent), helping students to master knowledge in a discipline (94 percent), and developing creative capacities (68 percent), as well as the more careerist goals of preparing students for employment after college (73 percent) and for graduate education (61 percent). Even ‘‘traditional’’ moral values were rated more important than political ones: 88 percent valued serving as a role model to students, 59 percent valued developing students’ moral character, and 53 percent valued helping students develop their ‘‘personal values.’’ To the extent that social activism or involvement was valued, it tended to be personal rather than political: helping others who are in difficulty (66 percent) and helping to promote racial understanding (54 percent).25

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In short, there is no credible evidence that American academia is the cradle of anti-American, antireligious radicalism. Nor is there a widespread, spontaneous clamoring among college students for protection from political indoctrination by their professors. Why then conservative demands for an ABOR? Why then Horowitz? The best way to understand Horowitz and the ABOR is as the latest iteration of a long-term, well-funded effort by conservatives to assert right-wing dominance over American universities. In a recent article in The Nation, Max Blumenthal wrote that this effort can be traced back to the early 1960s. In his 1962 autobiography, Out of Step, Frank Chodorov, the founder of the conservative Intercollegiate Studies Institute (ISI), proposed a long-term grand strategy to take control of academia and ‘‘implant [conservative] ideas in the minds of the coming generations. . . . a fifty-year project.’’ This project has been well funded from the beginning. According to Blumenthal, under the guidance of former Nixon Treasury Secretary William Simon, industrialists John Olin, Harry and Lynde Bradley, and Richard Mellon Scaife began bankrolling the ISI as well as other right-wing organizations such as Accuracy in Academia. Other right-wing groups funded by the Olin, Bradley, and Scaife foundations include the NAS, the ACTA (American Council of Trustees and Alumni), and Horowitz’s CSPC. Additional funding for these groups has come from other conservative foundations such as the Coors and the Smith Richardson foundations.26 The NAS was established in 1985 by conservative faculty, graduate students, and trustees with the mandate to oppose campus affirmative action programs, women’s and ethnic studies programs, and ‘‘political correctness.’’ The ACTA was established in 1995. Among its founding members are Connecticut Senator Joe Lieberman and Lynne Cheney, wife of Vice President Dick Cheney. It is most famous for its 2001 report ‘‘Defending Civilization: How Our Universities Are Failing America.’’ The report, written in the wake of 9/11, implied that while professors had the right to speak out, to provide context for the 9/11 attack was giving ‘‘comfort to adversaries.’’27 The CSPC was founded by Horowitz in 1989. Since its founding, CSPC has received $13 million in private grants. According to a report prepared by the AAUP chapter at the University of Cincinnati for the Ohio legislature during the 2005 hearings on a proposed ABOR, between 2001 and 2003, CSPC received $3 million in funding from the Bradley, Scaife, and Olin foundations alone.28 Overall, according to a Boston Globe article,29 conservative organizations spend more than $38 million annually to promote their agenda on college campuses, almost doubling the $20 million per year these organizations spent during the 1990s.30 In 2003, one conservative student organization, the Young America’s Foundation, spent $10 million in its efforts to recruit students for conservative causes. In fact, so much is being donated to conservatives on campus that conservative foundations established the Philanthropy Roundtable to coordinate the funding.31

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And, conservative advocacy groups such as the CSPC are not the only beneficiaries of the funding. The Bradley Foundation supported the writing of Charles Murray and Richard Herrnstein’s The Bell Curve, which argued that blacks and Latinos are less intelligent than whites. Funding also goes to establish academic programs that promote conservative views, particularly in the fields of business, economics, law, and history. Such programs have been supported at Harvard, the University of Chicago, George Mason University, and Princeton. At Princeton, a financially independent academic center, the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions, was founded in 2000 to ‘‘sustain America’s experiment in order liberty’’ in accordance with the principles of natural law. According to Blumenthal, the Madison Program has become a blueprint for the ‘‘right’s [50 year] strategy to extend and consolidate power within the university system.’’32 The program was established with generous donations from the core conservative foundations: $525,000 from Olin, $400,000 from Bradley (plus a $250,000 ‘‘award’’ in 2005), as well as $330,000 from the Association for Cultural Interchange (ACI), the Clover Foundation, and the Higher Education Initiative. But, according to the Daily Princetonian, these last three foundations turn out to be fronts for Opus Dei, a secretive, conservative Catholic organization founded by fascist sympathizer Josemaria Escriva. But the largest donations have come from Princeton alumni Steve Forbes and his younger brother Christopher, who in 2004–2005 donated $1,105,625 to Princeton, much of which went to the Madison Program.33 Given all the money that the right has poured into its 50-year project, has it had an appreciable affect on American academics? If we are to believe conservative rhetoric and claims about an increasingly radical professoriate, the answer would have to be a resounding ‘‘no.’’ But, while credible evidence clearly disputes conservative claims, it is also true that there has not been a movement by faculty to the political right. Given that the 50-year project was first enunciated in 1962, time is getting short (2012) for its completion. As with deadlines in general, its nearness may help explain the increasingly shrill conservative attack on academe.

The Real Threat: The Corporatization of Higher Education The academic integrity of colleges and universities is not in danger because liberal faculty have undermined the traditional goals of higher education. Although liberals clearly outnumber conservatives in the academy, there simply is no evidence of a major shift in the last several decades in this ratio. Combining this with the lack of evidence of any widespread or systematic disenfranchising of conservative students suggests that there is little basis for conservative claims that our colleges and universities represent a left-wing hegemony. In what can only be seen as an ironic twist, there is one notable trend in higher education in the last 25 years that has been the subject of serious

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inquiry and yet has somehow flown under the radar of conservative guardians of the ivory tower: the commercialization or corporatization of higher education. To be sure, business and industry have influenced higher education seemingly forever, attracting a serious critique almost a century ago from noted scholar Thorstein Veblen.34 However, a seismic shift in the very fabric of higher education has occurred in the last three decades, a shift that goes well beyond the evidence presented above concerning right-wing foundation and corporate support for conservative scholars and think tanks. Without attempting to reduce the impact of this funding, the latter might be best seen as an attempt from outside higher education to shape the academy. In contrast, this recent wave of corporatization fundamentally makes changes from the inside— colleges and universities are changing their emphases, practices, and reward structures. As a result, this corporatization is more widespread and has the potential of much more pernicious effects on education itself. The signs of this transition abound. The most obvious indication of corporatization, of course, is the growth of for-profit colleges and universities, with the University of Phoenix perhaps being the exemplar. Since its founding in 1976, the University of Phoenix has risen to being the largest university in the world; it has more than 180 campuses in the United States alone, with 280,000 students worldwide.35 In the last two decades, more than 500 forprofit colleges and universities have started, including almost 200 that are four-year institutions.36 The Economist ’s description of the University of Phoenix is an apt description of this growing sector of higher education: ‘‘the campus does not just look like a corporate headquarters; it is one.’’37 Given this, there is little to be gained from probing the ways in which commercialization has influenced for-profit universities, as these institutions are designed to be corporate ventures. What is worth examining, however, are the ways in which commercialization is affecting traditional nonprofit colleges and universities. At the most general level, colleges and universities are increasingly adopting the practices and language of for-profit corporations— that is, they produce a ‘‘product’’ (education) for their ‘‘customers’’ (students). Universities are increasingly relying on business models—moving resources to departments with high student credit hour production, outsourcing auxiliary functions (for example, dining services and bookstores), and adding layers of administration and centralizing control. Along with increasingly ‘‘walking’’ like businesses, colleges are prone to ‘‘talking’’ like them, too. For example, university presidents are now referred to as chief executive officers, provosts are being given the title of chief operating officer, and recruiting and retaining students is now seen as ‘‘enrollment management.’’ Not surprisingly, college and universities are increasingly evaluating themselves, and being evaluated by others, by comparing their ‘‘throughput’’ costs (faculty) to their ‘‘bottom line’’ revenue. Why are universities increasingly acting like for-profit corporations? Harvard President Derek Bok (2003) reviewed several different explanations: a

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loss of focus or purpose in higher education; an attempt by business to takeover universities; and the decline in government support, which forced public universities especially to look for other sources of revenue. Although Bok found some merit in each of these, he contended that the primary reason for the recent wave of commercialization was the newfound opportunities for universities to make money from university research and faculty advice.38 These newfound opportunities and thus the privatization and commercialization of university research stemmed most directly from the passage of what was, at the time, a rather obscure amendment: the Bayh-Dole Act of December 12, 1980 (P.L. 96-517, Patent and Trademark Act Amendments of 1980). Called ‘‘perhaps the most inspired piece of legislation to be enacted in America over the past half century,’’39 this Act allowed universities to patent the products of federally funded research (before this act, this required special approval from the federal government, a lengthy and uncertain process). The backdrop for this amendment was, on the broadest level, the economic problems of the 1970s (including stagflation, deindustrialization, and competition from other nations, especially Japan), and more directly, a 1979 report from the comptroller general that less than 5 percent of 28,000 government-held patents had been developed. Taxpayers were funding the research for these discoveries, but without a chance of ownership, corporations seemed unwilling to commercialize them.40 Bayh-Dole opened the doors for this transfer of technology and clearly has had a tremendous impact on university research. Virtually all top research universities have begun to pursue the acquisition and marketing of patents and the licensing of university products.41 Before Bayh-Dole, universities were awarded approximately 250 patents a year.42 By 2002, the Economist reported that patenting has increased by a factor of 10; 2,200 spin-off firms had been formed, creating 260,000 jobs and adding $40 billion annually to the U.S. economy.43 Some of the academic-industry partnerships have produced widely known products and have garnered tremendous revenue for universities. To cite just two examples, Florida State has earned more than $200 million from the cancer-fighting drug, Taxol, while the University of Florida received $94 million from selling its rights to Gatorade.44 The Association of University Technology Managers (AUTM)—a group of more than 350 universities, research institutions, medical centers, and government agencies involved in technology transfer—promotes the benefits of university-industry collaboration and conducts an annual licensing survey (summaries are available at http://www.autm.net/index.cfm). Its Better World Project has just issued two reports touting the benefits of technology transfer: Technology Transfer Stories: 25 Innovations that Changed the World and Technology Transfer Works: 100 Cases from Research to Realization.45 Despite this outpouring of effort and the publication of these reports, there are serious problems with the commercialization of research. Even though Derek Bok noted that universities, acting prudently, can patent scientific

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discoveries and work with industry without compromising themselves, he concluded that academic leaders have not paid enough attention to the Faustian bargains they are striking with corporations.46 A recent article in Fortune was rather direct: ‘‘Universities have evolved from public trusts into something closer to venture capital firms.’’47 A survey of 62 research universities indicated that both university administrators and technology transfer managers believed that ‘‘revenue’’ was the most important outcome of licensing work.48 Quite ironically, despite this emphasis on revenue, relatively few schools make any money from technology transfer. For instance, in 2002, two-thirds of the $959 million universities earned from commercial products went to only 13 schools, with perhaps half of all institutions not earning any money at all.49 Michael Crow, who was Columbia University’s executive vice-provost for technology transfer, echoed this concern, pointing out that only the top 15 universities on AUTM’s list of royalty earners had the necessary ability and resources for successful commercialization. The other institutions, he noted, were ‘‘basically getting nothing out of it, except a lot of economic development rhetoric.’’50 Most universities might not be making much money on their attempts to become venture capitalist firms, but this commercialization has exacted a high toll in other ways, especially on the objective pursuit of knowledge. There is an inherent tension between patenting and publishing, because information that is published cannot be patented. Slaughter and Rhoades speculated that the 9 percent decline in published articles from universities between 1992 and 1999, almost half of which was in the life sciences, could be due to the increased emphasis on patents rather than publications.51 A May 26, 2006, decision by the Texas A&M Board of Regents suggests that this interpretation has some validity. After reportedly hearing that their junior faculty felt pressure to delay patenting until after getting tenure, system chancellor Robert T. McTeer proposed—and the board approved—including patents as an explicit category in tenure reviews. McTeer was clear in defending the policy: ‘‘We wanted to send a message that Texas A&M is open for business.’’52 Beyond this, faculty receiving corporate support for their research or consulting with industry often are confronted with signing nondisclosure agreements, submitting their work to prepublication review, or not having access to all clinical data. For instance, nearly 20 percent of life science professors delayed publishing their results for more than six months for ‘‘commercial’’ reasons.53 More generally, one survey of industry licensing executives found that almost half (44 percent) of their university licenses request publication delays and 27 percent include provisions that permit the company to delete information before papers are submitted for publication.54 The secrecy involved in these arrangements literally can be deadly: The lead researchers of a 19-site clinical study of PolyHeme, an oxygen-carrying blood substitute, were unable to obtain all the data from the manufacturer, Northfield Laboratories, almost six years after the company stopped the study. Ten patients had

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heart attacks and two died, a situation characterized by a deputy editor of the Journal of the American Medical Association as ‘‘a very sad and very typical case.’’55 Given the above, it is perhaps not surprising that a number of studies have shown that the ties between the corporate and academic worlds have created conflicts of interest that skew research findings and undermine scientific integrity. For starters, industry-sponsored research is much more likely to find conclusions favorable to the sponsor than are independent studies. For instance, while 94 percent of studies not funded by the tobacco industry found secondary smoke harmful, only 13 percent of research funded by the industry did so.56 A similar and, in more ways, an even more telling finding was reported in the February 2006 issue of the American Journal of Psychiatry. In a wonderful play on the principle of transitivity, the title of this article is ‘‘Why Olanzapine Beats Risperidone, Risperidone Beats Quetiapine, and Quetiapine Beats Olanzapine.’’ The authors reviewed the results of 30 head-to-head studies of the effectiveness of antipsychotic drugs used to treat schizophrenia; each of these studies were fully or partially supported by a pharmaceutical company that manufactured at least one of the drugs tested in the trial. Similar to the findings reported above for tobacco, the sponsor’s drugs were favored in 90 percent of the trials. Perhaps more interesting, the authors were able to provide a set of 21 cases in which drugs manufactured by different corporations were directly compared, but with the sponsoring corporation varying. In 18 of these 21 tests (85.7 percent), the sponsoring corporation’s drug was deemed more effective. For instance, there were nine comparisons between Olanzapine (Lilly) and Risperidone (Janssen); all five times that Lilly sponsored the study Olanzapine was rated as more effective, while Risperidone fared better in three of the four tests connected to Janssen.57 The conflicts of interests between the pharmaceutical industry and the academy may have moved beyond the laboratory to the diagnostic and treatment standards themselves. An article in the April 2006 issue of Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics found that 56 percent of the experts who contributed to the current version of the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV) had financial ties to drug companies, with every member on the panels for ‘‘Mood Disorders’’ and ‘‘Schizophrenia and Other Psychotic Disorders’’ having these connections.58 This is not just a squabble over academic lists and rankings, as the DSM is used by insurance companies to determine what counts as a mental disorder, thus warranting reimbursement. At a more general level, a recent survey sought to uncover the extent of scientific misconduct among approximately 3,000 early- and mid-career scientists. Their article, published in Nature, detailed some rather chilling findings. One-third of the scientists surveyed reported engaging in one of 10 types of misconduct, most of which were serious enough to warrant sanctions—such behaviors included the unauthorized use of confidential information, ignoring

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or circumventing human subjects requirements, and failing to present data that contradict one’s earlier research. Most troubling, however, is that more than one in seven scientists (15.5 percent) admitted to ‘‘changing the design, methodology or results of a study in response to pressure from a funding source.’’59 The commercialization of higher education has affected universities in more ways than just research. The well-known historian of technology, David Noble, has referred to the ‘‘commoditization of the educational function of the university,’’ whereby instruction is transformed into marketable products (for example, CD-ROMS, Web sites, and so on).60 For-profit, virtual universities like the University of Phoenix may be the best examples of this, but more than half of the institutions in a 2004 survey felt that online education was essential.61 Much of the effort in computer-based instruction is taking place in large introductory courses at public or large universities (approximately half the students in community colleges and 35 percent of the students in fouryear institutions are enrolled in 25 online courses).62 Noble argues that as courses go online, faculty lose control over their content while administrators increase their ability to monitor, scrutinize, and censor. Once a faculty member has developed a course online, those who didn’t design or create the course may be hired to teach it, a process that Noble suspects may be used to undercut the status of tenure-track faculty.63 Indeed, one of the principal advocates for using technology in the classroom, Carol Twigg, president of the National Center for Academic Transformation, noted that the redesign of the introductory math course at Virginia Tech reduced labor costs by 77 percent.64 Beyond the part played by computer-aided instruction, across the last three decades, universities have increasingly moved to create a contingent labor force. Data from the U.S. Department of Education, compiled by the AAUP, indicate that the percentage of faculty in full-time tenured or tenure-track positions declined from 56.8 percent in 1975 to 35.1 percent in 2003. The flipside is that 65 percent of today’s faculty hold part-time or full-time nontenure-track jobs.65 Although part-time faculty earn much less than their full-time counterparts, increases in tuition have far outpaced inflation since the 1980s. Between 1980 and 2004, tuition and fees at public universities increased three times faster than inflation. From the early 1990s, tuition and fees have increased by 50 percent in real dollars at public colleges. As a result, almost two-thirds of graduating seniors (66.4 percent) had loan debt in 2004, up from less than half in 1993. Moreover, the average debt that seniors faced after graduation more than doubled across these years, rising from $9,250 to $19,200—a 58 percent increase after adjusting for inflation.66 This debt has become increasingly burdensome for students, especially those who might consider public service careers. For instance, an estimated 23 percent of public and 38 percent of private college graduates would find it unmanageable to repay their loans at a

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starting teacher’s salary.67 Along similar lines, Russell Jacoby cited a 1988 Los Angeles Times article reporting on Citibank’s policy (since rescinded) of denying credit cards to students majoring in the humanities, seeing them as being less likely than business or engineering students to land lucrative jobs.68 According to the 2002 National Student Loan Survey sponsored by Nellie Mae, one in six students admitted that their debt had a significant impact on their career plans.69 More recently, the experience of Princeton might be instructive. Five years ago, Princeton eliminated student loans, replacing them with grants, the result of which was that its 2005 class graduated without major loan burdens. A financial aid office survey of these seniors indicated that two-thirds believed that graduating with little or no debt had a significant impact on their career plans, with some mentioning that jobs in public service were more viable options.70 In sum, it is easy to see that ‘‘learning for learning’s sake’’ may be increasingly viewed by prospective ‘‘consumers’’ of higher education as an unaffordable ‘‘frill’’ and that the high costs of college may steer students toward career paths that have higher probabilities of financial rewards. Pulling together the arguments raised in this paper produces an interesting scenario. Conservative critics such as David Horowitz are promoting an ABOR in part to address what they see as the silencing of alternative voices in higher education. In particular, underlying these efforts is the notion that our universities have been co-opted by liberal and left-wing faculty who narrow the range of discourse. These are serious charges, and ones to be taken seriously, because systemic biases within higher education will erode public trust and undermine the very authority of the profession. Seen in this way, shining light on the undermining of academic freedom has produced, at least in our minds, a rather ironic set of findings: not only is there little evidence that supports the presence of an overwhelmingly liberal faculty that is distorting the academy, but also there is growing evidence that the increased corporatization of universities is skewing research findings, undermining tenure, turning education into a consumer product, and perhaps leading students to devalue public service careers. The real threat, then, does not lie in the presence of an overwhelmingly liberal faculty, but rather in the ways in which universities are increasingly turning from institutions concerned with the public good to institutions that are increasingly focused on private gains, more and more indistinguishable from private corporations.

Notes 1. Stephen H. Balch, ‘‘The Antidote to Academic Orthodoxy,’’ Chronicle of Higher Education, April 23, 2004. Available at http://chronicle.com/weekly/v50/i33/ 33b00701.htm (accessed May 21, 2007). 2. George Will, ‘‘Academia, Stuck to the Left,’’ Washington Post, November 28, 2004, B7.

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3. Justin Park, with Peter Kapick, Boone Shear, and Eric Zassenhaus, ‘‘Under Attack: Free Speech on Campus,’’ Media & Culture Clamor (September/October 2005): 9–14. 4. ‘‘Murderers, Video, and Academic Freedom,’’ Inside Higher Ed, March 23, 2006. Available at http://insidehighered.com/news/2006/03/23/academic (accessed May 21, 2007). 5. Park, Kapick, Shear, and Zaaenhaus, ‘‘Under Attack,’’ 10. 6. ‘‘Silence in Class,’’ Guardian Unlimited, April 4, 2006. Available at http:// www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0.,1746227,00html (accessed May 21, 2007). 7. Ibid. 8. Scott Smallwood, ‘‘People Oppose Government Interference in Academe, Poll Finds, Some Are Wary of Radical Professors,’’ Chronicle of Higher Education, 2006. Available at http://chronicle.com/daily/2006/06/2006060901n.htm (accessed May 21, 2007). 9. David Horowitz, The Professors: The 101 Most Dangerous Academics in America (Washington, DC: Regnery, 2006). 10. ‘‘Silence in Class,’’ Guardian Unlimited, 3. 11. Smallwood, ‘‘People Oppose Government Interference in Academe,’’ 2. 12. ‘‘Facts Count: An Analysis of David Horowitz, The Professors: The 101 Most Dangerous Academics in America,’’ Free Exchange on Campus, 2006. Available at http://images1.americanprogress.org/il80web20037/campusprogress/facts_count.pdf (accessed May 21, 2007). 13. David Horowitz and Eli Leher, ‘‘Political Bias in the Administrations and Faculties of 32 Elite Colleges and Universities,’’ Center for the Study of Popular Culture, 2002. Available at http://www.frontpagemag.com/Content/read.asp?ID=55 (accessed May 21, 2007). 14. Daniel B. Klein, and Andrew Western, ‘‘How Many Democrats per Republican at UC-Berkeley and Stanford? Voter Registration Data Across 23 Academic Departments,’’ 2004. Available at http://swopec.hhs.se/ratioi/abs/ratioi0054.htm (accessed May 21, 2007). 15. John F. Zipp and Rudy Fenwick, ‘‘Is the Academy a Liberal Hegemony? The Political Orientations and Educational Values of Professors,’’ Public Opinion Quarterly 70 (2006): 304–26. 16. ‘‘Facts Count,’’ vii. 17. Jennifer A. Lindbolm, Alexander W. Astin, Linda J. Sax, and William S. Korn, The American College Teacher: National Norms for the 2001–2002 HERI Faculty Survey (Los Angeles: UCLA Higher Education Research Institute, 2005). 18. Everett Carl Ladd, Jr. and Seymour Martin Lipset, The Divided Academy: Professors and Politics (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1975). 19. Richard F. Hamilton and Lowell L. Hargens, ‘‘The Politics of the Professors: Self-Identifications, 1969–1984,’’ Social Forces 71 (1993): 603–27. 20. Zipp and Fenwick, ‘‘Is the Academy a Liberal Hegemony?’’ 306, 308. 21. Ibid. 22. ‘‘Facts Count,’’ iv. 23. ‘‘Murderers, Video, and Academic Freedom,’’ Inside Higher Ed. 24. ‘‘The Real Bias in the Classroom,’’ Inside Higher Ed, March 20, 2006. Available at http://insidehighered.com/news/2006/03/20/politics (accessed May 21, 2007). 25. Lindholm, Astin, Sax, and Korn, The American College Teacher, 5, 19.

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26. Max Blumenthal, ‘‘Princeton Tilts Right, The Nation, March 13, 2006 (vol. 282, no. 10): 11–19. 27. Park, Kapick, Shear, and Zassenhaus, ‘‘Under Attack,’’ 12. 28. Trent Douthett, ‘‘Horowitz Funding Sources,’’ Report Prepared for [Ohio State] Senator Fedor by the University of Cincinnati Chapter of AAUP, 2006. Available at http://www.aaupuc.org/horowitz.htm (accessed May 21, 2007). 29. Park, Kapick, Shear, and Zassenhaus, ‘‘Under Attack,’’ 11. 30. Ibid. 31. Ibid. 32. Blumenthal, ‘‘Princeton Tilts Right,’’ 13. 33. Ibid., 16. 34. Thorstein Veblen, The Higher Learning in America: A Memorandum on the Conduct of Universities by Business Men (New York: B. W. Huebsch, 1918). 35. ‘‘Higher Ed, Inc.,’’ The Economist, 376, no. 8443 (September 9, 2005): 19–20. 36. Ana Marie Cox, ‘‘None of Your Business: The Rise of the University of Phoenix and For-Profit Education—and Why It Will Fail Us,’’ in Steal the University: The Rise of the Corporate University and the Academic Labor Movement, Benjamin Johnson, Patrick Kavanagh, and Kevin Mattson, eds. (New York: Routledge, 2003), 15–32. 37. ‘‘Higher Ed, Inc.,’’ The Economist, 19. 38. Derek Bok, Universities in the Marketplace: The Commercialization of Higher Education (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2003). 39. ‘‘Innovation’s Golden Goose,’’ The Economist 365, no. 8303 (December 14, 2002): 3. 40. Clifton Leach and Doris Burke, Fortune 152, no. 6 (2005): 250–68. 41. Bok, Universities in the Marketplace; Eric Gould, The University in a Corporate Culture (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003); Johnson, Kavanagh, and Mattson, eds. Steal the University; Sheila Slaughter and Gary Rhoades, Academic Capitalism and the New Economy: Markets, States, and Higher Education (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004); Jennifer Washburn, University, Inc.: The Corporate Corruption of American Higher Education (New York: Basic Books, 2005). 42. Slaughter and Rhoades, ibid., 17. 43. ‘‘Innovation’s Golden Goose,’’ The Economist, 3. 44. Washburn, University, Inc., 168–69. 45. Association of University Technology Managers, Technology Transfer Works: 100 Cases from Research to Realization (Northbrook, IL: AUTM, 2006); Association of University Technology Managers, Technology Transfer Stories: 25 Innovations That Changed the World (Northbrook, IL: AUTM, 2006). 46. Bok, Universities in the Marketplace, 200. 47. Leach and Burke, ‘‘The Law of Unintended Consequences,’’ 252. 48. Richard Jensen and Marie Thursby, ‘‘Proofs and Prototypes for Sale: The Licensing of University Inventions,’’ American Economic Review 91 (2001): 240–59. 49. Washburn, University, Inc., 169. 50. Ibid., 188. 51. Slaughter and Rhoades, Academic Capitalism and the New Economy, 312. 52. ‘‘Teaching, Research, Service . . . & Patents,’’ Inside Higher Ed, May 30, 2006. Available at http://insidehighered.com/news/2006/03/31/accredit (accessed May 21, 2007).

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53. David Blumenthal and Eric G. Campbell, ‘‘Withholding Research Results in Academic Life Sciences,’’ JAMA 277 (1997): 1224–28. 54. Jerry G. Thursby and Marie C. Thursby, ‘‘University Licensing and the BayhDole Act,’’ Science 301 (2003): 1052. 55. Katherine S. Mangan, ‘‘Researchers Who Tested Blood Substitute Raise Concerns about Secrecy Surrounding Company-Sponsored Trials,’’ Chronicle of Higher Education, March 29, 2006. Available at http://chronicle.com/daily/2006/03/ 2006032902n.htm (accessed May 21, 2007). 56. Deborah A. Barnes and Lisa A. Bero, ‘‘Why Review Articles on the Health Effects of Passive Smoking Reach Different Conclusions,’’ JAMA 279 (1998): 1566– 70. 57. Stephan Heres, John Davis, Katja Maino, Elisabeth Jetzinger, Werner Kissling, and Stefan Leucht, ‘‘Why Olanzapine Beats Risperidone, Risperidone Beats Quetiapine, and Quetiapine Beats Olanzipine: An Exploratory Analysis of Head-to-Head Comparison Studies of Second-Generation Antipsychotics,’’ American Journal of Psychiatry 163 (2006): 185–94. 58. Lisa, Cosgrove, Sheldon Krimsky, Manisha Vijayaraghavan, and Lis Schneider, ‘‘Financial Ties between DSM-IV Panel Members and the Pharmaceutical Industry,’’ Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics 75 (2006): 154–60. 59. Brian C. Martinson, Melissa S. Anderson, and Raymond de Vries, ‘‘Scientists Behaving Badly, ‘‘ Nature 435 (June 9, 2005): 737–38. 60. David Noble, ‘‘Digital Diploma Mills,’’ in Steal the University, Johnson, Kavanagh, and Mattson, eds., 34–35. 61. Scott Carlson, ‘‘Online-Education Survey Finds Unexpectedly High Enrollment Growth,’’ Chronicle of Higher Education, November 26, 2004. Available at http://chronicle.com/weekly/v51/i14/14a03001.htm (accessed May 21, 2007). 62. ‘‘Transforming Teaching and Learning: Face-off: Technology as Teacher?’’ Chronicle of Higher Education, December 9, 2005. Available at http://chronicle.com/ weekly/v52/i16/16b01201.htm (accessed May 21, 2007). 63. Noble, ‘‘Digital Diploma Mills.’’ 64. ‘‘Transforming Teaching and Learning,’’ Chronicle of Higher Education, 2005. 65. ‘‘Trends in Faculty Status, 1975–2003,’’ American Association of University Professors, 2006. Available at http://www.aaup.org/AAUP/pubsres/research/trends19752003.htm?PF=1 (accessed May 21, 2007). 66. ‘‘Quick Facts About Student Debt,’’ Project on Student Debt, 2006. Available at http://projectonstudentdebt.org/files/File/Debt_Facts_and_Sources_4_4_06.pdf (accessed May 21, 2007). 67. Luke Swarthout, ‘‘Paying Back, Not Giving Back: Student Debt’s Negative Impact on Public Service Career Opportunities,’’ State PIRG’s Higher Education Project, 2006. 68. Russell, Jacoby, Dogmatic Wisdom: How the Culture Wars Divert Education and Distract America (New York: Doubleday, 1994). 69. Sandy Baum and Marie O’Malley, ‘‘College on Credit: How Borrowers Perceive their Education Debt,’’ Results of the 2002 National Student Loan Survey, 2003. Available at http://www.nelliemae.com/library/nasls_2000.pdf (accessed May 21, 2007). 70. Jon Gertner, ‘‘Forgive Us Our Student Debts,’’ New York Times Magazine (June, 11, 2006): 60–68.

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HIGHER EDUCATION IN THE TIME OF THE CORPORATE UNIVERSITY: REPEATING THE CALL FOR FACULTY ACTIVISM David D. Witt A good conspiracy is unprovable. I mean, if you can prove it, it means they screwed up somewhere along the line. —Conspiracy Theory1

Introduction Over the past several decades, the academic life of the typical full-time, tenure-track university professor has been taking a long, slow turn for the worse. Tuition has outpaced the rate of inflation as one state legislature after another continues to underfund higher education, effectively shifting the cost of education onto the consumer/student, who is encouraged to view college classes as vocational training. On most campuses, especially those formerly supported by state budgets, the size of the full-time, tenure-track faculty has steadily decreased, with administrations replacing vacated faculty lines by attrition with part-time and nontenured labor for teaching. Renewed administrative interest in academic planning, as a response to legislative calls for accountability and efficiency, threatens the liberal arts with virtual extinction, while generating for the remaining faculty one ad hoc subcommittee after another with a charge to investigate the need for so many redundant courses of study in English, history, modern languages, psychology, and other nontechnical disciplines. The heavy hand of political factions is creeping into our classrooms, calling into question the value of academic freedom—free inquiry of most any kind. Faculty are generally disenfranchised from university governance as they are redefined by administrations as employees of the universitycum-corporation. The university’s diverse interests in the generation of knowledge has narrowed to the typical corporate mind-set of useful knowledge. Faculty need only examine the working environment on their own campuses to get a sense of all this and can find meticulous arguments in the mounting volume of work of scholars from such esteemed critics as Henry A. Giroux2 and Stanley Aronowitz,3 as well as those making more recent arguments (for example, Slaughter and Leslie,4 as well as Johnson, Kavanagh, and Mattson5). Taken together, they consistently arrive at similar conclusions. Could all this simply be the sad, but inevitable, consequences of a changing world order, or are there real enemies to contend with? It may matter little, as Nelson and Watt point out so well in Office Hours, for actual conspiracy or not, the effects are the same.6 The faculty voice has been virtually silenced. Without much organized faculty focus or awareness, they’ve initiated a

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fundamental shift in the purpose of the university—a shift in which faculty have, almost unwittingly, been accomplices. Sounds like a conspiracy theory, and they may have screwed up because the evidence is right in front of each faculty member willing to view it. Whether it is a vast conspiracy, a commonsense reaction to the fiscal reality of the new millennium, or the culmination of dozens of half-measures applied by a leadership with limited vision, there is no denying that the university is in ruins.7 How could this have happened? Similar in process to criminologist David Matza’s idea of subterranean drift, where old values are supplanted by new, deviant ones, the education enterprise has been gradually co-opted.8 Over the past several decades, faculty have been doing their academic work—juggling teaching, research, and service duties—as well as attending to the relentlessly mounting, administratively initiated hindrances to achieve an ever-changing benchmark for a nebulous standard of excellence.9 As administrations continually redefine the quest for institutional excellence (whatever the term means at the moment), they simultaneously redefine systemic rewards for faculty compliance to standards for excellence. One semester it might be grant activity that gets rewarded, the next focus is on enrollment, followed by innovation, then followed by retention, service, or graduation rates. In a sort of academic version of hide-the-button, faculty must listen to public statements by administrators for clues to their future, because part of the game is that the administration seldom spells out its intentions. To be fair, administrations are playing a similar game with state legislatures. Instead of paying attention, other than to separately take notice and individually revise approaches, there’s been no closing of ranks on the part of the professorate, only sporadic collective viewing of the evidence. Certainly, little has been accomplished in the way of jointly formulating a unified defense. Without a more unified voice in these matters, the ideals of the professorate—academic freedom, duty to student learning, teaching as a profession, and the respect for all knowledge—will soon be remembered as the quaint habits of thought of an extinct scholarly society. These are grave matters, not just for employed faculty, but for the survival of key elements of our society and culture. Rather than preach to the choir, the time has come to fulfill our higher collective calling as citizen-scholars and engage our communities at every level.10

A Growing Cultural Shift in the Purpose of the University Generally, the social purpose of the university has moved away from an institution for the democratic social good, in which students are socialized into habits of scholarship and service to society, toward University Inc., in which students are customers and our academic work a commodity, bought and sold by the corporation. Two factions within the university—administrations (the business side, along with boards of trustees or regents) and faculties (the academic side, along with increasingly powerless faculty senates) have come to

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disagree on the issue of the purpose of higher education. While individual faculty continue to grouse about administrative intrusion and seek to individually protect their intellectual territory, administrations are becoming less attentive to faculty-centered governance issues, concentrating instead on promoting and protecting institutional financial interests. A disturbing outcome has emerged—a continued loss of thousands of university teaching positions, increased reliance on part-time teaching, capital expenditures designed to draw students to Club Ed–type facilities, record-setting tuition hikes, and the redefined purpose of the university through radical changes in academic planning. This outcome represents nothing less than a fundamental change in what it means for a scholar to hold a faculty position and a in what it means to obtain a degree from a U.S. institution. Back when those of us who are part of today’s professorate were still students, we viewed the university as the place where our professional ideologies and values would be formed. As we advanced through graduate school and beyond, the university (even while it was starting to corporatize) remained the place where we all found our voice and started working for the maintenance of what we thought was the social good. Although we differed widely in terms of discipline, we all assumed that our general purpose was to prepare succeeding generations of students to take their intellectual place in the social order. First as students, and later as faculty, we developed a deeply held faith that the average student coming through our classes would, by the time they graduated, be a relatively fully formed citizen who would qualitatively benefit throughout life from the liberal arts education he or she had completed. More important, and precisely because of exposure to our university’s liberal arts curriculum, our students would, in the main, make the world a better place. For most of us, a university teaching position was our opportunity to live a necessary and useful life in the service of our society. It should come as no surprise that the future of the university that we had counted on is not on any agenda but our own as faculty. The university’s future, no longer spread out in the direction of a continuation of these humanistic, lofty ideals, has shifted while the professorate was on the job, busy with our research, thinking through our theoretical paradigms, and cultivating in our students the ability to solve problems. The future of the university has gradually become bound up in a corporate operational model that redefines the professorate by ushering in sweeping changes to our purpose. In the past three decades, we would have seen (if we were looking) an ideological shift in the administrative mind-set, from the active maintenance of the social good (that is, guardianship of active democracy, abiding values in support of the development of citizenship, a belief that knowledge for its own sake is a good thing) to an almost singular devotion to the ideology of personal gain through individual achievement and self-promotion. Support for the operation of the university has shifted away from the state (because of its past interest in supporting the production of reflective citizens) toward business

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interests (because of business interest in the production of good workers). This shift has turned our once-academic programs into vocational education for the companies that fund us. Where we were once primarily interested in the development of the whole citizen for the sake of the public good, we are quickly becoming an instrument for the training of future, expendable, interchangeable employees, a necessary step in the application of the conservative corporate business operational model.11 When we consider the larger context in which our respective institutions operate, we find that the professorate’s niche in the social order has been relegated to a narrower set of functions than we might have thought possible. It is imperative that we take a hard look at ourselves, if it isn’t already too late, and decide whether and how we can be a part of reshaping the future of higher education before it is no longer, well, educational.

Profiling the National Agenda and the Dwindling of State Support for Higher Education Over the past three decades, state funding for public higher education has declined severely.12 Although the national average expenditure by state per college student fluctuated over the past three decades (it was about $183 per student 1977 and fell to $180 by 2001), tuition has increased at a rate of about 2.5 percent above the rate of inflation. And the rate of inflation has averaged between 2.7 percent and 3 percent. For state spending to have merely kept up with inflation during this time, $180 in 1977 dollars would have to balloon to $526 by 2010.13 Actual figures vary depending on the method of calculation, but generally, state support has dwindled from almost 75 percent of the cost of educating the average student in the 1970s to as low as 35 to 40 percent in some quarters in the new millennium, and it is continuing to dwindle. A simplistic view is that the chief cause of this loss has been the steady loss of tax revenues because of poor planning at the state legislative level. Undeniably the practice of underfunding higher education has occurred simultaneously with steady movement in the political sphere toward profit-motivated conservatism. Reluctant to raise taxes in a flagging economy and burdened by the ignorance that comes with blind party allegiance, legislators are prone to nearsighted leadership in which state biannual budgetary shortfalls have become the norm. Of late, dominance within the conservative political camp by harsher forces reflects a near-complete capitulation of our major social institutions. The federal, state, and local government failures to respond to people in crisis along the Gulf Coast and New Orleans in the days after hurricanes Katrina and Rita illustrate the impotence, if not the complete cynicism, of government at all levels. The current health care crisis is another example, and so it is with our education system. The message is actually a simple one, and it is historically consistent—that is, take care of yourself—a sentiment that faculty are now

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starting to understand. With ever-increasing costs (for example, salary and benefits for full-time employees, large physical plants to maintain, increased costs incurred by the adoption of communication technology, and failure to budget for maintenance of those Club Ed capital improvements, to name just a few) and in the face of declining budgets, the operating costs have migrated into two alternative sources of funding: (1) big business and (2) our studentcustomers. Although the state is an obvious beneficiary, even in conservative terms, of every graduated son or daughter who will eventually earn a living and pay taxes, the cost of obtaining a college degree has migrated from the secondary beneficiary (the nation, state, and community) to the primary beneficiary (the student). Although the state benefits from the taxes paid by faculty and university employees and gains from the boosted economies of college towns across the country, our labor, particularly our instructional labor, is seen as useless unless it conforms to the new corporate ideal of useful. And although the state and society are beneficiaries of research completed at all corners of academia, administrations have chosen to rely on corporate money to fund research. And, as many of us learned in our respective research methodology courses, research funded by those in line to directly benefit from the research outcome is, by definition, suspect and will likely lead to less knowledge, not more (see Fenwick and Zipp in this chapter). No fewer than three national-level, if not global, shifts have coalesced to move the faculty and student neighborhoods of the university community into increasingly unstable, ephemeral territory. The first big shift was identified in 1961 by outgoing President Eisenhower, who sternly warned the nation about the dangers of a growing military-industrial complex: Today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been overshadowed by task forces of scientists in laboratories and testing fields. In the same fashion, the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity. For every old blackboard there are now hundreds of new electronic computers. The prospect of domination of the nation’s scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present and is gravely to be regarded.14

The second shift concerns a volatile economy driven by globally oriented corporate entities in which the profit motive is both immediate and singularly important. For the corporation, the maximization of profits, whatever the picayune enterprise may be, is the only reason worthy of attention. All other less precisely defined goals (that is, the general value of producing and maintaining a thoughtful, reflective, educated populace) are simply defined out of the company’s reasoning—these concepts simply never come to the surface. Supporting the social good, while noble, has nothing to do with maximizing profits.

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Continued support for ideals such as patriotism, intellectual honesty, or wisdom are only important to the extent that they support product dominance in a marketplace. These two shifts give rise to a third, an evolved political ideology that denies any recognition of real responsibility to the people by elected officials. Here, the Declaration of Independence becomes a mere mission statement, the Bill of Rights ensures our right to choose products in a host of zany colors, freedom of choice becomes that distinction between light beer or regular beer, and the U.S. Constitution becomes a set of guidelines to be overstepped when corporate interests demand it. Following the example set by their mentors in government and business, the new corporate-style university administrators are finding ways around troublesome university policies, hiring practices, and guarantees of participatory institutional governance. In the interest of expediency, despite existing policy, and without attention to historical values, these administrators are proposing new policies, such as five-year review of tenured faculty, and insisting that such changes will strengthen the university.

If It Walks Like a Material Determinist, and Quacks Like a Material Determinist … Left underfunded, university administrations have had to identify alternative funding opportunities from the only remaining source available—corporate and business sources that make up the difference in lost revenues from increased tuition and add-on student fees. Not far behind these decisions have come new definitions in our philosophy and purpose. The logical consequence is for university administrations to begin to emulate the management models of their funding sources over time and in small, sometimes barely noticeable, changes in policy and practice. With rare bold strokes in university leadership that have signaled sweeping changes, the practical shift has come by degrees: (1) steady tuition increases coupled with higher expectations for faculty to earn their own way through grants, (2) the replacement of full-time, tenuretrack faculty with cheaper labor at every possible opportunity, and (3) cosponsorship of degree programs by name-brand companies that promise to hire graduates in exchange for proprietary curriculum. The new order of things results in a vicious cycle of funding cuts by the state, tuition increases, faculty reductions, the creation of nontenure teaching positions, increases in overhead costs, and so on. There is a fruitless cycle of blame in process. Students, whose tuition has skyrocketed at four or five times the rate of inflation for decades, blame the wasteful, local university. Faculty, who for decades have seen their salaries remain stagnant while their responsibilities increase, blame unfeeling administrators. University administrators, who have witnessed their salaries balloon for decades, spend much of their time chasing foundation money and lobbying a legislature. Legislators, the majority of whom in many states have never

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completed a university degree program, blame wasteful duplication of academic programs and administrators’ exorbitant capital planning budgets. Tax revenue shortfalls, in spite of a rising population of taxpaying workers, are the direct result of a legislative body seeking reelection. Administrators look for funding opportunities anywhere they might exist while implementing costcutting measures. State legislatures blame inefficient university management, and administrators blame those in the state house while they continue to implement belt-tightening measures, such as early retirement programs, program elimination, and searching for new money.

The Newspeak of ‘‘Academic Planning’’ About this time in the public dialog comes the bootstrap philosophy pitch from the new breed of university administrators: No one is going to help us. . . . We have to do it ourselves. . . . I have a few ideas . . . new revenue streams for the university . . . will require some reorganization . . . faculty will have to make some adjustments. . . . We must study our purpose and create a new vision. . . . Online courses might be of some relief . . . big push in technology development. . . . We’ve managed not to let anyone go this year by saving through attrition. . . . That next ERIP window will be a boost. . . . Faculty salaries are low now, but my capital planning budget will attract students. . . . Increasing the general fund won’t be easy but our survival depends on exactly that. . . . We are a bright faculty who are not afraid of a little hard work. Today’s academic planning documents may be chock full of new and underdefined words, which are not as likely to agitate, or irritate faculty and may likely come in the form of Orwell’s B words. As he wrote, The B vocabulary consisted of words which had been deliberately constructed for political purposes: words, that is to say, which not only had in every case a political implication, but were intended to impose a desirable mental attitude upon the person using them. Without a full understanding of the principles of Ingsoc it was difficult to use these words correctly. . . . The B words were a sort of verbal shorthand, often packing whole ranges of ideas into a few syllables, and at the same time more accurate and forcible than ordinary language. The B words were in all cases compound words. They consisted of two or more words, or portions of words, welded together in an easily pronounceable form.15

Rather than speak about faculty layoffs and closing of departments or academic programs, the plan will opt for something cheery and bold, like operational excellence, which can mean laying off faculty and closing departments or academic programs. When necessary, the administration will emit inscrutable statements: Academic primacy results from high-quality experiences, both in the classroom and outside of it. To deliver those high-quality experiences, we must achieve

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operational excellence—that synergy of service delivered to our students, as well as to each other, that ensures the integrity of our operation and underpins the quality of the academic enterprise. We much achieve benchmarked standards of excellence in service, communication, infrastructure, shared leadership for decision-making, and business processes that provide integrity for the academic enterprise.

Achieving operational excellence (that is, downsizing, job losses) seems a necessary step in the conversion of the academy into corporate culture. Various terms for downsizing fit neatly into the administratively determined need for an overarching academic plan. Staff reduction is part of efficiency needs and serves to reduce costs in the face of declining or stagnant revenues. Intended or not, downsizing also accomplishes a void in the knowledge base (the wisdom) of a faculty. Academic planning sounds like a responsible endeavor, but it can also be a device to remove the authority over curricular decisions from the faculty and hand it over to the administration. New university presidents may likely think of themselves as chief executive officers rather than academicians. Relatedly, the legislatures in your home states have at least begun discussions about the reduced need for specialty educated professionals as technological advances and strapped budgets reduce the number of jobs available. Continuing along the path of traditional academics, they reason, will only glut an already overstuffed marketplace. As graduate programs begin to wane, fewer graduate students mean fewer teaching assistants, which in turn means an increased workload for the tenure-track faculty member. Absent from the administrative pitch is the probable truth that the fix has been in view from the outset. The people responsible for policymaking that resulted in the budget shortfalls and the loss of state funding—the whole train wreck—are often the very people who populate the selection pool from which our new presidents, administrators, and trustees are recruited (reminiscent of Pareto’s theory of circulation of elites).16 As faculty numbers decline, and tuition outpaces students’ ability to pay for college, administrators are offered handsome salaries to stay on and continue to chart the course into the new millennium—a neat trick. Make no mistake, faculty are told, the choice to go corporate has a positive function—ostensibly the continuation of institutional operation (that is, you still have a job). But it also carries with it massive latent negative functions that in the words of President Eisenhower, are ‘‘gravely to be regarded.’’

The Latent Negative Functions of the Corporatization of Higher Education The administratively perceived need to shift operational costs from state sources to corporate sponsorship, and a similar perception that businesses

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know the qualities desired in future employees, has resulted in bad things for faculty and students: A loss of control over academic research and curriculum The emergence of a corps of noneducators increasingly populating both campus administration and trustee positions More authoritarian governance practices The marginalization of the liberal arts and areas of research not conducive to the creation of wealth Rising tuition and debt load for students Inadequate or stagnant wages for campus workers of all types.17

As any given set of college and university presidents and boards of trustees run through their tenure of service, their replacements have tended to come from the very quarters of corporate philosophy that have produced the current business and political climate, thereby exacerbating and further entrenching it. Responding to the increasing competition for student tuition and limited sources for research funding, the newer leadership’s tendency has been to shift focus away from the student-as-developing-citizen in need of exposure to liberal arts toward student-as-customer in need of job training, and to shift the focus away from basic research toward marketable, patentable, profitable products. The new breed of university administration has been increasingly courting corporate sponsorship of research and development, which endangers the validity of research in familiar ways (that is, foretelling results if the sponsor stands to profit from the findings). As administrations adopt a business model that includes efficiency, excellence, and a market-driven focus, the old capitalist notion of saving operating costs by cutting labor costs is forcing reductions in the cost of the workforce almost everywhere except among administrators. Like Diogenes in his search for an honest man (‘‘I’ll take that lamp, pal!’’), faculty who are paying attention search in vain for an administration willing to shrink its own numbers in times of financial difficulty. Vice presidents and attendant staff grow like kudzu in Georgia at a time when university budgets are tight. Although more individual faculty may be underemployed at any given university, the cost of underemploying them meets bottom-line needs. This operational method will initially dilute, and eventually remove, those core values we supposedly harbor with the losses in faculty who are harboring those values. Underemployed faculty have no academic freedom protections. Having adopted corporate cultural values and the false efficiency inherent in the new order of things, institutions of higher education are no longer interested in harboring diverse faculty points of view as a matter of affordability, nor are they interested in providing a haven for the kind of research and intellectual

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pursuits done by social scientists and humanities professors. Instead we are seeing the following: Negative-to-slow growth of salary for full time faculty Rapid growth of administrative costs (in sheer number of administrators and higher salaries for them) Rapid increases in the number of part-time, adjunct, and graduate student labor for teaching Increases in class sizes and/or number of preparations Increases in the number of students to advise Increases in committee responsibilities Movement toward vocationalization of degree programs despite the university’s complete lack of control over the job market Replacing faculty control of curriculum with corporate sponsorship Increased pressure on faculty to seek out and maintain grants for corporate research A reinterpretation of notions about academic freedom and adherence to the scientific method and blind review

The unspoken, perhaps unintended, aim of this movement is away from large numbers of tenure-track faculty to a cheaper, sleeker, easier-to-manage, fluid workforce of highly specialized, mobile instructors of just-in-time, vocationally oriented knowledge.18 A likely model for this new paradigm for colleges and universities is the for-profit online university, just as many of our institutions at once criticize the digital college and copy its profitable course delivery methods. With few buildings to maintain, a totally adjunct faculty, no health benefits costs, and no frills (collegiate sports, student union buildings, libraries), for-profit diploma mills can offer online degrees at bargain basement tuition costs.19 Faculty, and the previous generation of old-school university administrators, are capable of seeing the disastrous shortcomings and obvious calamity that will result from adopting such an operational model. Administrators drawn from the ranks of the corporation, however, can see only the financial relief the model offers.

A Shrinking Professorate and the Activist Response The strong trend toward using (often as not abusing) adjunct faculty, and the creation of more and more nontenure-eligible positions, means that more of our colleagues who do the work of the university are increasingly more vulnerable if they criticize the institutional direction, or if they identify themselves with a collective effort to change that direction. A faculty approaching, or exceeding, 50 percent nontenure track means a faculty that is 50 percent potentially jobless at the first sign of financial shortfalls or as trends in

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employment change over time. Without job security, the idea of academic freedom loses its meaning. There are about 500,000 full-time, tenure-track professors in U.S. universities and colleges today, with an additional million adjuncts, part-timers, and graduate students instructing. We’ve all heard reports that between 43 and 46 percent of all faculty are now part time. Between 1998 and 2001, the estimated number of full-time, nontenure-track positions increased by 35.5 percent and they now total about 60 percent of all instructional appointments. One interpretation of these numbers is that the liberal arts agenda is in danger of losing 60 percent or more of its reinforcing power. The numbers provide some insight into other changes as well. Certainly we are witnessing the growing institutional tendency to nudge the professorate out of the university as early as possible. Increasingly strained working conditions that violate our fundamental beliefs are being met with offers for early retirement. Is it any wonder that recent emeritus retirees, who are awarded a little office space, a parking pass for life, and library privileges, never darken the parking deck entryway after retirement? Aside from the devastating effect such pressures create for the individual retiree (that is, fixed income living, reduced retirement benefits, soaring medical/insurance costs), the strategy of targeting (especially the higher-paid, top of the pay scale) professors for retirement nullifies the rules of academic freedom and shared governance that have for so long preserved the academy’s inherent support for democratic education. Although ostensibly to save money and provide employment opportunities for younger scholars, the likelihood of actually replacing retired faculty with tenure-track younger faculty is slim. Those jobs are vanishing on most of our campuses, or they are being replaced by people who are less prone to criticism and less able to defend themselves against the vagaries of administrative whim. Issues of academic freedom are being supplanted by administrative control, particularly in terms of tenure and promotion. The older faculty among our ranks remember when a tenure or promotion decision by the department faculty, except in rare instances, was upheld along the way to the provost or president’s office. That respect for faculty expertise and wisdom has slowly been lost to an increasing number of administrative reversals of faculty decisions, usually with the proviso that any faculty decision is advisory at best. The ostensible reasoning is a matter of perspective—that is, that faculty cannot grasp the view from 60,000 feet as they sit in their foxholes on the frontlines of education. The real reason for retaining not only the last word, but often the only word that counts, is likely to ensure that administrations have the ability to quickly reshuffle faculty as the market demands. If not already occurring on your campus, the administration would like to retain that option. Faculty senates, as a governing device, have not had decisive power in the history of academia, however, in the past decade, even advisory power has been diminished. My guess is that most of the faculty on my campus of 23,000

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students have no idea where the faculty senate meets, although it has met in the same room for the past 12 years. And so it goes for those tenured colleagues who resist retirement: increased workloads, additional classes, larger classes, less time counted for research, more advising, more responsibility and less pay, all without the help of graduate teaching assistants, as the reduction of qualified faculty to populate graduate programs decreases. Faculty unions hold some promise of at least slowing the tsunami of changes long enough for faculty to make an organized, thoughtful response designed to better fulfill our responsibilities as citizen-scholars, but this solution will prove ineffective if faculty are not engaged in community dialogue. For the voting public to understand and value the principles of scholarship and teaching we hold crucial to our beliefs, they have to know who we are. We have to volunteer to speak in the community on salient issues and to offer our service on community boards and in a wide variety of community settings—we have to be willing, available, and reachable. Similarly, we have to be good stewards of our charges, our students, and their parents, as our mentor faculty were to us not so many years ago. For faculty to become activists in this regard, they have to educate ourselves on the issues as they exist locally, nationally, and internationally. Activism in many other forms is not only possible but also necessary to stem the tide of neoliberalist, market-driven policies that threaten the historically democratic core values of education. By writing not only for publication, but for the public (in the opinion-editorial columns of local newspapers, in community newsletters, and for one or more of the many blogs that are emerging on the Internet), faculty activists can inform any readers of these changes and opportunities for action in the face of them. Within one’s own university setting— through faculty senates, committees, and meetings—faculty can ask questions and demand answers, and foster cooperative alliances among themselves, staff, and students. Even informal communications, initiated by faculty (with myriad administrators that supervise them), could lead to fruitful discourse.

Notes 1. Brian Helgeland (writer) and Richard Donner (director), Conspiracy Theory [Motion Picture] (Hollywood, CA: Warner Bros., 1997). 2. Henry A. Giroux, Beyond the Corporate University (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2001) and ‘‘The Corporate War against Higher Education,’’ Workplace 5(1), October 2002. Available at http://www.louisville.edu/journal/workplace/issue5p1/ 5p1.html (accessed January 2007). 3. Stanley Aronowitz, The Knowledge Factory: Dismantling the Corporate University and Creating True Higher Learning (New York: Beacon Press, 2001). 4. Sheila Slaughter and Larry L. Leslie, Academic Capitalism: Politics, Policies, and the Entrepreneurial University (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999). 5. Benjamin Johnson, Patrick Kavanagh, and Kevin Mattson, eds., Steal This University: The Rise of the Corporate University and the Academic Labor Movement (New York: Routledge, 2003).

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6. Cary Nelson and Stephen Watt, Office Hours: Activism and Change in the Academy (New York: Routledge, 2004). 7. Bill Readings, The University in Ruins (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997). 8. David Matza, Delinquency and Drift (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1964). 9. Bill Readings, The University in Ruins, 23. 10. Henry A. Giroux, ‘‘The Corporate War against Higher Education,’’ 1.3–1.6. 11. Ibid., 5.1. 12. Michael J. Rizzo, ‘‘A (Less Than) Zero Sum Game? State Funding for Public Higher Education: How Public Higher Education Institutions Have Lost,’’ Cornell Higher Education Research Institute Working Paper WP42, September 2003. Available at http://www.ilr.cornell.edu/cheri (accessed January 2007). 13. Consumer Price Index. Available at http://eh.net/hmit/compare/ (accessed January 2007). 14. Eisenhower’s Military-Industrial Complex Speech 1961. Transcript available at http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/presiden/speeches/eisenhower001.htm (accessed January 2007). 15. George Orwell, ‘‘Appendix to Nineteen Eighty Four, The Principles of Newspeak,’’ in Nineteen Eighty Four: A Novel (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1949). 16. Pareto, Vilfredo, The Mind and Society, Arthur Livingston, ed. (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1935). 17. Michael Mauer, ‘‘The Future of Academic Unions.’’ A lecture given at the University of New Mexico, October 2004, Albuquerque, NM. 18. Ana Marie Cox, ‘‘None of Your Business: The Rise of the University of Phoenix and For-profit Education—and Why It Will Fail Us All,’’ in Steal This University: The Rise of the Corporate University and the Academic Labor Movement, ed. Benjamin Johnson, Patrick Kavanagh, and Kevin Mattson, 15–32 (New York: Routledge, 2003). 19. David Nobel, ‘‘Digital Diploma Mills: The Automation of Higher Education,’’ First Monday: Peer Reviewed Journal on the Internet, 1998. Available at http://www.first monday.org/issues/issue3_1/noble/#d1 (accessed January 2007).

CHAPTER

6

STATE LEGISLATION AND REACTION

IS THE POPE CATHOLIC? THE STRANGE CASE OF THE ABOR DEBATE IN OHIO Rodger Govea This article describes the course of events leading to the ultimate resolution of the debate over free speech and bias in the classroom in Ohio. Specifically, it intends to show that (1) there were never any grounds for such a debate in the first place, (2) no actual debate ever took place anywhere in Ohio, and (3) when the issue was finally resolved, both sides declared victory in spite of the fact that absolutely nothing had happened. The genesis of the issue was uncomfortably familiar. State Senator Larry Mumper (R-Marion) had apparently had a discussion with a young constituent who had attended the Ohio State University branch campus in Marion, Ohio. While enrolled in a political science course, the student claims, he was berated by the professor for having conservative views. The student concluded that the professor was biased and consequently gave the student a poor grade. Although we do not have any further evidence of this claim, this scanty anecdote provided the impetus to action by Senator Mumper. The senator further justified his position by citing statistics that, to this day, have not been verified: ‘‘80 percent or so of (professors) are Democrats, liberals or socialists or card-carrying Communists who attempt to indoctrinate students.’’1 Although mythical statistics and outlandish assertions were not unknown in the history of the Ohio legislature’s handling of higher education, neither was the practice of drawing a conclusion based on an uncorroborated or questionable story. In 1992, the Ohio Legislature had passed legislation mandating a 10 percent increase in classroom teaching by faculty at all state institutions of higher education. One of the bill’s sponsors lived in the same neighborhood as an Ohio State professor, and reported that he had personally seen this professor mowing his lawn on a weekday afternoon. This, apparently, was

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sufficient evidence that faculty workloads were insufficient. As in the case of Mumper’s aggrieved student, the single incident gave rise to legislation. It is interesting that the workload bill had few implications for any faculty anywhere in Ohio. On most campuses, a document was prepared and forwarded to the regents showing how the bill had been applied and demonstrating, in one way or another, that faculty workloads had increased. The documents were dubious, often based on unreliable data collection (the standard measurement was a self-report prepared by professors, occasionally modified by institutional research divisions when the claims were patently outrageous). In no cases were teaching responsibilities actually increased. A short phrase embedded in the bill, however, did have repercussions at Wright State University, in Dayton, Ohio. The faculty at Wright State University (WSU) had voted for collective bargaining in the late 1990s. During negotiations, WSU’s administration used the language of the bill, which included a section intended to supersede the language of existing collective bargaining agreements, to support the claim that workloads could not be negotiated (in technical terms, that workload was a permissive subject of bargaining). A legal challenge to the administration’s claim failed, such that the bill was used to prevent the faculty from negotiating their own workloads in their first and subsequent collective bargaining agreements. Curiously, faculty teaching loads at WSU closely parallel those at other unionized campuses in Ohio, despite the absence of specific contract language on the subject. Outside of Wright State, there was no evidence of any effect on faculty teaching throughout Ohio. This did not stop then-governor Voinovich’s from declaring in his 1994 State of the State address that ‘‘thanks to your efforts, undergraduate faculty members are spending more time where our students need them most—in the classroom!’’2 The claim evoked enthusiastic applause in the legislature. Senator Mumper’s bill appeared to be the latest in a set of gratuitous volleys against the state higher education system. This particular volley was a little different, because it drew national attention and the participation of the notorious David Horowitz.

SB 24 and Its Meaning SB 24 was introduced in January 2005. Senator Mumper’s bill did not match the rather inflammatory rhetoric he used to introduce it. Instead, it enunciated a set of principles that had been well-accepted and understood within academe for decades. SB 24 followed very closely the template of the ABOR as designed by David Horowitz. Upon reading the ABOR, most faculty shrug, and wonder what the problem is. Others, more easily inflamed by words taken out of context, bristle at the invocation of ‘‘avoiding controversial material which bears little on course material.’’ That particular phrase, taken directly from the American

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Association of University Professors (AAUP) 1940 Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure,3 is often misunderstood. Various blogs and Web sites have attacked the phrase as having the intention of chilling any academic discourse by discouraging controversy in the classroom. In fact, it has no such meaning. This phrase establishes a distinction between discussing abortion in a class on public policy (where it could easily have pedagogical import) and the same material in a class on fluid dynamics (where it would seem gratuitous). This language does not imply skittishness about controversial material—indeed, universities do and should expose students to such material. Quite often, however, people do not understand the meaning of the AAUP language. This particular misunderstanding is a sort of sweet morsel that drops into the maw of Horowitz’s organization, Students for Academic Freedom (SAF). When public statements are made criticizing this particular segment of the ABOR, Horowitz is quick to respond that the segment was taken directly from the AAUP’s most basic document, the 1940 Statement. And he is correct. In Ohio, this argument flared momentarily, and then died out. Several partisan sources, including the Ohio Democratic Party Web site,4 brought the word ‘‘controversial’’ into play, wondering aloud who would interpret its meaning. In context, however, controversial material is not the problem, but rather its consistent introduction in a class for which it is immaterial. The controversy over the ABOR is more properly a debate over authority. Traditionally, accusations of bias in the classroom are resolved within the university. In Ohio, SB 24 would have changed that arrangement; it mandated the adoption of a set of uniform standards by all boards of trustees of public and private institutions in Ohio. What had been a long-standing principle of academe would have become a matter of law. A corollary development could have been a shift in the adjudication of such controversies from the academy to the courts and the politicization of the educational process. We now see some of the complexity involved in such legislation. The principles of ‘‘fairness in the classroom’’ and ‘‘ideological diversity’’ are not the least bit controversial. Defending them is like insisting that the pope is Catholic. As a consequence, however, opposing the legislation gives the impression that one is against those unassailable principles. To the general public, the message is read as ‘‘we are a bunch of liberals and we don’t believe in fairness because we are biased.’’ The other difficulty lies in stressing the principle of university autonomy, which does not immediately gain traction with the world outside academe.

The Players and Their Positions The most prominent parties involved in the dispute included legislators, university presidents, college professors, and a particular special interest

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group. This section summarizes the positions of these players and their activity in pursuit of those positions.

Senator Mumper (R-Marion) Certainly, Senator Mumper deserves consideration first, for it was he who introduced the measure. Senator Mumper is, by reputation, a very conservative representative from a rural district. He lists his occupation as realtor/ educator/farmer, but he is seen primarily as a representative of agriculture. During the 126th General Assembly (2005–06), he served as the chair of the Senate Agriculture Committee, establishing himself as a key player in farm policy in Ohio. It is relevant to our purposes, however, that he also sat on the Senate Education Committee, placing him at the center of legislation on higher education.

Senator Fedor (D-Toledo) Senator Theresa Fedor has a reputation as a hard-fighting (some use stronger terms for her) opponent of the Republican majority in the Ohio Assembly. As a member of the Senate Education Committee, she emerged early as an opponent of SB 24 and worked closely with other opponents of the bill. She is a former elementary school teacher and is consequently sensitive to some of the fears of other educators around the state. It is notable that SB 24 did not produce a genuinely partisan debate, despite the rivalry between Democrats and Republicans in the state. The bill was discussed and criticized briefly on the Ohio Democratic Party Web site. There was no discussion on the Republican side, however, nor was there ever a firm endorsement from the party, although some individual Republicans certainly sympathized with the bill. Similarly, a glance through partisan blogs showed an absolute revulsion for the bill coming from the left, and qualified, but not unanimous, approval on the right. Some conservative postings questioned the tactics of David Horowitz or the bill itself. In one case, a libertarian cleverly (although probably incorrectly) noted that this was the first bill in history that would outlaw its own discussion. Nonetheless, the majority of conservative postings clearly identified with Horowitz’s assertion of liberal dominance in academe. The Republican Party’s reluctance to advance SB 24 to the higher levels of the policymaking agenda may well have conditioned the strategy that was eventually adopted by most university administrations. If, in fact, this bill was not to be a major priority, then it made sense to look for a way to satisfy the bill’s supporters without actually bringing the bill up for a vote. Senator Fedor took the position that this bill was unnecessary. During the Education Committee’s deliberations, she stated that policies were already in place that protected students from potentially biased professors. She made a key request for information from the state university system, asking for copies

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of these existing policies from the various institutions. As we shall see, this request helped form the basis for the ultimate solution of the issue.

The Inter-University Council The Inter-University Council (IUC) emerged as a major force on this bill and ultimately brokered the agreement that led to its withdrawal. The IUC consists of the presidents of Ohio’s public universities. They meet periodically and coordinate lobbying activities at the State House. Given that, collectively, these presidents preside over budgets in the hundreds of millions of dollars, and additional millions in research money and efforts, their council is easily the most powerful voice of higher education in Ohio. When SB 24 was introduced, the IUC met to discuss a strategy for responding to the legislation. At first there was some discussion and debate, with some presidents expressing deep concern about the bill, while others thought it rather innocuous. But there was unanimity on a couple of key points. First, all agreed that the bill had to be addressed, because a mute response might be seen as an admission of guilt, and under certain hypothetical developments, the bill could be harmful. Second, all agreed that the kind of polarization sought by David Horowitz would not be healthy in the discussion and final disposition of the bill. Thus, all agreed on the need to find a quiet solution to the question. The first step they took was to seek an informal solution by demonstrating that universities already had the policies in place and the capacity to apply the policies throughout any institution. The IUC immediately addressed Senator Fedor’s request for information and sent copies of readily available policies to the chair of the Education Committee, Joy Padgett (R-Coshocton). For faculty members around the state, the IUC intervention was a mixed blessing. On one hand, the IUC represents a powerful force in higher education, much more influential than any organization of professors might have. On the other hand, professors are at times wary of the IUC. It is, after all, the organization that represents university presidents, not professors. And, while professors and their presidents share critical interests, there is always some tension between employees and their employers. Professors were similarly uneasy with an IUC response that was going to be moderate. The latter did little to satisfy professors who were clearly insulted by the legislation, particularly the claims being made by both Senator Mumper and David Horowitz. In the summer of 2005, the IUC set about creating the actual response, a resolution regarding the issue of academic rights and responsibilities. The resolution drew heavily from the Statement on Academic Rights and Responsibilities by the American Council on Education (ACE), which had been adopted in June. The IUC resolution, passed on October 11, became the foundation of the agreement leading to the withdrawal of SB 24 from consideration.

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American Association of University Professors Since 1915, the AAUP has been the leading voice of the professoriate. AAUP standards, and the organization’s rigorous pursuit of the observance of those standards, have left an indelible mark on American higher education. Nationally, the AAUP and Horowitz’s SAF have faced off over the last few years regarding the ABOR. The AAUP issued a special statement on the ABOR, which led to an exchange between the organization and the SAF. The AAUP’s basic view is that, contrary to Mr. Horowitz’s assertions, the ABOR does not reflect AAUP policy and guidelines. In brief, the AAUP believes that universities should not become the captive of state or federal legislation when it comes to critical areas like academic freedom. So, while some ABOR language quotes AAUP standards, the very idea of having political oversight into university operations is counter to long-standing AAUP principles. The Ohio Conference of the AAUP is the statewide counterpart to the national organization. It represents more than 4,000 faculty members, public and private, throughout the state. Because of its small numbers, it has been a less-effective voice in Columbus, but it has intervened in a number of cases involving higher education. The Ohio AAUP approach was developed after lengthy discussions by statewide leaders. This was a difficult decision, because no issue strikes a nerve like the issue of academic freedom. The AAUP was founded on the principle of academic freedom, and this certainly appeared to be an attack on it. Instinctively, the conference felt the need to respond, and its members were calling for a bold stance. At the same time, there were two concerns that gave it pause. One was the language of the bill itself. With the lifting of a key phrase from the 1940 Statement, the organization could give the impression that it opposed its own principles. Given the reasonable-sounding language of the actual legislation, it would have to first establish an alarmist interpretation of the document and then rally support based on the ‘‘clear and present’’ danger the document presented. The Ohio AAUP’s other concern was its ability to rally such support. The State of Ohio is on the border of the red-blue division in the United States, but internal state politics have been red for more than a decade. While some might characterize state financial support of higher education as having eroded, it would be an understatement in Ohio. It has been 20 years since the state provided more than 50 percent of the cost of the university system in Ohio; the figure is now in the 30 percent range. Universities have struggled in vain to reverse the trend. What, then, was the possibility of our gaining any significant popular support? It would be an uphill battle merely to counter Senator Mumper’s 80 percent assertion. The AAUP was aware that a number of initiatives in the legislature had been quietly forgotten. As is the case in any legislative body, the majority of legislation does not survive to floor debate and vote, but often dies in committee. The

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best way to allow the quiet demise of a bill is to ignore it. Inflammatory or pugnacious public statements would have the effect of elevating the visibility of the bill, thereby increasing the probability of its reaching a vote. This was not an easy position to implement. In February 2005, shortly after the bill was introduced, there was a flurry of media activity, with AAUP receiving a number of calls from interested reporters. At the same time, David Horowitz himself contacted the AAUP with a typically provocative message: If you value academic freedom, you will put my material on your Web site. There were indications that Mr. Horowitz wanted to debate the issue in public fora. It is good to let sleeping dogs lie, but what is the bromide that applies when a dog is barking? In the end, a brief exchange at the Ohio Conference AAUP Web site summarized some of the salient arguments about the ABOR, and, given that the site is not widely used by anyone outside the AAUP, it seemed to be an adequate containment of the controversy.

Faculty Senates in Ohio Throughout the Ohio public higher education system, as elsewhere, there is always a policymaking body that includes significant faculty representation. Usually called faculty senates, although names may vary, these bodies set policy on admission standards, curriculum, and other matters essential to the operation of the institution. The extent to which these bodies are dominated by faculty varies, but in all cases, faculty make up the largest component of the assembly. These bodies periodically issue resolutions on matters of concern beyond the scope of intra-university governance. They weigh in on matters such as the state budget, especially as it affects higher education, and occasionally on social issues, such as domestic partnerships and the like. These resolutions rarely have much impact beyond the campuses that produce them, but the impulse to issue a statement is undeniable. When SB 24 was introduced in Ohio, most faculty senates responded quickly with statements of their own. Faculty senates throughout the state uniformly condemned the legislation as an attack on higher education and its principles. Here are a few examples of the language used in these resolutions: A reference to a ‘‘chilling’’ effect on discussion appeared in resolutions coming from Shawnee State, Northeastern Ohio Universities College of Medicine (NEOUCOM), Central State University, and Youngstown State University. The latter three specifically cited the bill’s reference to ‘‘controversial material,’’ echoing the American Civil Liberties Union’s (ACLU’s) concern with the application of the language. A reference to ‘‘serious and unnecessary restrictions’’ appeared in resolutions from the Medical University of Ohio (MUO), University of Akron, Central State University, Youngstown State, and NEOUCOM.

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‘‘Frivolous and unwarranted’’ legal challenges were envisioned by Senates at Central State University and NEOUCOM. The incursion of the state into university matters was discussed by MUO, Akron, and most prominently by Ohio University, where the issue of autonomy was most salient. In sum, Ohio’s university senates produced a set of carefully crafted statements, but few believed that these would be taken seriously outside the university.

The American Civil Liberties Union The ACLU was the first organization to voice its unequivocal opposition to SB 24. They mobilized their own members and contacted other organizations about the presence of the bill. In fact, a large number of Ohioans first heard of the bill because of the ACLU. The ACLU was concerned about ABOR’s possible implications for freedom of speech on college campuses, and it held meetings at local chapters in conjunction with university faculty and student ACLU leaders. The ACLU has been a long-standing and consistent voice against any restriction of academic freedom. They understand that universities are a frequent target when civil liberties are threatened. There has, therefore, been a traditionally cordial relationship between the ACLU and the AAUP. The ACLU’s response came almost immediately after the introduction of SB 24: The Ohio Senate is considering a bill that would censor Ohio colleges and universities. The so-called ‘‘Academic Bill of Rights’’ is truly a misnomer, as it is really an ‘‘academic bill of restrictions.’’ The ACLU of Ohio opposes passage of this bill because it could be used to curtail academic freedom and to encourage thought policing in our institutes of higher education. The bill would have a chilling effect on freedom of inquiry on Ohio’s campuses. For example: • •

•

•

The bill forces the board of trustees, of both public and private schools, to adopt policies about what can and cannot be taught. Under the bill, faculty would be discouraged from teaching anything ‘‘controversial’’—a vague term that could pertain to any number of topics including evolution, history, or religion. If they do raise controversial issues, instructors would have to present alternative views regardless of the merits of those views or their own beliefs about them. Senate Bill 24 would shift the responsibility for course content and student evaluation from highly trained faculty to the state government or the courts.5

As in the case of the various faculty senates around the state, the ACLU found the statement about ‘‘controversial material’’ to be a rather ominous inclusion in the bill.

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The ACLU statement also contains a reference that is crucial to any professional. The final point that they make is that course content is ultimately the responsibility of the faculty member, and this content should be kept out of the hands of the legislature or the courts. This is, of course, a critical issue when discussing the ABOR. David Horowitz’s primary justification for his organization is his frequent claim that universities are incapable of policing themselves. In an April 4, 2005, entry in FrontPageMagazine.com, he excoriates the Bowling Green University administration for allowing a showing of Fahrenheit 9/11, adding that ‘‘as is generally the case with regard to universities these days, there seem to be no adults around to mind the playground.’’6 The claims and counterclaims regarding the ability of universities to selfregulate parallel those of other professional organizations. No one is completely satisfied with the notion that a group can be self-regulatory. It is, in the main, counterintuitive. Yet throughout the professions, there are agencies that license, monitor, and sanction their own membership. There are those who doubt the ability of the American Bar Association to hold up standards of professionalism, and certainly those who see the American Medical Association as a conspiratorial group dedicated to suppressing forms of ‘‘alternative medicine.’’ In spite of those concerns, self-regulation is the norm among professional organizations. The AAUP holds firmly to the notion that the professoriate must be ultimately responsible for the standards of the academy. Among other things, the AAUP established the very standards that have created the academic community in the United States. These standards call for faculty participation and shared governance, along with the administration, in the management and operation of the university. Most important, the standards call for peer review, not only in cases involving hiring and dismissal or promotion and tenure, but in any case involving the discipline of a faculty member. Ultimately, then, the AAUP position is that a peer review process should adjudicate disputes regarding the performance of any faculty member. This principle informs policies on student complaints, both in Ohio and throughout the country. In general, students who have a complaint should contact the instructor first, to see whether the complaint can be managed at an informal level. Students failing to achieve a satisfactory result may take their complaint to the chair of the department. If there is still no resolution, then the matter may be brought to a grievance board, usually consisting of faculty, administrators, and students. The logic behind this arrangement is that those who have an academic background will be able to discern when ideological bias has occurred. Indeed, it is not often clear to nonacademics when bias is present or not. When a student receives a bad grade on an exam, it could be a function of any number of factors, including bad preparation, inability to communicate effectively, inability or unwillingness to answer the questions posed, and the like. It could

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also be a function of the instructor’s own bias and an inability of that instructor to entertain politically incorrect ideas. From the point of view of the student, the latter explanation is often the most attractive, as it places all of the blame elsewhere.

The Bill Falters: The Hearings The first sign of momentum loss came in February, when hearings were held on the bill. David Horowitz appeared in Columbus to testify on behalf of the bill’s sponsors, along with some students who claimed to have been victims of biased professors. The students gave their stories about bias in the classroom, but upon questioning, greatly weakened the case for SB 24. None had ever filed a formal or even informal complaint at their home universities. A gaping hole thus appeared in the argument for the bill. The need for legislation rested in part on the claim that universities were unwilling or incapable of adjudicating these matters on their own. Now, it seemed, there were indeed ‘‘adults minding the playground,’’ but nobody was tattling. The students were left to the only argument available—that they felt intimidated and were afraid to file a complaint. Mr. Horowitz, for his part, issued a fairly straightforward prepared statement on the bill. He made the by-now familiar argument that he constantly receives complaints from conservative students and wants to give voice to these concerns. By this time, however, the key question was whether there was a need for mechanisms to enforce the norms expressed in the bill. Here, Mr. Horowitz had only this to say: While I will acknowledge that many universities and colleges have processes in place to deal with academic discrimination, I do not believe they are actively enforced. This bill is necessary because I have heard too many complaints and concerns that intellectual freedom and diversity are not being supported and promoted and thus brought forth this measure.7

But the media interest in the testimony came from Mr. Horowitz’s exchange with Senator Fedor. She launched into an inquiry about the sources of funding for the ABOR campaign, to which Mr. Horowitz took exception. In the exchange, Mr. Horowitz was less than responsive. Committee Chair Padgett repeatedly told Mr. Horowitz to answer the questions; at one point he flatly refused. In addition to confirming Mr. Horowitz’s reputation as someone unconcerned with decorum, the exchange raised, but did not answer, an important aspect of the entire dispute: Is this an ideological attack? Senator Fedor was attempting to establish that Mr. Horowitz’s funding comes from right-wing sources.8 Mr. Horowitz’s own testimony points out that

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[t]his bill is not set up to create some sort of quota system or use a political litmus test. Nowhere in the bill does it state anything about Republican or Democrat, Conservative or Liberal and this is for a reason. All ideas and opinions should be encouraged and fostered in Ohio’s colleges and universities and that is what is intended with Senate Bill 24.9

But nobody has ever intimated that David Horowitz is a disinterested party. Indeed, his galvanic approach to politics guarantees an ideological divide whenever he speaks. And Senator Fedor’s attempts to portray the bill as a partisan product were doomed not because they did not address the substance of the bill, but because they were met with a refusal to respond. The question of the motive behind SB 24 is on the mind of everyone who has an interest in the issue. Horowitz obviously represents the right, his claims to the contrary notwithstanding. And to some extent, the exchange with Senator Fedor was deserved, even if it did not shed light on the debate. After all, the SAF claim rests on the assertion that professors are predominantly liberal, and supporters of ABOR routinely cite some statistics (however dubious) to this effect. The opponents of ABOR must perforce be liberals defending liberalism. Here, Horowitz is less able to establish his political neutrality than the organizations he attacks. But the question of motive is ultimately subordinate to the main issue—whether or not college campuses are places where free exchange can take place. In the end, the hearings generated heat, but not light. Testimony by opposition representatives, tentatively scheduled for March, never occurred. Instead, the presidents of the various Ohio public universities intervened, and a solution emerged.

The IUC Resolution and the Withdrawal of the Bill On October 11, 2005, the IUC of Ohio passed a ‘‘Resolution on Academic Rights and Responsibilities.’’10 That resolution essentially endorses the principle of ‘‘intellectual pluralism and the free exchange of ideas’’ and asserts that ‘‘the validity of academic ideas, theories, arguments and views should . . . be measured against the intellectual standards of relevant academic and professional disciplines.’’ While endorsing the basic principles of the ABOR, the resolution asserts that there will be no ideological litmus test for academic ideas or practices. This statement takes Mr. Horowitz at his word and codifies the assertion he made in his Ohio Senate testimony. The resolution calls for each university to review its own policies on students’ rights and campus grievance procedures. It bases this call on the premise that ‘‘each of the individual universities and their governing boards are in the best position to create and implement policies that respect the rights of the members of the university community.’’ This assertion of university autonomy is a polite rebuff of Mr. Horowitz’s entire argument.

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The IUC resolution was accompanied by a companion resolution entitled ‘‘IUC Resolution on Academic Rights and Responsibilities: Communicating the Resolution to Students.’’ This document asserts that there is a need to communicate to students what their rights are in a university setting. This is perhaps the most politically adept move made during the entire controversy. Essentially, the IUC reduced the ‘‘problem’’ to one of communication. This, of course, is a convenient way to finesse a controversy: It’s not really a substantive problem—it’s just a problem of communication. The funny thing about this resolution is that it probably is true that many students do not know their rights. This made the resolution all the more palatable, and in the end, very difficult to disagree with. In a supreme irony, Mr. Horowitz’s tactics were turned against him, and the IUC found a popeCatholic argument they made public. These two resolutions were shared with the Republican leadership of the Senate, and in particular with Senator Mumper. Senator Mumper was quite pleased with the resolutions, although he quite correctly asked for a follow-up report on the implementation of the two IUC resolutions. He then agreed to withdraw the bill.

Postscript: After the Sound and Fury In the end, not much happened. David Horowitz, predictably, declared victory, professors breathed a huge sigh of relief, and absolutely nothing changed. What are we to make of all this? We must give Mr. Horowitz his due. In the 1980s, the threat to academic freedom came from Accuracy in Academia, which sent students into classrooms to record the (leftist) misstatements of professors. A few were outraged, but little came of the effort. The ABOR has been introduced in nearly half the states in the United States, although no legislation has actually been passed. Media coverage has been extensive, as newspapers gravitate toward controversy (whether significant or not). In the future, the SAF and Horowitz must demonstrate at least two points that they have simply not shown thus far. First, they must prove the assertion that professors are on some sort of crusade to indoctrinate students. There has been some discussion of the percentage of professors who are liberal or conservative, but it matters not if 60, 70, or even 100 percent of them are liberal (or conservative, for that matter). It is one thing to be liberal, it is quite another to expect students to be liberals, and still another to evaluate students according to personal values. Second, those who insist on legislation to protect students must demonstrate that students are routinely rebuffed when they bring complaints against allegedly unfair professors. Because most universities have policies in place to deal with bias in the classroom, it needs to be shown that the policies are not working. It is not enough that David Horowitz does not ‘‘believe they are actively enforced.’’

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For the professoriate, the challenge of ABOR is formidable. The academic instinct is to question statements that purport to be fact and to point out contradictions. Neither is terribly useful in dealing with ABOR supporters. Horowitz has retracted, without regret, a number of claims about complaints he has received, and when his claim of objectivity is met with evidence that all of his financial support comes from right-wing sources, he simply does not answer. To academics, such responses are sufficient to dismiss the claims. But dubious claims often are grist for the mill of right-wing talk shows, where standards of evaluation are often lax. And the careful arguments found in the faculty senate resolutions of 2005 do not matter much in the public domain. It is a challenge for academics to maintain a relative silence when they are under attack, especially when it seems to be an illogical attack. But our experience in Ohio indicates that the best strategy is to let quiet diplomacy run its course. The IUC resolution accomplished what needed to be done. The ABOR is no longer a threat in Ohio. For those who wanted to testify before the legislature and who needed to prove that Mr. Horowitz does not back his claims with sound empirical evidence, it may be frustrating. But in the end, it makes more sense to watch quietly, rather than attack a man who thrives on controversy. And if it is frustrating to see someone like that declare victory and move on, it is satisfying to know that the academy has not allowed such a person to have any visible effect. The ABOR is gone from Ohio. Our universities remain the institutions of free exchange that they were created to be. And the pope is still Catholic.

Notes 1. ‘‘Bill Could Limit Open Debate at Colleges,’’ Columbus Dispatch (online edition), January 27, 2005. Available at http://www.dispatch.com/election.php?story=dispatch/ 2005/01/27/20050127-C1-04.html (accessed May 28, 2007). 2. State of the State Speech, January 5, 1994, taken from the Ohio University George Voinovich Collection. Available at http://www.library.ohiou.edu/archives/ voinovich/sosa94 (accessed May 28, 2007). 3. American Association of University Professors, Policy Documents and Reports, 1995 Edition (Washington, DC: American Association of University Professors, 1995), 3. 4. ‘‘Update,’’ February 4, 2005. Available at http://www.ohiodems.org/ht/display/ IssueDetails/i/205519/pid/273262. 5. Center for Campus Free Speech, January 20, 2005. Available at http://www. campusspeech.org/speech.asp?id2=16015. 6. David Horowitz, ‘‘Bowling Green Barbarians,’’ Front Page Magazine. Available at http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=17594 (accessed May 28, 2007). 7. David Horowitz, Sponsor Testimony for SB 24, Ohio Senate Education Committee, February 22, 2005. 8. Jennifer Jacobson, ‘‘What Makes David Run,’’ Chronicle of Higher Education, May 6, 2005. Available at http://chronicle.com/weekly/v51/i35/35a00801.htm (accessed May 28, 2007).

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9. David Horowitz, Sponsor Testimony for SB 24, Ohio Senate Education Committee, February 22, 2005. 10. Inter-University Council, ‘‘Resolution on Academic Rights and Responsibilities.’’ Available at http://www.iuc-ohio.org/docs/academic_rights_resolution.pdf (accessed May 28, 2007).

IN SEARCH OF A PROBLEM: THE STUDENT ACADEMIC FREEDOM HEARINGS IN PENNSYLVANIA Mark Smith A hundred years ago, when the old-time colleges seemed to have lost their way and the modern university system was still struggling to be born, American academics worried about an entire range of questions that hardly anyone asks today. Broadly speaking, the questions lay at the intersection of epistemology and intellectual authority. How is knowledge best cultivated? What institutional setting is most conducive to intellectual authority? How is the professoriate to justify its existence to those who pay the bills? What is the university for? —Thomas Haskell, 19981

While very little of the arguments advanced for and against the Academic Bill of Rights (ABOR) explicitly addressed the questions Haskell identified as central to an earlier crisis period in American higher education, in fact, they underlie the entire debate. In going to the legislature to protect standards of academic freedom, faculty were justifying their existence to those who paid the bills. The purpose of the university, the cultivation of knowledge, and the very legitimacy of intellectual authority became the substance of even the most far-fetched statements. Proponents of the ABOR argued that the university as a setting for intellectual authority must be subservient to political authority. Their inability, or unwillingness, to distinguish intellectual authority from political authority permeates the entire debate, and represents the most serious and as yet unresolved aspect of the issue. The most sustained setting for the debate over the ABOR took place in Pennsylvania during the 2005–06 session of the legislature. Although other states simply considered whether or not to enact some form of the ABOR, Pennsylvania chose to establish ‘‘a select committee to examine the academic atmosphere’’ in public institutions in the commonwealth.2 Representative Gibson Armstrong from rural Lancaster County introduced HR 177 in March 2005, and the Republican majority debated what form the committee would take during the spring. The House passed the resolution on a largely partyline vote on July 5, 2005. Armstrong’s resolution stemmed directly from concerns about professorial conduct in the classroom. He had heard from a constituent who complained

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that ‘‘two of her professors openly expressed disdain toward her for having ideological views that were different from hers.’’ Others told him, ‘‘it happens all the time, but there’s nothing you can do about it.’’ He decided that ‘‘it was time to stop indoctrination taking place under the guise of education on taxpayer funded campuses.’’3 The debate over the resolution in the House occurred over the July 4, 2005, holiday, and largely followed partisan lines. Democrats attacked the resolution for the potential threat to colleges and universities, and the damage that could be done to the state’s image. Representative James Roebuck, minority chair of the Education Committee questioned the need for a select committee, on the basis of ‘‘50 complaints out of the thousands and thousands of students in college campuses across the Commonwealth.’’4 Representative John Pallone (D-Westmoreland County) added some words that became a recurring theme during the committee’s lifetime: The issue is not anything other than the fact that we are on a mission looking for a problem that does not exist. There are hundreds of thousands of college students in Pennsylvania. We have 50 letters complaining about possible or alleged academic infringement on academic freedom. We are in a situation where we are out searching for a problem. This is nothing more than taking action unnecessarily.5

The theme for critics of the committee became that the hearings were a solution in search of a problem. Faculty groups, including APSCUF, the faculty union for the State System, TAUP, the faculty union at Temple University, and the national American Association of University Professors (AAUP), sent out legislative alerts to mobilize their members. For example, AAUP’s April 8, 2005, e-mail message suggested raising the following points with legislators: • •

• •

The ABOR is part of a national campaign to restrict academic freedom on campuses. Pennsylvania has been chosen as a target. State legislatures, for good reason, are not in the habit of telling faculty members what to include on their reading lists and what to teach in the classroom. Students and faculty with legitimate complaints already have access to grievance processes. Proponents have not made the case that Pennsylvania has a problem that needs to be addressed with legislation. Anecdotes form only a shaky foundation for such fundamental changes in the law.6

The legislative debate resulted in two major changes to the resolution. First, the amended version specified that the select committee was to be composed of the existing subcommittee on higher education of the House’s Committee on Education, plus two members to be appointed by the speaker and the minority leader. The original resolution would have allowed Armstrong to

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chair a select committee that he would have had more of a hand in selecting, and under the circumstances, it could have made for a more partisan, and more ideologically charged, committee. In the end, the committee was made up of seven Republicans on the higher education subcommittee—including Tom Stevenson (Allegheny County), who was chairman; Michael Diven (Allegheny County); Patrick Fleagle (Franklin County); Lynn Herman (Centre County); Bev Mackereth (York County); Bernie O’Neill (Bucks County); and Thomas Quigley (Montgomery County); Armstrong was added by the speaker. The subcommittee’s five Democrats included Lawrence Curry (Montgomery), who was minority chairman; Rich Grucella (Northampton County); John Pallone (Westmoreland County); Dan Surra (Elk County); and John Yudichak (Luzerne County); Dan Frankel (Allegheny County) was added by the minority leader. O’Neill, Curry, and Grucella had backgrounds as former teachers; Herman represented the district containing the main campus of the Pennsylvania State University, and Frankel represented the University of Pittsburgh and served on the institution’s board of trustees. The second change, instituted to prevent ambushes of particular professors, required 48 hours’ notice be given to any faculty member individually cited in a complaint. To enforce this provision, the chair requested that each speaker sign a statement agreeing to the 48-hour requirement.7 The core of the resolution remained unaffected by the changes. The committee was to focus on three specific areas and to determine whether these criteria were met: 1. Faculty are hired, fired, promoted and granted tenure based on their professional competence and subject matter knowledge and with a view of helping students explore and understand various methodologies and perspectives. 2. Students have an academic environment, quality life on campus and reasonable access to course materials that create an environment conducive to learning, the development of critical thinking and the exploration and expression of independent thought and that the students are evaluated based on their subject knowledge. 3. Students are graded based on academic merit, without regard for ideological views, and that academic freedom and the right to explore and express independent thought is available to and practiced freely by faculty and students.8

The initial meeting of the select committee was held in September, with David French, president of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) as the only witness. Stevenson stated at the outset that the committee’s focus was ‘‘going to be on the institutions, not the professors’’9 and used French’s testimony to define the committee’s agenda and highlight that intention. French discussed the nature of academic freedom and its relationship with ‘‘the constitutional rights of students and professors’’ within the context of ‘‘the institutional responsibilities of Pennsylvania public universities.’’10 He

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commended the 1940 Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure of the AAUP as ‘‘the single best statement of professors’ academic freedom’’ and emphasized that ‘‘students have very broad First Amendment rights.’’11 But he made abundantly clear that students’ broad rights do not include a right to be taught what they want to hear. Their broad rights do not include a right not to be offended. Their rights do not include a right to have a teacher tell all sides of the story as they see all sides of the story.12

French also discussed the alleged lack of ideological diversity, quoting AAUP among others as arguing that ‘‘universities should provide a broad range of ideas and a broad range of viewpoints, and concluding that ‘‘it’s not really controversial to say that there should be a broader range of ideas in the university. What is controversial is the answer to this question: Does a broad range of ideas exist?’’13 After mentioning national studies that suggest that ‘‘universities are rather ideologically monolithic,’’ French raised the following questions for the committee: Does that matter from a standpoint of intellectual diversity? And more importantly for this Committee’s purposes, do such—if disparities are real, are they real because of misconduct? Are they real because of actually unconstitutional activities?14

He warned that ‘‘the State of Pennsylvania should not and cannot . . . go to individual professors in individual departments’’ and tell them ‘‘to teach [their] class in a different way so as to be more diverse.’’15 He also warned the committee that it is ‘‘critically important that any state investigation be an investigation of potentially unconstitutional or unlawful acts as opposed to an investigation into the exercise—into lawful acts that are done in a way that is not politically popular.’’16 He acknowledged the ‘‘cries of McCarthyism regarding this investigation’’ and agreed that ‘‘investigations can be quite chilling if what you’re investigating is a lawful activity’’ but argued that ‘‘an investigation into potentially unlawful behavior is what legislative committees do all the time.’’17 French rejected the suggestion of an ‘‘Affirmative Action hiring practice for college professors,’’18 but he did raise the possibility of ideological discrimination through the redefinition of a job description so that ‘‘it essentially excludes other points of view.’’ To illustrate his point, he paraphrased remarks of Roger Bowen, AAUP general secretary: Conservatives wouldn’t be interested in these subjects. For example, what is history but the study of inequality over time? What is anthropology but the study of the role of religious and cultural myth and the myth of cultural superiority?19

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French argued that these questions ‘‘are encompassed within sociology or history or anthropology and should be studied,’’ but he denied flatly that either would do ‘‘as the traditional definition of anthropology or history.’’20 The first public hearing of the select committee was held November 9 and 10, 2005, on the University of Pittsburgh campus, and was followed by three others in January, March, and May/June 2006.21 The main themes of discussion for subsequent testimony were set during that first hearing by four main witnesses: Dr. Stephen Balch, president of the National Association of Scholars (NAS); Dr. Joan Wallach Scott and Dr. Robert Moore from AAUP; and Dr. James Maher, provost of the University of Pittsburgh. Those four individuals represented the three main types of witnesses who testified before the committee. •

•

•

The first group consisted of outside experts who largely accepted the premises behind the ABOR and suggested ways for the legislature to correct the situation.22 The second group consisted of representatives of organized faculty groups and individual faculty members who mostly resisted the premise of the resolution and any legislative oversight of curriculum matters.23 The third group consisted of representatives of the state-owned and staterelated institutions in Pennsylvania, who also resisted the premise of the resolution and any further legislative oversight.24

The committee heard from individual faculty members who came from a variety of perspectives, as well as from students, most of whom—but not all— resisted the premise of the resolution. Balch spoke for those calling for redress of the widespread ideological imbalance among the faculty around the nation. He argued that this imbalance has resulted in a substitution of advocacy and activism for education, and to make sure the legislators understood his argument he laid out definitions from Webster’s New World Dictionary for his three key terms: Educate: to train or develop the knowledge, skill, mind or character especially by formal schooling or study. Emphasis on the building of capacity, on developing knowledge, skills, mind, character, leaving the student with something permanent to take with them after the educational process is over. Advocate: to speak or write in support of, to be in favor of. Advocacy is a process whereby one seeks to persuade someone of something other than they originally believe, to convert, to change opinion. Activism: the doctrine of policy of taking positive, direct action to achieve an end, especially a political or social end.25

Throughout his testimony Balch returned to the theme that today’s faculty have destroyed the standards of higher education by substituting advocacy and activism for education.

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To support his point about ideological hegemony, Balch cited various studies, and although admitting that he had no comparable data for Pennsylvania, claimed that there was no reason to suspect any difference within the state based on ‘‘a little study we did of our own.’’26 Balch and the NAS researched the ideological balance among Pennsylvania faculty by checking Federal Election Committee records showing the balance of Democratic to Republican donors. For example, 141 faculty and staff from the University of Pittsburgh made donations: 111 to Democratic candidates and 30 to Republicans. Representative Dan Surra was more impressed by the fact that there were 4,000 faculty at Pitt and only 141 made donations. He commented that there might be an untapped market for legislators. His joke highlighted the fact that the low rate of political giving was far more significant than the imbalance toward Democrats. No one seemed to think that there was anything chilling about a legislative committee examining the private political activity of public employees. Balch advocated a return to pure education by stressing AAUP’s statements about the obligations of the professor, stressing that ‘‘the faculty member is entitled to freedom in the classroom in discussing his or her subject’’ but it ‘‘is not the function of the faculty member in a democracy to indoctrinate her or her student.’’ He quoted the AAUP’s 1915 Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Academic Tenure, stressing that ‘‘in giving instruction about controversial matters, the faculty member is expected to be of a fair and judicial mind and to set forth justly, without suppression or innuendo the divergent opinions of other investigators.’’27 He provided examples for his points by extensive examination of Web site course descriptions and departmental mission statements,28 registering overt hostility to a number of disciplines, cultural studies, social work, and especially women’s studies. Women’s studies (which he spelled out loud to emphasize the possessive apostrophe) ‘‘does not describe a field that studies women or gender, not the field on study of women. It is the field that is possessed by women.’’29 In his discussion of the social work discipline, he raised the most surprising line of argument during the hearings, the wholesale assault on the idea of social and economic justice. He alerted the committee to the fact that the University of Pittsburgh’s School of Social Work ‘‘is committed to promoting the values of social and economic justice.’’30 The accrediting body for Social Work programs, the Council on Social Work Education, includes standards that claim that among the purposes of the social work profession . . . is the pursuit of policies, services and resources through advocacy and social or political actions that promote social and economic justice.31

Bloomsburg’s social work program has ‘‘a strong commitment to social and economic justice’’ and Temple’s school of social administration is ‘‘dedicated to

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societal transformation to eliminate social, political and economic injustice for poor and oppressed.’’32 In his written statement, Balch charged that ‘‘[s]ome schools of education have also built debatable political concepts into their programming,’’ such as the Penn State College of Education, which ‘‘lists as one of its goals to enhance the continuing commitment of faculty, staff and students to diversity, social justice, and democratic leadership.’’ Balch asked, ‘‘Whose notions of social justice (or diversity, or democratic leadership for that matter) will be used to evaluate the course work of aspiring teachers at Penn State?’’33 Representative Surra responded with the comment that ‘‘to me the promotion of social and economic justice is a good thing and something that’s done by conservatives and liberals alike.’’34 Representative Armstrong followed Balch’s lead, questioning Joan Scott about whether social justice was ‘‘a politically laden term in academia?’’ Scott turned the question around and asked, ‘‘Do you believe in social justice?’’ and ‘‘What is the problem?’’ Robert Moore jumped in and responded, ‘‘Certainly, at St. Joseph’s University, in a private context, if you don’t come into a Jesuit school on the side of social justice, you are not going to get hired. You won’t be around very long.’’35 And the next day, Armstrong asked University of Pittsburgh James Maher, ‘‘What does social justice mean in academia?’’ Maher responded by reminding Armstrong that ‘‘social justice is something that philosophers have argued about since the early Greek philosophers and I’m not sure that there is a consensus on exactly what social justice is.’’36 Balch also attempted to equate ‘‘gender and ethnic diversity’’ with ‘‘intellectual diversity.’’ He testified that ‘‘throughout American higher education . . . there are plans in place to vigorously enforce plans to increase gender and ethnic diversity.’’ He wondered, ‘‘why those same plans, those same monitoring systems and those same incentives never get employed with respect to intellectual diversity.’’37 In his conclusion, he called on the legislators to ‘‘communicate to the leaders of the university that they should expect to see the problem of intellectual pluralism addressed with the same vigor that the state’s universities are already addressing what they take to be the problem of a lack of gender and ethnic diversity.’’38 Balch seemed not so interested in new practices to promote intellectual diversity, but rather in arguments to discredit practices promoting gender and ethnic diversity. In response to a question about whether he was advocating affirmative action for Republicans that drew laughter from the audience he got testy and commented, ‘‘I hope those people who are laughing don’t believe in affirmative action at all otherwise they are being inconsistent in their laughing.’’39 Dr. Joan Wallach Scott and Dr. Robert Moore, testifying on behalf of the national and state AAUP, countered many of Balch’s major points. They focused on the need to avoid any appearance of government dictation of the curriculum, the fact that colleges and universities already have policies in place that protect student rights, and illustrations of how faculty governance and classroom

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teaching work in practice. Scott also brought threats of legislative intrusion into the classroom that the ABOR represents. ‘‘It recalls the kind of government intervention in the academy practiced by totalitarian governments’’ who ‘‘sought to control thought rather than permit a free marketplace of ideas.’’40 Scott quoted the historian of education and distinguished educator, Walter Metzger, on the question of legislatures and academic freedom: A state legislature does not violate academic freedom . . . when it sets up or abolishes departments of instruction in academic institutions under its control, because these actions have budgetary implications that the representatives of the paying public cannot ignore. Nor does it do so when, under its licensing powers, it requires candidates for professional degrees to undergo a specified course of training which the state academic institution must provide. It is an unsettled question whether it does so, when to gratify local pride, it makes a designated course in local history prerequisite for an undergraduate degree. But centuries of history tell us that it invades the very core of academic freedom . . . when it dictates the contents of any course at any level or for any purpose. When it does that, it converts the university into a bureau of public administration, the subject into a vehicle for partisan politics or lay morality, and the act of teaching into a species of ventriloquism. . . . The central precepts of academic freedom . . . are that professors should say what they believe without fear or favor and that universities should appoint meritorious persons, not followers of a diversity of party lines.41

Dr. Lisa D. Brush, president of United Faculty (the AAUP chapter at the University of Pittsburgh), and Dr. Burrell Brown, vice president of APSCUF (the union representing the faculty as the State System of Higher Education) also testified stressing the same themes. Dr. Maher stressed that policies to protect students from unfair grading and faculty misconduct were already in place at the University of Pittsburgh. After the Pittsburgh hearings, the main themes were set. Advocates from the first group repeated Balch’s arguments continually, stressing the lack of ideological diversity among faculty, the disturbing loss of standards in education through the substitution of advocacy and activism for education, the political nature of the quest for social justice, and the underlying resentment against policies advancing gender and racial diversity. Above all, they stressed the need to do something, although oddly in the midst of legislative hearing most seemed to be asking a government body not to have the government do anything. They had various explanations and solutions, but they all stressed that today’s academic environment was in crisis and sorely in need of serious reform. The representatives from the institutions clarified that their existing policies and practices already protected students’ legitimate concerns. Before beginning the hearings, committee staff had contacted all institutions covered by the resolution, and reviewed them.42 The attack on social justice continued throughout the hearings. As expected, David Horowitz took the extreme position by defining ‘‘social

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justice’’ as ‘‘a generally recognized code for socialism.’’43 This ‘‘generally recognized code’’ might well surprise generations of Catholic social thinkers, as well as earlier crusaders against leftist influence in American education. The headline for the November 6, 1939, issue of Father Coughlin’s national newsweekly Social Justice was ‘‘Do Communists Control New York City Schools?’’ Coughlin had blazed this trail long before Horowitz had begun his political journey. Nevertheless, the drive continued both within the committee and in the larger arena. At Millersville, Dr. Mark Bauerlein of Emory University defined ‘‘social justice’’ as ‘‘the idealized code word for various governmental management policies of income and resource distribution.’’44 Bauerlien went on to suggest ‘‘corrective action,’’ including the removal of ‘‘political elements such as social justice from the requirements and mission statements.’’45 The questions over the introduction of controversial material in the classroom refer to the misrepresentation of a particular sentence from the AAUP’s 1940 Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure. This has been a major weapon in the arsenal of proponents of the ABOR. This section of the 1940 Statement reads as follows: Teachers are entitled to freedom in the classroom in discussing their subject, but they should be careful not to introduce into their teaching controversial matter which has no relation to their subject.

However, there is a footnote to this section, which reads as follows: The intent of this statement is not to discourage what is ‘‘controversial.’’ Controversy is at the heart of the free academic inquiry which the entire statement is designed to foster. The passage serves to underscore the need for teachers to avoid persistently intruding material which has no relation to their subject.46

The footnote clarifies that controversy itself is not inappropriate. The 1915 Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Academic Tenure makes the same point, clarifying which remedies for abuses are appropriate and which are inappropriate. It is, however, for reasons which have already been made evident, inadmissible that the power of determining when departures from the requirements of the scientific spirit and method have occurred, should be vested in bodies not composed of members of the academic profession. Such bodies necessarily lack full competency to judge of those requirements; their intervention can never be exempt from the suspicion that it is dictated by other motives than zeal for the integrity of science; and it is, in any case, unsuitable to the dignity of a great profession that the initial responsibility for the maintenance of its professional standards should not be in the hands of its own members.47

Faculty groups are united in their commitment that the protection of academic freedom requires that decisions ‘‘determining when departures’’ from

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academic norms have occurred be made by academically qualified bodies from the faculty. This proved to be one of the key points of contention in the hearings, and it underlays most other controversies. Faculty, and most of the academic administrators testifying, understood this key point of academic freedom. They stressed disciplinary norms, the importance of peer review, and that academic judgment and academic freedom were professional concerns of faculty—not simply individual rights. Kathy Sproles, president of the National Education Association’s (NEA’s) higher education caucus, the National Council of Higher Education, talked about the difference between academic and political balance, and about the difference between offering an interpretation and indoctrinating an audience. Faculty members offer interpretations all the time, and it is important that we do so. Especially in the humanities and the social sciences, higher education is about learning how to develop interpretations, how to communicate those interpretations, and most critically, how to support those interpretations with facts, theories, models, and the other tools of scholarly interpretation. A faculty member offering a scholarly interpretation, though, is not the same thing as telling students how to vote in next Tuesday’s election.48

The same distinction was illustrated in an exchange in Pittsburgh. Representative Armstrong asked Joan Scott, ‘‘is it appropriate to advocate a certain viewpoint at the exclusion and expense of others?’’ Scott’s reply tried to distinguish between appropriate and inappropriate advocacy: Scott: If he or she thinks that a particular interpretation, a set of information, what you are talking about in humanities or social science classrooms is interpretation. You are not talking about pure objective fact. So everything is going to be about interpretation.. . . There are volumes of scholarship with very different opinions. I teach a certain line about, which I believe to be right about the causes of the French Revolution. It doesn’t mean if a student in my class writes an essay advocating another set of interpretations I don’t grant or recognize the validity of that point of view as long as he knows what happened and what the dates are all the rest of it. So I think this notion of education and advocacy is a tricky one. And in fact, there is nothing wrong with advocating particular points of view in a classroom. It is another thing to go and tell students how they should vote. Armstrong: Do you consider that inappropriate? Scott: I consider it inappropriate.49

In varying degrees, all of the faculty representatives stressed the principles of academic freedom, faculty governance, and the autonomy of the academy based on the professional standards of the disciplines. Joan Scott testified that Students need to know about the values and commitments of their professors— they don’t have to share them. But because such commitments cannot be separated from scholarship, there are mechanisms internal to academic life that

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monitor abuses, distinguishing between serious, responsible work and polemic, between teaching that aims to unsettle received opinion and teaching that is indoctrination. . .. The established procedures that AAUP recommends are not always perfectly implemented, but they will not work better if government oversight is substituted for community self-surveillance. This is how John Dewey and Arthur Lovejoy, founders in 1915 of the American Association of University Professors, understood the need for academic freedom. Precisely because academic work might call into question received wisdom and contradict popular opinion, there was a need to protect faculty from outside interference—it was that protection (a protection based on respect for self-regulating communities of scholars) that they called academic freedom.

At the Temple hearing, William Scheuerman, vice president of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), highlighted the diversity of the higher education system in this country: ‘‘diversity in missions, roles, programming and perspectives and an incredibly wide variety of faculty and staff nationwide.’’ He expressed thanks that ‘‘our governmental leaders have always understood that it is critical to keep institutions vital to the free expression of ideas, like higher education, free from political interference.’’50 And at the final hearing in Harrisburg, Kathy Sproles reiterated many of the same points in distinguishing between the concepts of academic freedom and free speech, which she noted were similar but not identical concepts. Professors have academic freedom in a professional capacity, not simply as individuals. Academic freedom allows professors to exercise their professional judgment in teaching and research. It does not give them unrestricted free speech rights in the classroom. . .. NEA does believe wholeheartedly that exposing students to the spectrum of significant scholarly viewpoints on the subjects examined in their courses is a major responsibility of the faculty. However, we do interpret that literally. We believe that faculty have that responsibility.51

Jane Munley, an associate professor and coordinator of criminal justice at Luzerne County Community College in Northeastern Pennsylvania, and president of the Pennsylvania Association of Higher Education, the Higher Education Department of PSEA (Pennsylvania State Education Association), also testified at Harrisburg about her fear that the so-called academic bill of rights will stifle the abilities of faculty to challenge students, that it will discourage confrontational and controversial issues from being discussed and debated. I fear that the political power holders—whoever they may be at any point in time—will be dictating the appropriateness of course content.

The major substantive discussion of issues before the committee occurred during the testimonies of Balch, Neal, and Bauerlien on the one hand, and

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representatives from faculty groups such as from AAUP, APSCUF, AFT, and NEA, as well as from institutional representatives, on the other. The most contentious exchange occurred between the committee and David Horowitz at the Temple hearing on January 10, 2006. Horowitz is listed in the transcript of the Temple hearing as president, Center for the Study of Popular Culture, Creator of the Students for Academic Freedom (SAF), author of the ABOR, author, and media commentator. His sense of self-importance cannot be overestimated, but he is in fact the individual behind the national drive for the ABOR. (To illustrate that sense of self-importance, see his reply to the AAUP Statement on his Web site, where he complains that ‘‘[t]heir statement in response airbrushes me out of the picture.’’52) David Horowitz, however, probably did more to undermine his own cause in Pennsylvania than any of the eloquent testimonies of faculty advocates. This has happened before. In both Georgia and Florida, witnesses said that Horowitz was the best witness against his position they could imagine. A Georgia activist told AAUP’s director of government relations that he should pay to send Horowitz into state legislatures.53 At Temple, Horowitz was bombastic, unapologetic, and unrepentant about interrupting legislators. Those who were not familiar with him did not seem impressed. In his testimony earlier that morning, Bill Scheuerman made the following point to the legislators: elected officials, like yourselves, know how to see shades of gray and understand the motivations of people who disagree with you. But ideologues, like Mr. Horowitz, simply cannot imagine people who disagree with him politically could possibly be responsible professionals. They have to be charlatans simply because they disagree with him.54

Horowitz proceeded to prove Scheureman’s point, adding a certain laissezfaire attitude toward veracity for good measure. According to Horowitz, ‘‘Student Activities Boards are generally controlled by leftist students and conservatives—there is nobody for conservative speakers.’’55 He declared that during the ‘‘last election season these violations became epidemic, yet I am not aware of a single case where a university administration has stepped in [to] correct these abuses.’’56 Horowitz criticized one class ‘‘on Enlightenment, Romantic, and Revolutionary Thinkers,’’ including Darwin, Freud, and Marx among its Revolutionary Thinkers, because he did not approve of the sample exam questions on Marx. Not one asked ‘‘students to consider that all economies run by Marxist have failed and have failed catastrophically and without exception.’’ Because of that, Horowitz concludes that ‘‘this is not education. It’s indoctrination.’’57 He spent time criticizing the ‘‘ignorance of the academic freedom principles’’ of ‘‘Dean Brown.’’ Horowitz implied that the administration of his institution was complicit in the ignorance of this principle, ‘‘since Dean Brown,

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obviously, discussed his presentation with the President of California University, and no doubt its legal counsel.’’ Had Dr. Brown been a dean, he might have discussed his testimony with those officials. But because Dr. Brown was a faculty member, department chair, and vice president of the faculty union, it is just as likely that he did not do so. (And the substance of the criticism had to do with the misrepresentation of introduction of controversial material into the classroom discussed above.) Horowitz outlined his research methods that allow him to conclude ‘‘with confidence’’ that the basic principle of academic freedom ‘‘is violated everyday on every campus in this state.’’ He asks a room of 30 students, ‘‘How many of you have been in a class this year where a professor has made a negative remark about President Bush?’’58 He later acknowledged that these meetings have been arranged by ‘‘college Republicans and are funded by something called the Young American’s Foundation,’’ although he did not seem to think that biased his sample.59 Horowitz’s online research methods are equally prone to selfselection. The SAF Website has a link entitled ‘‘Forum on Abuse,’’ which leads to the SAF Complaint Center. That page describes the postings as examples of student complaints. Students for Academic Freedom has not investigated these complaints and does not endorse them. It is providing this bulletin board to illustrate the kinds of complaints that students have. Individuals who have been named in a complaint and wish to respond may email [Students for Academic Freedom].60

Finally, Horowitz admitted on the record that the story he had been telling for some time about the Penn State biology professor who showed his students Michael Moore’s movie Fahrenheit 9/11 during a biology class was not true. Representative Yudichak mentioned that ‘‘the leader of the Young Americans for Freedom . . . actually did some checking . . . and found out that it was the Michael Moore film Bowling for Columbine, shown in a sociology class not in a biology class.’’ Horowitz responded, ‘‘a staffer told me this’’ and another student at Columbia told me exactly the same thing about a civil engineering class. It’s neither here nor there. There is no way every student’s complaint is going to be a valid one. It is very easy to get this information if the university will get it. I have a staff of two.61

Representative Curry returned to the subject of ‘‘lack of good evidence and misrepresentation and vagueness being presented’’ and the Michael Moore movies came up again: Curry: An incident illustrating the problem was related by Representative Gib Armstrong, the sponsor of this Academic Bill of Rights. You go on in this [essay] to recite about, what was raised earlier, to recite about the showing of

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Fahrenheit 9/11 before the election. Now we know that didn’t happen. Now we know it was another film in a sociology course and probably appropriately, but it wasn’t Fahrenheit 9/11. Are you going to retract that in a public setting? Horowitz: I did. I have already retracted it on my website. You don’t know that the Columbine was appropriately shown. I will tell you I’ve interviewed lots of students who have Columbine shown. What is appropriate is you show Bowling for Columbine and you . . . Curry: My question is . . . Horowitz: . . . invite students on the web at Sinsanity and other very liberal sites. Micheal Moore has been taken apart as a liar. Students need to have the critical apparatus when they deal with it. Also I gave you the name of a student Kelly . . . Curry: Listen, we better be careful about who we call liars when we have public statements asserting something that we know not to be true. Horowitz: I didn’t know that wasn’t true until two days ago. Curry: But you asserted it. Horowitz: So what. Everything you say is absolutely the gospel?62

This attitude did not play well with any member of the committee. Horowitz framed his remarks with a particular strand of nostalgia—he wants today’s students to have the kind of education that he had at ‘‘Columbia University in the McCarthy 50s.’’ He does not ‘‘remember a single professor in my college who expressed a political point of view in any class I ever had. That is my model. That is good education. Why can’t we just reestablish that?’’63 That may be Horowitz’s memory today, but a number of years earlier he described the higher education of his student days in quite different terms. In the 1970 introduction to his book on the Cold War, The Free World Colossus, Horowitz recounted that he wrote the book in the early 1960s at a time when ‘‘the intellectual atmosphere was frigid, both on and off the campus, and remained so until the birth of a mass anti-war movement created a new climate in which dissenting theory and analysis could begin to develop with some self-confidence.’’ He went on to criticize ‘‘those who have decried the attempt by student militants to politicize the universities, which, in their view, were previously sanctuaries of disinterested thought.’’64 What is striking about this formulation is not that he once was on the left and now is on the right, but that his standards have always been political, not academic. Many scholars are both partisan and objective, but Horowitz is not talking about changing academic paradigms, but about starting a new political movement creating a new analytical climate. He closes this introduction with the assertion that it is only through the political efforts of the students to counter-act the immense political weight which the power structure exerts on the intellectual processes of the university that the academy can be restored to its true critical function and the concept of academic freedom attain real significance and meaning.65

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Now, it is true that Horowitz has recanted his youthful leftist views, but that last statement could have been written this year. The political orientation has changed, but his concern is still focused on political efforts to counter the political weight of what he considers to be the power structure. Horowitz is not interested in the kinds of nuanced debate that characterizes true intellectual exchange in the academy. In spite of the fact that one of the central purposes of the hearings was to examine the extent to which ‘‘students have the opportunity to learn in an environment conducive to the pursuit of knowledge and truth,’’ students played a small role in the hearings. The committee heard no student complaints at the Pittsburgh hearing—the only student who did testify argued that his rights were already protected.66 Two students testifying at the Temple hearing did raise some complaints, but one that raised initial concerns turned out to be a dispute between a master’s student and his advisors over his thesis. He was claiming political repression for a case that, in reality, did not involve anything of the kind.67 The other student, Logan Fisher, the vice chair of the College Republicans at Temple, relayed lots of complaints from students too intimidated to speak up, and raised another about an unbalanced campaign appearance by Michael Moore. Upon questioning, he admitted that the university had not paid for the rally, merely rented out the hall, but insisted that the university was obligated to provide balance. When asked if he was seriously arguing that the university should spend student dollars on a rally for his side when it did not do so for the original event, he conceded that he was not quite asking for that either.68 Fisher was actually on the program, but most students who did testify did so during the public comment period at the end of each day’s schedule. In the end, more students testified against the thrust of the resolution. Student organizers for the Free Exchange on Campus Coalition did an especially impressive job at the final two hearings in Millersville and Harrisburg in turning out students who supported the coalition’s position. Free Exchange on Campus had been formed by the national faculty groups as well as by student and free expression advocacy groups.69 The first major action undertaken by the coalition was to respond to the hearings in Pennsylvania. Several individual professors from a variety of institutions and providing a variety of perspectives testified during the hearings. One example highlighted by Horowitz occurred at the Temple hearing. Professor Stephen Zelnick said he had been motivated to testify ‘‘because I was so upset . . . at the rally to organize the faculty versus the students on this issue. It was a remarkably one-sided meeting in which all sorts of scare tactics were put into play.’’70 Zelnick was referring to a rally put on by TAUP about the hearings, which also featured a speech by Dr. Ellen Schrecker of Yeshiva University who discussed a McCarthy era case at Temple. Zelnick referenced Schrecker’s speech by mentioning that ‘‘the Communist witch-hunts in the 50s were brought into play as a way of characterizing these hearings, and I thought that was

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massively unfair.’’71 Zelnick went on to illustrate his version of fair-minded observation by describing visits he had made to ‘‘more than a hundred different teachers’ classes.’’ In those visits, he rarely heard a kind word for the United States and our freedoms, for the riches of our marketplace, for the vast economic and creative opportunities available for energetic and creative people, that is, for our students, for family life, for marriage, for love between a man and a woman, or for religion.72

Conclusion Over the summer, the committee attempted to produce a report, but most members were preoccupied by the election. In June, Representative Curry shared his conclusions with his colleagues at a meeting. He wrote: 1. The evidence does not support political bias in the classroom that is not properly handled by existing academic policy. 2. No substantial evidence of the denial of free speech in the classroom that is not covered by college or university procedure. 3. Academic procedures should be emphasized to students during freshman orientation and brought to their attention in the student handbook by their advisor at the beginning of each semester.73

But Representative Armstrong still held out hope for a more interventionist set of recommendations. He wrote me that he believes the ultimate impact of the committee will be as follows: 1. Students will be better informed of their rights. Temple University’s Board was the first to pass a students’ bill of rights this summer, in part as a result of the hearings. Given the nature of academia, others will likely follow suit. 2. The quality of education on state campuses will improve as fewer professors will waste valuable class time indoctrinating. 3. The legislature will issue a report summarizing its findings with recommendations. This could lead to legislation or additional means of accountability.74

The Select Committee held what was to be its final meeting on November 14, 2006, to approve the report. Competing drafts of the final report revealed that Curry and Armstrong continued to hold widely divergent views of the problem. A partisan divide, exacerbated by unresolved questions about the partisan outlook of the 2007 legislature, threatened to result in two reports. A week’s adjournment, however, produced a consensus report that was adopted unanimously. The committee’s main finding was ‘‘that legislation requiring the adoption of a uniform statewide academic freedom policy, which was referenced by several testifiers, was not necessary.’’ The committee ‘‘determined that

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academic freedom violations are rare’’ and that ‘‘at institutions with academic freedom policies in place, it appears the policies are effective at resolving disputes.’’75 The main recommendations were as follows: •

•

•

Public institutions of higher education within the Commonwealth should continue to review existing academic freedom policies and procedures to ensure that student rights and grievance procedures are detailed and readily available. Public institutions of higher education should make students aware of the availability of academic freedom policies and grievance procedures. This should be accomplished by providing such information during student orientation when other student rights policies and/or discrimination policies are discussed. Additionally, this information should be available in the ‘‘student’’ section of the institution’s website. In order to provide students who do not wish to complain directly to a professor with an alternative option, public institutions of higher education should allow students to file complaints with a university official outside of the student’s major. This could be best accomplished by utilizing an existing office that handles student diversity issues for the purpose of receiving and processing such complaints.

Each member of the committee was allowed to insert remarks as part of an appendix of the report. Armstrong chose to insert a summary of testimony that had been stricken from the draft, because it did not reflect the committee’s findings or recommendations. Representative Curry’s remarks commended the final product, but also clearly distinguished between the educational concept of academic freedom, which attaches to faculty in their professional capacities, and the more general free speech rights of students as citizens. He pointed out that the misuse of the term ‘‘academic freedom’’ led to much of the difficulties in the public’s perception of the issue. Faculty and other defenders of the academy need to remember several points about the hearings. First, the majority of the legislators on the select committee, Democrats and Republicans alike, stepped up and defended academic freedom. The partisan circumstances provide Democrats with an easier time opposing the thrust of Armstrong’s questioning. Surra was the most outspoken in denouncing the hearings, but Curry’s patient and quiet questioning of witnesses proved effective. His interrogation of Horowitz was especially devastating to the ABOR. At the first hearing, Frankel expressed concern that the hearings may send a message ‘‘that [Pennsylvania] is not a welcoming environment for academics.’’76 And, in Millersville, he pointed out that he did not want his children ‘‘to have a sanitized environment in the classroom. I think quite frankly having opinionated professors . . . is not necessarily a bad thing.’’77 At the same time, faculty groups need to be aware of the general apprehension toward academia in legislative circles, largely but not entirely in the

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Republican Party. David Horowitz is not an adversary of intellectual worthiness, but his movement resonates with certain elements within the political arena. Because of the overwhelming response by faculty and higher education institutions in Pennsylvania over the past year, that kind of thinking was resisted in this case. But it would be wrong to underestimate its appeal, or to impugn the sincerity of its proponents. Horowitz may well be an intellectual charlatan, but someone like Gibson Armstrong is sincere in his concerns. He wrote of his final thoughts about the hearings: We must therefore get as many of our bright young minds into college, and ensure that they are learning to think critically and creatively—for themselves. That will enable them to reach their potential as productive members of society and better enable us to regain our competitive advantages. Indoctrinating them with pre-packaged conclusions and beliefs generates automaton citizens who know what to think, not how to think, and who are intellectually lazy and unlikely to contribute to anywhere close to their potential. Ignorance is the enemy of liberty. The perpetuation of our democratic republic depends on a citizenry educated enough to understand the issues America faces and analyze them and potential solutions based on sound principles and truth, with the passion to do something. It is difficult to recognize truth and see possible solutions for those who are taught that all is relative and there is no real truth (itself a statement of truth), and even more challenging for them to roll up their sleeves and contribute.78

An ideal result of this set of hearings, and frankly the entire debate over the ABOR in general, would be to see increased discussion on the part of faculty explaining the critical importance of academic freedom and the value it brings to higher education and society at large. Equally important would be a return to the questions Thomas Haskell raised at the turn of the last century: What is a university for? And what is the most appropriate setting for intellectual authority? The fact is that the history of academic disciplines is an extremely contested history. Those contests have been critical to the development of the disciplines, but they have little to do with election results in the general polity. At their best, the testimony delivered by the various faculty members representing the leading faculty organizations did just that. But we need to go further in articulating those themes to the general public, our students, and our fellow citizens. We could do worse than to begin with a comment from a special committee of the AAUP in a 1956 report entitled Academic Freedom and Tenure in the Question for National Security: We ask for the maintenance of academic freedom and of the civil liberties of scholars, not as a special right, but as a means whereby we may make our appointed contribution to the life of the commonwealth and share equitably, but not more than equitably, in the American heritage.79

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Notes 1. Thomas Haskell, ‘‘Justifying Academic Freedom in the Era of Power/Knowledge,’’ in Objectivity Is Not Neutrality: Explanatory Schemes in History (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998), 174. 2. House Resolution No. 177, Session of 2005 (Printer’s no. 2553), p. 1, lines 1–2. 3. Gibson C. Armstrong to Mark F. Smith, August 10, 2006. e-mail communication. 4. Legislative Journal—House. July 4, 2005, 1822. 5. Legislative Journal—House. July 5, 2005, 1833. 6. AAUP Legislative Alert, April 8, 2005. Sent by e-mail from the director of government relations to AAUP’s e-mail list for Pennsylvania. 7. Commonwealth of Pennsylvania House of Representatives Select Committee on Academic Freedom in Higher Education, Stenographic Report of Public Hearing held at Temple University Student Center, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, January 9, 2006, 4 [hereafter Transcript of Public Hearing, place and date]. 8. House Resolution No. 177, Session of 2005 (Printer’s no. 2553), p. 2, lines 21–30, and p. 3, lines 1–5. 9. Transcript, September 19, 2005, 6. 10. French testimony, Transcript, September 19, 2005, 9. 11. Ibid., 14. 12. Ibid., 13. 13. Ibid., 26–27. 14. Ibid., 27. 15. Ibid., 29. 16. Ibid., 66. 17. Ibid., 66–67. 18. Ibid., 73. 19. Ibid., 75. Bowen and French had both appeared at the American Enterprise Institute Forum ‘‘A Liberal Education?’’ to discuss Daniel Klein’s studies on partisan bias in the academy, February 14, 2005. To see Bowen’s exact words, see the transcript from the event at http://www.aei.org/events/filter.all,eventID.993/transcript.asp (accessed May 29, 2007). 20. French testimony, Transcript, September 19, 2005, 75. 21. The subsequent hearings were held at Temple University in Philadelphia, January 9 and 10, 2006; Millersville University in Millersville, March 22 and 23, 2006; and Harrisburg Area Community College in Harrisburg, May 31 and June 1, 2006. 22. This group included Dr. Stephen Balch, president of the National Association of Scholars (Pittsburgh); Ann Neal, president of the American Council of Trustees and Alumni (Temple); Mike Ratliff and Dr. Gary Scott, Intercollegiate Studies Institute (Millersville); and Mark Bauerlien, professor of English, Emory University (Millersville). David Horowitz, president of the Center for the Study of Popular Culture (Temple), also falls into this category, but he will be treated separately. 23. This group included (1) Dr. Joan Wallach Scott, Harold F. Linder Professor of Social Science at the Institute for Advanced Study, and former chair of AAUP’s Committee A on Academic Freedom and Tenure; (2) Dr. Robert Moore, assistant professor of sociology at St. Josephs University in Philadelphia and president-elect of the Pennsylvania Division of the AAUP; (3) Dr. Lisa D. Brush, associate professor of sociology, and president of United Faculty, the AAUP chapter at the University of Pittsburgh;

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(4) Dr. Burrell Brown, professor of business and economics at California University of Pennsylvania, and vice president of Association of Pennsylvania State College & University Faculties (APSCUF) (all at Pittsburgh); (5) Dr. Robert O’Neil, founding director of the Thomas Jefferson Center for the Protection of Free Expression, and former chair of AAUP’s Committee A on Academic Freedom and Tenure; (6) Dr. William E. Scheuerman, president of United University Professions, New York, vice president of American Federation of Teachers; (7) Dr. William W. Cutler, professor of history and educational leadership, Temple University, and president of Temple Association of University Professionals (TAUP-AFT); (8) Kathy R. Sproles, instructor of English, Hartnell College, Salinas, California, and president of the National Council on Higher Education, NEA; and (9) Jane Munley, associate professor and coordinator of Criminal Justice at Luzerne County Community College, and president of the Pennsylvania Association of Higher Education, the Higher Education Department of Pennsylvania State Education Association (PSEA/NEA) (all at Harrisburg Area Community College). 24. This group included (1) Dr. James V. Maher, provost of the University of Pittsburgh, (Pittsburgh); (2) Dr. David Adamany, president, Temple University (Temple); (3) Dr. Francine McNariy, president, Millersville University of Pennsylvania (Millersville); (4) David Morrison, executive assistant to the president of Harrisburg Area Community College; (5) Dr. Peter Garland, vice chancellor for academic and student affairs; (6) Dr. James Moran, association vice chancellor for academic and student affairs, State System of Higher Education; and (7) Dr. Blannie Bowen, vice provost for academic affairs at Pennsylvania State University (all at Harrisburg Area Community College). 25. Balch testimony, Transcript of Public Hearing, Pittsburgh, November 9, 2005, 9–10. 26. Transcript of Public Hearing, Pittsburgh, November 9, 2005, 27. 27. Balch testimony, Transcript of Public Hearing, Pittsburgh, November 9, 2005, 13–14. 28. NAS followed up Balch’s testimony with the June 29, 2006, release of a study of university Web sites ‘‘Words to Live By: How Diversity Trumps Freedom on Academic Websites.’’ See report at http://www.nas.org/reports/Diversity_Googled/ diversity_googled.pdf (accessed May 29, 2007). The address reveals the methodology. 29. Balch testimony, Transcript of Public Hearing, Pittsburgh, November 9, 2005, 52–53. 30. Ibid., 39. 31. Ibid., 41. 32. Ibid., 43–44. 33. Written statement submitted to Select Committee, 15. Available at http:// www.nas.org/reports/Balch_PA_Reps/pa_legisl_statmt.pdf (accessed May 29, 2007). 34. Transcript of Public Hearing, Pittsburgh, November 9, 2005, 118. 35. Ibid., 240–41. 36. Ibid., 54–55. 37. Ibid., 33. 38. Ibid., 88. 39. Ibid., 116. 40. Ibid., 187. 41. Ibid., 188–89.

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42. HR 177 covered ‘‘State-related and State-owned colleges and universities and community colleges.’’ There are four state-related institutions (Lincoln University, Pennsylvania State University, Temple University, and University of Pittsburgh.) There are 14 campuses in the state-owned State System of Higher Education: Bloomsburg, California, Cheyney, Clarion, East Stroudsburg, Edinboro, Indiana, Kutztown, Lock Haven, Mansfield, Millersville, Shippensburg, Slippery Rock, and West Chester. 43. Transcript of Public Hearing, Temple, January 10, 2006, 142. My copy of the transcript does not contain the words ‘‘social justice.’’ I believe that is a typographical error (the transcript reads ‘‘For example, if they advocate, which is a generally recognized code for socialism’’). Horowitz’s own Web site version of his testimony, ‘‘What I told Pennsylvania’s Academic Freedom Hearings’’ reads ‘‘for example that they advocate ‘social justice’ which is a generally recognized code for socialism.’’ See FrontPage Mag.com (accessed January 11, 2006). 44. Transcript of Public Hearing, Millersville, March 23, 2006, 13. 45. Ibid., 19. 46. American Association of University Professors, 1940 Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure, AAUP Policy Documents and Reports, 9th ed. (Washington, DC: American Association of University Professors, 2001), 3–10. Available at http://www.aaup.org/AAUP/pubsres/policydocs/1940statement.htm (accessed May 29, 2007). 47. American Association of University Professors, 1915 Declaration of Principles on Academic Freedom and Academic Tenure. AAUP Policy Documents and Reports, 9th ed. (Washington, DC: American Association of University Professors, 2001), 291–301. 48. Transcript of Public Hearing, Harrisburg, June 1, 2006, 30–31. 49. Transcript of Public Hearing, Pittsburgh, November 9, 2005, 236–37. 50. Transcript of Public Hearing, Temple, January 10, 2006, 5. 51. Transcript of Public Hearing, Harrisburg, June 1, 2006, 32–33. 52. David Horowitz, ‘‘The Professors’ Orwellian Case,’’ FrontPageMagazine.com, December 5, 2003. 53. Donald F. Wagner to Mark F. Smith (confirmed by e-mail, August 25, 2006). 54. Transcript of Public Hearing, Temple, January 10, 2006, 8–9. 55. Ibid., 202. 56. Ibid., 149. 57. Ibid., 162–63. 58. Ibid., 148. 59. Ibid., 202. 60. The main Web site is http://www.studentsforacademicfreedom.org/. The specific SAF Complaint Center is available at http://www.studentsforacademicfreedom.org/ comp/default.asp. 61. Transcript of Public Hearing, Temple, January 10, 2006, 185. 62. Ibid., 207–9. 63. Ibid., 151–52. 64. David Horowitz, The Free World Colossus: A Critique of American Foreign Policy in the Cold War, Rev. ed. (New York: Hill and Wang, 1971), 3. 65. Horowitz, The Free World Colossus, 7. 66. Transcript of Public Hearing, Pittsburgh, November 10, 2005, 150–59. 67. Transcript of Public Hearing, Temple, January 9, 2006, 180–205.

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68. Ibid., 162. 69. The list of the member organizations includes, in alphabetical order, the following: American Association of University Professors; American Civil Liberties Union; American Federation of Teachers; American Library Association/Association of College & Research Libraries; Campus Progress/Center for American Progress; Center for Campus Free Speech; Free Press; National Association of State PIRGs; National Education Association/NEA Student Program; People for the American Way Foundation/Young People For; Vox: Voices for Planned Parenthood; and the United States Student Association. The coalition’s Web site is available at http://www.free exchangeoncampus.org/. 70. Transcript of Public Hearing, Temple, January 10, 2006, 109. 71. Ibid., 109. 72. Ibid., 117. 73. Achille C. Scache (Representative Lawrence Curry’s Office) to Mark F. Smith, July 19, 2006, e-mail communication. 74. Gibson C. Armstrong to Mark F. Smith, August 10, 2006, e-mail communication. 75. Report of the Select Committee on Academic Freedom in Higher Education pursuant to House Resolution 177, November 21, 2006, 12. 76. Transcript of Public Hearing, Pittsburgh, November 9, 2005, 216. 77. Transcript of Public Hearing, Millersville, March 22, 2005, 86. 78. Gibson C. Armstrong to Mark F. Smith, August 10, 2006, e-mail communication. 79. Academic Freedom and Tenure in the Quest for National Security, Report of a Special Committee of the American Association of University Professors, AAUP Bulletin 42, no. 1 (Spring 1956): 55.

A CASE STUDY: THE COLORADO EXPERIENCE Dana R. Waller In the spring of 2003, the Colorado Conference of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP-CO) was organized for the purpose of increasing the voice of higher education in the state legislature. Our primary concerns included the significant budget cuts resulting from Colorado’s Taxpayers Bill of Rights (TABOR) Amendment (which eventually approached 30 percent), the ‘‘voucher’’ method of funding higher education that the governor was promoting (which eventually was passed as the Colorado Opportunity Fund), and our first Legislative Breakfast and presentation of our ‘‘Friend of Higher Education’’ Award. Little did we know that our biggest challenge in the upcoming session would not be any of these things, but instead would be what has come to be known as the Academic Bill of Rights (ABOR). On November 4, 2003, I received an e-mail from the national AAUP offices forwarding a correspondence they had received from Ryan Call, a second-year law student at the University of Denver and State Coordinator for David Horowitz’s organization, Students for Academic Freedom (SAF). Ryan was asking

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for comments on a draft of a proposed ABOR, which he said was being considered by the Colorado legislature. The e-mail informed me that AAUP’s Committee A on Academic Freedom and Tenure had recently authorized a subcommittee to prepare a statement on the recent controversy about purported political and ideological bias among college and university faculty members and on initiatives of state legislators and members of Congress meant to address the alleged bias.

The Ad Hoc Hearing on Academic Freedom I was scheduled to attend a Lobbying Seminar on January 5 and 6, hosted by Senate President John Andrews, and I planned to approach him at that time and ask him if he knew anything about the so-called Academic Bill of Rights. I knew Senator Andrews from my previous Republican activities; he was known to be very conservative and had a been a director of the Independence Institute (Colorado’s think tank known for their academic ‘‘ratings’’ of K–12 schools and their staunch support of vouchers). What I would eventually learn is that David Horowitz had been working on the ABOR with Tim Foster, the executive director of the Colorado Commission on Higher Education, and in June, Horowitz had come to Colorado for a planning session with Senator John Andrews, Representative Keith King (House Majority Leader), and Governor Owens. In mid-December, Senator Andrews held an Ad Hoc Legislative Committee Hearing on Academic Freedom at the Capitol. In attendance were Senator Ken Gordon (D), sitting in for Senator Terry Phillips (D) who arrived late, Senator Ken Arnold (R), Senator Bob Hagedorn (D), Representative Jim Welker (R), Representative Shawn Mitchell (R), Representative Bob McCluskey (R), and Representative Alice Madden (D). Senator Andrews’s opening remarks indicated he had done some ‘‘factfinding’’ and had received volumes of information from Colorado’s university presidents in response to four questions: (1) what formal policies exist to guarantee no student, faculty member, or employee is subject to discrimination, harassment, or a hostile academic environment on account of his or her political or religious beliefs? (2) what is the process for handling complaints and determining remedies in the event someone experiences a violation of academic freedom, and what is the recourse if the policy doesn’t seem to be operating to someone’s benefit? (3) do faculty evaluation questionnaires provide space for students to report bias? and (4) what steps are your institutions taking to promote intellectual diversity in the classroom and in departmental recruiting? He went on to characterize University of Colorado President Betsy Hoffman’s response as ‘‘exemplary,’’ and he didn’t see ‘‘how it could be improved upon.’’ He acknowledged that all of Colorado’s institutions had policies, so the question for this committee to hear was, is the policy working?

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Representative Madden vigorously protested ‘‘(the) questionable premise upon which this whole thing started and by mimicking the structure of a legislative committee, I think we are doing the public a disservice and we are doing the people picked to participate here today a disservice.’’ Representative Madden also said she knew ‘‘this started with David Horowitz’s proposition that there are too many liberals in academia,’’ to which Senator Andrews replied, ‘‘it is a mistake in premise to assume that many of us who are concerned about adequate protection of academic freedom in Colorado are in some way simply parroting Mr. Horowitz’s concerns, that’s just not the case.’’

The Legislative Session In January, I attended the Lobbying Seminar at the Capitol and managed to get Senator Andrews aside for a few minutes. I reminded him that we had met when I was Secretary for the House Majority Leadership and told him I was now lobbying for the AAUP-CO. I then asked him if he knew anything about an ABOR that was being considered for legislation. He said he wasn’t planning on carrying anything, but as he turned to go, almost as an afterthought, he said, ‘‘Ask Representative Mitchell.’’ I knew Shawn Mitchell: He had spoken at a Colorado Federation of Republican Women District Luncheon I had attended when I was president of the Longmont Republican Women’s Roundtable. I remembered his speech as being friendly, impromptu, and really funny. He also had one of his young children with him, and I’m always impressed with fathers who share parenting responsibilities. I e-mailed Representative Mitchell, identifying myself as president of the Longmont Republican Women’s Roundtable, and added that I was also the government relations person for the AAUP-CO. I said Senator John Andrews had referred me to him as a possible sponsor of an ABOR. I also offered him assistance, indicating that the versions I had seen had used AAUP wording, the National AAUP had been asked by Horowitz for feedback on the idea, and the AAUP statement would be coming out the following week. He returned my e-mail with a personal phone call, confirmed that he was introducing a bill dealing with student’s rights, and agreed to a meeting. Meanwhile, I got in touch with Ryan Call; I also managed to run into him several times at the Capitol. I told him I was interested in the work he was doing, particularly his use of the AAUP Redbook (policies and procedures for higher education) in developing the bill’s wording. I suggested things might be a whole lot better if all faculty were members of AAUP and had read the Redbook. I also identified with his concern that ‘‘administrators’’ did not seem to listen to student’s complaints: They didn’t listen to faculty, either, I told him. On January 12, Representative Schultheis introduced HJR 04–1003 Concerning First Amendment Protections on the Campuses of Colorado’s Publicly

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Funded Colleges and Universities (see appendix 6.A). This was a resolution, and it was soon overshadowed when Representative Shawn Mitchell, on January 27, introduced HB 04–1315 Concerning Students Rights in Higher Education (see appendix 6.B). A variety of articles and editorials were published across Colorado reacting to the new legislation, particularly HB 1315. The Pueblo Chieftain news headline read ‘‘Bill Introduced to Protect Students from Opinion Bias,’’ and the conservative Rocky Mountain News called it a ‘‘worthy goal’’ in their editorial titled ‘‘Student Bill of Rights Needs Tweaking.’’ But more reaction was negative: the Ft. Collins Coloradoan editorial warned ‘‘Academic Bill Full of Peril,’’ the Durango Herald editorial concurred, ‘‘Legislative Move Misguided and Potentially Costly,’’ and the Denver Post columnists and editorials ranged from, ‘‘Campus Speech Law Might Not Fly,’’ to declarations such as ‘‘Don’t Stifle Academic Freedom.’’ Most headlines around this time, however, focused on the growing recruiting scandal in the athletic department at the University of Colorado with allegations that recruiting practices included offerings of sex and alcohol; eventually charges of rape from within the athletic department would cast deeper aspersions on the reputation of Colorado’s flagship university. This compounding of negatives would eventually work to our advantage.

Our Meeting After weeks of trying to coordinate dates, Representative Mitchell, University of Northern Colorado (UNC) Professor Marshall Clough, and I agreed to meet on February 17, at 5:00 P.M., in the basement hearing rooms at the State Capitol. This was one day before the hearings for his bill were scheduled to take place. I was sure there was just some kind of misunderstanding. When we talked to Representative Mitchell, we would just explain how the system worked and he would see not only that his bill was a misinterpretation of academic freedom, but also that students already had a grievance procedure available to them at every institution of higher education, if they felt their rights as a student had been violated. Beyond that, I had no expectations. On February 16, Representative Mitchell changed the location for the hearing to the Old Supreme Court Chambers, a room typically reserved for large hearings with significant media interest. The next day we found out that Representative Mitchell had rescheduled the bill to accommodate the University of Colorado president’s schedule. I called Representative Mitchell’s office and confirmed Marshall and my meeting for that evening; it was still on for 5:00 P.M. Marshall had prepared a list of talking points: 1. In November, Senator Andrews queried the colleges and universities about student academic rights to see what protections they had in place. The

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4.

5.

6.

7. 8.

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presidents responded and Senator Andrews said he was satisfied in January. So what is the need for this bill? This bill will duplicate what already exists, for example on my campus, UNC (University of Northern Colorado). Why legislation to duplicate? Students are given a booklet, Student Rights and Responsibilities, when they come to UNC, so there is already adequate information available for them to defend their rights. This bill potentially puts the legislature in loco parentis to the students. Shouldn’t we assume that the students are adult enough to use procedures to defend their interests themselves? UNC expects them to do so under the procedure(s) in the student handbook. With paragraph (i) the legislature’s surveillance is brought into course grading itself. This undercuts the autonomy of teacher/scholars who have the most knowledge and background to determine what are ‘‘reasoned answers’’ and ‘‘appropriate knowledge’’ of the subject. Paragraphs (h) and (i) have the potential to place a chill on faculty academic freedom in the state. Should faculty academic rights be jeopardized by an unnecessary effort to protect student rights? The bill suggests that professors and students are opponents, but most learning happens through cooperation. Passage of this bill may have the effect of dissuading the best new faculty from coming to teach in Colorado.

My list was a few scribbled notes: 1. Horowitz’ study (‘‘Political Bias in the Administrations and Faculties of 32 Elite Colleges and Universities’’) did not include any schools in Colorado in his study; it is my belief that institutions of higher education reflected the communities in which they are located; Boulder is obviously a liberal community, but Colorado Springs, Greeley, Ft. Collins, and Grand Junction are more conservative communities and would therefore have more conservative faculties. 2. In Congressional hearings, Ann Neal, president of the American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA), said ‘‘the solution (to student complaints) rests not with the legislators, but with college administrators and trustees.’’ 3. What does not have a political position today? 4. Have the students that you are hearing from gone through their institution’s grievance procedures?

We were aware that students were being used by SAF to facilitate the discussion on ‘‘liberals in the classroom,’’ as well as being encouraged to look to an ABOR for students as the solution; institutions of higher education, however, already have grievance procedures to address such issues. If a student feels intimidated or humiliated in front of their peers because of their beliefs, if a student feels they have been unfairly graded because of their politics, if a student feels class discussion is inappropriate when a math class is lectured on the current administrative policy on war, or a variety of other possible

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complaints students may want to address, grievance procedures are in place to provide students with an opportunity to be heard. In addition, as Marshall points out, the bill’s language prohibits creating a hostile environment for political or religious beliefs and restricts grading to appropriate knowledge. In essence, this statutory language transfers these decisions from the learned faculty, to the political interpretations of the legislature and courts. Colorado’s financial crisis makes recruiting quality faculty already a challenging endeavor; legislative guidelines for teaching and grading would make it impossible. Marshall and I arrived at the Capitol at 5:00 P.M. for our meeting with Representative Mitchell only to find the House still in session. I sent a business card in to the House chamber with a sergeant to notify Representative Mitchell that we had arrived. Representative Mitchell came out and said he was going to have to stick around because the House was going to continue conducting business into the evening; he said we could either reschedule or we could talk in between votes. Coordinating this meeting had been too difficult to try to reschedule, so we said we would work with him in between votes. We walked a short distance down the hall to have some privacy and began to address our concerns. For almost three hours we argued against Representative Mitchell’s bill from every angle we could think of; periodically, he would have to go back to the chamber to cast a vote. Marshall and I would brainstorm: what was working, what wasn’t. It was chaotic, and it was mentally exhausting! Finally, in desperation, I asked Representative Mitchell, ‘‘When was the last time you were on a college campus?’’ It had been a while, he admitted. ‘‘Do you know what kids are like today?’’ I asked. He laughed. ‘‘No seriously,’’ I said. ‘‘Kids come into the classroom today thinking they know it all!’’ He laughed again. Finally, I had found something Representative Mitchell could relate to. I went on: Kids have grown up with so much information available to them that the first thing we have to do is challenge what they think they already know. It is the only way you can get them to rethink what they think they already know; apparently, it offends some who don’t want their ideas challenged.

Okay, he said. What? It was 8:30 P.M.; I was tired, hungry, and dehydrated. I wasn’t sure I was hearing him correctly. Okay, he repeated. I really don’t want to hurt CU, and they are really getting attacked lately, Mitchell said. I’ll tell you what, he continued, if you can get a critical mass of the college and university presidents to agree to sit down and discuss this issue, I will pull the bill. You got it! I said, and held my hand out to shake on it. How long do we have? I know you postponed the hearing . . . I still want to have the hearing, Mitchell said, but I’ll pull it before it goes to the floor.

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So, he wanted the publicity; it didn’t really surprise me. Representative Mitchell clearly aspired to higher office, and media coverage for what was a cornerstone of the conservative’s agenda during this legislative session on Colorado was part of Representative Mitchell’s motivation for carrying this bill. The ABOR was to become a part of the conservative’s national agenda. And it gave us more time to get the college and university presidents to agree to Mitchell’s proposal. Marshall and I sat in my car for about a half hour repeating to ourselves, ‘‘He’s going to pull the bill!’’ ‘‘We did it!’’ ‘‘Oh, my gosh!’’ ‘‘We really did it!’’ Now we had to figure out what ‘‘a critical mass’’ was, and how we were going to contact the presidents. One thing we did know: Representative Mitchell needed to get the credit for resolving this issue without the need for legislation, and AAUP-CO would work behind the scenes to facilitate that resolution. We decided to start with the institutions with AAUP chapters, so we sent word out by way of a memo (see appendix 6.C) and the presidents of several institutions were in agreement within days. After consulting with other members of our Conference, we decided that the definition of ‘‘critical mass’’ was the president of our flagship institution, the University of Colorado, Boulder, so we started working on contacting her office. Throughout this process, AAUP acted as the messenger: We spread the word, using the memo for consistency, and suggested the presidents contact Representative Mitchell’s office directly to respond.

The Hearing The House hearing for HB 1315 was rescheduled for February 24 in the Old Supreme Court Chambers, and it was a circus! The chair of the House Education Committee controlled questions and comments from individuals testifying as well as comments coming from her own committee members. Anyone mentioning ‘‘Horowitz’’ was immediately silenced. Marshall Clough, my colleague from UNC, was able to testify (see appendix 6.D), and although he was eloquent and well reasoned, one of the committee members chose to insult his argument with a demeaning comment. During questioning, Clough was reiterating that internal grievance procedures, particularly at UNC, were clearly written and available for students; Representative Hefley said she had received many complaints contrary to what Professor Clough had testified and therefore his opinion was not much in the way of a contribution. Another member of the committee spoke up and defended Clough’s comments. The atmosphere in the room was becoming uncomfortable. I had made copies of my testimony (see appendix 6.E); I wanted to object to Horowitz’s claim of liberal bias; I wanted to document the rights and obligations identified by numerous academic associations for faculty and students alike; I wanted to ask for just one grievance which may have been filed; I wanted to describe the relationship of students as ‘‘customers,’’ which was

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prevalent at our institutions and refuted the possibility of ‘‘fear of retaliation’’ as described by the bills proponents; I wanted to address the reality of the classroom in today’s Internet world where students come into our classes thinking they already have all the answers and how faculty have to challenge that premise to even start the learning process; and I wanted to stand up for the integrity of my colleagues who are committed and passionate about their discipline and their students. When it appeared the committee was not going to hear all of those signed up to testify, I asked Representative Mitchell if he would ask the chair of the Committee to allow me to testify. The chair agreed to honor Representative Mitchell’s request; however, after a few remarks she stopped me and apologized. Due to time considerations, the committee was going to have to consider my written comments only.

The Confrontation Emotions were running so high that at one point a faculty member from Metropolitan State University (Metro) reacted to the testimony of a student who had said that perhaps faculty needed to be sent a ‘‘chilling message.’’ As the student walked back to his seat, the faculty member got right in his face and said, ‘‘You send me a chilling message, and I’ll see you in court!’’ One of the members of the House Education Committee was very upset by the confrontation and, after calling for the Sergeants-at-Arms to protect the student, proceeded to try to put himself physically between the student and the faculty member. I looked at Marshall and rolled my eyes. ‘‘Oh my gosh,’’ I said, ‘‘I think we just shot ourselves in the foot!’’ After the hearing was over and Representative Mitchell had been interviewed by every television station and newspaper reporter from the state, I walked up to him and shook his hand. ‘‘You had quite a good day,’’ I said. But to my surprise, he responded, ‘‘I still plan to abide by our agreement.’’ Although Representative Mitchell had more difficulty killing the bill than he would have had if there had not been an ‘‘incident’’ at the hearing, on Thursday, March 18, Representative Mitchell held a press conference with the president of CU and the interim-president of Metro announcing a Memorandum of Understanding (see appendix 6.F) and indicating that most of the presidents of Colorado’s colleges and universities were in the process of signing on. Representative Mitchell thanked the AAUP for our assistance, although no one seemed to notice. I didn’t care. What was important was Colorado’s ABOR was dead.

Aftermath Oh, remember Senator John Andrews? He did manage to get SJR 04-033 (see appendix 6.G) passed, a resolution encouraging cooperation and coordination between legislative committees and institutions of higher education in

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implementing the Memorandum of Understanding, before the end of the legislative session. The following November, however, the voters in Colorado elected a Democratic majority in both the House and the Senate for the first time in more than 30 years. One local magazine, 5280, credited the Democrats’ victory to ‘‘The Gang of Four,’’ led by former president of Colorado State University, Al Yates. Under TABOR, higher education in Colorado had been cut 30 percent in three years, which had devastated our colleges and universities. National conservative groups, like ACTA (American Council of Alumni and Trustees), were taking advantage of the weakened condition to implement their view of higher education: students as consumers, corporate budgets, and definitions of truth that compliment religious values. Financially and philosophically, Colorado’s colleges and universities have been struggling. In 2005, the voters passed a referendum allowing TABOR to be put on hold for five years, and the primary campaign issues were funding transportation and higher education. The next year, 2006, the Democrat majority in the House and Senate increased again, and the Democrat candidate for governor won control of the executive branch; again, higher education was a critical part of his campaign platform. It seems Colorado’s conservative model has been rejected by Colorado’s voters.

Appendix A. House Joint Resolution 04-1003 Concerning First Amendment Protections on the Campuses of Colorado’s Publicly Funded Colleges and Universities Second Regular Session, Sixty-fourth General Assembly, State of Colorado, Introduced LLS No. R04-0006.01 Jennifer Thomsen HJR04-1003 House Sponsorship: Schultheis, Brophy, Cadman, Crane, Harvey, Lundberg, Rose, Welker, Rhodes, Sinclair, Stafford, and Wiens Senate Sponsorship: Lamborn and Johnson S. House Committees: Education Senate Committees WHEREAS, Higher education serves a vital role in the lives of many citizens of Colorado as they seek new opportunities and broader horizons for the benefit of themselves and others; and WHEREAS, Since its founding in 1876, the University of Colorado system has emerged as a national leader in teaching and research and has facilitated innumerable academic achievements worthy of the highest esteem; and WHEREAS, All of Colorado’s publicly funded colleges and universities exude academic excellence and provide invaluable services to the citizens of Colorado and beyond to the nation and the world; and

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WHEREAS, The protections of the First Amendment of the United States Constitution apply to the faculty, staff, and students of the campuses of Colorado’s publicly funded colleges and universities; and WHEREAS, Colleges and universities are marketplaces of ideas, and the trafficking of ideas and concepts is the foundation of learning and accomplishment for teachers, students, and researchers; and WHEREAS, Persuasion is the only just and lawful means to induce an individual to adopt or surrender a personal belief; and WHEREAS, It is unconscionable for college and university students, teachers, and researchers to be subjected to different or special official standards because of the viewpoints they hold, advocate, express, and demonstrate; and WHEREAS, In a letter dated July 28, 2003, the Office for Civil Rights (OCR) of the United States Department of Education made clear that OCR’s regulations protecting students from discrimination are not intended to regulate the content of speech. The letter states, ‘‘Harassment, however, to be prohibited by the statutes within OCR’s jurisdiction, must include something beyond the mere expression of views, words, symbols or thoughts that some person finds offensive.’’; and WHEREAS, The letter further states that ‘‘In order to establish a hostile environment, harassment must be sufficiently serious (i.e., severe, persistent or pervasive) as to limit or deny a student’s ability to participate in or benefit from an educational program.’’; and WHEREAS, College and university services should be provided to students and student groups neutrally, without regard to the viewpoints they hold, advocate, express, and demonstrate; and WHEREAS, The United States Supreme Court has stated that, under the First Amendment, funds collected through student fees must be distributed to student groups on a viewpoint-neutral basis; and WHEREAS, The First Amendment protects the freedom of association for individuals and organizations; and WHEREAS, Students, teachers, and researchers enjoy freedom of religion as a right under the Constitutions of the United States and the State of Colorado; and WHEREAS, The policies and practices of Colorado’s publicly funded colleges and universities establish an important example for the rest of Colorado, including the state’s private institutions of higher education; and WHEREAS, It is unlawful and immoral for the State of Colorado and its subdivisions, including its publicly funded colleges and universities, to condition the provision of a benefit or service on the surrender of First Amendment freedoms; now, therefore, Be It Resolved by the House of Representatives of the Sixty-fourth General Assembly of the State of Colorado, the Senate concurring herein: (1) That we, the members of the Sixty-fourth General Assembly, call upon all administrators of publicly funded colleges and universities in the state of Colorado to ensure that those policies and practices that affect student speech

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and religious exercise do not violate the protections of the United States Constitution and the Colorado Constitution. (2) That the General Assembly condemns practices and policies that violate First Amendment freedoms, including: (a) Mandatory ‘‘diversity training’’ that attempts to force students to affirm behavior or viewpoints that violate the faith or conscience of students; and (b) Requiring student organizations to open their leadership positions or membership to students who do not believe in the mission of the student organization; and (c) The enforcement of policies or practices that limit the right of individual students or student groups to speak on political, religious, and other cultural topics, including the right to speak disapprovingly of certain sexual behaviors; and (d) The imposition of restrictions on the expressive activities of students based solely on viewpoint; and (e) Conditioning the availability of funding for student organizations upon their character and mission as an organization, including whom the organization permits to serve in a leadership position. (3) That the General Assembly requests the Colorado Commission on Higher Education to ensure that Colorado’s publicly funded colleges and universities communicate to all incoming students the General Assembly’s intent regarding First Amendment freedoms on college and university campuses, as that intent is expressed in this Joint Resolution. Be It Further Resolved, That copies of this Joint Resolution be sent to the Regents of the University of Colorado System; the President of every publicly funded college and university in the state of Colorado; Tim Foster, Executive Director of the Colorado Commission on Higher Education; Governor Bill Owens; and Attorney General Ken Salazar.

Appendix B. House Bill 04-1315 Second Regular Session, Sixty-fourth General Assembly, State of Colorado, Introduced LLS No. 04-0751.02 Julie Pelegrin House Bill 04-1315 House Sponsorship: Mitchell, Cadman, Brophy, Miller, Rhodes, Sinclair, and Tochtrop Senate Sponsorship: (none) House Committees: Education Senate Committees

A Bill for an Act Concerning Students’ Rights in Higher Education Bill Summary (Note: This summary applies to this bill as introduced and does not necessarily reflect any amendments that may be subsequently adopted.)

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Recognizes students’ rights to academic freedom, rights to freedom from discrimination on the basis of political or religious beliefs, and rights to information concerning grievance procedures for protection of their academic freedoms. Directs the governing boards of the state institutions of higher education to adopt a grievance procedure for use in enforcing students’ rights. Be it enacted by the General Assembly of the State of Colorado: SECTION 1) 23-1-125 (1), Colorado Revised Statutes, is amended BY THE ADDITION OF THE FOLLOWING NEW PARAGRAPHS to read: 23-1-125. Commission directive—student bill of rights—degree requirements—implementation of core courses—competency test— academic freedoms. (1) Student bill of rights. The general assembly hereby finds that students enrolled in public institutions of higher education shall have the following rights: (h) Students have a right to expect that their academic freedom will not be infringed by instructors who create a hostile environment toward their political or religious beliefs or who introduce controversial matter into the classroom or course work that is substantially unrelated to the subject of study; (i) Students have a right to expect that they will be graded solely on the basis of their reasoned answers and appropriate knowledge of the subjects they study and that they shall not be discriminated against on the basis of their political or religious beliefs; (j) Students have a right to expect that their academic institutions shall distribute student fee funds on a viewpoint-neutral basis and shall maintain a posture of neutrality with respect to substantive political or religious disagreements, differences, and opinions; (k) Students have a right to be fully informed of their institutions’ grievance procedures for violations of academic freedom by means of notices prominently displayed in course catalogs or student handbooks and on the institutional web site. SECTION 2) Article 5 of title 23, Colorado Revised Statutes, is amended BY THE ADDITION OF A NEW SECTION to read: 23-5-128. Governing boards—protection of student rights. Each governing board shall adopt a grievance procedure by which a student may seek a redress of grievance for an alleged violation of any of the rights specified in section 23-1-125 (1) (h) to (1) (k). Each governing board shall publicize the grievance procedure to the students on each campus of the institutions that are under the control and direction of the governing board. SECTION 3) Effective date. This act shall take effect at 12:01 a.m. on the day following the expiration of the ninety-day period after final adjournment of the general assembly that is allowed for submitting a referendum petition pursuant to article V, section 1 (3) of the state constitution (August 4, 2004, if adjournment sine die is on May 5, 2004); except that, if a referendum petition is filed against this act or an item, section, or part of this act within such period, then the act, item, section, or part, if approved by the people, shall take

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effect on the date of the official declaration of the vote thereon by proclamation of the governor.

Appendix C. Memo to Presidents of Colorado’s Colleges and Universities Date: February 18, 2004 To: Presidents of Colorado’s Colleges and Universities From: Dana Waller, V-P Govt. Relations American Association of University Professors–Colorado Conference Re: HB04-1315 On Tuesday, February 17th, Marshall Clough (AAUP Conference Executive Committee Member) and I met with Representative Shawn Mitchell to discuss HB04-1315 Concerning Students Rights in Higher Education. After presenting Representative Mitchell with arguments against HB041315 that he was sympathetic to, and hearing Representative Mitchell’s concerns about students who had appealed to him for help, we began discussing alternatives. Representative Mitchell made the following offer: If a ‘‘critical mass’’ of Colorado’s university and college presidents are willing to acknowledge that there might be a problem with the issues he was trying to address in his bill, and expressed a willingness to come to the table with the legislature to address those problems, he would withdraw his bill. He explained that the committee hearing would go ahead (probably next week), but after that he could pull the bill, in effect, killing it.

Appendix D. Statement on HB 04-1315 Concerning Students’ Rights in Higher Education Marshall S. Clough Department of History, University of Northern Colorado President, UNC Chapter, American Association of University Professors This bill purports to protect students’ academic freedom against instructors ‘‘who create a hostile environment toward their political or religious beliefs’’ or ‘‘introduce controversial material into the classroom or course work that is substantially unrelated to the subject of study.’’ It specifies that students be ‘‘graded solely on the basis of the reasoned answers and appropriate knowledge.’’ It also calls for the adoption of grievance procedures that will enable students to seek redress against teachers who may violate these requirements. These may sound like worthwhile goals, but there are several serious problems with this bill. —First, the bill duplicates protections already available to students in the fundamental documents of the colleges and universities of Colorado. For example, existing protections clearly spelled out in the UNC Board of Trustees Policy

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Manual and in the booklet Student Rights and Responsibilities issued by the Dean of Students state clearly that students have the right to ‘‘experience free and open discussion,’’ to ‘‘take exception to the data or views presented’’ and to ‘‘expect protection through established procedures, against prejudicial or capricious evaluation’’ (Students Rights and Responsibilities, page 1). Last fall, when Senator Andrews asked the presidents of the colleges and universities to supply evidence of such protections for students, the presidents did so and Senator Andrews declared himself satisfied with their responses. Why then is this bill needed? —Second, this bill has the potential to place the legislature in loco parentis to the college students of Colorado. Should we not assume that students are adult enough to defend their interests themselves by pursuing the established internal grievance procedures within their college or university? UNC believes they are, by expecting them to take the responsibility to ‘‘initiate an investigation if they believe that their academic rights have been violated’’ (Student Rights and Responsibilities, page 1). —Third, paragraphs (h) and (i) of the bill have the potential to place class content and grading itself under the purview of the legislature. Should the General Assembly be determining what is ‘‘controversial’’ and ‘‘subsequently unrelated’’ to the subject? Should legislators undercut the autonomy of the college teachers, those who have the academic background and training to determine what are ‘‘reasoned answers’’ and what constitutes ‘‘appropriate knowledge’’ of a subject? Indeed, paragraphs (h) and (i) have the potential to place a chill on academic freedom in Colorado. Should the academic rights of faculty be jeopardized by an unnecessary effort to protect student rights? —Finally, passage of this bill may have the effect of dissuading the best new teacher-scholars from accepting academic positions in Colorado. Cutbacks in higher education funding and the freezing of salaries have already made it difficult for our colleges and universities to hire the best new Ph.Ds. If promising younger scholars believe that their academic freedom may be threatened if they come to this state it may be even harder.

Appendix E. Comments before the House Education Committee on HB 04-1315 February 25, 2004 Madame Chairwoman, Members of the Committee: My name is Dana Waller, and I am here to oppose HB04-1315. I have been teaching Political Science and Economics at Colorado community colleges for the past 13 years: the last 5 at Front Range. I am also the Vice-President of the American Association of University Professors–Colorado Conference, in charge of Government Relations. So I will be speaking both for myself, as well as my organization. I want to discuss six points regarding HB04-1315: 1) the public debate on political bias in institutions of higher education as characterized by David

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Horowitz, 2) faculty rights and obligations, and students rights and obligations, 3) appeals and grievance procedures, 4) evaluations and today’s campus environment 5) the faculty side of the equation, and 6) the integrity of my colleagues and my profession. First, the current debate regarding political bias in our institutions of higher education has sparked the interest of the higher education community nationwide. Mr. Horowitz has held up the report on ‘‘Political Bias in the Administrations and Faculties of 32 Elite Colleges and Universities’’ as though the findings extend to all institutions of higher education, and gone on to organize a movement among college students in areas where the results do not apply, like here in Colorado. I disagree with Mr. Horowitz. Not one of the institutions in the report on political bias is from Colorado. We are a conservative state and I believe that if a survey of our institutions were done, it would reflect a much more conservative mix of faculty members. Second, regarding faculty rights and obligations, there are guidelines established by colleges/universities, as well as the nationwide institutions which represent them. The AAUP’s Statement on Professional Ethics (1987) states, ‘‘As teachers, professors encourage the free pursuit of learning in their students. They hold before them the best scholarly and ethical standards of their discipline. Professors demonstrate respect for students as individuals and adhere to their proper roles as intellectual guides and counselors. Professors make every reasonable effort to foster honest academic conduct and to ensure their evaluations of students reflect each student’s true merit. They respect the confidential nature of the relationship between professor and student. They avoid any exploitation, harassment, or discriminatory treatment of students. They acknowledge significant academic or scholarly assistance from them. They protect their academic freedom.’’ Students’ rights and obligations have been long established in the same manner as that of faculty. In 1967, the American Association of University Professors, along with the United States National Student Association (now the United States Student Association), the Association of American Colleges (now the Association of American Colleges and Universities), the National Association of Student Personnel Administrators, and the National Association of Women Deans and Counselors (now the National Association of Women in Education) issued a Joint Statement on the Rights and Freedoms of Students. In the preamble it cautions, ‘‘Students should exercise their freedom with responsibility.’’ It then goes on to list the essential provisions to ensure a students freedom to learn . . . IN THE CLASSROOM 1. Protection of Freedom of Expression: Students should be free to take reasoned exception to the data or views offered in any course of study and to reserve judgment about matters of opinion, but they are responsible for learning the content of any course of study for which they are enrolled.

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2. Protection Against Improper Academic Evaluation: Students should have protections through orderly procedures against prejudiced or capricious academic evaluation. At the same time they are responsible for maintaining standards of academic performance established for each course in which they are enrolled. 3. Protection Against Improper Disclosure: Information about student views, beliefs, and political associations, which professors acquire in the course of their work as instructors, advisors, and counselors should be considered confidential. Protection against improper disclosure is a serious professional obligation. . . .

Given these guidelines, which establish rights and obligations on both sides of the student/faculty relationship, the question remains, what do we do when these guidelines are thought to be violated? Which brings me to my third point, the remedies are clear: every institution of higher education in Colorado has several options. 1. 2. 3. 4.

informal resolution (between the student and mediating faculty) formal academic appeals or grievance procedures faculty evaluations (for students) legal advice (for faculty)

Students are given information on the formal procedures when they register. At FRCC we have both Academic Appeals and Grievance Procedures listed clearly in our catalog. Over the last couple of months, I have read stories about intimidation and disrespect, but I haven’t read anything about even trying to resolve these issues within their departments or institutions. Have these students even tried to follow procedures currently in place? If not, why not? And if so, what were the results? How do we know if procedures don’t work if we don’t even try them? How are students supposed to learn about following procedures, if they aren’t directed to them when they have a problem? I think it would be irresponsible to pass legislation if we can’t even answer these questions. Fourth, students have power at our institutions of higher education; they are considered the customer, and their satisfaction is paramount. This is not a good situation: it has led to grade inflation, but it is the reality of today’s campus environment. Students don’t need to fear reporting grievances and appeals. On the contrary, faculty members must constantly be aware of their student’s satisfaction levels if they want to keep their jobs. Which brings up the fifth concern I have about this bill: in the student/faculty relationship, this bill only addresses one side of the equation. What about when the student is the offender, the disrespectful one, the disruptor? Faculty deal with these students on a regular basis. What do you do when a student is threatening? What do you do when an art student does an ‘‘in your face’’ pro-Nazi final project with a Jewish professor? What do you do when a student makes discriminatory statements in class? What do you do when a student makes emotionally charged

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political statements, or offensive religious statements in class? In addition to ongoing training provided by our colleges and universities, our institutions provide us with counselors to advise us and our students on how to best resolve these situations, but this bill doesn’t even acknowledge the possibility, that it may be the faculty member that may need protections. Finally, my sixth point, I would like to address the integrity of my colleagues. As I mentioned earlier, I have been teaching for 13 years, after spending 10 years in business and politics. I have found my colleagues in higher education to be of the highest quality: they are dedicated, hard working, honest, and intelligent professionals. We deal with students every day: it is our career choice, our passion, to work with students. To teach, to challenge, to help them continue to grow, when they are no longer children, but not yet adults. We love our jobs, and we do them well. Whether you call it an Academic Bill of Rights, or a Statement on Professional Ethics and a Statement on the Rights and Freedoms of Students, they already exist in every college and university in this country. It is the student’s responsibility to exhaust all administrative remedies before appealing to other options. And, if it is not a perfect system, it is the responsibility of the administrators of our colleges and universities, the people whose responsibility it is to protect and promote the student/faculty relationship, and who know the most about our institutions of higher education, to address any alleged problems, not the legislature. Please vote NO on more government; vote NO on HB04-1315. Thank you for your time, and I will try to answer any questions you may have.

Appendix F. Memorandum of Understanding As lawmakers and educational leaders in Colorado, we agree to the following: Higher Education in Colorado is a prized institution that fosters learning, culture and economic vitality. Colorado’s institutions of higher education are committed to valuing and respecting diversity, including respect for diverse political viewpoints. No student should be penalized because of political opinions that differ from a professor’s. Every student should feel comfortable in the right to listen critically, and challenge a professor’s opinions. Policies that protect students’ rights should not cast doubt on professors’ academic freedom. Academic freedom of faculty and academic freedom of students are essential and complementary elements of successful education. While the state of Colorado has a legitimate oversight role in statesponsored higher education, the individual institutions and their governing bodies are in the best position to implement policies to respect the rights of students and faculty.

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Each institution will review its student rights and campus grievance procedures to ensure that political diversity is explicitly recognized and protected. Each institution will ensure those rights are adequately publicized to students. Each institution will work with student leadership to ensure that the use of student activity fees meets standards articulated by the US Supreme Court for an open forum that is fair to all viewpoints. We will have future discussions to share ideas and perspectives on a range of issues to ensure the campus environment is open and inviting to students of all political viewpoints. Endorsed by: University of Colorado President Betsy Hoffman Colorado State University President Larry Penley Metropolitan State College of Denver Interim President Ray Kieft University of Northern Colorado President Kay Norton

Appendix G. Senate Joint Resolution 04-033 BY SENATOR(S) Andrews, Arnold, Chlouber, Dyer, Evans, Hagedorn, Hillman, Johnson S., Jones, Kester, and Teck; also REPRESENTATIVE(S) Spradley, Briggs, Brophy, Cadman, Cloer, Crane, Decker, Fairbank, Garcia, Hall, Harvey, Hefley, Hoppe, Jahn, Johnson R., King, Lee, Lundberg, May M., McCluskey, Merrifield, Miller, Mitchell, Paccione, Rhodes, Rippy, Rose, Schultheis, Sinclair, Smith, Spence, Stafford, Stengel, Welker, White, Wiens, Williams S., Williams T., and Witwer.

Concerning Academic Freedom in Higher Education WHEREAS, Higher education in Colorado is a prized institution that fosters learning, culture, and economic vitality; and WHEREAS, Colorado’s public institutions of higher education have often expressed their commitment to valuing and respecting diversity, including diverse intellectual and political viewpoints, and this commitment must remain strong; and WHEREAS, Respecting intellectual and political diversity means that a student should never be penalized because of the political opinions he or she holds that differ from a professor’s and that all students should be made to feel comfortable in exercising their right to listen critically and to challenge a professor’s opinions; and WHEREAS, Academic freedom of faculty and academic freedom of students are essential and complementary elements of successful education, so that policies that protect students’ rights need not and must not cast doubt on professors’ rights or vice versa; and WHEREAS, Although the state of Colorado has a legitimate oversight role in state-sponsored higher education, the individual institutions and their

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governing bodies are in the best position to implement policies to safeguard the academic freedom of students and faculty; and WHEREAS, A memorandum of understanding addressing the foregoing points was signed at the State Capitol on March 18, 2004, by University of Colorado President Betsy Hoffman, Colorado State University President Larry Penley, Metropolitan State College of Denver Interim President Ray Kieft, and University of Northern Colorado President Kay Norton; now, therefore, Be It Resolved by the Senate of the Sixty-fourth General Assembly of the State of Colorado, the House of Representatives concurring herein: (1) That we, the members of the Sixty-fourth General Assembly, commend the signatory institutions for the memorandum of understanding to protect academic freedom, and encourage all other public institutions of higher education in Colorado to join in signing the memorandum of understanding. (2) That each state-supported institution of higher education is encouraged to review its student rights and campus grievance procedures to ensure that intellectual and political diversity is explicitly recognized and protected and to ensure those rights are adequately publicized to students. Each institution is further encouraged to work with student leadership to ensure that the use of student activity fees meets the standards articulated by the United States Supreme Court for an open forum that is fair to all viewpoints. (3) That leaders in higher education are encouraged to meet periodically in joint session with the Education Committees of the House of Representatives and the Senate during the next twelve months to discuss the ongoing effort to ensure that the campus environment across Colorado is open and inviting to students of all political viewpoints. Be It Further Resolved, That a copy of this Joint Resolution be sent to Rick O’Donnell, the executive director of the Colorado commission on higher education with the request that copies of this Joint Resolution be forwarded to each member of the Colorado commission on higher education; the chairman of each higher education governing board in the state; and the president and the faculty council chairman of each state-supported institution of higher education in the state. John Andrews President of the Senate Lola Spradley Speaker of the House of Representatives Mona Heustis Secretary of the Senate Judith Rodrigue Chief Clerk of the House of Representatives

APPENDICES

ACADEMIC BILL OF RIGHTS I. The Mission of the University The central purposes of a University are the pursuit of truth, the discovery of new knowledge through scholarship and research, the study and reasoned criticism of intellectual and cultural traditions, the teaching and general development of students to help them become creative individuals and productive citizens of a pluralistic democracy, and the transmission of knowledge and learning to a society at large. Free inquiry and free speech within the academic community are indispensable to the achievement of these goals. The freedom to teach and to learn depend upon the creation of appropriate conditions and opportunities on the campus as a whole as well as in the classrooms and lecture halls. These purposes reflect the values—pluralism, diversity, opportunity, critical intelligence, openness and fairness—that are the cornerstones of American society.

II. Academic Freedom 1. The Concept Academic freedom and intellectual diversity are values indispensable to the American university. From its first formulation in the General Report of the Committee on Academic Freedom and Tenure of the American Association of University Professors, the concept of academic freedom has been premised on the idea that human knowledge is a never-ending pursuit of the truth, that there is no humanly accessible truth that is not in principle open to challenge, and that no party or intellectual faction has a monopoly on wisdom. Therefore, academic freedom is most likely to thrive in an environment of intellectual diversity that protects and fosters independence of thought and speech. In the words of the General Report, it is vital to protect ‘‘as the first condition of progress, [a] complete and unlimited freedom to pursue inquiry and publish its results.’’ Because free inquiry and its fruits are crucial to the democratic enterprise itself, academic freedom is a national value as well. In a historic 1967 decision (Keyishian v.

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Board of Regents of the University of the State of New York) the Supreme Court of the United States overturned a New York State loyalty provision for teachers with these words: ‘‘Our Nation is deeply committed to safeguarding academic freedom, [a] transcendent value to all of us and not merely to the teachers concerned.’’ In Sweezy v. New Hampshire, (1957) the Court observed that the ‘‘essentiality of freedom in the community of American universities [was] almost self-evident.’’

2. The Practice Academic freedom consists in protecting the intellectual independence of professors, researchers and students in the pursuit of knowledge and the expression of ideas from interference by legislators or authorities within the institution itself. This means that no political, ideological or religious orthodoxy will be imposed on professors and researchers through the hiring or tenure or termination process, or through any other administrative means by the academic institution. Nor shall legislatures impose any such orthodoxy through their control of the university budget. This protection includes students. From the first statement on academic freedom, it has been recognized that intellectual independence means the protection of students—as well as faculty—from the imposition of any orthodoxy of a political, religious or ideological nature. The 1915 General Report admonished faculty to avoid ‘‘taking unfair advantage of the student’s immaturity by indoctrinating him with the teacher’s own opinions before the student has had an opportunity fairly to examine other opinions upon the matters in question, and before he has sufficient knowledge and ripeness of judgment to be entitled to form any definitive opinion of his own.’’ In 1967, the AAUP’s Joint Statement on Rights and Freedoms of Students reinforced and amplified this injunction by affirming the inseparability of ‘‘the freedom to teach and freedom to learn.’’ In the words of the report, ‘‘Students should be free to take reasoned exception to the data or views offered in any course of study and to reserve judgment about matters of opinion.’’ Therefore, to secure the intellectual independence of faculty and students and to protect the principle of intellectual diversity, the following principles and procedures shall be observed. These principles fully apply only to public universities and to private universities that present themselves as bound by the canons of academic freedom. Private institutions choosing to restrict academic freedom on the basis of creed have an obligation to be as explicit as is possible about the scope and nature of these restrictions. 1. All faculty shall be hired, fired, promoted and granted tenure on the basis of their competence and appropriate knowledge in the field of their expertise and, in the humanities, the social sciences, and the arts, with a view toward fostering a plurality of methodologies and perspectives. No faculty shall be hired or fired or denied promotion or tenure on the basis of his or her political or religious beliefs. 2. No faculty member will be excluded from tenure, search and hiring committees on the basis of their political or religious beliefs.

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3. Students will be graded solely on the basis of their reasoned answers and appropriate knowledge of the subjects and disciplines they study, not on the basis of their political or religious beliefs. 4. Curricula and reading lists in the humanities and social sciences should reflect the uncertainty and unsettled character of all human knowledge in these areas by providing students with dissenting sources and viewpoints where appropriate. While teachers are and should be free to pursue their own findings and perspectives in presenting their views, they should consider and make their students aware of other viewpoints. Academic disciplines should welcome a diversity of approaches to unsettled questions. 5. Exposing students to the spectrum of significant scholarly viewpoints on the subjects examined in their courses is a major responsibility of faculty. Faculty will not use their courses for the purpose of political, ideological, religious or anti-religious indoctrination. 6. Selection of speakers, allocation of funds for speakers programs and other student activities will observe the principles of academic freedom and promote intellectual pluralism. 7. An environment conducive to the civil exchange of ideas being an essential component of a free university, the obstruction of invited campus speakers, destruction of campus literature or other effort to obstruct this exchange will not be tolerated. 8. Knowledge advances when individual scholars are left free to reach their own conclusions about which methods, facts, and theories have been validated by research. Academic institutions and professional societies formed to advance knowledge within an area of research, maintain the integrity of the research process, and organize the professional lives of related researchers serve as indispensable venues within which scholars circulate research findings and debate their interpretation. To perform these functions adequately, academic institutions and professional societies should maintain a posture of organizational neutrality with respect to the substantive disagreements that divide researchers on questions within, or outside, their fields of inquiry.

Note This document is reproduced with the permission of David Horowitz.

AAUP 1940 STATEMENT OF PRINCIPLES ON ACADEMIC FREEDOM AND TENURE WITH 1970 INTERPRETIVE COMMENTS In 1940, following a series of joint conferences begun in 1934, representatives of the American Association of University Professors and of the Association of American Colleges (now the Association of American Colleges and Universities)

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agreed upon a restatement of principles set forth in the 1925 Conference Statement on Academic Freedom and Tenure. This restatement is known to the profession as the 1940 Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure. The 1940 Statement is printed below, followed by Interpretive Comments as developed by representatives of the American Association of University Professors and the Association of American Colleges in 1969. The governing bodies of the two associations, meeting respectively in November 1989 and January 1990, adopted several changes in language in order to remove gender-specific references from the original text.

The purpose of this statement is to promote public understanding and support of academic freedom and tenure and agreement upon procedures to ensure them in colleges and universities. Institutions of higher education are conducted for the common good and not to further the interest of either the individual teacher1 or the institution as a whole. The common good depends upon the free search for truth and its free exposition. Academic freedom is essential to these purposes and applies to both teaching and research. Freedom in research is fundamental to the advancement of truth. Academic freedom in its teaching aspect is fundamental for the protection of the rights of the teacher in teaching and of the student to freedom in learning. It carries with it duties correlative with rights.[1]2 Tenure is a means to certain ends; specifically: (1) freedom of teaching and research and of extramural activities, and (2) a sufficient degree of economic security to make the profession attractive to men and women of ability. Freedom and economic security, hence, tenure, are indispensable to the success of an institution in fulfilling its obligations to its students and to society.

Academic Freedom 1. Teachers are entitled to full freedom in research and in the publication of the results, subject to the adequate performance of their other academic duties; but research for pecuniary return should be based upon an understanding with the authorities of the institution. 2. Teachers are entitled to freedom in the classroom in discussing their subject, but they should be careful not to introduce into their teaching controversial matter which has no relation to their subject.[2] Limitations of academic freedom because of religious or other aims of the institution should be clearly stated in writing at the time of the appointment.[3] 3. College and university teachers are citizens, members of a learned profession, and officers of an educational institution. When they speak or write as citizens, they should be free from institutional censorship or discipline, but their special position in the community imposes special obligations. As scholars and educational officers, they should remember that the public may judge their profession and their institution by their utterances. Hence they should at all times be accurate, should exercise appropriate restraint, should show respect for the opinions of others, and should make every effort to indicate that they are not speaking for the institution.[4]

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Academic Tenure After the expiration of a probationary period, teachers or investigators should have permanent or continuous tenure, and their service should be terminated only for adequate cause, except in the case of retirement for age, or under extraordinary circumstances because of financial exigencies. In the interpretation of this principle it is understood that the following represents acceptable academic practice: 1. The precise terms and conditions of every appointment should be stated in writing and be in the possession of both institution and teacher before the appointment is consummated. 2. Beginning with appointment to the rank of full-time instructor or a higher rank,[5] the probationary period should not exceed seven years, including within this period full-time service in all institutions of higher education; but subject to the proviso that when, after a term of probationary service of more than three years in one or more institutions, a teacher is called to another institution, it may be agreed in writing that the new appointment is for a probationary period of not more than four years, even though thereby the person’s total probationary period in the academic profession is extended beyond the normal maximum of seven years.[6] Notice should be given at least one year prior to the expiration of the probationary period if the teacher is not to be continued in service after the expiration of that period.[7] 3. During the probationary period a teacher should have the academic freedom that all other members of the faculty have.[8] 4. Termination for cause of a continuous appointment, or the dismissal for cause of a teacher previous to the expiration of a term appointment, should, if possible, be considered by both a faculty committee and the governing board of the institution. In all cases where the facts are in dispute, the accused teacher should be informed before the hearing in writing of the charges and should have the opportunity to be heard in his or her own defense by all bodies that pass judgment upon the case. The teacher should be permitted to be accompanied by an advisor of his or her own choosing who may act as counsel. There should be a full stenographic record of the hearing available to the parties concerned. In the hearing of charges of incompetence the testimony should include that of teachers and other scholars, either from the teacher’s own or from other institutions. Teachers on continuous appointment who are dismissed for reasons not involving moral turpitude should receive their salaries for at least a year from the date of notification of dismissal whether or not they are continued in their duties at the institution.[9] 5. Termination of a continuous appointment because of financial exigency should be demonstrably bona fide.

1940 Interpretations At the conference of representatives of the American Association of University Professors and of the Association of American Colleges on November

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7–8, 1940, the following interpretations of the 1940 Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure were agreed upon: 1. That its operation should not be retroactive. 2. That all tenure claims of teachers appointed prior to the endorsement should be determined in accordance with the principles set forth in the 1925 Conference Statement on Academic Freedom and Tenure. 3. If the administration of a college or university feels that a teacher has not observed the admonitions of paragraph (c) of the section on Academic Freedom and believes that the extramural utterances of the teacher have been such as to raise grave doubts concerning the teacher’s fitness for his or her position, it may proceed to file charges under paragraph 4 of the section on Academic Tenure. In pressing such charges, the administration should remember that teachers are citizens and should be accorded the freedom of citizens. In such cases the administration must assume full responsibility, and the American Association of University Professors and the Association of American Colleges are free to make an investigation.

1970 Interpretive Comments Following extensive discussions on the 1940 Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure with leading educational associations and with individual faculty members and administrators, a joint committee of the AAUP and the Association of American Colleges met during 1969 to reevaluate this key policy statement. On the basis of the comments received, and the discussions that ensued, the joint committee felt the preferable approach was to formulate interpretations of the Statement in terms of the experience gained in implementing and applying the Statement for over thirty years and of adapting it to current needs. The committee submitted to the two associations for their consideration the following ‘‘Interpretive Comments.’’ These interpretations were adopted by the Council of the American Association of University Professors in April 1970 and endorsed by the Fifty-sixth Annual Meeting as Association policy.

In the thirty years since their promulgation, the principles of the 1940 Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure have undergone a substantial amount of refinement. This has evolved through a variety of processes, including customary acceptance, understandings mutually arrived at between institutions and professors or their representatives, investigations and reports by the American Association of University Professors, and formulations of statements by that association either alone or in conjunction with the Association of American Colleges. These comments represent the attempt of the two associations, as the original sponsors of the 1940 Statement, to formulate the most important of these refinements. Their incorporation here as Interpretive Comments is based upon the premise that the 1940 Statement is not a static code but a fundamental document designed to set a framework of norms to guide adaptations to changing times and circumstances.

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Also, there have been relevant developments in the law itself reflecting a growing insistence by the courts on due process within the academic community which parallels the essential concepts of the 1940 Statement; particularly relevant is the identification by the Supreme Court of academic freedom as a right protected by the First Amendment. As the Supreme Court said in Keyishian v. Board of Regents, 385 U.S. 589 (1967), ‘‘Our Nation is deeply committed to safeguarding academic freedom, which is of transcendent value to all of us and not merely to the teachers concerned. That freedom is therefore a special concern of the First Amendment, which does not tolerate laws that cast a pall of orthodoxy over the classroom.’’ The numbers refer to the designated portion of the 1940 Statement on which interpretive comment is made. [1.] The Association of American Colleges and the American Association of University Professors have long recognized that membership in the academic profession carries with it special responsibilities. Both associations either separately or jointly have consistently affirmed these responsibilities in major policy statements, providing guidance to professors in their utterances as citizens, in the exercise of their responsibilities to the institution and to students, and in their conduct when resigning from their institution or when undertaking government-sponsored research. Of particular relevance is the Statement on Professional Ethics, adopted in 1966 as Association policy. (A revision, adopted in 1987, may be found in AAUP, Policy Documents and Reports, 9th ed. [Washington, DC, 2001], 133–34.) [2.] The intent of this statement is not to discourage what is ‘‘controversial.’’ Controversy is at the heart of the free academic inquiry which the entire statement is designed to foster. The passage serves to underscore the need for teachers to avoid persistently intruding material which has no relation to their subject. [3.] Most church-related institutions no longer need or desire the departure from the principle of academic freedom implied in the 1940 Statement, and we do not now endorse such a departure. [4.] This paragraph is the subject of an interpretation adopted by the sponsors of the 1940 Statement immediately following its endorsement which reads as follows: If the administration of a college or university feels that a teacher has not observed the admonitions of paragraph (c) of the section on Academic Freedom and believes that the extramural utterances of the teacher have been such as to raise grave doubts concerning the teacher’s fitness for his or her position, it may proceed to file charges under paragraph 4 of the section on Academic Tenure. In pressing such charges, the administration should remember that teachers are citizens and should be accorded the freedom of citizens. In such cases the administration must assume full responsibility, and the American Association of University Professors and the Association of American Colleges are free to make an investigation.

Paragraph (c) of the section on Academic Freedom in the 1940 Statement should also be interpreted in keeping with the 1964 ‘‘Committee A Statement

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on Extramural Utterances’’ (Policy Documents and Reports, 32), which states inter alia: ‘‘The controlling principle is that a faculty member’s expression of opinion as a citizen cannot constitute grounds for dismissal unless it clearly demonstrates the faculty member’s unfitness for his or her position. Extramural utterances rarely bear upon the faculty member’s fitness for the position. Moreover, a final decision should take into account the faculty member’s entire record as a teacher and scholar.’’ Paragraph 5 of the Statement on Professional Ethics also deals with the nature of the ‘‘special obligations’’ of the teacher. The paragraph reads as follows: As members of their community, professors have the rights and obligations of other citizens. Professors measure the urgency of other obligations in the light of their responsibilities to their subject, to their students, to their profession, and to their institution. When they speak or act as private persons they avoid creating the impression of speaking or acting for their college or university. As citizens engaged in a profession that depends upon freedom for its health and integrity, professors have a particular obligation to promote conditions of free inquiry and to further public understanding of academic freedom.

Both the protection of academic freedom and the requirements of academic responsibility apply not only to the full-time probationary and the tenured teacher, but also to all others, such as part-time faculty and teaching assistants, who exercise teaching responsibilities. [5]. The concept of ‘‘rank of full-time instructor or a higher rank’’ is intended to include any person who teaches a full-time load regardless of the teacher’s specific title.3 [6.] In calling for an agreement ‘‘in writing’’ on the amount of credit given for a faculty member’s prior service at other institutions, the Statement furthers the general policy of full understanding by the professor of the terms and conditions of the appointment. It does not necessarily follow that a professor’s tenure rights have been violated because of the absence of a written agreement on this matter. Nonetheless, especially because of the variation in permissible institutional practices, a written understanding concerning these matters at the time of appointment is particularly appropriate and advantageous to both the individual and the institution.4 [7.] The effect of this subparagraph is that a decision on tenure, favorable or unfavorable, must be made at least twelve months prior to the completion of the probationary period. If the decision is negative, the appointment for the following year becomes a terminal one. If the decision is affirmative, the provisions in the 1940 Statement with respect to the termination of service of teachers or investigators after the expiration of a probationary period should apply from the date when the favorable decision is made. The general principle of notice contained in this paragraph is developed with greater specificity in the Standards for Notice of Nonreappointment,

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endorsed by the Fiftieth Annual Meeting of the American Association of University Professors (1964). These standards are: Notice of nonreappointment, or of intention not to recommend reappointment to the governing board, should be given in writing in accordance with the following standards: (a) Not later than March 1 of the first academic year of service, if the appointment expires at the end of that year; or, if a one-year appointment terminates during an academic year, at least three months in advance of its termination. (b) Not later than December 15 of the second academic year of service, if the appointment expires at the end of that year; or, if an initial two-year appointment terminates during an academic year, at least six months in advance of its termination. (c) At least twelve months before the expiration of an appointment after two or more years in the institution. Other obligations, both of institutions and of individuals, are described in the Statement on Recruitment and Resignation of Faculty Members, as endorsed by the Association of American Colleges and the American Association of University Professors in 1961.

[8.] The freedom of probationary teachers is enhanced by the establishment of a regular procedure for the periodic evaluation and assessment of the teacher’s academic performance during probationary status. Provision should be made for regularized procedures for the consideration of complaints by probationary teachers that their academic freedom has been violated. One suggested procedure to serve these purposes is contained in the Recommended Institutional Regulations on Academic Freedom and Tenure, prepared by the American Association of University Professors. [9.] A further specification of the academic due process to which the teacher is entitled under this paragraph is contained in the Statement on Procedural Standards in Faculty Dismissal Proceedings, jointly approved by the American Association of University Professors and the Association of American Colleges in 1958. This interpretive document deals with the issue of suspension, about which the 1940 Statement is silent. The 1958 Statement provides: ‘‘Suspension of the faculty member during the proceedings is justified only if immediate harm to the faculty member or others is threatened by the faculty member’s continuance. Unless legal considerations forbid, any such suspension should be with pay.’’ A suspension which is not followed by either reinstatement or the opportunity for a hearing is in effect a summary dismissal in violation of academic due process. The concept of ‘‘moral turpitude’’ identifies the exceptional case in which the professor may be denied a year’s teaching or pay in whole or in part. The statement applies to that kind of behavior which goes beyond simply warranting discharge and is so utterly blameworthy as to make it inappropriate to

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require the offering of a year’s teaching or pay. The standard is not that the moral sensibilities of persons in the particular community have been affronted. The standard is behavior that would evoke condemnation by the academic community generally.

Notes This statement is reproduced with permission from the American Association of University Professors’ Policy Documents and Reports. 10th ed. (Washington, DC: American Association of University Professors, 2006), pp. 3–11. 1. The word ‘‘teacher’’ as used in this document is understood to include the investigator who is attached to an academic institution without teaching duties. 2. Boldface numbers in brackets refer to Interpretive Comments which follow. 3. For a discussion of this question, see the ‘‘Report of the Special Committee on Academic Personnel Ineligible for Tenure,’’ Policy Documents and Reports, pp. 88–91. 4. For a more detailed statement on this question, see ‘‘On Crediting Prior Service Elsewhere as Part of the Probationary Period,’’ ibid., pp. 100–101.

Endorsers Association of American Colleges and Universities 1941 American Association of University Professors 1941 American Library Association (adapted for librarians) 1946 Association of American Law Schools 1946 American Political Science Association 1947 American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education 1950 Eastern Psychological Association 1950 Southern Society for Philosophy and Psychology 1953 American Psychological Association 1961 American Historical Association 1961 Modern Language Association of America 1962 American Economic Association 1962 American Agricultural Economics Association 1962 Midwest Sociological Society 1963 Organization of American Historians 1963 American Philological Association 1963

American Council of Learned Societies 1963 Speech Communication Association 1963 American Sociological Association 1963 Southern Historical Association 1963 American Studies Association 1963 Association of American Geographers 1963 Southern Economic Association 1963 Classical Association of the Middle West and South 1964 Southwestern Social Science Association 1964 Archaeological Institute of America 1964 Southern Management Association 1964 American Theatre Association 1964 South Central Modern Language Association 1964 Southwestern Philosophical Society 1964 Council of Independent Colleges 1965 Mathematical Association of America 1965 Arizona-Nevada Academy of Science 1965 American Risk and Insurance Association 1965 Academy of Management 1965

Appendices American Catholic Historical Association 1966 American Catholic Philosophical Association 1966 Association for Education in Journalism 1966 Western History Association 1966 Mountain-Plains Philosophical Conference 1966 Society of American Archivists 1966 Southeastern Psychological Association 1966 Southern Speech Communication Association 1966 American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies 1967 American Mathematical Society 1967 College Theology Society 1967 Council on Social Work Education 1967 American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy 1967 American Academy of Religion 1967 Association for the Sociology of Religion 1967 American Society of Journalism School Administrators 1967 John Dewey Society 1967 South Atlantic Modern Language Association 1967 American Finance Association 1967 Association for Social Economics 1967 United Chapters of Phi Beta Kappa 1968 American Society of Christian Ethics 1968 American Association of Teachers of French 1968 Eastern Finance Association 1968 American Association for Chinese Studies 1968 American Society of Plant Physiologists 1968 University Film and Video Association 1968 American Dialect Society 1968 American Speech-Language-Hearing Association 1968 Association of Social and Behavioral Scientists 1968

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College English Association 1968 National College Physical Education Association for Men 1969 American Real Estate and Urban Economics Association 1969 History of Education Society 1969 Council for Philosophical Studies 1969 American Musicological Society 1969 American Association of Teachers of Spanish and Portuguese 1969 Texas Junior College Teachers Association 1970 College Art Association of America 1970 Society of Professors of Education 1970 American Anthropological Association 1970 Association of Theological Schools 1970 Association of Schools and Mass Communication of Journalism 1971 American Business Law Association 1971 American Council for the Arts 1972 New York State Mathematics Association of Two-Year Colleges 1972 College Language Association 1973 Pennsylvania Historical Association 1973 Massachusetts Regional Community College Faculty Association 1973 American Philosophical Association 1974 (endorsed by the Association’s Western Division in 1952, Eastern Division in 1953, and Pacific Division in 1962) American Classical League 1974 American Comparative Literature Association 1974 Rocky Mountain Modern Language Association 1974 Society of Architectural Historians 1975 American Statistical Association 1975 American Folklore Society 1975 Association for Asian Studies 1975 Linguistic Society of America 1975 African Studies Association 1975 American Institute of Biological Sciences 1975

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North American Conference on British Studies 1975 Sixteenth-Century Studies Conference 1975 Texas Association of College Teachers 1976 Society for Spanish and Portuguese Historical Studies 1976 Association for Jewish Studies 1976 Western Speech Communication Association 1976 Texas Association of Colleges for Teacher Education 1977 Metaphysical Society of America 1977 American Chemical Society 1977 Texas Library Association 1977 American Society for Legal History 1977 Iowa Higher Education Association 1977 American Physical Therapy Association 1979 North Central Sociological Association 1980 Dante Society of America 1980 Association for Communication Administration 1981 American Association of Physics Teachers 1982 Middle East Studies Association 1982 National Education Association 1985 American Institute of Chemists 1985 American Association of Teachers of German 1985 American Association of Teachers of Italian 1985 American Association for Applied Linguistics 1986 American Association of Teachers of Slavic and East European Languages 1986 American Association for Cancer Education 1986 American Society of Church History 1986 Oral History Association 1987 Society for French Historical Studies 1987 History of Science Society 1987

American Association of Pharmaceutical Scientists 1988 American Association for Clinical Chemistry 1988 Council for Chemical Research 1988 Association for the Study of Higher Education 1988 American Psychological Society 1989 University and College Labor Education Association 1989 Society for Neuroscience 1989 Renaissance Society of America 1989 Society of Biblical Literature 1989 National Science Teachers Association 1989 Medieval Academy of America 1990 American Society of Agronomy 1990 Crop Science Society of America 1990 Soil Science Society of America 1990 Society of Protozoologists 1990 Society for Ethnomusicology 1990 American Association of Physicists in Medicine 1990 Animal Behavior Society 1990 Illinois Community College Faculty Association 1990 American Society for Theatre Research 1990 National Council of Teachers of English 1991 Latin American Studies Association 1992 Society for Cinema Studies 1992 American Society for EighteenthCentury Studies 1992 Council of Colleges of Arts and Sciences 1992 American Society for Aesthetics 1992 Association for the Advancement of Baltic Studies 1994 American Council of Teachers of Russian 1994 Council of Teachers of Southeast Asian Languages 1994 American Association of Teachers of Arabic 1994 Association of Teachers of Japanese 1994 Academic Senate for California Community Colleges 1996

Appendices Council of Academic Programs in Communication Sciences and Disorders 1996 Association for Women in Mathematics 1997 Philosophy of Time Society 1998 World Communication Association 1999 The Historical Society 1999 Association for Theatre in Higher Education 1999 National Association for Ethnic Studies 1999 Association of Ancient Historians 1999 American Culture Association 1999 American Conference for Irish Studies 1999 Society for Philosophy in the Contemporary World 1999 Eastern Communication Association 1999 Association for Canadian Studies in the United States 1999 American Association for the History of Medicine 2000 Missouri Association of Faculty Senates 2000 Association for Symbolic Logic 2000

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American Society of Criminology 2001 American Jewish Historical Society 2001 New England Historical Association 2001 Group for the Use of Psychology in History 2001 Society for the Scientific Study of Religion 2001 Society for German-American Studies 2001 Society for Historians of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era 2001 Eastern Sociological Society 2001 Chinese Historians in the United States 2001 Community College Humanities Association 2002 Agricultural History Society 2004 National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education 2005 American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages 2005 Society for the Study of Social Biology 2005 Society for the Study of Social Problems 2005 Association of Black Sociologists 2005

WHY AN ACADEMIC BILL OF RIGHTS IS NECESSARY TO ENSURE THAT STUDENTS GET A QUALITY EDUCATION David Horowitz Testimony before the Ohio Senate Education Committee on Ohio Senate Bill 24, sponsored by Senators Mumper, Jordan, Cates, and Wachtman.

Ohio Senate Bill 24, which has been sponsored by Senator Mumper and is now before this Committee, and which is based on my Academic Bill of Rights, is not about Republicans and Democrats, liberals and conservatives, left and right. It is about what is appropriate to a higher education, and in particular what is an appropriate discourse in the classrooms of an institution of higher learning. All higher education institutions in this country embrace principles of academic freedom that were first laid down in 1915 in the famous General Report of the American Association of University Professors, titled ‘‘The Principles

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of Tenure and Academic Freedom.’’ The Report admonishes faculty to avoid ‘‘taking unfair advantage of the student’s immaturity by indoctrinating him with the teacher’s own opinions before the student has had an opportunity to fairly examine other opinions upon the matters in question, and before he has sufficient knowledge and ripeness of judgment to be entitled to form any definitive opinion of his own.’’ In other words, an education—as distinct from an indoctrination—makes students aware of a spectrum of scholarly views on matters of controversy and opinion, and does not make particular answers to such controversial matters the goal of the instruction. This is sound doctrine and common sense, and in one form or another it is recognized in the academic freedom guidelines of all accredited institutions of higher learning in the United States. Unfortunately, it is a principle increasingly honored in the breach and not in the observance in American universities today. All too frequently, professors behave as political advocates in the classroom, express opinions in a partisan manner on controversial issues irrelevant to the academic subject, and even grade students in a manner designed to enforce their conformity to professorial prejudices. (Numerous instances of these abuses are available on the websites www.studentsforacademicfreedom.org and www.noindoctrination.org.) Why this abuse of the academic classroom has occurred in the last academic generation is a matter for historians. Why it has not been remedied by existing institutional supports for academic freedom is the business of Senate Bill 24 and the Academic Bill of Rights. To anticipate, it is the view of the authors of this legislation that the academic freedom protections to prevent indoctrination in the classroom are generally buried in ‘‘faculty handbooks,’’ as faculty ‘‘responsibilities,’’ never codified as a student right. Therefore when they are neglected there is no remedy for students who are victims of professorial abuse. Nor does there exist any grievance machinery that specifically recognizes this academic freedom right or that provides a policy for redress. The purpose of Senate Bill 24 and legislation in other states based on the Academic Bill of Rights is to rectify this omission. It is not an education when a mid-term examination contains a required essay on the topic, ‘‘Explain Why President Bush Is a War Criminal,’’ as did a criminology exam at the University of Northern Colorado in 2003. It is not an education when a professor of property law harangues his class on why all Republicans are racist as happened at the Colorado University Law School in 2004. It is not an education when a widely-used required ‘‘Peace Studies’’ textbook, described by the professor as a ‘‘masterpiece,’’ explains that the Soviet Union was a force for peace in the Cold War and the United States was not, that ‘‘revolutionary violence’’ is the only justifiable violence, and that the United States is the greatest terrorist state—and does so without making students aware that there are other interpretations of this history and other views that should be considered on these matters. This extremist text, Peace

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and Conflict Studies, written by two university professors who explain in their preface that they are partisans of the political left is the required ‘‘academic’’ textbook for students in the Peace Studies course at Ohio State University (Marion). At Foothills College in California, a pro-life professor compared women who have abortions to the deranged mother Andrea Yates who drowned her six children. The professor then gave D’s and F’s to students who expressed opinions in favor of abortion. Abortion is a matter that is both profoundly controversial and also emotional, and involves the deepest and most personal values. It is also a matter of opinion. It is not the task of a professor to provide his students with politically correct opinions. It is the task of professors—whether they are politically left or politically conservative—to teach students how to think and not what to think about matters that are controversial. An education should make students aware of the range of scholarly views on a subject, teach students how to marshal evidence in behalf of a point of view, and instruct them how to make a logical case for their conclusions. An education is not about providing students with the correct conclusions on controversial matters. We live in democracy that is based on the proposition that there is no correct conclusion available to ordinary mortals, that no one—not even professors— are in possession of absolute truth. If there were only one correct conclusion to all controversial issues there be no need for a multi-party democracy, since the only party necessary would be the one with the truth. No such party exists. No such professor exists. Therefore, Ohio Senate Bill 24 states that ‘‘students [shall] have access to a broad range of serious scholarly opinion pertaining to the subjects they study;’’ and further that: ‘‘Students shall be graded solely on the basis of their reasoned answers and appropriate knowledge of the subjects and disciplines they study and shall not be discriminated against on the basis of their political, ideological, or religious beliefs. Faculty and instructors shall not use their courses or their positions for the purpose of political, ideological, religious, or antireligious indoctrination.’’ Three principal objections have been made to the Senate Bill 24, all of them groundless. The first is that the Bill would impose ‘‘political standards’’ on higher education. This is an invention of opponents of the Bill, whose text could not be clearer on this matter: ‘‘students [shall] have access to a broad range of serious scholarly opinion pertaining to the subjects they study.’’ In other words, the standards ‘‘imposed’’ by the Bill are scholarly not political. The second objection is that the Bill ‘‘limits free speech’’ and in particular would impose limits on the ability of professors to express themselves freely in the classroom. A typical ‘‘news’’ headline in the Cleveland Plain Dealer, reporting Senator Mumper’s legislation, transforms a bill expressly designed to promote academic freedom into its opposite: ‘‘Legislator Wants Law to Restrict Professors.’’

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This false charge originates with the American Association of University Professors, which long ago abandoned its commitment to academic freedom where students are concerned. The AAUP was entirely absent from the battle against speech codes in the 1990s—the most dramatic infringement of free speech rights on college campuses since the McCarthy era. I am acutely conscious of this dereliction because my Individual Rights Foundation was actively engaged in those battles. The AAUP has particularly singled out the following clause in the Senate Bill for disapproval: ‘‘Faculty and instructors shall not infringe the academic freedom and quality of education of their students by persistently introducing controversial matter into the classroom or coursework that has no relation to their subject of study and that serves no legitimate pedagogical purpose.’’ According to the AAUP and opponents of the Bill generally, this stipulation is an infringement of the free speech rights of professors. Presumably it would be perfectly appropriate as far as the AAUP and these opponents of the Bill are concerned if a professor of property law were to devote an entire class to explaining why Americans deserved to die on 9/11, or a professor of Women’s Studies devoted an entire class to discussing how the terrible results of the 2004 presidential election could be countered or a Metallurgy professor confronted students in a class on ‘‘Organic Materials’’ with the question of whether it was right for the Governor of California to leave his state to campaign for George Bush in Ohio, or whether a Spanish language professor used her class time to tell her students ‘‘I wish George Bush were dead.’’ All these incidents happened at quality American universities (Colorado, Stanford, and Ripon) within the last school year. In fact, the issue here is not the free speech rights of professors as private citizens, but what is appropriate to a classroom, and in particular what form of discourse constitutes indoctrination as distinct from education. We don’t go to our doctors’ offices expecting to get a lecture on politics. That is because doctors are professionals whose responsibility is to minister to all their patients regardless of their patients’ political beliefs. Introducing passionately divisive matters into a medical consultation can injure the trust between doctors and their patients, which is essential to the healing mission. Why is the profession of education any different? When students go to their professors’ offices, for example, they go for advice and help. When professors plaster their office doors with partisan cartoons that mock the deeply held beliefs of students on matters like abortion and party affiliation—which they regularly do—this creates a wall between faculty and students, which is injurious to the counseling process. How can a professor teach a student whom he regards as a partisan adversary? The answer is he cannot. Can professors, under this guideline, discuss controversial matters in class? Of course they can. But their purpose must be educational and not political. They can present students with the opposing views that define a controversy, show them how to marshal evidence for one view or the other and teach them

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how to construct a case in behalf of their own viewpoint. What they must not do is jump into the controversy on one side, wielding all the authority of their greater experience and superior knowledge, backed by their grading power. They are not in the classroom to recruit students to their political or religious agendas. They are there to teach them. It does not take a rocket scientist to understand the difference. A classroom is not—or should not be—a political soap box. The truly insurmountable problem for opponents of this injunction is that the principle of restricting professorial speech in the classroom to what is professionally appropriate is not only a long-standing principle of academic freedom, it is a principle already embraced (if not practiced) by most universities. The Faculty Handbook of Ohio State University, for example, instructs professors as follows: ‘‘Academic freedom carries with it correlative academic responsibilities. The principal elements include the responsibility of teachers to ‘‘… (5) Refrain from persistently introducing matters that have no bearing on the subject matter of the course;… (7) Differentiate carefully between official activities as teachers and personal activities as citizens, and to act accordingly.’’ Is it feasible for professors to keep the political opinions and prejudices they hold as citizens out of the classroom? I attended school for 19 years from kindergarten to the graduate level, where I received my M.A. 43 years ago. In all that time I do not remember a single teacher or a single professor on single occasion in any classroom reveal or express their political beliefs. If my teachers could be that professional, so can this generation of educators. The principle of professional restraint in the classroom could not be stated more clearly than in the Ohio State University handbook and it is expressed in the very wording of Senate Bill 24 to which apparently the same administrators who are responsible for the Faculty Handbook and the same professors who are supposed to be guided by it now strenuously object. Apparently, the principle of academic freedom is acceptable when it is only a faculty responsibility that can be disregarded. When it is proposed as a student right that might be enforced, it becomes objectionable. There is a reason that the Academic Bill of Rights and the Faculty Handbook have nearly identical wording. Both are derived from the long-standing Academic Freedom guidelines of the American Association of University Professors, which the present leaders of the AAUP have turned their backs on now seek to repudiate: Thus, the 1940 Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure of the AAUP states: ‘‘Teachers are entitled to freedom in the classroom in discussing their subject, but they should be careful not to introduce into their teaching controversial matter which has no relation to their subject.’’ The real problem has now been revealed, and the third of the three objections to the bill—the complaint that this would be a legislative interference in academic affairs—is answered: it wouldn’t be an interference because the

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university itself has already adopted the principles of this Bill; the problem is that they will not enforce them. The reasons for enacting Senate Bill 24 are that too many faculty members at our universities no longer observe their responsibility to teach and not to indoctrinate students; that university administrations no longer enforce their faculty guidelines on academic freedom; and that the existing guidelines are not codified as student rights; as result students currently have no way to redress their grievances. In this situation legislatures have a fiduciary responsibility—as the elected representatives of the taxpayers who fund these institutions—to step in and provide a remedy. If they do not, the future of our universities is bleak.

Note Facsimile document provided on May 23, 2006, by the Office of State Senator Joy Padgett (20th Senate District), chair, Education Committee, Ohio Senate.

TESTIMONY BY PROFESSOR JOAN WALLACH SCOTT BEFORE THE PENNSYLVANIA GENERAL ASSEMBLY’S HOUSE SELECT COMMITTEE ON STUDENT ACADEMIC FREEDOM November 9, 2005 Good afternoon. My name is Joan Scott and I am Harold F. Linder Professor of Social Science at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton N.J. I also hold a teaching position in the history department at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey. I served as chair of the American Association of University Professor’s Committee on Academic Freedom and Tenure from 1999 until June of this year. I remain as a consultant to the committee and the issues of academic freedom remain central to all of my professional work. In addition to the AAUP, I am active in my professional disciplinary society, the American Historical Association, and devote some of my research and writing to questions about the history of my discipline in particular and of scholarly disciplines in general. I appreciate the opportunity this committee has given me today to present the AAUP’s viewpoint on the important issues the committee is considering as they are spelled out in HR 177. As I read the resolution, there are essentially three questions you are charged with studying. The first is about whether political considerations enter the hiring, promotion, and tenuring of faculty. The second is about the openness of the campus environment: has it been, as some who’ve spoken to you have charged, high jacked by liberals who prevent the full exploration of ideas and thus deny students the kind of

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education they deserve? And the third is whether ideological considerations are involved in the grading of students and in the kinds of discussions that are permitted in classrooms. These are, of course, matters of concern and they respond directly to charges that have been made by proponents of (what we think has been misnamed) the Academic Bill of Rights. You have wisely posed as questions charges that some have already stated as fact, charges that our campuses have been taken over by left-wing ideologues (the tenured radicals of the 1960’s) and that they are waging a campaign of indoctrination that captures the minds of unsuspecting students and punishes those wise enough to disagree with them. These charges are not only for the most part false, but are themselves based on political and ideological considerations. Take for example the study that concludes that college teachers are more likely to vote Democratic than Republican. The people arguing that that study proves political discrimination in hiring neglect many factors that good social scientific research would consider—the possible role of preference for more economically lucrative work on the part of Republicans; or the different policies each party has in regard to financial support for higher education and so what might be called ‘interest-based’ votes by university faculty—to take only two examples. But even more important, political party affiliation has nothing to do with scholarly positions and with what counts as a conservative or a non-traditional approach to literature or history or the classics. The considerations that enter hiring decisions have everything to do with scholarship and with what might be called disciplinary politics. And here, the tendency already is towards pluralism, that is to an open classroom and campus environment. For example, English departments cover the ground, representing not only Shakespeare, the Victorians, the Romantics, novels, poetry, American literature and so forth, they also include a variety of theoretical approaches: New Criticism, Formalism, Poststructuralism, Psychoanalysis, Feminist Criticism. It is true that at some schools there are more Formalists than New Critics, or more literary historians than theorists, but that is a result of market decisions made by departments—a decision to specialize and so become distinctive in a particular field. In the same universities where there are predominantly Poststructuralist English departments there are old fashioned history departments (teaching the facts, covering chronological periods) and political science departments that hire no political theorists (those who might teach about Locke and JS Mill), but only game theorists, and economics departments that offer no courses in economic history (as once such departments did), but only courses in mathematical modeling. You have only to look department by department at most universities and colleges—you will find no prevailing ideology, only a mix of approaches; often one department’s conservatism is balanced by another’s more avant garde emphasis. For every women’s studies program that upsets Dr. Balch, there are political science departments committed to celebrating American democracy; for every ethnic studies program that worries

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him (and they don’t all fit the distorted picture he has painted today) there are economics departments teaching only supply side economics. If you look at departments over time, you will see changes that reflect new disciplinary knowledge as well as new styles of thinking. This history and the mix it produces have more to do with markets than with ideology. In the attempt to capture student enrollment, some universities have emphasized vocational training, investing in high powered computer science faculties, others have introduced programs in gender or ethnic studies to attract more students interested in those topics. In the search for a market niche, the Business School at the University of Chicago has emphasized conservative approaches while the Law Schools at Duke and Yale have chosen to be associated with liberals; some universities and colleges have emerged as exemplars of traditionalist education—St. John’s or Grove City—and others as liberal—Brown and Wesleyan—or wildly experimental (Sarah Lawrence, Reed, Hampshire). But most have chosen a more pluralist route, offering a wide range of courses and approaches so as to meet all student demand. If you do a systematic study of courses offered and of the theoretical or interpretive approaches their instructors employ, you will find that diversity already characterizes our colleges and universities. That is because there are carefully monitored guidelines for hiring and promotion—you have copies of AAUP guidelines (The 1940 Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure and The Ethics of Recruitment and Faculty Appointments) and these are followed in most institutions, as are the procedures for grieving and challenging decisions that have been made. (AAUP censures institutions that don’t follow these guidelines and there are relatively few institutions on our censure list. The small number of censures—47 of the many thousands of universities and colleges in the nation—indicates that the guidelines are being implemented. Censure is one way of making sure there is national attention to the enforcement of guidelines.) The evidence suggests that there is no party line being used either to hire teachers or to inform their teaching. (If you like, in the question period, I will describe the elaborate procedures followed by hiring search committees and by tenure committees, the ways in which a wide range of views are represented on these committees, the ways their recommendations are scrutinized by all-university committees as well as by deans, provosts and presidents—there is no short quick way to get hired or tenured in an American university!) And you cannot rely on anecdotal evidence in your quest for information—you will always find an instance in which someone claims (for good or bad reasons) that he’s been discriminated against on political grounds. It’s hard for someone not hired or tenured to admit that his work just didn’t measure up to scholarly standards and much easier to find other reasons—race, gender, political opinions—for not getting a job or tenure). What your committee needs is good social science and the supporters of the ABR are not interested in that. One can only conclude from that flawed study of Democratic and Republican faculty, that they are looking to have more

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Republicans as university teachers—a political test for what should be a scholarly job! An important point to remember as you look at the make-up of college and university faculties is that disciplines are constantly in flux; knowledge changes as new research opens new doors. It is up to scholarly communities to collectively decide what counts as responsible knowledge; to deny a place to a professor of phlogiston theory of heat (a notion widely held in the Middle Ages), for example, because it is not deemed a reasonable perspective within the discipline of chemistry. There is plenty of room within these communities for debate and change—indeed debate takes place all the time and it follows accepted rules of procedure (which you can read about in our guidelines). The process usually works and works well, although there are always glitches that need attention. But mechanisms exist to address these glitches and to fix them; there is no need for interference from outside legislative or judicial agencies. On the second and third questions—about the openness of the campus environment and students’ rights to free expression—I think there are important points to bear in mind. One is whether ‘‘balance’’ on every issue, as recommended by the ABR, is a desirable feature of the university curriculum. Another is whether all points of view must always be taught in every classroom for students to enjoy a good climate for learning. We do not think that either balance or all points of view are necessary in every course, nor are they the right of students. It is one thing to insist (as we do) that there be respect for differences of opinion; another to argue that all opinions have the same weight. For the most part, students do not have the training and the knowledge base that their teachers do; they are there to learn. As David French said before this committee last September, student rights ‘‘do not include a right to be taught what they want to hear. Their broad rights do not include a right not to be offended. Their rights do not include a right to have a teacher tell all sides of the story as they see all sides of the story.’’ We agree with his statement and think the door should not be opened to having students think they have such rights. In the Joint Statement on the Rights and Freedoms of Students we say that while ‘‘students should be free to take reasoned exception to the data or views offered in any course of study and to reserve judgment about matters of opinion,’’ they are also ‘‘responsible for learning the content of any course of study for which they are enrolled.’’ While students ought to be protected against ‘‘prejudiced or capricious academic evaluation,’’ they are also ‘‘responsible for maintaining standards of academic performance established for each course in which they are enrolled.’’ In other words, ultimate judgment about what counts as serious academic work and as legitimate course content rests with the faculty. A student cannot claim violations of his academic freedom if creationism is not taught in his biology course or if Holocaust deniers are not on his history syllabus or if his professor of Middle Eastern Studies is critical of Israeli domestic or foreign policy. In the area of

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rights to free speech, faculty and students may be on the same plane since the First Amendment assumes equality of status in the field of ideas. But in the classroom, academic freedom rests on a notion of faculty expertise. It derives from values that attach to the distinctive role of the professional scholar, a member of a self-regulating corporate body whose job it is to certify that expertise. Academic freedom pertains to scholars as professionals, not individuals. It guarantees freedom of research, freedom to determine one’s teaching in the classroom and freedom from censorship for extra-mural expression. It carries responsibilities enforced by one’s peers. Students do not have this kind of academic freedom and they ought not to be led to believe that they do. Otherwise, we will face a nightmare of unjustified and costly litigation that will seriously interfere with the university’s mission. We also worry that the insistence on ‘‘balance’’ as a guarantee of student rights ignores another important aspect of education. Conflicts of values and ethics are part of the process of knowledge production; they inform it, trouble it, drive it. The commitments of scholars to ideas of justice, for example, are at the heart of many an important investigation in political theory, philosophy and history; they cannot be dismissed as irrelevant ‘‘opinion.’’ Students need to know about the values and commitments of their professors—they don’t have to share them. But because such commitments cannot be separated from scholarship, there are mechanisms internal to academic life that monitor abuses, distinguishing between serious, responsible work and polemic, between teaching that aims to unsettle received opinion and teaching that is indoctrination. There are established procedures within universities for hearing complaints about indoctrination, about unfair grading, and other denials of student rights, and for deciding on the merits whether it is happening or not. (See for example, The Assignment of Course Grades and Student Appeals.) (These procedures are markedly different from what passes for information on the web site of Students for Academic Freedom, which posts lists of unexamined complaints by students as if they were established fact. These lists constitute an end-run around serious procedures, kangaroo courts not interested in justice, but in scoring points, or meting out punishment and revenge.) The established procedures that AAUP recommends are not always perfectly implemented, but they will not work better if government oversight is substituted for community self-surveillance. This is how John Dewey and Arthur Lovejoy, founders in 1915 of the American Association of University Professors, understood the need for academic freedom. Precisely because academic work might call into question received wisdom and contradict popular opinion, there was a need to protect faculty from outside interference—it was that protection (a protection based on respect for self-regulating communities of scholars) that they called academic freedom. We worry, too, about the idea of neutrality promoted by supporters of the academic bill of rights. It would prohibit professors from expressing judgments about the material they teach, as well as about matters not directly

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relevant to course material; instead they are simply to transmit stores of undisputed information and refrain from expressing their points of view. Aside from the fact that this denies the role judgment must play in scholarly work, it cancels the important critical role that higher education should fulfill. The best teachers, in my experience and I’m sure it’s true for many of you too, are usually those whose commitment and point of view, grounded to be sure in a command of information and knowledge of a field (a command certified by their degrees, refereed publications, and departmental reviews), inspire students to think differently about the world; whose teaching calls into question the pieties and certainties students have imbibed elsewhere. It is precisely the experience of this kind of education that opens students’ minds and engages them in learning, sets them out on paths they never knew they could take. That has been the critical thinking that is the hallmark of American education—an education designed to create thinking citizens for a free society. I worry that the emphasis on formal balance and neutrality, and the injunction not to express a point of view will harm our educational system and suppress exactly the kind of thinking that has distinguished our democracy and made it a model elsewhere in the world. I have restricted most of my comments about students to the question of the classroom, to what is taught and how. I’d like to add, and here again I’ll be agreeing with David French, that an open environment is one in which the free exchange of ideas and views occurs within a framework of tolerance and civility. AAUP deplores speech codes and believes that the best cure for insulting speech is more speech. We also insist that speakers of any stripe be allowed to come to campus and we warn students, faculty, and university administrators (as well as regents and legislators) that attempts to censor speakers, however much we disdain their words, creates a chilly climate for everyone. These days there are many attempts to enforce certain political or moral positions on campus—by students, administrators, and off-campus groups. If true democracy is to prevail, we must resist these attempts and let differences of opinion and ideas thrive. If John Stuart Mill was right, the market place of ideas will sort out the good from the bad—we cannot, should not do that in advance. I said at the beginning of my remarks that AAUP considers the ABR, which seems to inform House Resolution 177, to be a misnomer, as well as a mistake. In our view it ‘‘ironically infringes academic freedom in the very act of purporting to protect it.’’ You have, I believe, a copy of our statement of opposition to the bill. In it we detail our criticisms, so I’ll just summarize them now. 1) AAUP believes that the ABR threatens to impose legislative oversight on the professional judgment of the faculty, oversight which is not only unnecessary because self-regulating governance procedures already are in place and work very effectively, but also dangerous—it recalls the kind of government intervention in the academy practiced by totalitarian governments (historical examples are Japan, China, Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, and the Soviet Union) who seek to control thought rather than permit a free marketplace of ideas.

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Here I will quote the historian of education and distinguished educator, Walter Metzger, on the question of academic freedom: A state legislature does not violate academic freedom…when it sets up or abolishes departments of instruction in academic institutions under its control, because these actions have budgetary implications that the representatives of the paying public cannot ignore. Nor does it do so when, under its licensing powers, it requires candidates for professional degrees to undergo a specified course of training which the state academic institution must provide. It is an unsettled question whether it does so, when to gratify local pride, it makes a designated course in local history prerequisite for an undergraduate degree. But centuries of history tell us that it invades the very core of academic freedom…when it dictates the contents of any course at any level or for any purpose. When it does that, it converts the university into a bureau of public administration, the subject into a vehicle for partisan politics or lay morality, and the act of teaching into a species of ventriloquism…The central precepts of academic freedom…are that professors should say what they believe without fear or favor and that universities should appoint meritorious persons, not followers of a diversity of party lines.

2) AAUP believes that by insisting that students have the same rights to academic freedom as their professors, it deprives teachers of the authority necessary for teaching. It threatens to substitute mere opinion for scholarly knowledge; and it opens the door to student complaints that subject matter is offensive to them and therefore should not be taught. 3) AAUP believes that the ABR, by insisting that all courses and departments have ‘‘balance’’ and ‘‘diverse points of view’’ represented, would actually prevent colleges and universities from making the kinds of judgments that guarantee high quality teaching. The market place of ideas is and must be an open system, of course, and in the process of research and study, some ideas prove more compelling and closer to the truth than others. It is up to faculty, in their disciplinary associations, to evaluate these matters of knowledge, to constantly subject them to criticism and to change them. Faculty are the only ones competent to make these decisions and it is academic freedom—a corporate, not an individual right—that enables them to do this. Students do not, they cannot, have this kind of academic freedom. That does not mean that students have no rights, of course they do, but we maintain that they are already well protected by procedures internal to the academy, procedures which you should become familiar with as you conduct your hearings, procedures which I believe my colleague Professor Moore will cover in more specific detail. Thank you.

Note Reproduced from the Public Hearing transcript of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives Select Committee on Academic Freedom in Higher Education held on November 9, 2005, with permission of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives Archives.

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OHIO SENATE BILL 24 As introduced in the 126th General Assembly, Regular Session, 2005–06, by Senators Mumper, Jordan, Cates, and Wachtmann.

A Bill to Enact Sections 3345.80 and 3345.81 of the Revised Code to Establish the Academic Bill of Rights for Higher Education Be it enacted by the General Assembly of the State of Ohio: Section 1. That sections 3345.80 and 3345.81 of the Revised Code be enacted to read as follows: Sec. 3345.80. The board of trustees of each state institution of higher education, as defined in section 3345.011 of the Revised Code, and the board of trustees or other governing authority of each private institution of higher education that holds a certificate of authorization issued under section 1713.02 of the Revised Code shall adopt a policy recognizing that the students, faculty, and instructors of the institution have the following rights: (A) The institution shall provide its students with a learning environment in which the students have access to a broad range of serious scholarly opinion pertaining to the subjects they study. In the humanities, the social sciences, and the arts, the fostering of a plurality of serious scholarly methodologies and perspectives shall be a significant institutional purpose. In addition, curricula and reading lists in the humanities and social studies shall respect all human knowledge in these areas and provide students with dissenting sources and viewpoints. (B) Students shall be graded solely on the basis of their reasoned answers and appropriate knowledge of the subjects and disciplines they study and shall not be discriminated against on the basis of their political, ideological, or religious beliefs. Faculty and instructors shall not use their courses or their positions for the purpose of political, ideological, religious, or antireligious indoctrination. (C) Faculty and instructors shall not infringe the academic freedom and quality of education of their students by persistently introducing controversial matter into the classroom or coursework that has no relation to their subject of study and that serves no legitimate pedagogical purpose. (D) University administrators, student government organizations, and institutional policies, rules, or procedures shall not infringe the freedom of speech, freedom of expression, freedom of assembly, and freedom of conscience of students and student organizations. (E) The institution shall distribute student fee funds on a viewpoint-neutral basis and shall maintain a posture of neutrality with respect to substantive political and religious disagreements, differences, and opinions. The selection

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of speakers, allocation of funds for speakers’ programs, and other student activities shall observe the principles of academic freedom and promote the presentation of a diversity of opinions on intellectual matters. Except as provided by law, the institution shall not permit the obstruction of invited campus speakers, the destruction of campus literature, or other efforts to obstruct a civil exchange of ideas. (F) Faculty and instructors shall be free to pursue and discuss their own findings and perspectives in presenting their views, but they shall make their students aware of serious scholarly viewpoints other than their own through classroom discussion or dissemination of written materials, and they shall encourage intellectual honesty, civil debate, and the critical analysis of ideas in the pursuit of knowledge and truth. (G) Faculty and instructors shall be hired, fired, promoted, and granted tenure on the basis of their competence and appropriate knowledge in their field of expertise and shall not be hired, fired, promoted, granted tenure, or denied promotion or tenure on the basis of their political, ideological, or religious beliefs. (H) Faculty and instructors shall not be excluded from tenure, search, and hiring committees on the basis of their political, ideological, or religious beliefs. (I) The institution and its professional societies shall maintain a posture of organizational neutrality with respect to the substantive disagreements that divide researchers on questions within, or outside, their fields of inquiry recognizing that: (1) Knowledge advances when individual scholars are left free to reach their own conclusions about which methods, facts, and theories have been validated by research; (2) Academic institutions and professional societies formed to advance knowledge within an area of research, maintain the integrity of the research process, and organize the professional lives of related researchers serve as indispensable venues within which scholars circulate research findings and debate their interpretations. Sec. 3345.81. The board of trustees of each state institution of higher education, as defined in section 3345.011 of the Revised Code, and the board of trustees or other governing authority of each private institution of higher education that holds a certificate of authorization issued under section 1713.02 of the Revised Code, shall adopt a grievance procedure by which a student, faculty member, or instructor may seek redress for an alleged violation of any of the rights specified by the institution’s policy adopted under section 3345.80 of the Revised Code. Each board of trustees or other governing authority shall provide students, faculty, and instructors with notice of the rights and grievance procedure by publication in the institution’s course catalog, student handbook, and web site.

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AMERICAN COUNCIL ON EDUCATION: STATEMENT ON ACADEMIC RIGHTS AND RESPONSIBILITIES Intellectual pluralism and academic freedom are central principles of American higher education. Recently, these issues have captured the attention of the media, political leaders and those in the academy. This is not the first time in the nation’s history that these issues have become public controversies, but the current interest in intellectual discourse on campuses suggests that the meaning of these terms, and the rights and responsibilities of individual members of the campus community, should be reiterated. Without question, academic freedom and intellectual pluralism are complex topics with multiple dimensions that affect both students and faculty. Moreover, America’s colleges and universities vary enormously, making it impossible to create a single definition or set of standards that will work equally well for all fields of academic study and all institutions in all circumstances. Individual campuses must give meaning and definition to these concepts within the context of disciplinary standards and institutional mission. Despite the difficulty of prescribing a universal definition, we believe that there are some central, overarching principles that are widely shared within the academic community and deserve to be stated affirmatively as a basis for discussion of these issues on campuses and elsewhere. —American higher education is characterized by a great diversity of institutions, each with its own mission and purpose. This diversity is a central feature and strength of our colleges and universities and must be valued and protected. The particular purpose of each school, as defined by the institution itself, should set the tone for the academic activities undertaken on campus. —Colleges and universities should welcome intellectual pluralism and the free exchange of ideas. Such a commitment will inevitably encourage debate over complex and difficult issues about which individuals will disagree. Such discussions should be held in an environment characterized by openness, tolerance and civility. —Academic decisions including grades should be based solely on considerations that are intellectually relevant to the subject matter under consideration. Neither students nor faculty should be disadvantaged or evaluated on the basis of their political opinions. Any member of the campus community who believes he or she has been treated unfairly on academic matters must have access to a clear institutional process by which his or her grievance can be addressed. —The validity of academic ideas, theories, arguments and views should be measured against the intellectual standards of relevant academic and professional disciplines. Application of these intellectual standards does not mean that all ideas have equal merit. The responsibility to judge the merits of competing academic ideas rests with colleges and universities and is determined

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by reference to the standards of the academic profession as established by the community of scholars at each institution. —Government’s recognition and respect for the independence of colleges and universities is essential for academic and intellectual excellence. Because colleges and universities have great discretion and autonomy over academic affairs, they have a particular obligation to ensure that academic freedom is protected for all members of the campus community and that academic decisions are based on intellectual standards consistent with the mission of each institution. June 23, 2005 The following organizations have endorsed this statement: American Association of Community Colleges American Association of State Colleges and Universities American Association of University Professors American Council on Education American Dental Education Association American Political Science Association Association of American Colleges and Universities Association of American Law Schools Association of American Universities Association of Catholic Colleges and Universities Association of Governing Boards of Universities and Colleges Association of Higher Education Facilities Officers Association of Jesuit Colleges and Universities The College Board

College Student Educators International College and University Professional Association for Human Resources Council for Advancement and Support of Education Council for Christian Colleges and Universities Council for Higher Education Accreditation Council for Opportunity in Education Council of Graduate Schools Council of Independent Colleges EDUCAUSE National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities National Association of State Universities and Land-Grant Colleges National Association of Student Personnel Administrators University Continuing Education Association

Note American Council on Education. Statement on Academic Rights and Responsibilities. Reprinted with permission.

ANNOTATED SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

Sources marked with asterisks first appeared in Academic Freedom: A Guide to the Literature. Compiled by Stephen H. Aby and James C. Kuhn IV. Copyright © 2000 Stephen H. Aby and James C. Kuhn IV. Reproduced with permission of Greenwood Publishing Group, Inc., Westport, CT.

Books, Articles, and Reports Aby, Stephen H., and James C. Kuhn, IV, eds. Academic Freedom: A Guide to the Literature. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2000. 225p. Index. (Bibliographies and Indexes in Education, Number 20). ISBN 0-313-30386-X. Although this annotated bibliography covers a broad range of books, articles, and Web sites on academic freedom in historical perspective, two of the chapters relate more directly to the content of the debate over the Academic Bill of Rights. Specifically, entries in chapter six (‘‘Current Issues and General Trends’’) and chapter seven (‘‘Academic Freedom and the Culture Wars’’) relate to the debates over Accuracy in Academia, speech codes, and the pre-ABOR critiques, suggesting that higher education is populated by ‘‘tenured radicals.’’ Authors arguing this view include Lynne Cheney, Dinesh D’Souza, Les Csorba, Roger Kimball, Charles Sykes, and Steven Balch, among others. Other authors in this chapter challenge the conservative critiques of higher education and advance their own criticisms of the conservative agenda in education. Some of these authors include Jordan Kurland, Ellen Schrecker, Nadine Strossen, Henry Giroux, Sara Diamond, Stanley Aronowitz, Cary Nelson, and Patricia Aufderheide, among others. Reading through these summaries, one will see many arguments similar to those in the ABOR debate, suggesting some historical continuity in the debates about the politics of higher education and academic freedom. American Association of University Professors. ‘‘On ‘Accuracy in Academia’ and Academic Freedom.’’ Academe 71(5): 1a, September–October 1985.* This report represents the AAUP’s response to and position on Accuracy in Academia, a watchdog group looking for faculty who, it alleges, disseminate misinformation. The AAUP considers Accuracy in Academia, an offshoot of Accuracy in Media, to be a threat to academic freedom. The organization attempts to recruit individuals to report on what faculty say in their classes. Faculty

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Annotated Selected Bibliography disseminating ‘‘misinformation’’ would be notified and asked to correct their errors. Otherwise, the organization would publish their errors. The AAUP’s position is threefold. First, the classroom must be protected as a place for the free and open expression of ideas, including ‘‘new or unpopular theories.’’ Spies in the classroom would discourage the free exchange of ideas, both for students and faculty. Second, the AAUP considers Accuracy in Academia presumptuous and ‘‘arrogant’’ to say that it can determine which ideas are ‘‘correct.’’ That is the job of university trustees and faculty colleagues engaged in peer evaluation. Third, it appears to the AAUP that Accuracy in Academia is most concerned with promoting its own rather narrow and sectarian political agenda. As always, the AAUP adheres to its 1940 Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure and related guidelines.

American Council of Trustees and Alumni. ‘‘How Many Ward Churchills?’’ May 2006. 54p. Available: http://www.goacta.org/whats_new/How%20Many%20Ward%20 Churchills.pdf. Accessed: September 16, 2006. The American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA) argues in this report that the bias and politicization of education that they say is reflected in the work of Ward Churchill is not unique. By browsing through the course catalogs, course descriptions, and faculty Web sites at a number of prominent institutions, ACTA found what it considers to be evidence of bias throughout higher education. Its charge is that rather than teaching courses and material in an impartial manner, too many faculty use their courses to push their political agendas and indoctrinate students. According to ACTA, the behavior of these faculty members infringes on the academic freedom of students and compromises the faculty’s obligation to teach objectively and not persistently to introduce material unrelated to their subjects. The charges of bias are centered on a number of specific themes that ACTA says are inappropriate and apparent in the course descriptions. These include sensitivity training, political activism, social justice, radical theories, and more. Copies of the brief course descriptions (with URLs) are appended, as is a list of the institution course descriptions that were browsed. Aufderheide, Patricia, ed. Beyond PC: Toward a Politics of Understanding. St. Paul, MN: Graywolf Press, 1992. 239p. ISBN 1-55597-164-4.* Included in this edited collection are reproduced articles, essays, and book chapters reflecting various perspectives on the political correctness (PC) debate. Focusing on higher education, most contributions address the debate over speech codes and free speech, the multiculturalization of the curriculum (and the alleged concomitant demise of the classics of Western culture), the lowering of academic standards, identity politics, and related topics. The contention of the PC critics is that speech codes limit the speech of both students and faculty, and that the multiculturalization of the curriculum narrowly redefines what knowledge should be taught, thus limiting the academic freedom of faculty and students. The academic ‘‘search for truth’’ is constrained by the ideological constraints of political correctness. Furthermore, the classics and great works of Western literature and culture (the ‘‘canon’’) are given less prominence in the curriculum, resulting in a lowering of curricular quality. Other contributors argue that the critique of PC on campus is a media-inspired myth, and that the broadening of the curriculum is appropriate and modest in its effect. Notable contributors include Nat Hentoff, Ruth Perry,

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Sara Diamond, George Will, Mortimer Adler, Molefi Asante, Michael B´erub´e, Todd Gitlin, Patricia Aufderheide, and Dinesh D’Souza, among others. Balch, Stephen H. and Herbert I. London. ‘‘The Tenured Left.’’ Commentary 82(4): 41–51, October 1986.* The authors charge that university campuses are where most of the political extremists in the United States are located. Evidence cited for this claim includes the following: a 1984 Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching survey of the political orientation of faculty members; new left-leaning scholarly journal titles (such as Dialectical Anthropology) and the influence and writings of Marxist and leftist scholars (such as Bertell Ollman and Frederic Jameson); new partisan or politically oriented courses in such areas as economics and black studies; the proliferation of peace studies programs; and a politicization of scholarly associations. Balch and London see in all of this a rise in ‘‘adversarial education’’ in which class, racial, and sociocultural differences and resentments are emphasized and even encouraged. Academic freedom is threatened by a parceling out of higher education resources with little regard for intellectual merit. The authors contend that academic freedom in its current form actually serves those groups that are the most vocal, assertive, or sizable. Berman, Paul, ed. Debating P.C.: The Controversy over Political Correctness on College Campuses. New York: Laurel, 1992. 338p. ISBN 0-44050-466-X.* According to Paul Berman, the political correctness debate began in 1990 when neoconservatives charged that campus leftists, both faculty and students, were radicalizing the curriculum and creating an atmosphere of intolerance on campus. The political correctness (PC) debate revolves around three major and related issues. First, PC critics argue that college campuses are becoming dominated by a radical multiculturalism that promotes ethnic separatism and is socially divisive. Second, and related to the first point, the classic works of Western literature (the ‘‘canon’’) are allegedly being devalued and replaced by radical, multicultural works that are not only of less-enduring quality, but also critical of Western culture. Third, critics argue that campus groups fighting racial, ethnic, and gender bias are passing speech and behavior codes that deny the free speech and academic freedom of many students and faculty. Berman’s edited collection presents a crosssection of participants and positions in this debate. Major sections address an overview of the debate, the canon, speech codes, a case study of the University of Texas, public schools and multiculturalism, and other diverse views. B´erub´e, Michael. What’s Liberal about the Liberal Arts? Classroom Politics and ‘‘Bias’’ in Higher Education. New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 2006. 344p. ISBN 0-393-06037-3. B´erub´e defends what is the promise of the liberal arts—that is, its dedication to cultivating critical thinking in its students. This enterprise depends on the free pursuit of knowledge by the faculty entrusted, by virtue of their training and position, with this responsibility. He makes this case in a couple of different ways. A number of the chapters recount, in some detail, how he teaches his classes (in literature) and deals with students in the process. Student questions, class dynamics, and the challenges presented by difficult readings and material are all discussed. Whether addressing literary issues relating to race, class, gender, or postmodernism, or teaching literary classics and cutting edge titles, B´erub´e provides what amounts to one faculty member’s dialog journal about how he presents

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Annotated Selected Bibliography ideas, challenges students, and adapts his teaching and interaction to their needs and the demands of a challenging liberal education. He refers to his own conceptualization of his approach to students as ‘‘reasonable accommodation,’’ drawing from the field of disability studies. This discussion not only gives insight into his teaching, but also indirectly provides no small defense of the value of such teaching (despite his presence on David Horowitz’s list of 101 most dangerous professors). Elsewhere, B´erub´e takes on, more directly, the assaults on academic freedom initiated most recently by Horowitz and various state legislatures that have proposed legislative versions of his Academic Bill of Rights. These efforts are, he argues at one point, the conservative right’s attempt to gain control over the one major cultural or political institution that has so far eluded its control.

Bollier, David. Silent Theft: The Private Plunder of Our Common Wealth. New York: Routledge, 2002. 260p. ISBN 0-415-93264-5. Bollier analyzes the threats to the free sharing of natural and intellectual resources that comprise the knowledge commons or the gift economy. Historically, these resources have been shared alongside goods and services that are traded in the market economy. The value of the gift economy, argues Bollier, is that this free exchange of knowledge or resources multiplies many times the collective benefit to and productivity of those who participate in it. As he puts it, gift economies are somewhat counterintuitive in that the more their resources are used or shared, the more they create. The free access has a multiplier effect on their further benefit and use. Scientific research has historically been a prime example, with scholars and researchers freely making their findings available for scrutiny and further exploration. This compounds the benefit that flows from their work. The current danger, according to Bollier, is in the increasing privatization of knowledge and resources that previously were part of the commons. This development can have a negative effect on the further development of knowledge. Examples are drawn from agricultural and medical research, the Internet, and higher education, among others. In the academy, corporate sponsorship and control of academic research can lead to restricted access to data and findings and the patenting and private control of the knowledge generated. Ultimately, the restricted access to this and other knowledge that was part of the commons will dampen their development. Burris, Val, and Sara Diamond. ‘‘Academic Freedom, Conspicuous Benevolence, and the National Association of Scholars.’’ Critical Sociology 18(3): 125–42, Fall 1991.* Burris and Diamond examine the network of neoconservative foundations (for example, Mellon-Scaife Family Trusts, John M. Olin Foundation, Adolph Coors Foundation, Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation) and think tanks (e.g., Heritage Foundation, American Enterprise Institute, Madison Center for Educational Affairs) that provide an ideological support structure for the National Association of Scholars (NAS). The authors describe these foundations and organizations and the thrust of their political activities since the mid-1980s. Particular focus is given to their activities in the area of higher education, where they have fought against multiculturalism, affirmative action, and political correctness. According to Burris and Diamond, the NAS and its supporters have tried to portray themselves as true supporters of academic freedom, higher standards, and intellectual diversity on campus, in contrast to what the neoconservatives characterize as the repressive and antidemocratic tactics of liberal, left, and radical faculty. The authors argue

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that this is part of a strategy of the neoconservatives to capture the intellectual and moral high ground in campus debates over policy, access, and curriculum. Burris and Diamond contend that these neoconservative groups support ‘‘private monied interests’’ at the expense of publicly supported education. Cheney, Lynne V. Telling the Truth: A Report on the State of the Humanities in Higher Education. Washington, DC: National Endowment for the Humanities, September 1992. 60p.* The former director of the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) here discusses what she contends is the politicization of scholarship and classroom teaching, citing such examples as campus speech codes and claims of undue pressure from feminist and leftist professors on students with differing political views. Cheney asserts that new theories or academic approaches to the issues of objectivity or universality in the pursuit of truth, such as poststructuralism or deconstruction, are dogmas that subvert teaching into mere indoctrination. Cheney goes on to discuss what she calls the ‘‘attack on standards’’ and claims that today’s universities come close to requiring allegiance to a political agenda from students while allowing professors broader freedom of speech and inquiry. In a chapter on academic freedom, the author refers to the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) 1915 code and its stressing of the importance of a disinterested pursuit of truth and knowledge, contrasting that with what she sees as today’s more common politicized approaches to scholarship. Discussing what she sees as ‘‘Europhobic’’ attempts to increase the multiculturalism of high-school curricula in New York and California, Cheney also cites the AAUP 1991 statement on the political correctness controversy as evidence of politicization of the humanities. Csorba, Les, III. Academic License: The War on Academic Freedom. Evanston, IL: UCA Books, 1988. 329p. ISBN 0-937-04711-2.* This is an edited collection of essays, most of which appear to have been originally presented at an Accuracy in Academia annual conference. The majority of the essays are critical of a perceived leftist ideological bias in universities. A common theme is that many of the radical leftists of the 1960s have become administrators and tenured faculty members in today’s universities and colleges. In their new positions, these leftists are imposing their ideological biases on administrative decisions, curriculum development, and classroom instruction. Rather than presenting the prescribed curriculum in a balanced manner, many faculty members are indulging their own political biases. This constitutes, say the critics, academic license, which is an abuse of academic freedom. In other cases, leftist faculty are developing curricula, such as Peace Studies or Women’s Studies, with a distinct leftist perspective. A number of the essays review particular cases in which conservative students and faculty members were allegedly denied their academic freedom or freedom of speech by leftist faculty and administrators. These include cases at Dartmouth, Fordham, University of Southern California, Stanford, State University of New York at Farmingdale, George Washington University, and the University of Colorado at Boulder, among others. A couple of the essays reflect opposing viewpoints. D’Souza, Dinesh. Illiberal Education: The Politics of Race and Sex on Campus. New York: The Free Press, 1991. 319p. ISBN 0-02-908100-9.*

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Annotated Selected Bibliography D’Souza’s work is primarily a critique of political correctness on college campuses and its effect on curricula, freedom of speech, tolerance for diverse opinions, admissions requirements, and scholarship. He is particularly critical of what he sees as a growing liberal consensus that constrains intellectual freedom on campus and hinders the achievement of excellence. This is reflected in campus speech codes, in preferential admissions, in a devaluation of the classics of Western literature and scholarship (the ‘‘canon’’), and in the ascendancy of postmodern literary criticism, multiculturalism, and Afrocentrism. These developments serve to limit the academic freedom of both faculty and students, and a number of cases are discussed, including those of Stephan and Abigail Thernstrom.

Free Exchange on Campus. ‘‘Facts Count: An Analysis of David Horowitz’s The Professors: The 101 Most Dangerous Academics in America.’’ May 2006. Available: http://images1. americanprogress.org/il80web20037/campusprogress/facts_count.pdf. Accessed: May 9, 2006. In response to the latest book by David Horowitz, The Professors: The 101 Most Dangerous Academics in America (see entry below), the organization Free Exchange on Campus (see the following section for a review of this Web site) undertook a critical evaluation of the facts reflected in his critiques of the ‘‘101 most dangerous academics in America.’’ In part one, the organization argues that Horowitz criticizes these faculty for exercising their free speech rights, particularly their rights within a marketplace of ideas. He does this by using manipulated and distorted facts, and by using faulty premises that colleges are not protecting students’ academic freedom and that students do not have the requisite criticalthinking skills to defend themselves against alleged indoctrination. Findings in the report focus on a lack of evidence, problems in argumentation, and faulty premises. In part two, which makes up most of the report, specific charges against 23 of the professors are responded to by those professors and compared with demonstrated facts. Giroux, Henry A. ‘‘Teaching in the Age of ‘Political Correctness.’’’ The Educational Forum 59(2): 130–39, Winter 1995.* Conservatives argue that leftist and radical academics are undermining standards of excellence by promoting open admissions, multicultural curricula, and affirmative action. They argue further that these radical academics attack academic freedom by politicizing the curriculum. That is, their teaching is supposedly guided by a desire to promote radical social change, rather than by a desire to seek the truth. This has led to censorship of the curricular classics (the ‘‘canon’’), as well as censorship of certain types of speech (hate speech). Giroux counters these arguments, however, by suggesting that all knowledge is socially selected and transmitted. One must necessarily see the connection between social and political power and the curricular knowledge that is considered legitimate. True intellectual freedom entails a full and open examination of the connections of power and knowledge. The cultural conservatives, by contrast, take for granted the origin and value of their knowledge, focusing only on its transmission. This serves to oppress students, deskill teachers, and fossilize knowledge. Gross, Neil, and Solon Simmons. ‘‘Americans’ Views of Political Bias in the Academy and Academic Freedom.’’ Working Paper, May 22, 2006. Available: http://www. aaup.org/surveys/2006Gross.pdf. Accessed: August 10, 2006.

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Based on phone surveys with 1,000 Americans age 18 and older, this study attempts to identify the degree of Americans’ concern over bias in the academy, academic freedom, and other related issues. The survey was undertaken in response to the controversy stirred up by the Academic Bill of Rights and is an attempt to determine the actual views of the public. Sponsored by the American Association of University Professors, the Spencer Foundation, and Harvard University, and conducted by Princeton Survey Research Associates International, the study reports interesting and sometimes contradictory results. On the one hand, rising tuition costs was the biggest concern for 42.8 percent of respondents, while concern over the alleged political bias of faculty was the biggest concern for only 8.5 percent of respondents. On the other hand, approximately 37 percent of respondents considered political bias a very serious issue, along with other issues. The public seems quite supportive (more than 70 percent) of the academy being free of political interference, and of the value of tenure in protecting academic freedom. At the same time, this group has reservations about faculty who support politically unpopular positions (such as opposition to the war in Iraq), support Islamic militants, or hold membership in radical political organizations like the Communist Party (which no longer exists). Clearly, then, the public has conflicted views over the appropriate extent of academic freedom and its protection. A significant percentage have confidence in colleges (ranked only behind confidence in the military), and another significant percentage believe a college professorship is a ‘‘very’’ or ‘‘somewhat’’ prestigious position. Not surprisingly, on many of these questions, there are interesting differences in responses based on age, education level, and party affiliation. In summary, the authors conclude that the furor over the Academic Bill of Rights is not a ‘‘tempest in a teapot,’’ and in fact there is something there, as qualified by the data. Hamilton, Neil. Zealotry and Academic Freedom: A Legal and Historical Perspective. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1995. 402p. ISBN 1-56000-205-0. The thesis of Hamilton’s book is that there have been seven waves of zealotry, with accompanying abridgements of academic freedom, in our country’s history between 1870 and 1970. These recur every 20 years or so, according to Hamilton. The historical examples that he cites and discusses include the following: religious fundamentalism of administrators and faculty (nineteenth century); unfettered capitalism of trustees and regents (late nineteenth century); patriotism of World War I; pre–World War II anticommunism; McCarthyism (late 1940s and early 1950s); and student activism of the 1960s. The discussions of these periods are supplemented by a chapter and additional commentary on what Hamilton refers to as the fundamentalism of the radical American left. Other chapters address similarities in the waves of zealotry, as well as the meaning and defense of academic freedom. A number of later chapters examine judicial decisions related to the First Amendment and academic freedom. Herman, Deborah M., and Julie M. Schmid, eds. Cogs in the Academic Classroom: The Changing Identity of Academic Labor. Westport, CT: Praeger, 2003. 208p. ISBN 0-89789-814-1. Although these articles primarily focus on case studies of part-time graduate student, and faculty organizing at various institutions, the lessons they explicitly teach are invaluable and not limited to any specific setting. The first article

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Annotated Selected Bibliography highlights the risk of tenure-track and tenured faculty taking their freedoms for granted, at the expense of a growing number of part-time, adjunct, graduate student and term contract faculty. The authors of the case study on Ryerson provide insight into the dangers of faculty unions sacrificing progressive and collective values for more expedient negotiating positions that undermine union solidarity (as happened at Ryerson). The article on COGS (the graduate student union at Iowa) amplifies this message and discusses the insights into organizing gained by University of Iowa graduate students over numerous failed, but finally successful, organizing campaigns. Ultimately, their success can be attributed to their embracing their role as a labor organization and to their continuing commitment to progressive social values both inside and outside of the institution. Joe Berry’s article on part-time teaching in Chicago exposes the illusory nature of the view that graduate study was part of the academic guild or apprenticeship system, training students for future full-time positions. In fact, those positions are increasingly scarce, and the growth is in cheap, part-time academic labor, where organizing efforts need to be made. The article on the U.C. Santa Barbara graduate student unionization effort exposes the tensions between social movement unionism and business unionism. Graduate students at UCSB organized under the former model, though their effort ultimately was subsumed under the latter. The articles on the GEO graduate student union effort at Michigan talk of the inherent challenges of getting graduate students to overcome the view that they are ‘‘apprentices,’’ and identifying themselves instead as workers, which they most certainly are. They go on to talk about strategies for organizing and exerting pressure on the institution to respect the needs of graduate student employees, as well as the legal obstacles in gaining recognition. Throughout the collection, an underlying theme is the corporatization of higher education, the incredible growth and exploitation of contingent teaching labor, and the threats these developments pose for academic freedom and shared governance. Ultimately, a democratically based unionism is a means of protecting both contingent labor and the core values of the academy.

Horowitz, David. The Professors: The 101 Most Dangerous Academics in America. Washington, DC: Regnery Pub., 2006. 448p. ISBN 0-89526-003-4. The bulk of this volume is composed of three- to four-page profiles of the 101 academics identified in the title. Virtually all of these academics come from the social sciences and humanities, which Horowitz suggests are prone to faculty bias and extremism. The profiles themselves are based on both brief, selective quotes from things that the faculty members may have written or said, often in their public speech or extramural utterances, and characterizations of the faculty written by Horowitz or a research assistant. Many of the profiles refer not to in-class statements, but rather to extramural scholarship, statements, and writing. Horowitz is quite critical, however, of the theoretical orientations or subjects that many of the faculty teach (for example, postmodernism, ethnic studies, Middle East studies, peace studies, women’s studies, queer studies), as well as the allegedly lax standards that led to their tenure and promotion in numerous cases. The book’s introduction focuses on the Ward Churchill case at Colorado and selectively reviews some of the research on the party affiliation of faculty. The brief concluding chapters address why administrators do not uphold standards, and why the

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101 faculty identified in this volume are, supposedly, broadly representative of faculty. The Web site Free Exchange on Campus (see next section on Web sites) includes rebuttals from some of the faculty described in this volume. Jacoby, Russell. ‘‘The New PC: Crybaby Conservatives.’’ The Nation, April 4, 2005. Available: http://www.thenation.com/doc/20050404/jacoby. Accessed: September 16, 2006. Jacoby notes that, historically, attacks on ‘‘subversive’’ professors have come in waves, such as during World War I, the Russian Revolution, and the Cold War. Nowadays, however, it is not Communists or anarchists who are too plentiful and a danger, but rather Democrats or liberals. Conservative critics of higher education have studied the voting patterns of some faculty at some institutions and found that they are disproportionately Democrats. This, they suggest, is prima facie evidence of bias in academe, and they argue for parity and redress of the imbalance. They want more conservative professors, or affirmative action for conservatives, and they want more of their preferred knowledge in the curriculum. They also want the government and the institutions themselves to impose this. This is the origin of the Academic Bill of Rights, which has been proposed in numerous state legislatures. Jacoby observes that such studies of voting patterns seem unconcerned about the more conservative leanings of engineering or business departments. Nor do such studies ever examine the assumption that one’s party affiliation has anything to do with the practice of one’s academic discipline. Even the American Council of Trustees and Alumni’s finding that half of students surveyed reported bias was flawed by a methodological vagueness in the questions asked. Anecdotal evidence, with all its flaws, is primary data at the Students for Academic Freedom Web site and its Academic Freedom Complaint Center. Ultimately, the conservative critics want to redefine academic freedom to include the students’ right to have all perspectives covered in all courses. Failure to do so would be a basis for a student challenging the professor and course. The faculty member’s academic freedom would be the casualty. Johnson, Benjamin, Patrick Kavanaugh, and Kevin Mattson, eds. Steal This University: The Rise of the Corporate University and the Academic Labor Movement. New York: Routledge, 2003. 265p. ISBN 0-415-93483-4. This volume’s 13 chapters are divided into three sections: The Rise of the Corporate University, Laboring Within, and Organizing. All of the chapters address, in various ways, the corporatization of universities in the United States, its deleterious effects, and the resistance of those negatively effected by this trend. Forprofit institutions, such as the University of Phoenix, proudly pursue a corporate model that disparages coursework designed to support a broad-based liberal education and instead aims to serve the immediate needs of industry. As other articles elaborate, the growth of merit pay, distance learning, and contingent faculty are further indications of higher education’s adoption of corporate models of management. Articles in section two provide case study details on the exploitation of faculty under a corporate model. Adjunct or part-time faculty have exploded in numbers, providing huge profit margins for universities that get them to teach courses for full tuition but vastly reduced salaries, benefits, and academic freedom. Similarly, the growing use of graduate teaching assistants has generated the graduate student unionization movement at such institutions as New York

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Annotated Selected Bibliography University or Yale University. Despite stereotypes that higher education is too liberal, university administrations fight unionization and even allegedly liberal faculty (for example, Yale) have opposed such efforts. As universities’ commitment to liberal education and shared governance give way to corporate decision making and profit generation, faculty, part-time faculty, and graduate students look to unionization as a means of protecting traditional values and their rights in an increasingly exploitative environment. Articles in section three address these themes.

Kimball, Roger. Tenured Radicals: How Politics Has Corrupted Our Higher Education. Rev. ed. Chicago: Elephant Paperbacks, 1998. 246p. ISBN 1-56663-195-5.* Kimball examines the culture wars in American higher education, contending that the traditional canon of Western scholarship and literature, most notably in the humanities, is being replaced by anti-Western, deconstructionist, postmodernist, poststructuralist, and multiculturalist theory and literature. This academic revolution is being championed by ‘‘tenured radicals’’ who are denying what Kimball argues is the best of what has been written and thought in Western culture. As a result, politics and ideology dictate what is considered legitimate knowledge in higher education, thereby constraining both the academic’s freedom to teach and the student’s freedom to learn. According to Kimball, this has led to the degradation and corruption of higher education. Klein, Daniel B., and Andrew Western. ‘‘Voter Registration of Berkeley and Stanford Faculty.’’ Academic Questions 18(1): 53–65, Winter 2004–2005. The authors conducted a voter registration study of faculty in a variety departments at Berkeley and Stanford to determine the ratios of registered Democrats to registered Republicans. After a brief review of prior studies on the topic, and a discussion of their own methodology, the authors report that the aggregate ratio of registered Democrats to Republicans ranged from 7:1 to 8:1. This was based on registration data obtained for approximately two-thirds of faculty included in the study. Data are presented by departments within groupings for the social sciences, humanities, hard sciences and mathematics, and the professional schools. There are further breakdowns by gender and academic rank. The authors state that discussing the meaning of these data is for another time, but then go on to speculate that lopsidedness in party registrations translates directly into inequities in departmental decision making over academic and personnel matters. These inequities are alleged to include minority dissenters being avoided, expelled from, or silenced in their departments. Larkin, Graham. ‘‘‘More Than a Stretch’: David Horowitz’s Imagined Supporters Speak Out.’’ Available: http://www.aaup-ca.org/larkin_morethanastretch.html. Accessed: January 16, 2007. Larkin responds to claims by David Horowitz that he vetted his Academic Bill of Rights with a number of left-wing academics and that, after making changes to the document, he had removed anything ‘‘that so much as irritated’’ them. Larkin asked the three academics (Stanley Fish, Todd Gitlin, and Michael B´erub´e) if this were so. Their responses were that, yes, they had responded to Horowitz, identifying problems they had with his ABOR. They elaborated further, however, that they continue to have problems with the ABOR and did not now endorse it. Each articulated some of the reasons why. According to Larkin, this example, along

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with others he provides, raises serious questions about Horowitz’s credibility and truthfulness. Lawrence, Malcolm. ‘‘Accuracy in Academia: Is It a Threat to Academic Freedom?’’ Vital Speeches of the Day 52(2): 44–49, November 1, 1985.* The President of Accuracy in Academia (AIA) denies that his organization threatens academic freedom, calls for the formation of campus chapters, and explains the liberal bias that his organization investigates and opposes in higher education. Criticism from the mainstream media and the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) is answered, with the text of an AIA document released in response to the official AAUP statement on AIA (see ‘‘On ‘Accuracy in Academia’ and Academic Freedom’’). Quotes from students from around the country who support AIA efforts and documented cases of bias or liberal political advocacy in courses and classrooms are provided. Lee, John. ‘‘The ‘Faculty Bias’ Studies: Science or Propaganda?’’ November 2006. Available: http://www.aft.org/pubs-reports/higher_ed/FacultyBiasStudies.pdf. Accessed: January 22, 2007. In research sponsored by the American Federation of Teachers and Free Exchange on Campus, Lee examines eight studies of purported faculty bias to verify whether the studies meet scientific criteria, both in their methodology and in the claims they make from the data. These eight studies represent the most widely circulated studies charging that faculty in higher education have a liberal bias, which they impose on the classroom and in the hiring and retaining of colleagues. Five criteria of objectivity, drawn from the U.S. Office of Management and Budget, were used: (1) can the study be replicated; (2) are clear definitions established; (3) does the study account for alternative explanations; (4) does the study draw logical conclusions from the evidence; and (5) does the study eliminate the possibility of bias? A detailed analysis is made of each study. Of the eight studies, none meet all of the research standards, three meet none of the standards, and three meet two of the standards, according to Lee. Two of the studies, one by Klein and Western and the other by the American Council of Trustees and Alumni (‘‘How Many Ward Churchills?’’), are described in this annotated bibliography. Martin, Randy, ed. Chalk Lines: The Politics of Work in the Managed University. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1998. 313p. ISBN 0-82232-249-8. That the academic world is changing, and in fact has changed, so remarkably in the past few decades is not up for debate. Exactly how change has occurred, and whether these changes have been for the good, is what is troubling. Chalk Lines provides, in one volume of essays, an exceptionally insightful overview of the many social, political, and economic factors influencing the evolution of higher education. Taken individually, each essay informs even casual readers on topics that should be central in discussions about the future of our academic world (for example, Aronowitz’s ‘‘Last Good Job in America,’’ Harvey and Moten’s ‘‘Doing Academic Work’’) and the future of our social world (for example, Montgomery’s ‘‘Education for Public Life,’’ and Hacker and Yankwitt’s ‘‘Education, Job Skills, or Workfare’’). Taken as a whole, the collection makes some sense of why and how education has taken a strong right turn toward corporatized management (‘‘it’s the economy, stupid’’), which centers around the exchange of currency at all levels

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Annotated Selected Bibliography of society. Each essay is accessible, regardless of the reader’s primary motivation to peruse its pages, and provides personal accounts, as well as informed arguments, about where higher education is headed. The volume is structured into three parts. Part I lays out ‘‘the whole business’’—providing an overview of the forces behind corporatizing the university. Part II details ‘‘the academy’s labor’’— explaining why even seasoned members of the professorate might have a difficult time explaining what they do. The part also reveals the complexity of academic work, identifying areas where constituencies within the academic community are often at political odds with each other. Part III provides specific examples of reactions within the academy when change is perceived as threatening, harmful, or ill-advised. Chalk Lines is a welcome addition to a growing list of sources for descriptions and explanations of our past and present working environment, predictions of the academy’s future, and examples of somewhat successful actions taken to preserve it. (annotation by David D. Witt)

Messer-Davidow, Ellen. ‘‘Manufacturing the Attack on Liberalized Higher Education.’’ Social Text 36: 40–80, Fall 1993.* The author charges that the right has invented its attack on higher education to effect ‘‘radical cultural change.’’ In addressing debates over political correctness and academic theories of poststructuralism, feminism, and Marxism, MesserDavidow puts these debates in the context of a history of the American conservative movement. The influence of cultural conservative thinkers and foundations is detailed here. Included in Messer-Davidow’s analysis are such figures as M. Stanton Evans, Stephen Balch, Paul Weyrich, and William F. Buckley (among others); and foundations such as Olin, Coors, Bradley, and Scaife. Particularly effective has been the establishment of policy-oriented think tanks, training institutes, and grassroots organizations in higher education, including the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, the Madison Center for Educational Affairs, the Leadership Institute, the National Association of Scholars, the Center for Individual Rights, and the Washington Legal Foundation, as well as such Heritage Foundation projects as the Bradley Scholars and Salvatori Center for Academic Leadership. Funding sources and activities of these organizations are detailed, as are the statements, publications, and policy decisions of Reagan and Bush-era appointees such as Lynne V. Cheney (National Endowment for the Humanities chair). Connections are drawn between right-wing foundations granting funds and organizations leveraging changes in higher education. The author’s ‘‘field research in conservative organizations’’ concludes that there are three main areas of attack on higher education: the manufacture of conservative victim stories; the push to revise curricula to emphasize conservative values; and a new focus on legal and grassroots change through direct mail, electronic bulletin boards (such as the National Review ‘‘Town Hall’’ system), and cable television (such as the Free Congress Foundation’s syndicated ‘‘National Empowerment Television’’). The author concludes by calling on progressive academics to engage more in activism and less in debate. Mohl, Raymond A. ‘‘The Culture Wars and the Universities.’’ Educational Forum 58(1): 15–21, Fall 1993.* Mohl suggests that the universities are embroiled in a battle over academic values (the ‘‘culture wars’’) and that academic freedom and the creation of new knowledge are at risk. Citing Lynne Cheney’s Telling the Truth (see above), a

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National Endowment for the Humanities report, Mohl points to a stream of conservative books contending that universities have become politicized and are suppressing academic freedom. Although he agrees that they are politicized, Mohl counters that it is the conservatives doing the politicization. Behind such books as Allan Bloom’s The Closing of the American Mind and E. D. Hirsch’s Cultural Literacy, cultural conservatives are reasserting that Western culture should be the shared body of knowledge. At the same time, they are opposing new topics and lines of inquiry in academia that may help generate new knowledge, expand what is considered legitimate knowledge, and challenge received wisdom. For Mohl, the academic values of freedom of inquiry and the creation of new knowledge must be defended against political intervention. Nelson, Cary. Manifesto of a Tenured Radical. New York: New York University Press, 1997. 243p. ISBN 0-81475-794-4 (cloth). Much of this volume addresses issues related to the ‘‘culture wars’’ of recent years, including the politics of the field of English, the debate over the literary canon, hate speech, and political correctness. All of these are invaluable in analyzing the battle of ideas and ideology in higher education. The essays in the last section, however, more explicitly address a couple of themes brought out in this current volume’s review of the Academic Bill of Rights debate. The final essays provide evidence for the increasing corporatization of higher education, reflected in part by the failure of the academic job market for humanities doctorates and the growing exploitation of graduate student contingent labor. In addition, the proponents of the Academic Bill of Rights, and their predecessors, have always argued that higher education is controlled by tenured radicals. Two of the essays in Nelson’s volume attempt to refute this view and explore the conservative and hierarchical view of the Modern Language Association’s leadership in protecting the privileges of tenured faculty and ignoring the exploitation of graduate students. Furthermore, at Yale University, where graduate students were attempting to unionize in the mid-1990s for better wages and working conditions, the faculty actively undermined the graduate student effort. This was done by faculty who were considered, in many cases, to be progressive scholars in their fields of study. These examples reinforce a theme that Nelson argues relentlessly—that is, faculty no longer have the luxury of limiting their activism to purely scholarly pursuits, while simultaneously refusing to engage in the public sphere of debate over the future of higher education. Nelson, Cary, ed. Will Teach for Food: Academic Labor in Crisis. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997. 308p. ISBN 0-81663-034-8. One of the leading indicators of the undermining of academic work in universities is the growing use and exploitation of graduate student and part-time faculty labor. This major theme is illustrated here with articles on the Yale graduate student unionization effort and strike in the mid-1990s, and on the growing use and exploitation of part-time faculty in community colleges, colleges, and universities. The underlying thread throughout this edited collection is the corporatization of the university and the accompanying efforts to control its educated labor. Articles on the Yale graduate student strike detail the struggle of its graduate students to unionize for better pay, benefits, and control over their work. Nationally, graduate students provide a growing amount of cheap teaching labor

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Annotated Selected Bibliography on universities, which profit greatly from their employment. Although Yale and other administrations argue that graduate students’ teaching is part of their apprenticeship and education, and therefore not employment, Yale’s accompanying attacks on other campus staff unions suggests other motivations for resisting graduate student unionization. The articles in part two of this volume continue the theme of the undermining of academic labor. This trend is reflected in the increasing use of cheap, part-time faculty labor in universities, and the rapid shrinking of full-time tenure-track faculty positions. Part-time faculty make up an instructional reserve army that can teach many of the same classes as tenure-track faculty for a fraction of the cost and usually with no benefits, while students continue to pay full tuition. The continued overproduction of postgraduate-degreed students in a declining market provides a reserve pool of under- and unemployed educated labor that depresses wages for all faculty and undermines their academic freedom.

Nelson, Cary, and Stephen Watt, eds. Office Hours: Activism and Change in the Academy. New York: Routledge, 2004. 223p. ISBN 0-41597-185-3 (paperback). The essays that comprise this volume address the threats to the academy at both the macro or structural level and the micro level. The key structural threat is the increasing corporatization of higher education, which is manifested in both the bottom-line management of institutions and more specifically, as is illustrated here, in the growth and exploitation of contingent academic labor. At the micro level, this trend manifests itself in the deterioration of the academic labor market for new doctorates, particularly in the humanities. This, in turn, aggravates the debt level incurred by those students persisting in this increasingly competitive race for scarce faculty positions. Those who fail in this pursuit are often faced with staggering debt, and possibly a future of low-paid part-time instruction, which will ensure their inability to repay that debt. In light of these developments, all of which are addressed in various chapters, faculty in humanities disciplines often persist in an outmoded apprenticeship model for graduate training. Ignoring the structural changes in higher education, they often fail to make common cause with the many graduate students who lose out in the new academy. As is pointed out in numerous essays here, faculty members harm both their students and their disciplines if they pursue only their short-term interests in an academic hierarchy. Other essays are more optimistic in presenting alternative models for supporting graduate students and in describing graduate student unionization movements (such as at Illinois). The growing corporatization of universities manifests itself in many ways, and it creates added pressures on what were traditional academic structures and functions, such as graduate training. As a result, new forms of activism are required of campus members to resist the trend. This book discusses some of that resistance and details some of the elitist academic behaviors that might constitute ‘‘fiddling while Rome burns.’’ Parenti, Michael. ‘‘The Myth of the Liberal Campus.’’ Humanist 55(5): 20–23, September/ October 1995.* Parenti disputes the claim of conservatives that most American universities are places where leftist views predominate. Evidence is provided to the contrary that anticapitalist views were historically suppressed in higher education, that leftleaning professors have often been fired in the years since World War I, and that

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university administrations engaged in repressive tactics in response to protests of the 1960s. Schultz, David. ‘‘The Corporate University in American Society.’’ Logos 4(4): Fall 2005. Available: http://www.logosjournal.com/issue_4.4/schultz.htm. Accessed: August 29, 2006. Schultz argues that the American university historically has been committed to two separate mandates: workforce training and education for democratic citizenship. The first broad mandate is rooted in the education philosophy and practice of Horace Mann, who started compulsory public education in Massachusetts as a means of preparing an uneducated citizenry for work in the growing industrial economy. On the other side, John Dewey saw education as a means of personal growth and development, as well as a means of preparing educated citizens for a democratic society. Both of these demands on higher education have operated in a sort of peaceful coexistence or tension, until recently. The declining support of public education by states has led to the growth of the corporate university, increasingly reliant on private money, bottom-line values, and a utilitarian view of schooling as training for work. Washburn, Jennifer. University, Inc.: The Corporate Corruption of American Higher Education. New York: Basic Books, 2005. 326p. ISBN 0-46509-051-6. Washburn’s book is an expos´e on the growing corporatization of universities and the increasing privatization of the knowledge and research created there. Washburn reviews the long history of the tensions between the academy and business and industry. One of the more recent causes of the growing entanglement of corporations and the university was the Bayh-Dole Act in Congress, which facilitated the privatization and marketing of university research. The bulk of the book details numerous examples of how knowledge and research, which used to be created for the public domain and the public good, has increasingly become owned by private corporations. As Washburn points out, this hampers the overall research climate by restricting access to critical new knowledge, which previously had been more readily accessible as part of the information commons. More dangerous, the growing control of this research by corporations threatens to bias both the subjects researched and the findings that faculty researchers arrive at. Corporate-sponsored and -controlled research may be aimed more at return on investment than on generating fundamental and open research for the advancement of knowledge. Many of the examples Washburn uses to illustrate these trends are drawn from the biomedical and health sciences. She concludes by providing other examples of the increasing corporatization of universities, such as the growing use of part-time faculty and graduate student labor. A number of suggestions for reform are proposed. Williams, Jeffrey, ed. PC Wars: Politics and Theory in the Academy. New York: Routledge, 1995. 340p. LC 94-3735. ISBN 0-41591-072-2.* Included in this edited collection are separately authored chapters discussing the origins, manifestations, and consequences of the antipolitical correctness movement. The chapters are divided into three sections: the campaign against political correctness (PC); the trouble with theory; and othering the academy. As Joan Wallach Scott succinctly points out in her essay (‘‘The Campaign Against Political Correctness: What’s Really At Stake’’), the PC debate is really over what

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Annotated Selected Bibliography counts as legitimate knowledge within the academy. Scott and other contributors argue that the anti-PC movement is attempting to discredit contemporary, critical theories such as postmodernism, poststructuralism, deconstructionism, and multiculturalism. By labeling such perspectives as extremist, opposed to objective truth, and nihilistic, the anti-PC movement delegitimizes the teaching, research, and writing of faculty from these theoretical perspectives. This poses a threat to their academic freedom and, as a result, could limit the diversity of ideas in the academy. Articles in the last two sections focus on the theoretical and cultural developments that provide a broad context for the PC debate.

Zipp, John F., and Rudy Fenwick. ‘‘Is the Academy a Liberal Hegemony? The Political Orientations and Educational Values of Professors.’’ Public Opinion Quarterly 70(3): 304–26, Fall 2006. Drawing on national data sets tapping faculty values and political orientations, the authors attempt to answer two key questions underlying the debate over the Academic Bill of Rights: (1) have faculty become increasingly liberal, and (2) do liberal faculty attempt to indoctrinate their students? Data were drawn from two respected national data sets of faculty values: the National Surveys of Faculty, sponsored by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching; and the General Social Surveys. Contrary to the stereotypes put forth by conservative critics of higher education faculty, the authors found that (1) faculty are becoming slightly more centrist or moderate in their political orientations and values, and (2) liberal faculty seem more committed to traditional goals of higher education, such as ‘‘appreciation of literature and the arts, creative thinking, and the free exchange of ideas’’ (p. 320). Regarding political orientations, the authors found significant variations by type of institution, age, and gender. For example, the most conservative faculty, as it turns out, are at the community college level, which serves the largest number of students. Also contradictory is the fact the while female faculty are more liberal than males, younger faculty are more conservative than older faculty. Ironically, the data indicate that it is conservativeleaning faculty, not liberals, who are less supportive of the free exchange of ideas and more supportive of transmitting or shaping the values of their students.

Web Sites AAUP. American Association of University Professors. Available: http://www.aaup.org/ aaup. Accessed: November 25, 2006. The AAUP’s Web site includes copies of association guidelines on dozens of subjects related to academic freedom, shared governance, tenure, due process, contingent faculty, and more. Also included are numerous documents critiquing the Academic Bill of Rights (ABOR) and its accompanying legislative initiatives. The AAUP’s initial statement in opposition to the ABOR (see chapter 3) can be found linked off of the ‘‘Issues in Higher Education’’ page. A more comprehensive set of documents and links relating to the ABOR are located under the Web site’s ‘‘Government Relations’’ page, titled ‘‘Resources on the Academic Bill of Rights’’ (http://www.aaup.org/ AAUP/GR/ABOR/Resources/). These include summaries of the state legislative initiatives, links to relevant AAUP documents, faculty senate resolutions opposing the ABOR, and numerous articles analyzing and criticizing the ABOR.

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AAUP. State Legislation Proposing an ‘‘Academic Bill of Rights.’’ Available: http://www. aaup.org/AAUP/GR/ABOR/aborstateleg.htm. Accessed: November 30, 2006. This page at the AAUP Web site provides brief descriptions of the ABORinspired legislation proposed in various states. It includes a link to the text of the legislation and, in some cases, links to related documents and testimony. ACTA. American Council of Trustees and Alumni. Available: http://www.goacta.org/ flashindex.html. Accessed: November 26, 2006. The ACTA Web site states that its mission is ‘‘to support liberal arts education, uphold high academic standards, safeguard the free exchange of ideas on campus, and ensure that the next generation receives a philosophically-balanced, openminded, high-quality education at an affordable price.’’ Among its concerns is a lack of ‘‘intellectual diversity on campus,’’ which is similar to charges raised by David Horowitz. This charge is reflected in at least two of its reports, ‘‘How Many Ward Churchills?’’ (see books, articles, and reports in the annotated bibliography) and Intellectual Diversity: Time for Action, which are available on the Web site. Online copies of the organization’s newsletter are also available, as is testimony given at recent hearings. AFT. American Federation of Teachers. Available: http://www.aft.org/topics/academicfreedom/index.htm. Accessed: November 26, 2006. The AFT Web site includes two sections of special interest to those researching the Academic Bill of Rights (ABOR). First, its Academic Freedom in Higher Education page, linked above, includes critiques of the ABOR, an AFT convention resolution on the ABOR, testimony before the Pennsylvania Select Committee on Academic Freedom in Higher Education by three leaders of Pennsylvania faculty associations or unions (William Scheuerman, Karen Schermerhorn, William Cutler), and the text of a radio commentary on the ABOR by Scheuerman. The Higher Education Web page includes an opposition toolkit for those opposing the ABOR locally, an academic freedom forum, and a link to the Web site Free Exchange on Campus (see below), which is co-sponsored by the AFT. AIA. Accuracy in Academia. Available: http://www.academia.org/. Accessed: November 26, 2006. The AIA Web site critiques what it identifies as political bias in higher education, indoctrination of students, discrimination against students, and violations of free speech on campus. Among the many features on its Web site is its campus report online, which includes write-ups of alleged academic bias on a range of topics such as speech codes, political correctness, the teaching of history, and international affairs, among other things. The Web site also includes specific references to the work of David Horowitz and the ABOR. There are book reviews, transcripts and audio lectures, lists of upcoming AIA-sponsored events, links to other Web sites (for example, Students for Academic Freedom, the Cato Institute), and more. California Conference of the American Association of University Professors. Available: http:// www.aaup-ca.org/. Accessed: November 26, 2006. The California Conference represents both public and private American Association of University Professors (AAUP) chapters and members in the state. California was one of the earliest states to introduce Academic Bill of Rights (ABOR)

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Annotated Selected Bibliography legislation, and the state Conference has developed an extensive Web page of information on the subject (http://www.aaup-ca.org/abor.html). Included here are critiques of the California bill, more general critiques of the ABOR, an analysis of Horowitz’s funding sources, faculty senate resolutions, newspaper articles, and all of the exchanges between Graham Larkin and David Horowitz (http:// www.aaup-ca.org/larkin_horowitz.html; read the first three exchanges in chapter 4), among other items. There are links to other organizations on the Web (for example, Democracy Now; the Center for Campus Free Speech) that analyze the ABOR.

The Chronicle of Higher Education. Available: http://chronicle.com/. Accessed: November 27, 2006. The Chronicle of Higher Education is one of the two major online sources of daily higher education news, along with Inside Higher Ed (see below). Unlike the latter source, the Chronicle exists in both print and online form and is available by subscription only. As of this writing, there were more than 50 articles, including a few letters to the editor on the ABOR. The articles are spread across various subsections of the Chronicle, including Government & Politics, the Faculty, Research and Books, the Chronicle Review-Forum, and more. The Web site allows Boolean searches (for example, Horowitz and AAUP) to find articles linking key concepts. This is an essential site for up-to-the-minute tracking of the ABOR debate, its key protagonists, and the legislation the ABOR has inspired. Coalition on the Academic Workforce. Available: http://www.academicworkforce.org/ index.cfm. Accessed: November 27, 2006. A key alternative theme of some of the chapters in this book is the corporatization of higher education, with one major indicator being the increasing reliance on part-time or contingent faculty. The coalition is ‘‘concerned about the dramatic increase in the use of ‘contingent,’ or non-tenure-track, faculty appointments. Many faculty with such appointments are employed part-time and lack adequate pay, benefits, and professional support. Contingent faculty members employed full time are often excluded from the governance processes at their institutions and often serve on limited-term appointments.’’ These are features of an increasingly corporatized higher education, and they threaten academic quality and academic freedom. The Web site serves as a clearinghouse for information on these developments, and it also evaluates their consequences. College Freedom: A Website about Academic Freedom. Available: http://collegefreedom. org/. Accessed: November 26, 2006. Created by John K. Wilson, this Web site addresses a broad range of issues related to academic freedom, including censorship, legal decisions, the college press, academic freedom and religion, K–12 academic freedom, and international academic freedom. There is an interview with David Horowitz that was conducted by Wilson, as well as responses from various faculty members identified as dangerous in Horowitz’s book, The Professors (see books, articles, and reports in the annotated bibliography). The site also includes Academic Bill of Rights–related links to the Students for Academic Freedom Web site, as well as the American Association of University Professors Web pages dealing with the subject. Wilson provides links to online histories of academic freedom, as well as a bibliography for further reading.

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FIRE. Foundation for Individual Rights in Education. Available: http://www.thefire.org/. Accessed: November 29, 2006. FIRE is an academic freedom organization with a significant focus on speech codes on campuses. Included here are not only articles and press releases written by FIRE, but also links to articles from other sources, such as newspapers, dealing with issues of free speech on campus. A search of the Web site on the Academic Bill of Rights returns approximately 150 items, while a search on David Horowitz or the American Association of University Professors retrieves about 50 each. The Web site also includes a section of online contributions by staff members, The Torch. Free Exchange on Campus. Available: http://www.freeexchangeoncampus.org/. Accessed: November 26, 2006. The Free Exchange Web site was formed by a coalition of interest groups opposed to the Academic Bill of Rights and its accompanying legislative initiatives. Coalition members include the American Association of University Professors, the American Federation of Teachers, the National Education Association, the American Civil Liberties Union, and the American Library Association, among others. The Web site includes regular stories and blogs on the ABOR, interviews with faculty involved in the issues, frequently asked questions, legislative testimony, and a Horowitz Fact Checker page (which includes responses from faculty targeted in his book, The Professors). Two of its reports include Campus Voices: Students and Faculty Speak Out on the Free Exchange of Ideas on Pennsylvania Colleges and Universities, and Facts Count: An Analysis of David Horowitz’s ‘‘The Professors.’’ There are also pages devoted to academic freedom, free speech, real issues in education (for example, college affordability), and Horowitz & Co. Horowitz Funding Sources. Trent Douthett, University of Cincinnati AAUP. Available: http://www.aaupuc.org/horowitz.htm. Accessed: November 27, 2006. In preparation for the Ohio legislative hearings over Senate Bill 24, the Ohio Academic Bill of Rights, the University of Cincinnati American Association of University Professors researched the foundation funding sources for David Horowitz’s Center for the Study of Popular Culture (now the David Horowitz Freedom Center). The report, dated April 6, 2005, draws information on funding sources from the foundation’s Web sites and from various watchdog organizations that have analyzed the funding sources and their agendas. Foundations funding Horowitz include the Bradley, Scaife, and Olin foundations, among others. Some of the watchdog Web sites cited and drawn on by Douthett include Media Transparency (see below) and People for the American Way. Inside Higher Ed. Available: http://insidehighered.com/. Accessed: November 27, 2006. Inside Higher Ed is one of the two major online news sources for higher education, along with The Chronicle of Higher Education (see above). Because of the prominence of Academic Bill of Rights (ABOR) legislation in the last three years, and its potential impact on higher education, Inside Higher Ed has run almost 80 stories on the ABOR alone. These are searchable on the Web site’s search engine, and the stories found would allow one to track the debate over the ABOR, state legislation, and David Horowitz. Other key actors in the debate, such as the American Association of University Professors (AAUP), can be searched as well.

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Annotated Selected Bibliography One can search for articles containing multiple subject terms, using the ‘‘and’’ (Boolean) search command (for example, AAUP and Horowitz).

Media Matters for America. Available: http://mediamatters.org. Accessed: November 27, 2006. Media Matters is an information and research Web site that looks for bias and misrepresentation of fact in the conservative media. Included among its investigative subjects is David Horowitz, along with a quite specific review of and series of exchanges on The Professors. At dispute is how erroneous the characterizations are of the 101 professors profiled in Horowitz’s book. Media Transparency. Available: http://www.mediatransparency.org. Accessed: November 27, 2006. Media Transparency attempts to document the connections between funding sources for conservative media and activities, and the grant recipients themselves. Not only are dollar amounts identified, but also the political interests of the parties involved. A searchable database of funding amounts, grantees, and recipients is available. There are some original research articles, a list of issues (with links to research), as well as articles found elsewhere on the Web. The David Horowitz Freedom Center (formerly the Center for the Study of Popular Culture) is profiled, as are the American Council of Trustees and Alumni and the American Legislative Exchange Council (a conservative legislative group to whom Horowitz has presented his Academic Bill of Rights [ABOR] proposal), both of which have connections to the ABOR debate. NAS. National Association of Scholars. Available: http://www.nas.org/. Accessed: November 27, 2006. Among other features, the NAS Web site includes, as of this writing, links to about 15 items each on the Academic Bill of Rights (ABOR) and David Horowitz. Approximately half of the entries are in an online forum; most are supportive of the ABOR and critical of an alleged leftist bias on campuses. The various entries address recent events, such as the American Council on Education’s statement on ‘‘Academic Rights and Responsibilities.’’ Also included are book reviews and an index to the National Association of Scholars journal, Academic Questions. NEA. National Education Association. Available: http://www2.nea.org/he/. Accessed: November 27, 2006. The NEA Web site includes a higher education Web page that focuses on numerous critical issues, including academic freedom and the Academic Bill of Rights (ABOR). A search on the ABOR or David Horowitz retrieves dozens of articles, including NEA critiques of and testimony on proposed state legislation, ongoing developments in various legislatures that have introduced such bills, and links to related Web sites (such as Free Exchange on Campus, of which NEA is a co-sponsor). There is a table tracking the legislation in the various states, with the most recent updates being from the spring of 2006. Students for Academic Freedom. Available: http://www.studentsforacademicfreedom.org/. Accessed: November 27, 2006. This is the primary Web site developed to advocate and publicize the Academic Bill of Rights (ABOR) and its various initiatives. Developed by David Horowitz, its stated ‘‘goal is to end the political abuse of the university and to restore

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integrity to the academic mission as a disinterested pursuit of knowledge.’’ Included here are articles on ABOR developments, written by Horowitz and some others; an academic freedom complaint center (with postings from students, arranged by institution, on alleged abuse); texts of the ABOR and the Student Bill of Rights; lists and copies of state legislation; a model resolution and bill distributed by the American Legislative Exchange Council; various reports on hearings; Horowitz legislative testimony; Web links to other conservative organizations; and more. Many of the articles are posted on a related Web site at FrontPageMagazine.com. Workplace: A Journal for Academic Labor. Available: http://www.cust.educ.ubc.ca/workplace/. Accessed: November 29, 2006. Workplace is a somewhat irregularly published online journal of articles focusing on various aspects of the corporatization of higher education, which is a theme raised by numerous authors or cited works in this volume. Some of the Web site’s articles address issues of faculty and graduate student employee work in an increasingly corporate-oriented university setting. Other articles focus on issues such as copyright and intellectual property, the commercialization of knowledge, and more. The Web site includes book reviews, as well as a ‘‘Breaking News’’ items related to the Academic Bill of Rights and its state legislative initiatives, graduate student organizing, academic freedom violations, denial of visas to international scholars, and academic strikes, among other things.

INDEX

AAUP. See American Association of University Professors (AAUP) ABOR. See Academic Bill of Rights (ABOR) Aby, Stephen H., 203 Academic Bill of Rights (ABOR), 175–77; on character of knowledge, 9, 12, 55; draft, 59–60; enforcement, 74–76, 77n6; funding, 130; goals, 1–2, 43–44, 59–64, 97; media on, 1; and spirit of the ’60s, 38–39; statistics in, 3–4, 73–74; strategy for defense against, 133 academic freedom: definition and principles of, 41, 43–45, 49, 175–78; history, 2–3, 19–20, 22; importance of, 50; of institutions, 26; permissible limits on, 26–28; politicization of, 13–14; in public interest, 20–22; roots, 4, 6 Academic Freedom: A Guide to the Literature (Aby and Kuhn), 203 Academic Freedom and Tenure in the Question for National Security (AAUP), 151 ‘‘Academic Freedom, Conspicuous Benevolence, and the National Association of Scholars,’’ 206 ‘‘Academic Freedom, Fragile as Ever’’ (Berub ´ e), ´ 4 Academic License: The War on Academic Freedom (Csorba), 207 academic planning, 13, 108, 114–15

accountability, 48–49, 108 Accuracy in Academia, 2, 17, 97, 132, 203, 213, 219 ‘‘Accuracy in Academia: Is It a Threat to Academic Freedom?’’ (Lawrence), 213 activism, faculty, 8, 96, 138, 141 Adamany, David, 153n24 Adams, Henry, 30 adjunct faculty, 12, 13, 23, 108, 113, 117–18 Adler vs. Board of Education (1952), 24 administrators: and academic planning, 108; authority, 115, 118; corporate philosophy, 116, 117; and funding of higher education, 113–14; and Ohio SB 24, 125; and purpose of higher education, 109–10 advocacy, 138, 141, 143–44 affirmative action, 47, 62, 97, 137, 140 African Americans, 36, 47 African-American Studies, 63 Air America (San Diego), 69, 77, 79 Alabama, 50 al-Arian, Sami, 78 Allen, Gerald, 50 American Association of University Professors (AAUP): on balance and diversity, 4, 53–57, 68; on character of knowledge, 9–10; and civil liberties, 128, 151; on faculty hearings, 22; on faculty responsibility, 30; founding, 2, 19–20, 144; and Horowitz-Larkin debate, 69; and Horowitz’s accusations

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of dishonesty, 77–79; Horowitz’s responses to, 57–65, 81–85; in Ohio, 126–27; ‘‘On ‘Accuracy in Academia’ and Academic Freedom,’’ 203; in Pennsylvania, 135, 141, 145; Redbook, 157; restatement of principles in 1925 Conference Statement, 177; statement on ABOR, 53–57; statistics on tenureand nontenure-track faculty, 103; subjects of cases, 25; survey on political bias, 92, 93; Web sites, 218, 219. See also Declaration of Principles on Academic Freedom and Academic Tenure (1915) (AAUP); Joint Statement on Rights and Freedoms of Students (AAUP); 1940 Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure (AAUP) American Association of University Professors California Conference (CA–AAUP), 70–71, 77, 219 American Association of University Professors Colorado Conference (AAUP–CO), 155, 161 American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), 127, 128–30 ‘‘The American College Teacher,’’ 94 American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA), 11, 13, 47–48, 97, 163, 204, 219 American Council on Education (ACE), 125, 201–2 American Federation of Teachers (AFT), 144, 145, 219 American Journal of Psychiatry, 102 American Psychiatric Association, 102 ‘‘Americans’ Views of Political Bias in the Academy and Academic Freedom’’ (Gross and Simmons), 7, 208 Andrews, John K., 59, 156, 157, 162–63 Arizona, 10, 31–32, 92 Armstrong, Gibson, 42–43, 134–36, 140, 143, 146, 149–51 Arnold, Ken, 156 Aronowitz, Stanley, 108 art history, 71–72 The Art of Political War and Other Radical Pursuits (Horowitz), 37, 44

Association for Cultural Interchange (ACI), 98 Association of American Colleges and Universities, 15n9, 22, 23, 177 Association of Pennsylvania State College & University Faculties (APSCUF), 135, 141, 145 Association of University Technology Managers (AUTM), 100 Aufderheide, Patricia, 204 Augustana University, 58 autonomy, institutional: AAUP on, 56–57, 63–64; and diversity programs, 62; in Germany, 18–19; Hofstadter on, 35; and legislation, 123; in Ohio, 128, 131; in United States, 26. See also self-governance, faculty Backward and Upwards (Brooks), 37 ‘‘bad tendency’’ argument, 23–24 Baggett vs. Bullitt (1964), 27 balance: AAUP on, 4, 53–57, 68; ABOR on, 4–6, 28–30, 59–63, 68, 69, 79–83; Horowitz-Larkin debate on, 5, 59–63, 67–69, 78–85, 87–90; and limits on academic freedom, 26–27; in Pennsylvania, 138–39, 148. See also diversity Balch, Stephen: and draft of ABOR, 59; and Horowitz’s response to AAUP, 57; importance of testimony, 144; on legislation, 6; on liberal faculty, 91; on Pennsylvania faculty, 46–47, 138–39; point of view at hearings, 152n22; on social and economic justice, 139–40; ‘‘The Tenured Left,’’ 205 Barnes, Fred, 37 Barnette, West Virginia State Bd. of Educ. v. (1943), 73 Bates College, 58 Bauerlein, Mark, 45, 142, 144, 152n22 Baxley, Dennis, 42 Bayh-Dole Act (1980), 100–101 The Bell Curve (Murray and Herrnstein), 98 Bemis, Edward, 18, 19 Berlin Wall mockup, 45–46 Berman, Paul, 205

Index Berub ´ e, ´ Michael, 4–6, 8, 10, 59, 205 Better World Project, 100 Beyond PC: Toward a Politics of Understanding (Aufderheide), 204 bias: AAUP statement on, 156; AAUP survey on, 92, 93; and conviction, 48; and hiring practices, 59, 64; and legislation, 123; student complaints about faculty, 74, 95–96, 121–22, 129–30; threat to higher education, 104. See also ideology, political Black, Hugo, 24 Black Panther Party, 37, 44 Bloom, Allan, 9, 36, 38 Bloomsburg campus, 139–40 Blumenthal, Max, 97, 98 boards of trustees, 11–12, 20, 116 Bobos in Paradise (Brooks), 37 Bok, Derek, 99–101 Bollier, David, 13, 206 Boston Globe, 97 Bowen, Blannie, 153n24 Bowen, Roger, 137 Bowling for Columbine, 146, 147 Bowling Green State University, 129 Bradley, Harry, 70n1, 97 Bradley, Lynde, 70n1, 97 Bradley Foundation, 97, 98 Brooks, David, 37 Brown, Burrell, 141, 145–46, 153n23 Brown University, 58–59, 73 Brush, Lisa D., 141, 152n23 Buckley, William F., 9, 32–34, 36–38 Bullitt, Baggett vs. (1964), 27 Burgan, Mary, 59 Burris, Val, 206 Bush, George W., 26, 37, 72, 77 business schools, 95, 98, 104 California SB–1335, 69, 71 California State University–San Marcos, 69 Call, Ryan, 155–57 ‘‘The Campus Blacklist’’ (Horowitz), 79–80, 83 campus construction, 13 careers, public service, 104 Carnegie Foundation, 95

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Cates, Gary, 187, 199 Center for the Study of Popular Culture: establishment and purpose, 97; funding, 70n1, 83–84, 86–87, 89–90, 97; and student complaints, 95; study, 67, 73, 93–94; on threat of liberal faculty, 91–98 Central State University, 127, 128 Chalk Lines: The Politics of Work in the Managed University (Martin), 213 Chambers, Whittaker, 32, 33 Cheney, Lynne, 97, 207 chilling effect, 25 Chodorov, Frank, 97 The Chronicle of Higher Education, 1, 65, 74–75, 220 Churchill, Ward, 47, 91, 93. See also ‘‘How Many Ward Churchills?’’ (ACTA) Citibank policy, 104 The Closing of the American Mind (Bloom), 9, 36 Clough, Marshall, 158–62 Clover Foundation, 98 Coalition on the Academic Workforce, 220 Cogs in the Academic Classroom: The Changing Identity of Academic Labor (Herman and Schmid), 209 Cold War, 34 College Freedom: A Website about Academic Freedom, 220 colleges and universities. See for-profit colleges and universities; Ivy League schools; public colleges and universities; research universities; two-year colleges Colmes, Alan, 76n5 Colorado: ad hoc hearing on academic freedom, 156–57; alleged offenses in, 58; case study, 8; demographics, 159; funding of higher education in, 163; legislation, 7, 55–56, 57nn1–2, 59, 63, 64, 155–63; legislative session, 157–58; memo to presidents of colleges and universities in, 167; university policies in, 156. See also Colorado HB 04–1315

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Colorado Commission on Higher Education, 156 Colorado HB 04–1315, 165–67; comments before House Education Committee on, 168–71; hearing, 161–62; introduction, 158; meeting about, 158–61; statement on, 167–68 Colorado HJR 04–1003, 157–58, 163–65 Colorado Opportunity Fund, 155 Colorado Revised Statute 24–125.5, 57nn1–2 Colorado SJR 04–033, 162–63, 172–73 Colorado Taxpayers Bill of Rights (TABOR) Amendment, 155, 163 Columbia University, 35, 101, 146, 147 Columbus Dispatch, 4, 42 communism, 45–46, 93, 121 community engagement, 109, 119 computer-based instruction, 103, 117 computer science, 95 conservatives: and civil rights law, 47; in Colorado, 161; concern of, 10–12; culture war, 32, 35; and enforced diversity, 54; foundations, 97–99; and funding of higher education, 111; and Horowitz/Luntz study, 67; image, 36–38; label, 5; on postmodernism and relativism, 32–34, 36, 39; as procedural liberals, 50; statistics, 93–95, 98; on threat of liberal faculty, 91–98. See also neoconservatives; Republicans controversial material: AAUP on, 122–23, 142; Balch on, 139; and Brown, 146; Mumper on, 42, 122–23; Ohio universities on, 127, 128 Coors Foundation, 97 Cornell University, 36 ‘‘The Corporate University in American Society’’ (Schultz), 217 corporatization: effects on personnel, 113–17; and funding of higher education, 112; latent negative functions, 115–17; as philosophy of higher education, 113; shift toward, 109–11; and student demands, 39; threat of, 12–14, 98–104 Coughlin, Father, 142

Coulter, Ann, 41 Council on Social Work Education, 139 course descriptions, 11, 47–48, 139. See also curriculum Crow, Michael, 101 Csorba, Les, III, 207 ‘‘The Culture Wars and the Universities’’ (Mohl), 214 curriculum: ABOR on, 63, 72; authority over, 11–12, 19, 26, 39, 43, 129; and corporatization, 13, 113; in Germany, 18–19; Pennsylvania faculty on, 140; at Yale, 34. See also course descriptions; reading lists Curry, Lawrence, 44, 52n9, 136, 146–47, 149, 150 Cutler, William W., 153n23 Daily Princetonian, 98 David Horowitz Freedom Center. See Center for the Study of Popular Culture Debating P.C.: The Controversy over Political Correctness on College Campuses (Berman), 205 Declaration of Principles on Academic Freedom and Academic Tenure (1915) (AAUP), 19–23, 28, 139, 142 deconstructionism, 62, 88 ‘‘Defending Civilization: How Our Universities Are Failing America’’ (NAS), 97 Democrats: category in Horowitz’s studies, 78, 84; in Colorado, 163; and enforced diversity, 54; Harvey on, 77; labeling of, 4, 15n7, 93; Mumper on, 121; in Ohio, 123, 124; as one of two options, 72–73; in Pennsylvania, 46, 135, 136, 139, 150; statistics, 3–4, 73–74, 93–94. See also ideology, political; liberals Denver Post, 158 Depression, 2 Dewey, John, 33–34, 144 Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV) (American Psychiatric Association), 102 Diamond, Sara, 206 ‘‘Dirty 30,’’ 92

Index discipline, 129, 143 disciplines, academic, 94–95, 98, 104, 108. See also specific disciplines discrimination, employment, 47 dismissals, 2, 18, 22, 24, 129 Diven, Michael, 136 diversity: AAUP on, 4, 53–57, 68; ABOR on, 4–6, 28–30, 59–63, 68, 69, 79–83; Balch on, 140; in curriculum, 11–12; Declaration on, 22; definition, 82, 85; and funding of public institutions, 92; Horowitz-Larkin debate on, 5, 71–72, 75; Horowitz on intellectual, 77n6; legislation of, 81, 123; in Pennsylvania, 137, 141; Scheuerman on, 144. See also balance; pluralism doctrine of unconstitutional conditions, 24–25 Douglas, Justice, 24 Douthett, Trent, 221 D’Souza, Dinesh, 2, 207 due process, 8, 22, 23 Duke University, 64 Durango Herald, 158 early retirement, 118 economic justice, 139–40 economics, 33, 34, 103–4 economics (discipline), 73, 98 Economist, 99, 100 education, colleges of, 140 Eisenhower, Dwight D., 112 Eli Lilly and Company, 102 Ely, Richard, 18 Emory University, 45 employees, 20, 21, 23–24 engineering, 95, 104 English, 19, 29–30, 73 Enlightenment, 32, 33, 38, 43, 44, 50 equity, 82, 84 Escriva, Josemaria, 98 ethnic studies, 97 evaluation, peer, 4, 6 evolution, 19, 42 Facts Count, 93 ‘‘Facts Count: An Analysis of David Horowitz’s The Professors: The 101

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Most Dangerous Academics in America’’ (Free Exchange on Campus), 208 faculty: ABOR on authority of, 38; Buckley on role of, 33–34; complaints against in Pennsylvania, 41–42, 136–37; component groups, 19, 26; and computer-based instruction, 103; and corporatization, 12–13, 100–101; ‘‘dangerous,’’ 11; definition of academic freedom for in Pennsylvania, 150; as employees, 20, 21; enforced diversity of, 7, 53–54; ethics, 22–23, 26–28; in Germany, 18–19; grievance procedures for, 92; history in United States, 19; Horowitz on political ideology of, 3–5, 58–62, 65, 67, 68, 71–76, 76n1, 76n5, 77–80, 82–85, 87–98, 147–48; and Inter-University Council in Ohio, 125; job security, 117–18; privileges and responsibilities, 21–23, 25–28, 54–56, 61, 144; ratio of liberal to conservative, 98; recruitment in Colorado, 160; reductions, 113–19; role in modern university, 108–9; student perceptions of, 96; surveys of goals, 96; testimony in Pennsylvania, 138–39, 151; workloads, 122. See also adjunct faculty; part-time faculty; self-governance, faculty The ‘‘Faculty Bias’’ Studies: Science or Propaganda? (Lee), 15n6, 213 ‘‘Faculty Liberalism and the Corporate Control of Universities’’ (Fenwick and Zipp), 3 faculty senates, 127–28. See also selfgovernance, faculty Fahrenheit 9/11, 44, 129, 146–47 fairness, 84–85, 123 Federal Election Committee records, 139 Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies, 47 Fedor, Theresa, 124–25, 130–31 Feinberg Law, 24, 25 feminists, 36 Fenwick, Rudy, 3, 12–13, 218 Fienberg, Howard, 67–68 First Amendment, 23–26, 28, 73, 137. See also free speech

230

Index

Fish, Stanley, 59, 65 Fisher, Logan, 148 Fleagle, Patrick, 136 Florida, 5–6, 42, 96, 145 Florida State University, 100 Forbes, Christopher, 98 Forbes, Steve, 98 for-profit colleges and universities, 99, 117 Fort Collins Coloradoan, 158 Fortune, 101 Foster, Tim, 156 Foucault, Michel, 38 Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), 136, 221 Fourteenth Amendment, 24, 25 FoxNews Channel, 58, 92 Frankel, Dan, 136, 150 Frankfurt, Harry G., 69 Frankfurter, Felix, 25 freedom of inquiry, 20 Free Exchange on Campus Coalition, 95–96, 148, 155n69, 208, 221 free speech: AAUP on, 20, 22; distinction from academic freedom, 144; Horowitz-Larkin debate on, 73, 76; Horowitz on, 11, 58, 60; in Ohio, 122, 128; in Pennsylvania, 150; workplace related, 25. See also First Amendment The Free World Colossus (Horowitz), 147–48 Freiheit der Wissenschaft, 18 French, David, 136–38 FrontPage Magazine, 80, 81, 129 Garland, Peter, 153n24 Gatorade, 100 gay and lesbian studies, 19, 50, 63 George Mason University, 98 Georgia, 45, 145 Germany, 18, 19, 36 Gingrich, Newt, 91 Giroux, Henry A., 108, 208 Gitlin, Todd, 12, 59, 60 God and Man at Yale (Buckley), 9, 33–34 gold and silver standard, 19

Goldberg, Jonah, 41 Gordon, Ken, 156 Govea, Rodger, 7 governing boards, 20. See also boards of trustees graduate teaching assistants, 12, 13, 115, 118, 119 Graff, Gerald, 30 Gramsci, Antonio, 3–4 Gross, Neil, 7, 208 Grucella, Rich, 136 Hagedorn, Bob, 156 Hamilton, Neil, 209 Hannity, Sean, 92 Harper, William Rainey, 19 Harrisburg, Pa., 144, 148 Harvard University, 30, 94, 98 Harvey, Marcus, 77, 79 Haskell, Thomas, 26, 134, 151 Hefley, Lynn, 161 Herman, Deborah M., 209 Herman, Lynn, 136 Herrnstein, Richard, 98 higher education: authority over, 123, 134; co-opting of, 108–9; and corporatization, 12–14, 98–104, 115–17; cost of, 108, 110–14; diversity in, 144; funding in Ohio, 126; history, 17–23; Horowitz on integrity of institutions of, 58, 61–62; liberalism in, 41; politicization of, 18–20; purposes, 109–11, 134, 175–77 Higher Education Appropriation Act (2006), 92 Higher Education Initiative, 98 Higher Education Research Institute (HERI), 94–96 hiring practices: Balch on in Pennsylvania, 46–47; and corporatization,118; French on, 137; Horowitz on, 3–4, 15n6, 43, 59, 62, 64, 78, 84, 92; and legislation, 6; and peer review, 129 History, 73, 98 Hoffman, Betty, 156 Hofstadter, Richard, 35, 38 Holmes, Oliver Wendell, Jr., 23–24 Hoover Center, 69–71, 78

Index Horowitz, David: on AAUP dishonesty, 77–79; on allegations made by students, 8; appeal of, 151; and Arizona ABOR, 32; on character of knowledge, 9–10; in Colorado, 156, 157, 159, 161; concern of, 11; on Democratic party registration, 4, 15n7; on enforcement of ABOR, 77n6; on faculty political ideology of, 3–5, 58–62, 65, 67, 68, 71–76, 76n1, 76n5, 77–80, 82–85, 87–98, 147–48; goals, 1–2, 43–44, 97; at Hoover Center, 69–71, 78; Larkin debate arguments, 77–78, 81–85, 88–90; Larkin debate origin, 4, 5, 15n7, 67–69; Larkin’s perception of goals of, 76; Larkin’s responses to, 79–81, 86–88; in Ohio, 122, 124, 125, 127, 130–33, 187–92; in Pennsylvania, 145–47, 152n22, 154n43; political history, 37–38, 44, 69, 147–48; and political power, 39; The Professors: The 101 Most Dangerous Academics in America, 3–4, 11, 92–96, 208, 210; response to AAUP statement, 57–65; on self-governance, 129; on social justice, 141–42; and student complaints, 95–96; and use of public records, 76n5; worldview, 72–73 Horowitz Funding Sources, 221 ‘‘How Many Ward Churchills?’’ (ACTA), 11, 47–48, 204 Humanities, 13, 19, 29, 68, 93–95, 104, 143 ideology, political: and Horowitz/Luntz study, 67–68; Horowitz on faculty, 3–5, 58–62, 65, 67, 68, 71–76, 76n1, 76n5, 77–80, 82–85, 87–98, 147–48; legislated diversity of, 123; in modern higher education, 113; and Ohio SB 24, 130–31; in Pennsylvania, 137–39, 141; and public universities, 48–49; and student grievances, 129–30; subtlety and complexity, 80–81 ideology, professional, 110 Illiberal Education (D’Souza), 2, 207 Illinois Supreme Court, 24

231

Independence Institute, 156 Independent Florida Alligator, 42 ‘‘independent’’ voters, 94 indoctrination: AAUP and ABOR on, 54, 57, 62; Armstrong on, 149; and character of knowledge, 9–10; conservatives on, 95; and hiring practices, 64; interpretation vs., 143–44; Mumper on, 121; and pedagogy, 10, 54–56, 62; in Pennsylvania, 135, 145, 151; proof of, 132; students on, 96 InsideHigherEd.com, 1 Inside Higher Education, 10, 32, 69, 221 Intelligent Design, 32, 42 Intercollegiate Studies Institute (ISI), 97 Inter-University Council (IUC), 7, 125, 131–32 investigative hearings, 24 Iraq war, 58, 65, 71, 77, 78 Irvine Valley College, 68 ‘‘Is the Academy a Liberal Hegemony? The Political Orientations and Educational Values of Professors’’ (Zipp and Fenwick), 218 ‘‘It’s Time for Fairness and Inclusion in Our Universities’’ (Horowitz), 80 Ivy League schools, 17, 33, 67. See also Harvard University; Princeton University; Yale University Jacoby, Russell, 104, 211 James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions, 98 Janssen (pharmaceutical company), 102 Japan, 100 Japanese-American internment, 41 Johns Hopkins University, 18 Johnson, Benjamin, 108, 211 Joint Statement on Rights and Freedoms of Students (AAUP), 6, 15n9, 23 Jones, Andrew, 92 Jones, Walter B., 80 Jordan, Jim, 187, 199 journalism, 32, 58 Journal of the American Medical Association, 102

232

Index

Kavanagh, Patrick, 108, 211 Kelly-Woessner, April, 96 Keyishian vs. Board of Regents (1967), 25, 181 Kimball, Roger, 2, 212 King, Keith, 156 Kingston, Jack, 57n1, 59 Kirk, Russell, 34 Klein, Daniel, 3, 84, 93–94, 212 Klinkner, Philip, 57, 59 Knight, Jonathan, 59 knowledge: character of, 9–10, 29, 38, 55, 56, 62–63, 86–90; conservatives’ concern about, 10–12; as focus of university, 108; Larkin on policing of, 75; privatization of, 12–13 Kors, Alan, 59 Kristol, Irving, 35 Kuhn, James C., IV, 203 labor studies, 63 land grant universities, 18 Larkin, Graham: on character of knowledge, 9–10; Horowitz debate arguments, 70–76, 79–81, 86–88; Horowitz debate origin, 4, 5, 15n7, 67–69; on Horowitz’s Lenin reference, 44, 51n8; Horowitz’s responses to, 77–78, 81–85, 88–90; ‘‘‘More Than a Stretch’: David Horowitz’s Imagined Supporters Speak Out,’’ 212 Law, 98 Lawrence, Malcolm, 213 Lee, John, 15n6, 213 Lee, Kenneth, 47 legislation: Alabama, 50; of diversity, 81, 123; on education, 77; on federally funded research, 100; Horowitz on, 63–65, 78; inspirations for, 5–8, 23–26; Larkin on, 72; proposed and passed, 71, 85, 92, 132; rationale for, 95. See also California SB–1335; Colorado, legislation; Colorado HB 04–1315; Colorado SJR 04–033; Ohio SB 24; Pennsylvania HR 177 legislators: and academic planning, 115; and funding of higher education, 113–14; role in modern university, 108, 109, 150–51, 160

Lehrer, Eli, 73 Lehrfreiheit, 18 Lenin, Vladimir, 44, 51n8 Lernfreiheit, 18, 19 Leslie, Larry, 108 liberal arts, 13, 17, 77, 95, 108, 110, 118 liberals: convictions vs. bias, 48; and enforced diversity, 54; Horowitz on, 76n1; label, 5; Mumper on, 121; and Ohio SB 24, 131; at Penn State, 45–46; reasons for attacks on, 41, 91–98; statistics, 93–95, 98; substantive vs. procedural, 49–50. See also Democrats libertarians, 81 licensing, 100–101 Lieberman, Joe, 97 life sciences, 101 Linder, Harold F., 152n23 London, Herbert I., 205 Longmont Republican Women’s Roundtable, 157 Los Angeles Times, 104 Lovejoy, Arthur, 144 loyalty oaths, 2, 24, 25, 27 Luntz, Frank, 67–68, 73 Macdonald, Dwight, 34 Mackereth, Bev, 136 Madden, Alice, 156, 157 Maher, James, 138, 140, 141, 153n24 Malkin, Michelle, 41 Manifesto of a Tenured Radical (Nelson), 215 ‘‘Manufacturing the Attack on Liberalized Higher Education’’ (Messer-Davidow), 214 Martin, Randy, 213 Marxism, 3, 58, 145 Mattson, Kevin, 9–10, 108, 211 Matza, David, 109 McCarthyism, 2, 27, 41, 93, 137, 148 McCluskey, Bob, 156 McNariy, Francine, 153n24 McTeer, Robert T., 101 Media Matters for America, 222 Media Transparency, 222 Medical University of Ohio (MUO), 127, 128

Index Memorandum of Understanding (Colorado), 162–63, 171–72 Messer-Davidow, Ellen, 214 Metropolitan State College, 58, 162 Metzger, Walter, 141 military-industrial complex, 112 Mill, John Stuart, 21 Millersville, Pa., 142–43, 148, 150 mission statements, 139, 142 Mitchell, Shawn, 156–60, 162 Modern Age, 34 Mohl, Raymond A., 214 Moore, Michael, 44, 146–48 Moore, Robert, 138, 140, 152n23 moral values, 96 Moran, James, 153n24 ‘‘‘More Than a Stretch’: David Horowitz’s Imagined Supporters Speak Out’’ (Larkin), 212 ‘‘The More Things Change? Academic Freedom Then and Now’’ (Poston), 2–3 Morrill Act (1867), 18, 21 Morrison, David, 153n24 Morrow, Bill, 69 Mother Jones, 12 Mumper, Larry: background, 124; and Horowitz’s testimony, 187–92; introduction of bill, 42, 51n6, 121–23, 199; on ‘‘left-wingers,’’ 4; withdrawal of bill, 132 Munley, Jane, 144, 153n23 Murray, Charles, 98 ‘‘The Myth of the Liberal Campus’’ (Parenti), 216 The Nation, 97 National Association for Women in Education, 15n9 National Association of Scholars (NAS), 97, 153n28, 206, 222. See also Balch, Stephen National Association of Student Personnel Administrators, 15n9 National Association of Women Deans and Counselors, 15n9 National Center for Academic Transformation, 103

233

National Council of Higher Education, 143 National Education Association (NEA), 143, 145, 222 National Review, 33, 34 National Student Association, 23 National Student Loan Survey, 104 Nature, 102–3 Neal, Ann, 144, 152n22, 159 Nellie Mae, 104 Nelson, Cary, 108, 215, 216 neoconservatives: on diversity, 68; emergence of, 35–36; principles, 36–39. See also conservatives neutrality, principle of, 53–54, 56, 57, 64–65 New Bedford, Mass., police department, 23–24 New Hampshire, Sweezy vs. (1957), 25 New Historicism, 19 New Left, 34–36, 38 New Left Review, 58 ‘‘The New PC: Crybaby Conservatives’’ (Jacoby), 211 New York, 24 New York Times, 80, 84 Nietzsche, Friedrich, 36 9/11, 91, 97 1940 Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure (AAUP), 177–87; acceptance of, 6; on controversial material, 122–23, 142; effect on legislation, 23–26; French on, 137; Horowitz’s use of, 43; interpretive comments (1970), 180–84; Mumper’s reference to, 51n6; and Ohio SB 24, 126; on privileges and responsibilities of faculty, 22, 26–28 Noble, David, 103 Northeastern Ohio Universities College of Medicine (NEOUCOM), 127, 128 Northfield Laboratories, 101–2 Office Hours (Nelson and Watt), 108, 216 Ohio: board of trustees positions in, 11; hearings in, 97; legislation, 5–8; student grievances in, 121–22, 129–32. See also Ohio SB 24

234

Index

Ohio SB 24, 199–200; description, 122–23; hearings, 130–31; Horowitz on, 122, 124, 125, 127, 130–33, 187–92; origin of, 121–22; people and organizations involved in, 123–30; resolution, 131–32; withdrawal, 125 Ohio State University, Marion, 121 Ohio University, 128 Olanzapine, 102 Olin, John M., 70n1, 97 On Bullshit (Frankfurt), 69 O’Neil, Robert, 153n23 O’Neill, Bernie, 136 online courses. See computer-based instruction operational excellence, 114–15 Opus Dei, 98 Orwell, George, 114 Out of Step (Chodorov), 97 Owens, Bill, 156 Padgett, Joy, 125, 130 Paglia, Camille, 37 Pallone, John, 135, 136 Palmer raids, 2 Parenti, Michael, 216 part-time faculty, 12, 13, 15n14, 103, 108, 110, 118 Patent and Trademark Act Amendments (1980), 100–101 PC Wars: Politics and Theory in the Academy (Williams), 217 pedagogy, 10, 30, 54–56, 62. See also teaching peer review, 4, 6, 22, 26, 28, 49, 129, 143 Penn State Daily Collegian, 45–46 Pennsylvania: composition of faculty in, 15n14, 46; institutions of higher education, 154n42; Kelly-Woessner study in, 96; legislation, 5–8, 92. See also Pennsylvania HR 177; specific schools in the state Pennsylvania Association of Higher Education, 144 Pennsylvania HR 177: Harrisburg hearings, 144, 148; institutions covered by, 154n42; introduction, 134–35; Millersville hearings, 142–43,

148, 150; result of hearings, 41–43, 135, 148–51; Scott’s testimony on, 11, 140, 143–44, 192–98; select committee initial meeting, 137–38; select committee members, 134–36; select committee subjects of investigation, 138; Temple University hearings, 144, 145–47, 148; University of Pittsburgh hearings, 138–41, 148 Pennsylvania State Education Association, 144 Pennsylvania State University: ‘‘American Masculinities’’ course, 47–48; ‘‘Berlin Wall’’ at, 45–46; College of Education, 140; complaints about faculty at, 41–42; funding, 48–49; Moore film at, 146–47; and select committee, 136; student grievance procedures, 42–43 pharmaceutical research, 101–2 Philanthropy Roundtable, 97 Phillips, Terry, 156 Philosophy, 73 Pickering case (1968), 24 pluralism: Horowitz on, 89; regarding speakers and student activities, 84; use of term, 60, 61, 74–75. See also diversity Political Bias in the Administrations and Faculties of 32 Elite Colleges and Universities (Horowitz and Lehrer), 73 political correctness, 36, 58, 81, 97, 130 political science, 73–74, 96 PolyHeme, 101–2 popular culture, 19 Post, Robert, 26 postmodernism, 9, 29, 32, 38, 62, 88 Poston, Lawrence, 2–3, 9 poststructuralism, 19 pragmatism, 62, 88 Princeton University, 98, 104 The Professors: The 101 Most Dangerous Academics in America (Horowitz), 3–4, 11, 92–96, 208, 210 promotion, 92, 118, 129 Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics, 102 public colleges and universities, 48–49, 92, 103, 150 public opinion, 49

Index publishing, 43, 101 Pueblo Chieftain, 158 Quigley, Thomas, 136 quotas, 61, 85, 92 railroads, 19 Ramadan, Tariq, 78 Ratliff, Mike, 152n22 reading lists, 72, 76n3, 79–80, 83, 86. See also curriculum reappointment, 22 Recommended Institutional Regulations on Academic Freedom and Tenure (AAUP), 183 Reed, Justice, 73 relativism, 9–10, 32–34, 36, 39, 43, 86, 88. See also knowledge, character of religion, 17, 19, 33–34, 42 Republicans: category in Horowitz’s studies, 78, 84; and civil rights law, 47; and enforced diversity, 54; legislation introduced by, 92; in Ohio, 124, 126; as one of two options, 72–73; in Pennsylvania, 134, 136, 139, 146, 150–51; statistics, 3, 73–74, 93–94; teaching by, 4. See also conservatives; ideology, political research: and accountability, 49; and corporatization, 12–13, 100–103, 112, 116; federal restrictions on, 19; in Germany, 18–19; history of freedom in, 20; as principle of academic freedom, 43; in public interest, 21 research universities, 18 Rhoades, Gary, 101 Risperidone, 102 Roberts, Justice, 73 Robertson, Pat, 91 Rockefeller, John D., 19 Rocky Mountain News, 158 Roebuck, James, 135 Ross, Edward, 18, 19 Rudd, Mark, 35 Salon, 37 Savage, Michael, 41 ‘‘Save the World on Your Own Time’’ (Fish), 65

235

Scaife, Richard Mellon, 97 Scaife, Sarah, 70n1 Scheuerman, William, 144, 145, 153n23 Schmid, Julie M., 209 Schrecker, Ellen, 148 Schultheis, David, 157–58 Schultz, David, 217 scientific misconduct, 102–3 Scopes case, 24 Scott, Gary, 152n22 Scott, Joan Wallach: on advocacy, 143–44; testimony, 11, 140, 143–44, 192–98; as witness, 138, 152n23 self-governance, faculty: AAUP on, 56–57, 129, 142–43; and corporatization, 118–19; Horowitz on, 129; importance of, 26; Kirk on, 34; and Ohio SB 24, 130, 131; in Pennsylvania, 140–41; as principle of academic freedom, 43; Scott on, 144; willingness, 28. See also autonomy, institutional; faculty senates 700 Club, 91 Shawnee State University, 127 Silent Theft: The Private Plunder of Our Common Wealth (Bollier), 206 Simmons, Solon, 7, 208 Simon, William, 97 Slaughter, Sheila, 101, 108 Smith, Mark, 7, 8 Smith Richardson Foundation, 97 social good, 110–13 social justice, 139–42, 154n43 social sciences, 19–20, 29, 68, 93–95, 143 social work, 139 sociology, 74 speakers, 72, 80, 84, 90 speech codes, 78 Spelling’s Commission on the Future of Higher Education, 13 Sproles, Kathy, 143, 144, 153n23 Standards for Notice of Nonreappointment (AAUP), 182–83 Stanford, Mrs. Leland, 19 Stanford University, 18, 84, 88, 93–94 State Legislation Proposing an ‘‘Academic Bill of Rights’’ (AAUP), 219

236

Index

Statement on Academic Rights and Responsibilities (American Council on Education), 125, 201–2 Statement on Procedural Standards in Faculty Dismissal Proceedings (AAUP), 183 Statement on Professional Ethics (1966) (AAUP), 22–23, 181, 182 Statement on Recruitment and Resignation of Faculty Members (AAUP), 183 Statistical Assessment Service, 67 Steal This University: The Rise of the Corporate University and the Academic Labor Movement (Johnson, Kavanagh, and Mattson), 211 stem-cell research, 19 Stevenson, Tom, 136 Student (Horowitz), 76n4 Student Bill of Rights, 1–2 student grievances: AAUP on, 6; and ABOR legislation, 7, 8, 92; in Colorado, 159–60, 161; enforcement of procedures, 132; in Florida, 41–42, 96; Horowitz on, 8, 95–96; in Ohio, 121–22, 129–32; in Pennsylvania, 41–43, 136–37, 141, 150 student protests, 34–36, 38–39 students: AAUP on rights of, 54–56; and Arizona ABOR, 32, 92; and character of knowledge, 10; in Colorado, 157–60; as consumers, 13, 39, 99, 103–4, 108–10, 112, 116; definitions of academic freedom for, 6, 150; effects of faculty academic freedom on, 27–28; in Germany, 18–19; and history of academic freedom, 19, 22–23; Horowitz on academic freedom of, 44, 58, 59, 64, 78, 82–83, 85; in Pennsylvania, 138–41, 148; speakers and programs for, 72, 80, 84, 90. See also student grievances; Students for Academic Freedom (SAF) Students for Academic Freedom (SAF): clarification of argument, 132; in Colorado, 155–56, 159; complaints about reading lists, 76n3; on faculty bias, 74; founding, 1; handbook, 44–45;

Larkin on, 71, 76; Mission and Strategy statement, 88; and 1940 Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure, 123; Ohio AAUP on, 126–27; sponsorship of ABOR, 59; on threat of liberal faculty, 91–98, 131; Web site content, 8, 13, 80, 81, 95, 146, 222 Summers, Larry, 94 Surra, Dan, 41, 136, 139, 140, 150 Sutherland, George, 24 Sweezy vs. New Hampshire (1957), 25 Taxol, 100 teaching: attacks on, 93; goals of, 110; history of freedom in, 20; legislation of, 121–22; nature of, 75–76; and political orientation, 4; value of, 112. See also pedagogy ‘‘Teaching in the Age of ‘Political Correctness’’’ (Giroux), 208 technology transfer, 100–101 Telling the Truth: A Report on the State of the Humanities in Higher Education (Cheney), 207 Temple Association of University Professionals (TAUP), 135, 148 Temple University, 135, 139–40, 144, 145–49 Tennessee Supreme Court, 24 tenure: and corporatization, 118; Declaration on, 22; Horowitz on, 62, 92; 1940 Statement on, 178–79; and patents, 101; and peer review, 129; responsibilities of, 23 ‘‘The Tenured Left’’ (Balch and London), 205 Tenured Radicals (Kimball), 2, 212 Texas, 58 Texas A&M University Board of Regents, 101 tobacco research, 102 Toledo Blade, 11 Tribe, Lawrence, 24 truth, 38, 39, 60, 62–63, 86–89, 151 tuition and fees, 103, 111, 117 Twigg, Carol, 103 two-year colleges, 95

Index ‘‘Uncommon Knowledge,’’ 69 unions, faculty, 119, 122 United Faculty, 141 United States Bill of Rights, 84 United States Congress, 63 United States Department of Education, 103 United States government, 34–36 United States National Student Association, 15n9 United States Student Association, 15n9 United States Supreme Court, 24, 26, 27, 84 University, Inc.: The Corporate Corruption of American Higher Education (Washburn), 217 University of Akron, 127, 128 University of California–Berkeley, 93–94 University of California–Los Angeles (UCLA), 28, 94–96 University of California–Los Angeles (UCLA) Bruin Alumni Association, 2, 92 University of Chicago, 18, 19, 36, 98 University of Cincinnati, 97 University of Colorado, 91, 156, 158, 160 University of Colorado–Boulder, 161 University of Colorado–Denver, 75 University of Florida, 42, 100 University of Illinois, 64 University of Northern Colorado, 158–59, 161 University of Phoenix, 99, 103 University of Pittsburgh, 136, 138–41, 143, 148 University of Washington, 27 University of Wisconsin, 18, 35 Updegraff, Wieman v. (1952), 25 U.S. Patriot Act, 29 Van Alstyne, William, 23, 24 Vanlandingham, James, 42 Veblen, Thorstein, 99 Vietnam War, 2, 23, 34–36 Virginia Tech, 103 vocational education, 111 Voinovich, George, 122 ‘‘Voter Registration of Berkeley and Stanford Faculty’’ (Klein and Western), 3, 212

237

Wachtman, Lynn, 187, 199 Waller, Dana, 8, 161 Washburn, Jennifer, 13, 217 Washington Times, 80 Watt, Stephen, 108, 216 Weaver, Richard, 33, 36 Welker, Jim, 156 Wesleyan University, 58–59, 73 Western, Andrew, 3, 93–94, 212 West Virginia State Bd. of Educ. v. Barnette (1943), 73 What’s Liberal About the Liberal Arts? Classroom Politics and ‘‘Bias’’ in Higher Education (Berub ´ e), ´ 205 ‘‘What’s Not to Like About the Academic Bill of Rights’’ (Larkin), 69–76, 78, 79, 81–82 Wieman v. Updegraff (1952), 25 Will, George, 91 Will County (Ill.), 24 Williams, Jeffrey, 217 Will Teach for Food: Academic Labor in Crisis (Nelson), 215 Witt, David, 12, 13 Woessner, Matthew, 96 women’s studies, 63, 97, 139 Workplace: A Journal for Academic Labor, 223 World Trade Center victims, 91 worldview, two-sided, 72–73, 78, 80–81 World War I, 2 World War II, 41 Wright State University, 122 Yale University, 32–34 Yates, Al, 163 Young Americans for Freedom, 45–46, 146 Young America’s Foundation, 97, 146 Youngstown State University, 127 Yudichak, John, 136, 146 Zealotry and Academic Freedom: A Legal and Historical Perspective (Hamilton), 209 Zelnick, Stephen, 148–49 Zipp, John, 3, 12–13, 218

ABOUT

EDITOR, CONTRIBUTORS, REPRODUCED AUTHORS

THE

AND

Editor STEPHEN H. ABY is Professor and Education Bibliographer at the University of Akron. He has a Ph.D. in social foundations of education from the State University of New York, Buffalo, an M.A. in sociology from the University of Houston, and an M.L.S. from Kent State University. His previous books include Sociology: A Guide to Reference and Information Sources with James Nalen and Lori Fielding (Libraries Unlimited, 2005) and Academic Freedom: A Guide to the Literature with James C. Kuhn (Greenwood Press, 2000).

Contributors Michael B´erub´e—Pennsylvania State University Rudy Fenwick—University of Akron Rodger Govea—Cleveland State University Marcus Harvey—Canadian Association of University Teachers Kevin Mattson—Ohio University Lawrence Poston—University of Illinois–Chicago Mark Smith—National Education Association Dana R. Waller—Front Range Community College David D. Witt—University of Akron John Zipp—University of Akron

Reproduced Authors David Horowitz—David Horowitz Freedom Center Graham Larkin—National Gallery of Canada Joan Wallach Scott—Institute for Advanced Study