College Freedom

A False Charge of “Incitement to Violence”

2012-01-25T07:33:00.000-06:00

The conservative site, The College Fix, offers up an article by Emily Schrader reporting that students “at the University of Pennsylvania have ignited tensions nationwide with their choice of headliners for their upcoming anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment and Sanction (BDS) conference.”

Schrader targets Ali Abunimah for being a keynote speaker at the event: “Abunimah in particular is highly controversial, having repeatedly condemned a two-state solution, and having gone on record with comments that sound a great deal like incitement to violence against Israelis.”

As for the claim that Abunimah is guilty of “incitement to violence against Israelis,” it's an absolutely outrageous lie. The proof Schrader offers is this quote:
In 2002 he told the Washington Post, “If Israel is going to maintain a military occupation over millions of people by nothing but brute force, then no power on earth is going to stop some of these occupied people responding in kind. The only way to end the violence is to end the occupation.”
Nothing in this statement can possibly sound like incitement to violence. In fact, Abunimah declares in this same lengthy interview about suicide bombings, “Such bombings are horrific and need to stop.” He added, “no good can come out of murdering innocent civilians. Palestinians have to stop doing it....” The quote Schrader emphasizes is simply a recognition of the fact that some people under occupation turn to violence. There's no endorsement of violence here, and it's hard to conceive how anyone could call it “incitement to violence.”

At least Schrader does not openly call for censorship of the conference. But incitement to violence is one of the traditional valid justifications for repression of free speech. That makes this utterly absurd claim (quoted with approval at Phi Beta Cons) such a disturbing idea. There are plenty of legitimate critiques a rational person can make against the divestment movement or Abunimah's argument. But “incitement to violence” isn't even remotely close to being true.

NAS Now Claims to Oppose Preferences for Hiring Conservative Professors

2011-12-14T14:42:00.000-06:00

In an essay on the NAS blog, Glenn Ricketts proudly declares that NAS' principled opposition to all hiring or admissions preferences: “This means that faculty hiring, student admissions, scholarship awards or any aspect of the academic enterprise should be guided by individual merits without regard to racial, ethnic and sexual criteria, or any other a priori ascriptive criteria. That includes some recent proposals for giving preference to conservatives or to male undergraduate applicants. Nope, no preferences based on group identity however it’s defined, period. That’s been the NAS position since our founding in 1987, and we’re sticking to it.”

This claim of a principled position might be more plausible if it were actually the NAS position. It's not. Less than a year ago, the NAS published an exchange between me and NAS head Peter Wood, in which Wood endorses David Horowitz's proposal for political preferences for conservatives in the hiring of visiting professors. As far as I know, no one in the NAS has ever criticized this stand of affirmative action hiring for conservatives. Wood defended his claim with the absolutely absurd position that visiting professors aren't real faculty. As I pointed out, that's not true, and even if it weren't factually wrong, I'm appalled that Wood thinks politically-based hiring of anyone at a college should be acceptable.

The ROTC Ban Myth Strikes Again

2011-10-27T12:44:00.000-05:00

KC Johnson at Minding the Campus is wrong on two points. He is simply mistaken when he writes, "the universities banned ROTC." Neither Brown nor any other university banned ROTC. As I wrote on Academe Blog, the banning of ROTC is a myth.

Johnson claims, "There never was a coherent intellectual rationale for Brown’s policy." This is false. There is a clear intellectual rationale. One issue is equality, and the continuing ban on transgender soldiers is a continuation of concern about supporting bias against Brown students. But the primary intellectual rationale is that the faculty should decide faculty hiring and control the curriculum. In 1969, this was the reason why the military withdrew ROTC from Brown, and the faculty were right then and they're right today.

A Misleading Hatchet Job on David Protess

2011-10-21T21:48:00.000-05:00

Michael Miner's hatchet job on David Protess is depressing to read, not because it's right, but because it's so wrong. Miner distorts and omits key facts while he presents the prosecutor's case. But worst of all, he betrays the spirit of advocacy journalism that the Chicago Reader is supposed to be celebrating on its 40th anniversary.

Miner notes that Protess' Innocence Project worked with the Center on Wrongful Convictions and declares, “no, it's not the way journalists are supposed to act.”
Why the hell not? Nobody has a problem with law schools advocating for the innocent. Why should journalism schools be any different? What part of the words “Innocence Project” are unclear? It is, by definition, an advocacy project, and a damned good one.

While claiming that the university established that Protess had falsified an email, Miner omits the very important fact that Protess told Northwestern at the time that he had altered the email Miner finds so damning, and that he had urged Northwestern to get the information themselves. Miner reprints at length a series of utterly pointless emails from Protess, which only establish what Protess admits and everyone knows: Protess worked closely with defense attorneys. So what? Beyond unfairly smearing Bryan Smith of Chicago magazine because he had enough sense not to waste his readers' time with such nonsense, Miner implies they prove Protess did something wrong without ever explaining why.

Meanwhile, Miner omits numerous important facts, such as the fact that prosecutors sought grades and emails that everyone knows were never revealed to defense attorneys.

If, due to the failings of our legal system, Protess lost the “journalistic privilege” for his classes by providing information to defense attorneys, then so be it. But it's no reason for a professor to be banned from teaching a class or forced out of a university.

It's particularly disappointing that Miner concludes his article by praising what happened to Protess as “proper” and “necessary”: “The first generation has left the building.” No, the first generation was shoved out of the building. Banned from teaching a class, and then forced out of a job.

If the fuzzy “rules” of journalism are supposed to be sacrosanct, what about the very clear rules of due process and academic freedom in the Northwestern Faculty Handbook, which require any suspension of a faculty member to include a hearing before a faculty committee with actual evidence presented and proof of intentional deception provided? Why has Miner never written a single word about the fact that the Northwestern administration violated its own rules in punishing Protess?

It's particularly appalling that around the 40th anniversary of the Chicago Reader, where Miner has been publishing for 40 years as part of a leading example of (at its best) crusading, advocacy journalism, Miner buys into this nonsense of objective journalism. If the people who forced out Protess had their way, the advocacy journalism in newspapers like the Chicago Reader would never exist. Miner's memo for the prosecution is a betrayal of everything the Chicago Reader ever stood for.

The Statistics of Victimization

2011-10-19T01:03:00.000-05:00

Ted Gup in the Chronicle of Higher Education repeats some of the usual fake statistics aimed at promoting conservatives as victims on campus: “The American Council of Trustees and Alumni found that almost half of students believed in-class discussions of politics were too one-sided. Almost one-third said they felt they had to agree with the professor to get a good grade.”

I can find nothing in ACTA's 2004 survey about one-sided classroom discussions; 49% did agree that “some panel discussions and presentations on political issues seem totally one-sided,” but even I would agree with that. Anyone with a strong point of view who gives a speech on campus is going to be one-sided.
It's true that 29% did agree, “On my campus, there are courses in which students feel they have to agree with the professor's political or social views in order to get a good grade." However, ACTA surveys never ask students for their own experiences; they always ask students to speculate about whether there are some courses where this happens, which makes them entirely worthless.

In an ACTA survey in Missouri, 51 percent agreed that “On my campus, there are courses in which students feel they have to agree with the professor’s political or social views in order to get a good grade.” Omitted in the report (unless you examine the full list of questions in the appendix) was this question: “On my campus, some professors penalize students because of the student's political or social views.” Only 12 percent of students agreed with this secondhand rumor that “some” professors do this, even though it seems almost identical to the question that got 51 percent support.

A 2008 Georgia study that ACTA did not conduct found much more ambiguous political results. Only 23% of students reported having to agree with a professor to get a good grade. 25.2% of Republicans (vs. 19.3% of Democrats) reported this. For two-thirds of the students, this only happened once in college (and it was less likely to happen frequently to Republicans: 1.8% of Republicans, but 6.2% of Democrats, reported it happened 5 or more times). Part of the party difference may reflect a desire by Republicans not to have their views challenged. Only 40.5% of Republicans (vs. 59% of Democrats) considered it important for instructors to challenge their beliefs. More Democrats (22.8%) than Republicans (16.8%) reported "low" respect for the political views of all students.

Of course, even if we did find more conservatives than liberals report feeling bias, it would not be proof of it. Self-reported bias is highly unreliable, and the fact that creationists might feel uncomfortable in a biology class discussion about evolution is the fault of their own ignorant and unscientific beliefs, not political bias by professors. A student who devoutly believes in astrology is not necessarily the victim of political bias in an astronomy class, even if they feel like they must betray their own ideas and agree with scientific reality in order to get a good grade.

God and Truth at Erskine College

2011-10-14T14:55:00.000-05:00

Last month, Peter Wood and Ashley Thorne of the National Association of Scholars wrote an article of extraordinary ambivalence, refusing to criticize Erskine College for firing of Bill Crenshaw because of his outspoken defense of science.

Wood and Thorne write about my earlier criticism of Erskine's firing, “Wilson’s characterization of what happened at Erskine is off the mark. He is vilifying Erskine simply for offering faith-based education. This is not a case of a conservative college repressing a pro-science professor. It is a Christian college attempting to adhere to its own clear values as it struggles with the case of a professor who plainly rejects those values—and apparently carries his dissent to the point of dissuading potential applicants and donors.”

This is absolutely false. This is a case of a conservative college repressing a pro-science professor.

Wood and Thorne are even unwilling to criticize the obvious abuse of the term “harm” in the Erskine faculty handbook used by the administration to justify Crenshaw's firing. Wood and Thorne argue, “Encouraging people not to donate to or enroll at Erskine certainly counts as “harm” to a college. Whether this is the kind of 'harm' originally contemplated in the now obsolete handbook is a rather lawyerly question. The AAUP says no; Erskine College says (via a spokesman to Inside Higher Ed) that there are harms beyond the merely physical that warrant administrative intervention.”

It is notable that Crenshaw declares, “I did not tell anyone to quit donating and I did not tell any parent not to send children to Erskine,” and no evidence has been presented proving he did this. But even if he did, it seems perfectly obvious that “harm to himself or others” in the handbook refers strictly to physical harm. If harm beyond the “merely physical” can now justify firing a professor, then it's hard to imagine anything that could not qualify. A student who receives a bad grade suffers a “harm” from it. A professor who criticizes the administration can be said to “harm” it. A discussion on campus that offends someone can be deemed to “harm” them emotionally. And anyone on campus who says something controversial can be accused of “harm” to college fundraising. This may be a “lawyerly question” in the sense that a lawyer for the college can invent rationalizations that are plainly contrary to any common sense meaning, but why is the NAS embracing the administration's side in firing critical faculty?

Ashley Thorne writes on Phi Beta Cons, “The AAUP and others take it as a given that religious faith is incompatible with scientific inquiry. Peter and I disagree.” This is absurd. Of course religious faith can be compatible with scientific inquiry. Plenty of scientists are religious. But they understand that scientific reality cannot be ignored simply because particularly ignorant fundamentalists imagine that not one iota of their vision of religious dogma must never be challenged. Young earth creationism cannot be defended by any scientific analysis, but that scientific fact is only incompatible with a particularly crazed interpretation of Christianity. It is bizarre to imagine that the essence of Christian faith is the false belief that the Earth was created 10,000 years ago. That's why devoutly religious colleges can and should employ scientists.

It's actually Thorne and Wood who argue that religious faith cannot be compatible with scientific inquiry, and therefore religious dogma justifies the expulsion from religious colleges of those who believe in science.

Now, it is a separate issue as to whether religious colleges should employ people who reject their faith. As an atheist, I'm appalled that hundreds of conservative religious colleges ban me from being hired, while I'm not aware of a single university in America that excludes fundamentalist Christians. I think that a truly religious college is a place where faith is the center of the conversation, not a place where everyone agrees with a particular religious dogma. Therefore, I believe that religious colleges should welcome atheists and encourage religious dissenters who challenge the faith of their students.

However, that argument has nothing to do with the Crenshaw case, because science is perfectly compatible with religious faith. Wood and Thorne argue, “The harsh antipathy between faith and science conjured in some of Professor Crenshaw’s statements is mostly if not entirely a secularist illusion.” Apparently the belief that Crenshaw was fired is a secularist illusion. But as Crenshaw noted in my interview with him, “I do not think, and have never said, that religious faith and scientific inquiry are incompatible.”

Wood and Thorne argue that “the doctrine of academic freedom be conceived as sufficiently capacious to allow room for minds that are open to religious truth.” That's a great idea, and I agree with it. So shouldn't academic freedom allow room for Crenshaw's mind to believe in a religious truth that also allows for scientific truth?

Ironically, Wood and Thorne blame their failure to defend academic freedom in the Crenshaw case on the AAUP: “The AAUP’s 1940 statement, however, was purposely vague. Far from settling the question of how religious colleges can or should protect academic freedom, it set up an ambiguity that has repeatedly led to confrontations.”

That assessment of the 1940 Statement is true. And that's why the AAUP and the American Association of Colleges in 1970 adopted a series of Interpretive Comments, among which was this: “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.”

Everything in the 1970 Interpretive Comments is fully part of the AAUP's fundamental principles (indeed, it's more important than the 1940 Statement because the 1970 Comments supercede the 1940 Statement at any points where they conflict).

There is no ambiguity in the AAUP's 1970 Comments. They clearly state that religious colleges should follow the same principles of academic freedom as secular colleges.

But Wood and Thorne reject this universal idea of academic freedom, preferring to carve out a far more restricted concept for professors at religious colleges: “We should be able to conceive of ideals of academic freedom that can thrive in the setting of creedal communities. If not, the doctrine of academic freedom itself is exposed as a conceit too weak to match the actual circumstances of higher learning.” The fault, dear NAS, lies in yourselves, not in the doctrine of academic freedom. Academic freedom is a conceit strong enough for everyone, except when some people refuse to apply it to actual violations of intellectual liberty.

I can find no other instance where the NAS ever blamed the victim of an attack on academic freedom, as they do when they attack “Crenshaw for his destructive antagonism towards the college.” The NAS has defended plenty of professors who criticize the administration of their colleges. Wood and Thorne are embracing a double standard, refusing to acknowledge repression when it is aimed at a controversial “liberal” professor who supports science.

Interview with Bill Crenshaw

2011-10-14T11:56:00.000-05:00

Bill Crenshaw was fired in August from his job at Erskine College by President David Norman. The AAUP wrote a letter in his defense. Since then, Crenshaw has come under attack from groups like the National Association of Scholars, so I decided to email Crenshaw a few questions about his case.

1. It's been reported that you were willing to accept a retirement offer, but Erskine would have required that you not criticize the administration. Is that true? How much were they willing to pay you to stay quiet?

Norman offered to continue my salary and retirement package for two more years. I had to do only two things: retire, and stop criticizing the direction Erskine was going. The total would run about $140,000 over two years, although they had financial contingency clauses built in. I believe Greg has a copy of this agreement. If not, I can send it to you.

I agreed to discuss the offer with my lawyer.

I was tempted to take that offer for several hours. I have been under active attack for six or seven years now, and an hour and a half or so with Norman made it all seem like more than enough grief. But the temptation didn’t last long. It boiled down to my living with myself. What was being offered was hush money. It was a bribe. I’ve spent many years being vocal about the problems facing Erskine. I wasn’t going to be bought off. As I told my wife and lawyer that weekend, I won’t take a dime in hush money, but I’ll take what I can get in compensatory and punitive damages.

2. Norman sent you an email on August 23 saying that, “The College cannot permit you to hold your position on an active basis and while doing so [permit you to] encourage people to quit donating to Erskine and to quit sending their kids to Erskine.” Of course, encouraging or discouraging donations, and advising students about the correct colleges to attend, are fully protected by academic freedom. But did you actually ever tell someone to quit donating to Erskine, or tell a parent not to send their children to Erskine?

I did not tell anyone to quit donating and I did not tell any parent not to send children to Erskine. The quotations he cites are, in context, clearly part of an ongoing discussion with alumni on the Facebook sites that the alumni themselves set up. The discussion concerned the purpose of the Facebook site. I can dig up, I think, the entire discussion for the context. The alumni themselves had already discussed not sending their children and withholding their contributions. I did not suggest the idea; I did not endorse it. I did say, as many alums had already, that using the Facebook merely as a place to complain would not get them a seat at a negotiation table.

As for giving, I donated $3000.00 to Erskine at the end of June by allowing a stipend attached to my chair to roll over unused into the general fund. I had hope to be reimbursed through restricted English department funds, but even then, my expenditures would have been less than $3000.00. In addition, when asked last summer by a colleague about the advisability of sending his children to Erskine, I did not discourage him in any way.

3. Do you reject the values of Erskine College and the religious requirements for faculty, and did you ever seek actively to undermine the college’s mission?

Absolutely not. I am a graduate of Wofford College, a sister school to Erskine (or was when I first came). I’m the son of a Methodist minister.

What I do reject is the recent fundamentalist interpretation of the mission, which was not the interpretation through most of my 35 years at Erskine; I do seek to prevent a more stringent theological litmus test being imposed on new faculty.

When I came to Erskine we had a Jewish professor and Roman Catholic professors on the faculty. Under the current policies, Jews will not be hired and outside of modern languages, Catholics are rarely hired.

4. Ashley Thorne and Peter Wood of the NAS argue, “It is Crenshaw, not Erskine College, who seems to think that religious faith and scientific inquiry are incompatible.” Do you think that religious faith and scientific inquiry are incompatible?

No, I do not think, and have never said, that religious faith and scientific inquiry are incompatible. The idea that you can’t do science and be a Christian, a Muslim, a Jew, or any other believer or a non-believer is insulting on its face.

However, scientific inquiry and a fundamentalist literalism about the Bible are indeed incompatible. In one’s personal life, faith separate from science serves a variety of important functions and meets many needs.

But the question is not one of faith, but dogma: dogma cannot trump fact at a college with the least pretensions to academic integrity and intellectual honesty. Erskine teaches science honestly and does not deny faith, nor does it let dogma dictate what is and is not accept from modern scientific understanding. I want to keep it that way.

Due Process at Northwestern

2011-10-03T07:03:00.000-05:00

My essay on due process violations at Northwestern University in the cases of David Protess and Michael Bailey appears at InsideHigherEd today. While the two cases are very different in many ways, what they share is the administration’s indifference to due process and faculty shared governance in high-profile cases of controversial professors.

The New Academe Blog

2011-09-27T11:13:00.000-05:00

The AAUP has launched a new Academe Blog, and I am a co-editor. Read the Academe Blog for some of my latest posts about campus freedom, although I'll continue to make some posts on this blog.

Northwestern Journalism Dean to Retire

2011-09-22T00:30:00.000-05:00

Northwestern journalism dean John Lavine announced that he will retire at the end of the 2011-12 academic year, but it probably won't mark the end of a disastrous experiment in taking away faculty power and handing a journalism school over to a business manager. Lavine, who came from the School of Management in 2006, was immediately given near-total control over the school: “the university’s president and provost suspended formal faculty oversight and gave the new dean authority to overhaul the entire curriculum.” Lavine promised it was aimed to “create a guarantee for employers.” According to Robert Feder's account, “Faculty members who didn’t buy in to the new vision found themselves on their way out.” One of those faculty was David Protess, who retired last month under attack by Lavine, just a few years after Protess had publicly questioned whether Lavine invented a student quote praising the Northwestern program in a PR letter. Lavine's most lasting legacy might be providing Northwestern with the worst name change in the history of journalism schools: the Medill School of Journalism, Media, Integrated Marketing Communications.

UIC Joint Faculty Union Upheld

2011-09-15T17:39:00.000-05:00

Today, the full Illinois Education Labor Relations Board (IELRB) ruled in favor of the faculty union at the University of Illinois-Chicago (UIC), rejecting the administration's argument that full-time faculty and adjuncts could not be part of the same union. According to a press release, "UIC United Faculty will immediately contact the administration to bargain a first contract." The administration should stop its stalling tactics, and start negotiating with the union. The UIC United Faculty revealed that UIC had spent the amazing figure of $3,282,414 in the past 10 years on outside counsel dealing with labor issues.

Claptrap and Smears about 9/11, 10 Years Later

2011-09-13T12:52:00.000-05:00

John Leo of Minding the Campus revisits, with great pride, the words he wrote after 9/11 for U.S. News and World Report about the AAUP:

The American Association of University Professors put out a statement that probably would have made Neville Chamberlain throw up. It promised to "continue to fight violence with renewed dedication to the exercise of freedom of thought and the expression of that freedom in our teaching." What does that mean? That the professors of 1941 should have responded to Pearl Harbor by just logging more class time? Bradford Wilson of the National Association of Scholars, a group that has been struggling to restore intellectual integrity to the campus, called the AAUP statement "fatuous nonsense," "basic Marxist claptrap" and "anti-American in its basic thrust."

John Leo smears the AAUP's immediate response to 9/11 as a statement that "probably would have made Neville Chamberlain throw up." If you look at the actual statement (which was a personal statement by the president and general secretary, not an official statement by the AAUP), it's nothing like that.

Leo wonders about the AAUP's defense of freedom of thought in response to 9/11, "What does that mean? That the professors of 1941 should have responded to Pearl Harbor by just logging more class time?"

What does Leo propose that the professoriate should have done after 9/11? Imprison Muslim in camps? Mount machine guns on the roof of a campus building? Launch a team of professors to seek out and kill Osama bin Laden? Support the invasion of random countries on false pretenses?

It seems perfectly wise that professors (and everyone one) should have responded to the act of irrational mass murder on 9/11 with a commitment to rationality and freedom of thought. Not one word in the AAUP statement suggests that they think the American government should have done nothing in response to the "immense violence" of 9/11--it was strictly limited to what professors ought to do.

The reactionary responses by Leo and Bradford Wilson of the NAS to these reasonable ideas were deplorable, but perhaps understandable considering the wave of fear and anger inspired by 9/11.

But 10 years later, Leo actually seems proud to have falsely smeared the AAUP as "anti-American" because it stood up for freedom of thought after 9/11. Personally, I don't see anything American about attacking the patriotism of people who defend free speech.

The NAS Attack on College Common Reading Programs

2011-09-12T11:52:00.002-05:00

The National Association of Scholars is attacking common reading programs again with a new bizarrely titled report, “Beach Books: What Do Colleges and Universities Want Students to Read Outside Class? 2011-2012.”

I criticized the NAS report on common reading programs last year, and even had a superficial debate with them on Fox News Channel.

In this year's report, the NAS repeats the same attacks for colleges asking students to read contemporary books. It claims, “Colleges continue to ignore the best books when they make their selections for common reading. One likely reason for this is that Americans have eroded the distinction between high and low culture.”

Only the worst elitist can imagine that The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks (by far the most popular book this year) is “low” culture or a “beach book.” Sadly, the NAS denounces the book as “an effort to create a social controversy on the basis of a long-since settled scientific accomplishment” and smears it because “the writing itself is journalistic, not intellectual.”

The great thing about current books such as The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks is that they usually aren't already read in classes, and they offer a highly appealing (and, yes, intellectual) way to bring students into a discussion about science and ethics.

The NAS press release declared,

NAS identified five problems in U.S. society that are amplified when colleges limit students' exposure to good books:
1. An inability to distinguish "the truth" from "my truth"
2. A tendency to ignore aspects of the world that fall outside the bounds of race, class, and gender
3. A shallow understanding of the human heart
4. A lack of humility and willingness to learn
5. A sense of resentment toward those who are prosperous.

Of course, common reading programs don't “limit students' exposure to good books”--they expand it. But this statement reveals something about the NAS' particular conservative ideology. They seem to think (#5) that the only “good books” are ones that will cause students to love rich people.

The reality of the world is that if you assign a classic to an entire college, most students are going to ignore it. If you ask students to read an excellent book about a contemporary issue and bring the author on campus to talk about it, there's a better chance to have a broader campus conversation about intellectual matters.

The NAS recognizes this problem and suggests, “Bring in an impersonator or an expert on the writings of a deceased author to speak and answer questions.” Oh, good lord. So every college is going to bring in a guy with a Mark Twain mustache to tell us in a fake drawl what Huckleberry Finn is all about?

Instead of dealing with the reality that classic books just aren't desirable reading for most students, the NAS offers a truly stupid idea: “Make reading the book mandatory, and enforce the assignment with a test.”

Exactly how would you do that? Would students who fail the test be expelled from college? And who would do this? At a college with 20,000 students, would you have someone grading 20,000 essays? Would you somehow prevent 20,000 students from cheating on a multiple-choice test (not to mention the fact that standardized multiple-choice tests on literature are the worst kind of dumbing down imaginable)?

The great thing about common reading experiences is that they are voluntary. They send a message to students that reading should be a lifelong activity done for self-improvement, not something limited to classes and assignments and tests.

The NAS adds to its bad ideas with this gem: “Require that students submit a list of new words they learn from the book.” Require how? Will you fail a student who already knows these words and didn't learn new words? These are the kinds of activities I would expect in third grade, not college. I can't think of anything quite so idiotic as reducing a work of great literature to its vocabulary-building components.

Sadly, the NAS' suggestions also ignore what I think would be a great way to improve common reading programs: add a second book. It would be fantastic to have students reading books on a common subject that disagree with one another, to teach students about how to debate different views. Or imagine a college reading a classic book along with a contemporary book that's somehow connected to it. But by sneering at all current books as inherently inferior, the NAS is missing an opportunity to recommend solid books published in recent years where students can speak to a real author rather than impersonator.

None of the books suggested by the NAS seem bad, but neither are the books picked by colleges that are being attacked by the NAS (except for Tuesdays with Morrie). Instead of denouncing colleges for picking good books, they should be criticizing the colleges who haven't adopted one yet and start encouraging an expansion of these programs.

2011-09-12T09:44:00.000-05:00

Inside Higher Ed reports on a proposed University of Illinois email policy, which has been condemned by FIRE and the AAUP in an unusual joint letter (I don't recall the AAUP and FIRE ever doing this before).

Banning the use of non-university email accounts is very disturbing, especially since the example offered by Corn is this: "We have seen situations where researchers are collaborating and using personal accounts, and they have a falling out, and the research project is at risk." So if there's a dispute between collaborators, the university will go into the email of one of them and steal their data to be used against their will? Let's ignore the likely fact that no research project has ever been endangered by private email accounts. This threat of stealing data is another alarming reason why every professor and student should use private email accounts.

Here's another disturbing part of this proposed policy. According to section 12.1, "Individuals and units are required to accurately and correctly identify themselves in all electronic communications." This is not expressly limited to university business or campus email accounts; it means that students or staff at the U of Illinois are banned from being anonymous anywhere on the internet at any time (the exception allowed is to "report intolerance").

This is an example of what happens when administrators devise policies that should be written by faculty and students.

Another Victim of Repression at a Conservative College

2011-09-08T10:09:00.000-05:00

Yesterday, Erskine College fired William Crenshaw for the thoughtcrime of questioning right-wing dogma and suggesting that science should be taught. Once again, more proof that the worst repression in American higher education comes from conservative religious colleges that fire liberal (or in this case pro-science) professors. Unfortunately, many conservatives who imagine only right-wingers are ever fired will ignore it or defend violations of academic freedom when the Bible is being held up to justify it. I'd love to hear about a similar example of a conservative professor being fired under the same circumstances.

Ruling on Northwestern Students and the Protess Case

2011-09-07T12:49:00.002-05:00

A judge ruled today that Northwestern University must turn over 500 emails between David Protess and his students because "the Medill students worked at the direction of Anthony McKinney’s attorneys, conducting interviews, gathering evidence.” The ruling is stayed for 10 days until Northwestern can decide to appeal it.

I'll admit that I'm no expert at this issue. I think that if anything, the privilege that applies to investigators working for the defense should be much, much stronger than any journalistic privilege. Exactly why should the prosecution be able to subpoena the defense for evidence? I'm baffled by the whole situation. Perhaps it's because the guilt of a separate individual is now in question, but that has nothing to do with the McKinney defense, an apparently innocent man who remains in prison while prosecutors delay and delay everything.

On Monday, I watched the remarkable new documentary Crime After Crime, which shows how Los Angeles prosecutors stonewalled the efforts to release a woman from prison who should never have received a life sentence. The McKinney case doesn't seem much different, with State's Attorney Anita Alvarez leading a successful crusade against David Protess and his students to avoid dealing with the issue of innocence and prosecutorial misconduct.

Of course, the emails are quite likely to reveal absolutely nothing of any legal significance once they come out (otherwise, I'm sure Northwestern officials would have leaked any negative information as part of their crusade against Protess). But they set a terrible legal precedent against Innocence Project classes. This whole sham of a proceeding is meant to intimidate and smear, not gain justice for anyone.

Chicago Magazine just released an extensive story about what happened to Protess at Northwestern. This article is a good examination of the appalling actions by the Northwestern administration against David Protess. I am particularly amazed by the admission that the administration thinks it can ban faculty from attending faculty meetings if they are on leave for the semester: “Professor Protess was on leave spring quarter. Faculty members on leave do not attend faculty meetings.” It's a small point, but it reflects both the repressive tendencies of Northwestern administrators and their outright hypocrisy, since I am sure many faculty who have been on leave can come forward to reveal that they have attended faculty meetings without opposition.

As an advocacy journalist, I am appalled and annoyed by the article's discussion about whether Protess and his students engaged in advocacy for innocent prisoners, as if this were a crime deserving the academic death penalty. Objectivity is the worst thing that's happened to journalism in recent decades (yes, even worse than corporate ownership) and it's the main source of both bad writing and false reporting in the media. Advocacy journalism is a glorious tradition, and I regard it as both unethical and unprofessional for any journalism school to ban students from learning advocacy reporting. I don't object to journalism schools teaching objectivity despite its all-around evil influence, and I think individual professors should be free to push objectivity even though I hate it. But the notion that advocacy journalism should be banished from journalism schools is appalling and should be regarded as both an attack on academic freedom and an attack on great journalism.

In one area, this article falls short. It notes, “The American Association of University Professors also demanded to know Lavine’s reasoning.” In reality, the AAUP letters to Northwestern (available on my blog at http://collegefreedom.blogspot.com) demanded to know why the administration was violating Northwestern's own rules for due process before removing a faculty member from teaching responsibilities. It wasn't just the lack of any good reason for removing Protess from his class (and now the university completely) that upset the AAUP, it was the lack of any due process that the University's own rules demanded.

Conspiracy Theories and the AAUP

2011-08-17T01:41:00.000-05:00

KC Johnson at Minding the Campus not only attacks the AAUP's report defending politically controversial professors, but imagines that a post by Alex Klein at the New Republic somehow violates the AAUP's principles.

KC Johnson fundamentally distorts both the AAUP's report and the Klein blog. Absolutely nothing in the AAUP's work suggests that professors should be immune from criticism. What the AAUP rightly worries about are efforts to silence or punish faculty who express controversial views of any kind. Klein's blog likewise says absolutely nothing about seeking to punish the professors or ban the class in question.

Now, there might be some legitimate critiques of this class on the grounds that big money, rather than academic quality, has sustained and expanded it. But Klein doesn't say this. And the AAUP report doesn't, either.

It's sad to see otherwise thoughtful people like Johnson reduced to conspiracy theorists who imagine that the AAUP's fair-minded and even-handed defense of all professors, left and right alike, is a secret left-wing plot to prevent any criticism of an academic. The reality for anyone who actually reads the AAUP report is so plainly different that it requires a conspiratorial mind to distort it.

The Orwellian Bias of Freedom from Bias

2011-08-05T12:07:00.000-05:00

Robert Martin hates bias. In this Inside Higher Ed column, he hates it so much that he demands it by endorsing a call for affirmative action in hiring conservative professors. This is the Orwellian nature of his call for freedom from bias. It's really just a demand to suppress political speech he doesn't like (i.e., bias) and favor the speech he likes. The "post-partisan" university is really a "post-academic freedom" institution, one where repression in the name of public opinion is welcomed.

The Conservative War on College

2011-07-01T15:07:00.000-05:00

The conservative attack on higher education has reached some new disturbing peaks in recent months. In the past, conservatives complained that colleges didn't teach the classics enough or force students to take more survey classes. But now you have a conservative movement attacking college as a "bubble" and urging students not to go to college. It's part of a growing anti-intellectual movement on the right that I document in my recent book on Rush Limbaugh, "The Most Dangerous Man in America."

There's also another side to the conservative attack on higher education, a growing hatred of academic freedom, and a desire to impose political agendas on faculty hiring. This was reflected in my debates with David Horowitz and Peter Wood on hiring preferences for conservatives among adjunct faculty.

Now, in the wake of the appalling Koch Foundation attempts to control faculty hiring at Florida State and other campuses, conservatives have actually come out and endorsed the political hiring controls of the Koch Foundation.

After repeatedly failing in their efforts to prove liberal bias in faculty hiring, the right has simply decided to declare that they must be right and the only solution left is to force colleges to hiring more conservatives.

In the most recent version of this, Mark Bauerlein at Minding the Campus challenges Cary Nelson of the AAUP over his criticism of the Koch deals, claiming that they are no different from the Ford Foundation encouraging racial diversity on campus.

Bauerlein is obviously wrong here, even if we accept his claim that diversity is an ideology. If the Ford Foundation is demanding a role in the hiring decisions over faculty, then that would obviously cross the line. But Bauerlein presents zero evidence that this is the case. Certainly, foundations are allowed to have whatever goals they want. It's the question of the faculty hiring process that's at stake here, and the imposition of ideological demands by outside forces.

Sadly, the only ones left with integrity and principle in this debate are liberals such as Nelson and myself, who argue that colleges should not impose any political bias in hiring. The conservative movement has decided to abandon the pretense of academic freedom and the principle of unbiased hiring, preferring to believe that the free market will allow them to purchase dominance on college campuses.

Speech Codes on Campus: Man Boob Bans, Apathy Crimes, and Other Strange College Rules

2011-06-03T16:52:00.000-05:00

Last week, Greg Lukianoff of FIRE wrote an article that “commends the nation’s seven best colleges and universities for freedom of speech.” FIRE claims that at these colleges, “their policies at least nominally protect speech that would be protected by the First Amendment.” But is that really true? I examined some of the speech codes at these seven colleges, and I found disturbing provisions at all of them, including one college that prohibits men from baring their breasts on campus and punishes students for “apathy.”

In my 2008 book, Patriotic Correctness: Academic Freedom and Its Enemies, I did something similar, examining all of the colleges given a “green light” rating by FIRE and finding many flaws in their speech codes, including one college (Elizabeth City State University in North Carolina) that had the worst speech code I'd ever encountered. Here's what I wrote:

The campus rules include some downright silly provisions, prohibiting “making a loud noise,” “playing musical instruments,” and “repeated failure to keep residence hall room clean.” More alarmingly, the speech code punishes students merely for “association with others who are openly engaging in a prohibited activity.” Students must immediately squeal on their friends or face the same penalty. Worst of all, the rules impose automatic suspension without a hearing any student accused of “hate crimes that show evidence of prejudicial treatment or speech based on one's race, religion, sexual orientation or ethnicity” or even “any behavior or disorder that impedes, hinders or prevents the attainment of educational, research, or other goals of the University related to the mutual process of teaching and learning.” Just imagine being summarily suspended for “hindering” the “attainment” of “goals.”

Since then, FIRE has downgraded ECSU to a yellow rating, which is still a better rating than most colleges. However, ECSU still has the very same incredibly restrictive speech code imposed on their students.

Here are the flaws in the speech codes at the seven colleges identified by FIRE as the best in America:

Arizona State's Code of Conduct is a terrible speech code. For example, it bans “Unauthorized access to, disclosure of, or use of any university document.” In other words, if someone leaked a university document to the campus newspaper, the students who published such a newsworthy document could be punished. It includes vaguely-worded bans on “Interfering with or disrupting university or university-sponsored activities.” It prohibits “Engaging in harassment” but doesn't define the term. And it prohibits “Use, possession, display, or storage of any weapon” on university property, a category that explicitly includes mace and all “martial arts weapons,” whatever that means. And it bans “supporting, promoting, or sponsoring hazing.” So if a student disagreed with the ban on hazing and expressed support for hazing, that student could be punished merely for supporting it. Finally, ASU has a catch-all provision punishing students for any “Violation of, or attempt to violate, other rules that may be adopted by ABOR or by the university.” So students can be expelled for violating any university rules, even if they aren't in the code of conduct.

Dartmouth has a catch-all rule that is among the worst in the country: “In general, any conduct which interferes with the College’s responsibility to protect the health and safety of its members or visitors, to protect College property or the property of others, to carry out its functions, or to provide its members and others with services would also be in violation of this standard.” The rest of the code of conduct is not too bad, but this single provision makes all of that unimportant. Under this catch-all provision, any student who does anything that “interferes” with the College's desire to “carry out its functions” (meaning just about anything the College does) can be punished.

The University of Pennsylvania actually has a positive statement on student rights, but still has some deeply flawed parts of its code of conduct, such as the vague requirement “To refrain from conduct towards other students that infringes upon the Rights of Student Citizenship.” The code requires students “To cooperate fully and honestly in the Student Judicial System of the University.” This violates the right of students not to incriminate themselves. If the university wants to punish a student, they should prove their case, and not be able to punish the student for failing to cooperate fully in his or her own prosecution. Finally, the University of Pennsylvania offers a common catch-all rule that allows students to be punished for violating any policy of the university not listed in the code, or even a policy of a particular department that has never been approved by the university, since students are required “to comply with policies and regulations of the University and its departments.”

Carnegie Mellon's Community Standards include this broad catchall: “Examples of violations of community standards in relation to integrity include, but are not limited to:” In other words, nothing in the college's code of conduct provides a limit on enforcement, but simply offers examples. Even some of these examples are troubling, though:
“Using a message system for obscene, libelous or defamatory purposes.” If a person's message is obscene or libelous, why should the university be regulating it? Carnegie Mellon also bans the undefinable “Other acts that compromise the integrity of the academic process.” And the code prohibits “Violations of the Carnegie Mellon Basic Building Etiquette,” but I can't find any description online of what “Basic Building Etiquette” might be.

The University of Tennessee at Knoxville's conduct code prohibits “Disorderly conduct or lewd, indecent, or obscene conduct on university-owned or controlled property or at university-sponsored or supervised functions.” In addition to this vague ban, it prohibits “Inciting other students to violate written university policies or regulations,” a broad provision that covers a lot of protected free speech urging civil disobedience.

The University of Virginia declares that “an honor offense is defined as an intentional act of lying, cheating or stealing,” making it one of the few colleges that punishes students for any lies they might tell.

The College of William and Mary has several vague provisions in its code of conduct, including a particularly bad rule on hazing: “Apathy or acquiescence in the presence of hazing are not considered neutral acts; they are violations of this rule.” It is remarkable that any college thinks it can punish students for the crime of “apathy.”

The College of William and Mary has the vague catch-all rule against “Violating any College policy, rule, or regulation.” Another rule bans “abusing the student conduct system” which is seemingly unlimited in its scope, but particularly includes “refusing to appear, testify, or remain present during an official College hearing or meeting with any person connected with the disciplinary or honor processes.” This is a fundamental violation of an individual's right not to give self-incriminating testimony.

Another rule threatens to punish students for “Hosting guests who violate College Policy. All guests are expected to abide by College regulations. Students are responsible for the behavior of their guests and may be sanctioned for violations committed by their guests.” Again, it is fundamentally wrong to punish students for the violations committed by others that they could not predict and did not know about.

William and Mary's Weapons Policy includes a ban on undefined “other weapons” as well as “realistic-looking toy firearms, knives, or swords.”

But the most bizarre rule at William and Mary is a ban on “Engaging in conduct that infringes on the rights of others,” an extremely vague provision explained only by this footnote that says, “Examples include: exposing one's own genitals, buttocks, or breasts in a public place...” I'm not sure how the exposure of breasts infringes upon my rights (in fact, I firmly reject this theory). But hilariously enough, because the university tried to be political correct and not specify any gender, this rule also prohibits male breasts from being exposed. That's right: William and Mary bans men from being shirtless in public places, whether it's the campus swimming pool or the quad. Nor does this rule explain whether women who expose part of their breasts (i.e., cleavage) would be subject to the ban.

But the bigger problem with this rule is that the man boob ban is only an example of what violates the rules. We have no idea what “conduct that infringes on the rights of others” means. Presumably, if being offended by breasts is deemed a violation of your rights, being offended by all sorts of expression could also qualify under this same rule. If you're more offended by the N-word than bare breasts, does that mean the N-word should be prohibited on campus?

Of course, the actual wording of a speech code is not the most important factor in the state of liberty on campus. FIRE's description of each ideal campus tends to emphasize the actual practice of free speech on campus (most often a recent repeal of a restrictive policy).

What does all this mean? First, it means that some of the hysteria about “speech codes” is overblown, a point I made in my first book, The Myth of Political Correctness: The Conservative Attack on Higher Education. A bad provision in a speech code does not mean colleges are totalitarian spaces. To the contrary, college campuses are generally the freest institutions in American society. So long as reasonable people interpret these speech codes, there is often little to fear.

But speech codes do matter. A bad speech code is a ticking time bomb waiting for an incompetent or misguided administrator to abuse it. We need to criticize and revise flawed speech codes, and improve them to protect the rights of everyone on campus. And that's what makes FIRE's celebration of these colleges so objectionable. By pretending that these colleges have no problems with their speech codes, FIRE is taking away an opportunity to continue improving the state of freedom on these campuses.

One reason why many of these “best” colleges were honored by FIRE is because they went through the process of scrutinizing their policies and consciously adopting greater free speech on campus. That's something that shouldn't end. FIRE should be praising some of the actions of these colleges while continuing to criticize the flaws in their speech codes.

Free speech on campus requires a constant process of debate and discussion about the meaning of liberty.

College of DuPage Removes Student Newspaper Adviser

2011-06-01T13:44:00.001-05:00

The College of DuPage continues its dubious record of silencing free speech and academic freedom. The Courier newspaper at COD reports that journalism professor Cathy Stablein, who has been the adviser to the Courier since 1987, has been removed from her position effective June 1. The administration claims that it removed Stablein from her job so that she could focus on restructuring the journalism program. Courier editors report that they have not been consulted about any of these decision.
In a letter to the administration, current editor-in-chief Nick Davison and former editor-in-chief Vikaas Shanker praised Stablein's work in helping the Courier consistently win journalism awards as the leading community college newspaper in the state of Illinois. They also praise her for never censoring the newspaper and allowing the voice of students to be heard. Shanker has started a petition to reinstate the Courier adviser.

I've previously written about the attempts by the College of DuPage administration and trustees to silence free speech on campus. In 2008, the DuPage administration and trustees tried to impose a new policy requiring, “All College-sponsored or authorized student publications must operate in a professional manner and are expected to follow the standards of professional journalism....The College President will be responsible for overseeing student publications.” The administration backed down from this proposal, but it reflects the mindset of the current president.

In my book, Patriotic Correctness: Academic Freedom and Its Enemies, I note how student newspaper advisers have one of the most vulnerable jobs on campus, and are often fired for refusing to censor student newspapers. The College of DuPage needs to reconsider this rash decision to remove an adviser for no good reason.

UPDATE: The Daily Herald reports on the case and adds this interesting detail:

The episode isn’t the first time College of DuPage President Robert Breuder has been at the helm when issues arose involving the student press. In 2006, when Breuder was president of Harper College in Palatine, Daily Herald film critic Dann Gire’s contract as faculty adviser to the student newspaper was not renewed. At the time, Gire said college administrators wanted to impose new guidelines on the paper that would have restricted what was published, and he refused to sign off on those rules.

Wheaton College and the Bigots of Academia

2011-05-23T08:52:00.000-05:00

Stanton Jones, provost of Wheaton College in Illinois, argues in today's InsideHigherEd.com that his college is tolerant because it's willing to allow gay students who never have sex to remain on campus.

If Wheaton College's anti-gay policies are really a product of a voluntary community of religious scholars, as Provost Jones claims, then surely he would be willing to put the college's homophobia up for a secret vote of the faculty. They should also be willing to publicly debate their values on campus; I'd be happy to debate Provost Jones at Wheaton any day.

Wheaton College fires professors for getting divorced (http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2008/04/25/wheaton), and for becoming a Catholic (http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2006/01/12/faith), even though their rules don't actually prohibit Catholics.

I don't think the government should seek to prohibit colleges like Wheaton from existing. But all of us (including evangelicals who share the faith imposed at Wheaton) should condemn their bigotry, and their appalling attacks on academic freedom.

Wheaton embraces the false notion that a college cannot maintain a Christian identity without prohibiting dissent and diversity among its faculty and students. For this, its administration deserves our condemnation.

Required Homophobia at Liberty University

2011-05-19T20:20:00.000-05:00

Sarah Posner writes about an exam question at a law class at Liberty University dealing with a formerly lesbian mother who hides her child from a former partner despite a legal custody order:

the exam asked, “Lisa needs your counsel on how to think through her legal situation and how to respond as a Christian to this difficult problem. Relying only on what we have learned thus far in class, how would you counsel Lisa?”

Students who wrote that Miller should comply with court orders received bad grades while those who wrote she should engage in civil disobedience received an A, the three students said. “People were appalled,” said one of the students, adding, “especially as lawyers-to-be, who are trained and licensed to practice the law—to disobey that law, that seemed completely counterintuitive to all of us.”

Of course, law professors and law students should be free to argue for civil disobedience, although exactly what part of God's law demands illicitly hiding a child from her mother is mysterious to me. And professors deserve criticism for expressing those stupid ideas.

But what's most notable to me here is the lack of freedom of speech at Liberty University, where students are graded based on their personal view of lawbreaking rather than any intellectual understanding of the law. This is pure political correctness. And considering that Liberty University doesn't have academic freedom, it indicates that this embrace of breaking the law is the official stand of Liberty University, one that professors and students alike cannot disagree with. And that's just as upsetting as the repulsive homophobia displayed in this case.

Clemson Sells Out to the Koch Foundation

2011-05-14T08:55:00.001-05:00

The disturbing news that Florida State University sold out its faculty spots to the right-wing Koch Foundation has led to probes into other agreements that the Koch Foundation has made with universities.

The Anderson Independent Mail today writes about the case at Clemson University, a public institution in South Carolina. Clemson's agreement with the Koch Foundation (pdf available here) explicitly imposes right-wing criteria for hiring the faculty. Section II(b)(i) declares that the university will only recruit faculty who “support the Objectives and Purposes” in Section I, which proclaims that the program must support “appreciation of economic freedom.” That's a very serious violation of academic freedom. You can fund a particular subject matter, but not a particular viewpoint. And that's what this agreement seems to demand of the faculty being hired under it. That's a serious mistake.

It appears that Clemson changed its faculty manual (pdf) to allow the Koch Foundation greater influence over faculty. In a new provision added last year to the Clemson Faculty Manual, “a sponsoring party representative may interview the final candidates and offer opinions about the candidates’ qualifications to the search-and-screening committee.” It is highly unusual for non-academic outsiders to be permitted to interview faculty candidates and provide a formal process for their opinions to be considered by a search committee. Amazingly, Clemson's formal rules now allow outsiders to buy their way into the search committee process and ensure that their views are heard. Donors should have absolutely no role in the hiring process.

The agreement also allows the Koch Foundation to withdraw most of its donation if they don't like the faculty member who is hired. The $1 million donation is done in four annual donations of $250,000. This puts intense pressure on the faculty to hire someone Koch likes, or else risk losing a lot of money that could cause a faculty position to be eliminated.

The other interesting thing about this Clemson donation: $1 million isn't very much money to sustain a highly paid business scholar, because business faculty are often incredibly overpaid. That's why the named professorship is really only a rental for 6 years. After that, the name goes away. The university is still obligated to keep the faculty member they hired and keep them under the normal tenure procedures. In fact, under the university rules, they have to keep the faculty member even if the Koch foundation objects and pulls its funding after a year.

So really, the university has taken upon itself a massive financial cost for the long-term, with only a fraction paid for by the foundation, and given the foundation a lot of influence in return. If Clemson University is going to sell out its faculty to the highest bidder, it ought to be asking for a lot more money than this.

Clemson needs to change its faculty manual to remove the influence of wealthy donors on the hiring process. It needs to prohibit ideological criteria in any donor agreement. And it needs to set a priority that named faculty chairs are paid for up front and in full, and not rented out by right-wing foundations who want to influence the hiring process without actually providing full support for the position.

Crossposted at DailyKos.

Academic Freedom for Sale at Florida State

2011-05-11T08:34:00.000-05:00

In an astonishing view of academic freedom, Florida State dean David Rasmussen defends the 2008 deal to allow the Koch Foundation into the faculty hiring process for economics professors.

Rasmussen assures us that critics “can take comfort in the fact that the university duly performed its due diligence in entering these partnerships.” Actually, there’s no evidence that the university considered academic freedom as a serious issue. If they had, there’s no way any responsible administrator would have approved these appalling deals.

Florida State president Eric Barron declared, "If there is anything that affected academic freedom, I would put an immediate stop to it." It already has. Consider this: “the school agreed to recruit and maintain faculty and individuals who support objectives set forth by an advisory panel appointed by the non-profit foundation.” This is a plain and devastating violation of academic freedom, to allow an outside actor to set ideological criteria for hiring (and, apparently, tenure and promotion, too).

It is appalling to allow a donor to evaluate and potentially veto faculty hires. The proper role of a donor in the faculty hiring process can be summarized in two words: absolutely none. The fact that faculty still maintain ultimate control over hiring doesn’t change that. And the faculty are quite aware that if too many of their hires are unacceptable to the donor, then they will lose the money and be unable to hire the new faculty. This places a clear threat to academic freedom.

Rasmussen concludes his letter by writing, “We should always seek to enhance academic freedom by being aware that bias, both external and internal, can corrupt the free inquiry of ideas.” This comment indicates that Rasmussen sees no distinction between the faculty and the donors. Both the external and internal actors, he thinks, can be biased, and he seems to believe that academic freedom is enhanced when donors can counter the “bias” of the faculty. This astonishing view of academic freedom effectively destroys it.

Rasmussen argues that this deal is desirable because it would “enable the university to hire professors.” Of course, any donation enables a university to hire professors and offer more courses. But at what price? By this logic, any demand by a donor would be acceptable so long as the check was big enough. David Rasmussen and the administration of Florida State have put the university’s academic freedom and intellectual integrity up for sale.

How the Arizona Legislature Accidentally Banned Religious Discrimination on Campus

2011-05-04T16:14:00.003-05:00

Sometimes a legislature doesn't understand what it's doing. But it takes genuine stupidity for a legislature to do the exact opposite of what it intended. Yet that's what the Arizona legislature appears to have done.

The right-wingers who run Arizona seem to have been trying to get around the Supreme Court's ruling in CLS v. Martinez that refused to require public colleges to recognize anti-gay religious student groups that discriminate based on belief and prohibit anyone who isn't homophobic from running for a leadership position. Unfortunately for the conservatives, the wording of the Arizona law itself doesn't do this. In fact, the law does the exact opposite and requires colleges to enforce the non-discrimination rules for student groups that CLS v. Martinez merely permitted universities to follow. That's because the law doesn't explicitly declare that discriminatory student groups are allowed. By contrast, the law explicitly bans religious discrimination: “A university or community college shall not discriminate against a student on the basis of the student's religious viewpoint, expression or belief.” Since being banned from a student group is a form of punishment, no student organization at a public college can discriminate based on religious beliefs.

Here's what the law requires under 15-1863 B, “A religious or political student organization may determine that ordering the organization's internal affairs, selecting the organization's leaders and members, defining the organization's doctrines and resolving the organization's disputes are in furtherance of the organization's religious or political mission and that only persons committed to that mission should conduct such activities.”

That's all quite lovely. But let's go through this carefully:
“ordering the organization's internal affairs”: this doesn't really mean anything, since student groups always get to order their internal affairs.

“selecting the organization's leaders and members”: selecting leaders is non-controversial. No one opposes letting students in a group select their leaders. The only issue in CLS v. Martinez was banning certain people from running for election because of their views, which this doesn't change. Selecting members is a much more controversial issues, since student groups normally don't get to select their members. But remember, they would only be able to exclude members based on the commitment to the group's mission, not based on their religious views. A student can be committed to a group's mission without agreeing to every belief espoused by the group.

“defining the organization's doctrines”: again, nothing controversial here, student groups always get to define their doctrines.

“resolving the organization's disputes”: This is a troublesome clause because it makes absolutely no sense to say that organizational disputes should be resolved by people in the group committed to the mission of the group. Such organizational disputes are between people in the group who almost invariably claim to be committed to the mission of the group, and therefore must be resolved by the administration.

So, the Arizona legislature was afraid to be honest about what conservatives want on campus: discriminatory religious student groups. As a result, they passed a law that failed to impose this on colleges.

In fact, another provision of the same law does the exact opposite. According to 15-1862 A, “A university or community college shall not discriminate against a student on the basis of the student's religious viewpoint, expression or belief.”

The key question is, can a student's exclusion from a student group be regarded as a form of penalty? The answer, I believe, must be “yes.” If a university decreed that a student could not participate in a student group because of his or her views, it would clearly be regarded as a punishment that could not be allowed without evidence of wrongdoing. If a student organization makes the same decree banning certain students from the student group, it must also be regarded as a penalty. The reason is simple: legally, student groups are legally a subset of the university, and the university has certain legal responsibilities for their actions as a student organization.

If exclusion from a student group based on their religious views is a form of punishment, then it cannot be allowed. All student groups must allow anyone to join, regardless of their religious views.

It could be argued, I suppose, that Section 15-1863 B was intended to be an exception to 15-1862 A, and therefore supersedes it. This is a difficult argument to make. Normally, the provisions in a particular law are held equal. Section 15-1863 B include numerous new rules that protect the rights of student groups, and nothing in them is really incompatible with 15-1862 A. There have been some baseless fears that anti-discrimination rules might be used to overturn the decisions of students in religious student groups, and 15-1863 B would resolve that. All that 15-1862 A does is take away the discretion of college administrators to allow discriminatory student groups, which isn't incompatible at all with 15-1863 B.

It could also be argued that Arizona legislators had a clear intent to allow discriminatory religious student groups on college campuses, despite their failure to pass a law doing this. I don't share this view of the law. The law is what it says. I don't care if Arizona's legislators, like many people, misunderstood the Supreme Court's ruling in CLS v. Martinez and don't understand what religious freedom means.

The law is what it says. And in Arizona, the law says that students at public colleges cannot face discrimination based on their religious views, and that must include participation in student organizations.

Crossposted at DailyKos.

UIC Faculty Unionize

2011-04-30T15:25:00.000-05:00

On April 29, 2011, the AFT/IFT and the AAUP filed hundreds of authorization cards to unionize the faculty at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

This a dramatic step. Gary Rhoades, the General Secretary of the AAUP, declared that “this is the first major, large public research university in 30 to 40 years” to unionize. UIC is one of the largest and most prestigious universities in America ever to demand union representation for their faculty. UIC's union is also notable because it will include both non-tenure-track fuull-time faculty and tenure-track faculty

Under state law, faculty at public colleges can unionize without a vote when a majority of them sign a card for having the union. At UIC, approximately 60 percent of the faculty signed the “card check” authorizing the union.

AAUP president Cary Nelson, who spoke along with Rhoades at the AAUP's Collective Bargaining Congress regional conference and Illinois AAUP annual meeting, said: “This is a time to fight.”

Rhoades predicted, “I think this victory is going to send shockwaves through administrations” across the country.

Investigative Reporters Speak Out Against Protess Punishment

2011-04-27T13:21:00.004-05:00

A group of investigative journalists issued the following statement today about the Protess case at Northwestern University:

STATEMENT IN SUPPORT OF AN INDEPENDENT INVESTIGATION INTO THE PROTESS CONTROVERSY

We are deeply concerned about what appears to be a retaliatory campaign by law enforcement authorities and Northwestern University against long-time investigative journalist and Professor David Protess.

Professor Protess has established a national reputation at Northwestern University by working with journalism students on investigations that have resulted in the release of a dozen innocent men from death row or long prison terms. His work and writings have inspired many to become investigative journalists and to the creation of innocence projects in their own communities.

This controversy began two years ago when the Cook County prosecutor began an unprecedented effort to obtain the notes, grades and emails of Professor Protess' students, who worked on the case of a man who appears to have been unjustly convicted.

Now Professor Protess' methods and honesty have been questioned not only by prosecutors, but by his employer, Northwestern University, and its attorneys. This month, in a highly unusual proceeding the University presented its case against Professor Protess to a closed session of the journalism faculty. Professor Protess was barred from the meeting, denying him an opportunity to confront the accusations. Then the university issued a press release making public the serious allegations against him, quickly adding that it would not comment any further.

Tarnished and isolated, Protess has been the subject of news reports and leaks that further damaged his reputation. In response, he has asked for an independent investigation into the allegations against him as well as the conduct of all those involved.

We support such an investigation and we call on our colleagues, especially those covering the news media, to join in investigating what is happening at Northwestern University. We also ask university officials to present themselves in a public session to explain their actions, and to answer questions on why they have endangered one of the premier investigative reporting projects in the country.

*Affiliation listed for identification purposes only

Prof. Lowell Bergman, Logan Professor of Investigative Reporting, UC Berkeley

Prof. Mark Feldstein, George Washington University

Prof. Brant Houston, Knight Chair in Investigative Reporting, University of Illinois

David Cay Johnston, investigative reporter and author

Prof. Charles Lewis, American University

Prof. Belle Adler, Northeastern University

Laurie Becklund, writer and author

Bill Boyarsky, political writer, Truthdig

David Burnham, Investigative Reporter

John Camp, former senior investigative correspondent, CNN

John S. Carroll, Retired Newspaper Editor

Prof. Wendell Cochran, American University

Sheila Coronel, Toni Stabile Professor of Professional Practice in Investigative Journalism, Columbia University

Prof. Stephen Doig, Knight Chair in Journalism, Arizona State University

Dan Gillmor, Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication, Arizona State University, Author, “We the Media” and “Mediactive”

Prof. Theodore Glasser, Stanford University

Florence Graves, The Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism & The Justice Brandeis Innocence Project

Prof. Christopher Hanson, Merrill College of Journalism, University of Maryland

Ellen Hume, Annenberg Fellow in Civic Media, Central European University

Martin Koughan, former senior producer, CNN and CBS News

Prof. Jane E. Kirtley, Silha Professor of Media Ethics and Law, University of Minnesota

Prof. Marvin Kalb, Murrow Professor Emeritus, Kennedy School, Harvard University

Katherine Kross, ex-CNN and Bloomberg TV Washington bureau chief

Prof. David T. Z. Mindich, Media Studies chair, Saint Michael's College

Morton Mintz, Senior Advisor, Niemanwatchdog.org, former Washington Post reporter

Jim Naughton, Emeritus President of The Poynter Institute.

James Neff, investigative journalist, author

Mark Nykanen, author and journalist, former NBC News correspondent

Prof. William Serrin, New York University

Prof. Herman Schwartz, American University’s Washington College of Law

Ira Silverman, former senior producer, NBC News

Prof. Edward Wasserman, Knight Professor of Journalism Ethics, Washington and Lee University

Prof. Steve Weinberg, author and emeritus professor, University of Missouri

Henry Weinstein, Professor the Practice of Law and Senior Lecturer in Literary Journalism, University of California, Irvine

Tracy Wood, investigative reporter

Two Chicago Events on Higher Education

2011-04-24T15:51:00.001-05:00

Two events in Chicago where I'll be speaking this week.

I'm going to be speaking on a panel on Tuesday at NEIU:

"Free Speech Under Fire: From Wisconsin to NEIU"
panel including Loretta Capeheart of NEIU, Peter Kirstein of St. Xavier, and myself
Tuesday, April 26 · 7:00pm - 9:00pm
Northeastern Illinois University (NEIU), LWH (Lech Walesa Hall) room 1002
3601 West Bryn Mawr Avenue
Chicago, IL
https://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=148258058574713

On Saturday, April 30, I'll be speaking on a panel about graduate student organizing at the Illinois AAUP annual meeting:

Please mark your calendar to attend the joint IL AAUP Annual Meeting and AAUP Collective Bargaining Congress Regional Conference on Saturday April 30, 9:30 a.m. – 4:30 p.m. The meeting will be held at the Crowne Plaza Chicago Metro, 733 West Madison St., Chicago, Ill. Travel to the Crowne Plaza is easy via Metra, Amtrak, and Megabus. Also, in the past there has often been free parking available on the side streets of Greektown a few blocks west of the hotel (check the street signs).

The conference is free, and will offer many excellent sessions by leaders in the AAUP. Please refer to www.ilaaup.org for more information. If you plan to attend please contact Jennifer Nichols jnichols@aaup.org, so that we will have an accurate headcount for workshop materials and meals. Scheduled speakers include Gary Rhoades and Cary Nelson.

I'll also be speaking at the national AAUP's conference and Annual Meeting on June 8 in DC.

Don't Ban the Innocence Project

2011-04-21T17:54:00.000-05:00

Charlotte Allen at Minding the Campus writes about the David Protess case. I've written at length about the Protess case on my blog, and Allen's summary of the facts is not extremely biased (although, like too many others, she completely omits the facts that Northwestern violated its own rules by suspending Protess without any due process).

The possibility that a few of Protess' students over the years may have done something arguably unethical (although the examples offered seem extremely minor) should not surprise anyone, since this could be found among virtually every professor's students.

But I'm deeply concerned by Allen's belief that "innocence project" programs should be banned by universities. Instead of imposing one terrible theory of journalism (banning all advocacy), colleges should welcome a variety of different perspectives. Investigating the possible innocence of a convict is a wonderful way to learn journalistic techniques, and Protess' Innocence Project should be imitated by journalism programs across the country. Sadly, there seem to be no other journalism programs doing this, and the crusade against Protess (and conservative critics such as Allen) may ensure that there is an effective ban already on these programs. Our justice system, and our journalism programs, are much worse because of this.

David Protess Calls for Independent Investigation

2011-04-13T20:30:00.002-05:00

David Protess issued a press release earlier this evening about his academic freedom case at Northwestern:

April 14, 2011
For Immediate Release

Protess Calls for Independent and Public Review

David Protess, Professor of Journalism at Northwestern University and President of the fledgling Chicago Innocence Project, called today for an independent review of the Medill Innocence Project and his actions as its director, saying the results of the review should be made public.

Since last October, three former federal prosecutors have been investigating the innocence project at the behest of Northwestern officials. Their report has remained secret, though Provost Daniel Linzer and Dean John Lavine revealed portions of it at a private meeting of the Medill faculty, from which Protess was excluded. According to sources at the meeting, the provost and dean showed a dozen or so redacted email messages from the more than a thousand exchanged during an investigation of a wrongful conviction case involving Anthony McKinney.

No students, alumni or senior faculty were interviewed by the former prosecutors, who now are partners at Jenner & Block, a firm hired by Northwestern to respond to a subpoena issued by the Cook County State's Attorney's Office.

"The former prosecutors' review was completely lacking in transparency," Protess said. "I will participate fully in any independent review that makes its findings available to the public." Protess added that if the university is unwilling to cooperate, he will publicly release all 26,600 "hits" from the imaged hard drives of his work and home computers to help the review team decide whether any improprieties occurred during the reporting of the McKinney case.

Protess said the independent review team should be chosen by Northwestern's Faculty Senate and ideally include representation from students, alums and professors, as well as at least one director of a journalism innocence project and a professional organization of journalists, such as Investigative Reporters & Editors.

Among the questions the review team might address:

1. Did Protess knowingly mislead the university during the litigation surrounding the McKinney case or others? Was his conduct inconsistent with widely accepted standards for investigative reporting or administering an innocence project in a university setting?

2. Did Dean Lavine suspend Protess from teaching and replace him as director of the Medill Innocence Project in retaliation for Protess's acknowledged role in exposing the dean's alleged fabrication of quotes in a magazine article? Did the suspension violate university rules and American Association of University Professors (AAUP) guidelines?

3. Did Provost Linzer have a conflict-of-interest in deciding a matter in which his spouse is the Associate Director of the Law School's Center on Wrongful Convictions, whose handling of documents from Protess was a hotly contested issue in the McKinney case? Was former U. S. Attorney Anton R. Valukas, the head of the Jenner & Block investigative team, biased because of his numerous affiliations with the Law School? Was Northwestern's General Counsel, Thomas Cline, a law school alumnus and donor, similarly biased?

Protess is on leave from Northwestern to establish the Chicago Innocence Project, a nonprofit investigative reporting group whose mission is to expose and remedy the problem of wrongful convictions.

David Protess Responds to Critics

2011-04-08T16:39:00.000-05:00

More on the David Protess case can be found in Michael Miner's Chicago Reader article and his follow-up blog.

Michael Miner makes one serious error in this article: claiming that Northwestern administrators, after losing confidence in Protess' veracity, had "no choice this spring but to remove him from the classroom." In fact, they did have a choice. According to the faculty handbook, they could have let him teach, or they could have filed charges of misconduct against Protess before a faculty committee and then show an "immediate harm" to students in allowing him to teach. Administrators instead chose to suspend Protess without due process, and they violated their own university rules. Administrators are not the gods of the university, empowered to toss aside any tenured professor they have lost confidence in. The administration must prove very serious misconduct in order to suspend or fire a professor, and so far Northwestern officials have alleged very little of significance and proven absolutely nothing. Perhaps that's why they refuse to provide Protess with the due process he is guaranteed--because administrators know they have nothing that can justify what they have done.

Meanwhile, Protess himself wrote a response to critics in a letter to alumni:

Dear Medill and Innocence Project Alums,

On April 6, a spokesperson for the university informed the public that Medill Dean John Lavine would tell the faculty that afternoon why the dean had suspended me from teaching in Spring quarter. Dean Lavine informed me in advance by email that I would be denied the opportunity to be present at that meeting to tell my side. I also have called for the administration to make public its report about my project as well as another report by a junior faculty member who shadowed me -- at the dean's instigation -- for almost two years. Both requests have been rejected.

I am therefore left to respond to a news release by a university spokesperson You deserve a more complete explanation, particularly in light of your outpouring of support the past few weeks, and I will provide it if the dean ever fulfills his obligation to transparency. Meanwhile, this response will have to do.

The spokesperson's news release -- issued 48 hours after the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) launched an investigation into the dean's violation of rules for suspending faculty -- is filled with blatant distortions of the truth. I will reply to each of the main allegations in his release.

1. The spokesperson: "Protess...knew from the very beginning" that he had "authorized the release of all student memos to Mr. McKinney's counsel."

The facts:

The university knew from the very beginning that I had provided McKinney's lawyers with the evidence in the case. On November 19, 2008, six months before the subpoena, I wrote a story for our Web site describing that evidence -- most of which was in the form of student memos. Here's what I wrote: "We shared the evidence in 2006 with lawyers and law students at the Center on Wrongful Convictions at our law school's Bluhm Legal Clinic.".My public statements about the collaboration between my innocence project and the law school's were well known to the legal team when they began fighting the subpoena in June of 2009. The original Web posting is still up. You can find it at . Regrettably, the university spokesperson is now blaming me for matters communicated to the university more than two years ago.

2. The flak: "The review uncovered numerous examples of Protess knowingly making false and misleading statements to the dean, to University attorneys, and to others."

The spokesperson:

There is an important distinction between knowingly making false statements and recollections that sometimes prove to be inaccurate. Here is the first of many examples of this distinction: On September 14, 2009 a lawyer for the university reported that she had spoken with McKinney's lawyer, Karen Daniel, and indicated that "she has a significant amount of materials from the [Medill] investigation, including videos, transcripts and student memos..." The email continued: "If that's true, it may constitute a waiver..." This was indisputably the first time that the issue of a waiver of journalistic privilege had arisen -- four months after the subpoena was served. I replied by email the same day: "As for Karen Daniel, I asked her long ago what she'd kept, and she told me she only had the videos, audios and transcriptions from the interviews....I said it had been several years and I couldn't remember...." [Italics added.]
At this point, when my memory diverged from McKinney's lawyer, it was incumbent on Northwestern's legal team to conduct computer imaging to find the truth. The university blundered by waiting ten months to do the imaging, and now has decided to deflect attention from themselves rather than accept responsibility for their failure to act.

3. The spokesperson: "[I]n June 2010 the University discovered that there were many inconsistencies emerging between Protess' representations and the facts."

The facts:

Since I have not been given the opportunity to review and reply to each of these "many inconsistencies," I can only generally acknowledge that they did occur. However, none was intentional. I was being asked in 2009-10 to recall events from the McKinney investigation, which we had conducted from 2003-06. We had undertaken numerous investigations in the intervening period with the sharing of evidence varying from case to case. Moreover, most of the memos in McKinney were shared with the Center in 2005-06, a time when my wife was being treated for metastatic breast cancer. My thoughts were not focused on how many student memos were given from my innocence project to another innocence project, so I relied on my best memory. Unfortunately, my memory often failed.
On October 10, 2010, several months after the "many inconsistencies" were identified, Northwestern's General Counsel Thomas Cline reached this conclusion about the problem in an email to the dean and me: "I recognize that it is often difficult to recall fully and accurately matters that occurred several years ago. It is now apparent, based on what we learned from the Center on Thursday, that some of your statements and recollections regarding materials published to the Center may not have been completely accurate." [Italics added.]
I couldn't agree more. The university flak's statement, a desperate effort to publicly justify my suspension by the dean, is fundamentally at odds with the private conclusion of the head lawyer for the university.

4. The spokesperson: "As just one example [of false information], in December 2009 Protess sent them a falsified communication in an attempt to hide the fact that the student memos had been shared with Mr. McKinney's lawyers."

The facts: While this allegation sounds sensational, the reality is quite benign. First, out of more than a thousand email exchanged in the McKinney case, only one part of one message has been questioned. Second, no one changed the wording of that email by adding or substituting language. Rather, a clause within a single sentence was redacted. Third, the clause that was redacted was inaccurate. That is, it was redacted so university lawyers would NOT be misled. Fourth, the lawyers were informed at the top of the message that a portion had been redacted. Fifth, I explained all this to the three former prosecutors who investigated my innocence project at the university's behest. They didn't care about the truth.They had an agenda from day one: to shift blame away from the university lawyers for not imaging the computers sooner, and from the law school that destroyed most of the documents I gave them.

5. The spokesperson: "He caused the University to take on what turned out to be an unsupportable case..."

The facts: If the subpoena case is "unsupportable," why is the university continuing to fight it? In truth, my students' memos were a fraction of the documents demanded by prosecutors. The other records include students' notes, binders, summaries, email and grades, reimbursements for travel expenses, as well as my syllabi and evaluations of students' performance. The fight goes on, both by my lawyers and the university's, because this cause transcends reporting memos. It involves a fundamental infringement by the State on the autonomy of the university. To suggest the subpoena would not have been worth fighting simply because more memos went to the Center than I recalled reflects the lack of principle that has been the hallmark of the university's actions in this matter.

Finally, I could not help but notice that the spokesperson's statement failed to mention the plight of the most important person in this sideshow: Anthony McKinney. An innocent man, Anthony has been locked up for more than three decades for a murder he did not commit. I am proud of the many project alums who worked tirelessly to uncover evidence of his innocence, and of the lawyers who have bravely pursued his cause. It is a shame that a university flak, and the dean of a once-proud journalism school, have chosen to join prosecutors in compounding one injustice with another.

I have hired lawyers at great personal expense to protect the journalistic and privacy rights of project alums while turning over 26,600 "hits" from my personal computers to the university to expedite the process of securing justice for Anthony McKinney.

Beyond that, I will continue to respond to the university's smear campaign and will always be available to answer your questions about this case.

Thanks.

Best,

David

2nd AAUP Letter to Northwestern on Protess Case

2011-04-08T12:05:00.000-05:00

The AAUP has written a second letter to Northwestern University about the David Protess case, which I reprint in full below. This letter is a reply to Northwestern's letter by Thomas Cline, which was a response to the first AAUP letter. (Unfortunately, the AAUP doesn't release third-party letters without permission, and Cline is out of the office and hasn't responded yet to my request to post his letter.) Here is the AAUP letter:

April 4, 2011

Thomas G. Cline
Vice President and General Counsel
Northwestern University

Dear Mr. Cline:

Thank you for your letter of April 1, responding to mine of March 28, addressed to President Schapiro, concerning the case of Professor Protess. We appreciate that the issue of Professor Protess's reinstatement for the spring quarter has been rendered moot as a result of his taking a leave of absence for the quarter. Our concerns remain, however, about the issues of academic due process for a faculty member at Northwestern posed by Dean Lavine's decision to remove Professor Protess from teaching his previously assigned course.

You note that “the University's Faculty Handbook provides specifically that '[t]eaching responsibilities and specific course assignments are established by the school dean and/or department chair.” Such a policy and practice are, of course, common, but it is a long step from that to your assertion that “Therefore, it was Dean Lavine's prerogative to assign the course in question to another tenured faculty member for this quarter.” Moreover, we take exception to your denial that assigning the course to someone else “constitutes a sanction for which any adjudicative hearing is required.”

Enclosed with my March 28 letter to President Schapiro was the report of our Association's Committee A on Academic Freedom and Tenure on The Use and Abuse of Faculty Suspensions. It quotes earlier AAUP reports which state that the action to bar a faculty member from the classroom “inflicts ignominy upon the teacher” and denies the individual “a right, in the case of the teaching profession, which is exercised not in private practice but through institutions. To deny a faculty member this opportunity without adequate cause, regardless of monetary compensation, is to deny him his basic professional rights. Moreover, to a good teacher, to be involuntarily idle is a serious harm in itself....” In short, see removal from normal teaching responsibilities, even where the faculty member retains other duties, as certainly a suspension and plainly, therefore, a severe sanction—requiring an adjudicative hearing of record before an appropriate faculty body. Indeed, on page 28 of the Northwestern University Faculty Handbook regarding “Termination or Suspension of Faculty for Cause,” one reads the following:

“Termination of an appointment with continuous tenure, or of a probationary of special appointment before the end of the specified term, may be effected by the University for adequate cause and in conformity with the procedures outlined below. If the University believes that the conduct of a faculty member, although not constituting adequate cause for termination, poses a sufficiently grave infraction of the principles of academic freedom or of faculty responsibility to justify suspension from service for a stated period or some other severe sanction, the University will follow the procedures below in conducting proceedings that may impose such sanctions. Adequate cause for termination of an appointment or the imposition of some other severe sanction will be related, directly and substantially, to the faculty member's fitness in his/her professional capacities as a teacher or researcher, which includes conduct consistent with principles of academic freedom and faculty responsibility. Termination, suspension, or other severe sanction will not be used to restrain faculty members in their exercise of academic freedom or other rights of United States citizens.”

The “procedures below” to which reference is made in the foregoing paragraph are set forth on pages 29-31 of the handbook, and these track the AAUP's recommended procedural standards. They require inter alia an adjudicative hearing of record before the University Faculty Reappointment, Promotion, Tenure, and Dismissal Appeals Panel, in which the administration, before taking any final action, must bear the burden of demonstrating adequacy of cause for the severe sanction it seeks to impose.

In sum, beyond the specific case of Professor Protess, we are troubled that, in writing for the Northwestern administration, you have set forth a position that appears not only at odds with AAUP-supported standards of academic due process but also in conflict with the university's own applicable policies and procedures.

Sincerely,
B. Robert Kreiser
Associate Secretary
AAUP

The Crusade Against David Protess

2011-04-07T09:31:00.001-05:00

The outrageous crusade of Northwestern University administrators against David Protess continued yesterday as officials spoke to journalism professors and then made a public statement attacking Protess. Now the accusation of “lying” against Protess is running along the bottom of the screen all morning on the Chicago TV channels. But the evidence offered for it is shockingly weak. As I've previously noted, and the AAUP has confirmed, Northwestern still refuses to follow its own rules in suspending Protess.

The administration finally revealed what it seems to think is its smoking gun: the fact that Protess edited a 2007 email he forwarded about student memos to remove the phrase “we share everything with the legal team.” To the administration, this constitutes a firing offense. In my eyes, it only proves that Protess is an innocent man.

Protess says that he took out the line because it was inaccurate. Unless the administration can prove that every single bit of information found by students was shared with the legal team, and that Protess knew this to be the fact, then he seems to have an airtight defense. It may be unwise to edit out inaccurate information from old emails when you forward them, but it's not lying. Trying to provide accurate information is the opposite of lying.

University spokesperson Al Cubbage declared in his statement, “Medill makes clear its values on its website, with the first value to 'be respectful of the school, yourself and others - which includes personal and professional integrity.' Protess has not maintained that value, a value that is essential in teaching our students. That is why Medill Dean John Lavine has assigned the course to another faculty member this quarter and Protess is on leave.”

It's notable that Northwestern administrators claim that Protess violated some vague public relations language (“be respectful”) on a school website, rather than an actual enforceable policy of the university. That's because there is no Northwestern policy I can find requiring faculty to “be respectful,” and there shouldn't be. The university rules on integrity refer to research and academic publication, to prohibit fraud and plagiarism in professional work. But there is no general rule I can find anywhere on Northwestern's website that prohibits the vague crime of “lying” to administrators.

Why are Northwestern administrators doing this to Protess? I suspect there are two reasons. First, the administration and its lawyers screwed up the legal case, and they're looking for a fall guy. They choose a bad approach by invoking journalistic privilege alone and then followed it up with terrible execution. What kind of incompetent lawyers would respond to a subpoena by asking employees to please forward them crucial emails, rather than going to the university server directly? The second reason for going after Protess is personal revenge. People don't like it when they feel like they're being lied to, and so they want to retaliate.

Unfortunately for Northwestern administrators, anger and revenge are not adequate cause for dismissal under Northwestern's rules.

One journalism professor leaving the meeting with Northwestern officials declared, "I'll definitely get fired if I talk to you." Yet administrators feel free to smear Protess without restraint. This reflects an appalling atmosphere of repression and administrative control.

At the moment, we need to defend Protess from this unjustifiable dismissal. But we also need to start to talk about other dismissals: at what point will Northwestern's faculty stand up for their own rights and make a vote of no confidence in the president and the administration? And will they have the courage to do this in the face of an administration that declares it has the power to suspend anyone who angers them?

So, let's summarize: Northwestern administrators have offered no evidence that Protess intentionally lied. They have not pointed to any university policy he has violated. They have not explained how any minor misconduct he is, at worst, accused of could outweigh his accomplishments and justify his suspension or firing. And they have violated every procedure in their own Faculty Handbook to suspend Protess without any due process. Northwestern administrators need to start obeying their own campus rules before they smear faculty with false accusations of violating the rules.

Crossposted at Daily Kos.

AAUP Writes Letter to Northwestern Criticizing Protess Suspension

2011-03-28T15:11:00.000-05:00

The national AAUP has written a letter to Northwestern University today about the suspension of David Protess, which I wrote about last week. Hundreds of former students of Protess, such as the Nation's Ari Berman, have spoken out against Northwestern's decision. The Northwestern administration gave a "no comment" in response to my query about the Protess suspension.

Here is the full text of the AAUP letter:

Dear President Schapiro:

Dr. David Protess, professor in the Medill School of Journalism, has consulted with our Association as a result of the decision earlier this month by Dean John Lavine to remove him from teaching his assigned course in investigative journalism in the spring quarter (which begins today). Professor Protess reports that the notification of his suspension came without warning, that no stated explanation for it has thus far been provided, and that it is being imposed without affordance of opportunity for an independent faculty hearing.

Under Regulation 7a of our Association's enclosed Recommended Institutional Regulations on Academic Freedom and Tenure, incorporated in all essential respects in Northwestern University's official policies, if the administration "believes that the conduct of a faculty member ... is sufficiently grave to justify the imposition of a severe sanction, such as suspension from service for a stated period, the administration may institute a proceeding to impose such a severe sanction." The proceeding, akin to one in which dismissal is sought, is to be an adjudicative hearing of record before an elected faculty body in which the administration bears the burden of demonstrating adequacy of cause for the sanction it seeks to impose. See our enclosed report, On the Use and Abuse of Faculty Suspensions.

Our concerns in this matter are heightened by press accounts of the events which preceded Professor Protess's suspension, particularly a longstanding conflict between him and the dean which reached a head only days before his removal from the course that was about to begin. These accounts suggest to us the possibility that the decision to remove Professor Protess from the course may have been taken for reasons that violate his academic freedom.

The information in our possession relating to the case of Professor Protess has come to us primarily from him, and we realize that those at Northwestern with administrative responsibilities may have additional information that would contribute to our understanding of what has occurred. We shall therefore welcome your comments. If the facts as we have recounted them are essentially accurate, we urge, absent demonstrated cause or threat of immediate harm, that Professor Protess be informed of reinstatement as soon as feasible to his regular teaching duties.

Sincerely,
B. Robert Kreiser
Associate Secretary

Northwestern Violates Its Own Rules in Protess Case

2011-03-21T01:38:00.001-05:00

This week, Northwestern administrators removed journalism professor David Protess from teaching his class on investigative journalism in the spring quarter.
Students in Protess' class wrote a petition protesting his removal as the professor.

Protess is probably the man most hated by Cook County prosecutors because for years he led classes of his students to investigate the cases of innocent convicts, many of them on Death Row in Illinois. Protess exposed police and prosecutor misconduct, and brutal police torture taking place in Chicago. He and his students proved the innocence of many convicts. Almost certainly because of his classes, the Illinois General Assembly passed a law, signed by Gov. Pat Quinn in March, to abolish the death penalty in Illinois.

Perhaps in retaliation, Cook County prosecutors decided to go after Protess and his students in the appeal of convicted murderer Anthony McKinney. After Protess and his students found evidence indicating McKinney's innocence, prosecutors demanded their notes and even their grades. The key question in dispute is what evidence had been provided to McKinney's lawyers, which would be available to prosecutors, and what evidence was protected by journalistic privilege. Northwestern officials think that Protess deceived them about what evidence was provided. Protess claims that he simply didn't remember what records had been turned over to McKinney's lawyers. It's possible—but in no way proven yet—that Protess acted unethically in his dealings with university officials. Until that proof is offered, no university can remove a professor from a class without endangering academic freedom.

Normally, faculty are only removed against their will from teaching a regularly scheduled class because of the most severe reasons, when they are proven guilty of serious misconduct by a jury of their peers, or when their continuing presence in the class endangers the safety or rights of their students. Nothing like this has even been alleged in this case.

No one can question Protess' qualifications to teach a class on investigative journalism. While his ethics as the subject of a subpoena may be questioned (though nothing has been proven), this has no connection with his work in the classroom. Protess may be the most highly regarded journalism professor in the country, because the investigations conducted by his students dramatically changed the lives of numerous innocent people rotting in prison, and because those investigations were often the most significant class any of his students ever took.

Protess hasn't cost Northwestern any money here. Northwestern would have still been compelled to fight the subpoena in court because prosecutors demanded access to student grades in Protess' class, and revealing that irrelevant information would be a clear violation of university policies on student privacy. But even if it did cost Northwestern money, that's their problem. Academic freedom doesn't stop when it costs a university money.

Northwestern University hired former U.S. Attorney Anton Valukas to investigate Protess and the Innocence Project, which was a highly unusual step. It is common practice for universities to having faculty investigate faculty; hiring a former prosecutor to investigate a professor is almost unheard of in academia.

Likewise, any punishment of faculty should only come from a determination of misconduct by a faculty committee, which also recommends an appropriate penalty. However, removal from teaching a class is among the most serious penalties that a faculty member can receive. The removal of a teacher should only be undertaken when there is clear evidence established before a faculty committee.

And that's exactly what Northwestern requires. Northwestern's faculty handbook (pdf) is not a well-written document. The section on academic freedom merely quotes the outdated language of the AAUP Statement of Principles that the AAUP updated over 40 years ago.

But it is quite clear on the rules and procedure for a suspension: “If the University believes that the conduct of a faculty member, although not constituting adequate cause for termination, poses a sufficiently grave infraction of the principles of academic freedom or of faculty responsibility to justify suspension from service for a stated period or some other severe sanction, the University will follow the procedures below in conducting proceedings that may impose such sanctions.”

The removal of a faculty member against his will from a regularly scheduled class due to allegations of misconduct is the quintessential definition of a suspension. A suspension is still a suspension even if the term is not officially used. Although the administration is given broad latitude in scheduling classes, the removal and replacement of a teacher less than two weeks before a class begins, for no reason other than allegations of misconduct, cannot be defined as anything other than a suspension.

In the case of a suspension or termination, the faculty handbook requires a “reasonably particularized statement of charges against the faculty member by the president of the University or the president’s delegate.” These charges “shall be referred to the Faculty Committee on Cause for mediation.” If no resolution is made, then the Administration can continue proceedings before the UFRPTDAP university committee.

What is most notable, however, is the failure of the Administration to follow its rules on temporary suspensions: “Pending a final recommendation by the Panel, the faculty member will not be suspended or assigned to other duties in lieu of suspension, unless immediate harm to the faculty member or others is threatened by continuance.” Not only is there no evidence of “immediate harm” compelling a suspension in the Protess case, but a temporary suspension cannot take place without the first stages of the suspension process—a written statement of charges—being made. Nor does it appear that the required consultation with the UFRPTDAP committee was ever made, as is required: “If the Administration wishes to suspend a faculty member pending an ultimate recommendation on the faculty member’s status through the hearing procedures, the Administration will consult with the UFRPTDAP Executive Committee concerning the propriety, the length, and the other conditions of the suspension.”

If the Administration could temporarily or permanently remove faculty from any teaching or research assignments and avoid any of the rules for suspension by using a different name, it would make a mockery of the Faculty Handbook. According to the story in the Daily Northwestern, “Bitoun also said that as a matter of Medill policy, professor changes can be made at any time.” By the Northwestern Administration's logic, they could ban Protess from ever teaching another class without needing to charge him with any misconduct. Clearly, this cannot be true. A suspension is a suspension, no matter what excuse is used to justify it.

It does not appear that the Administration followed any of these rules required by the faculty handbook. These procedures are important to protecting the right of faculty to teach freely, and the right of students to be taught. It is dangerous to allow arbitrary punishment of faculty without any proof of misconduct. It is dangerous for the administration to issue punishments such as suspension before any evidence of misconduct is offered or a final determination of appropriate penalty is made. Northwestern University's statement on the Protess case does not answer any of these issues, except to indicate that an investigation of Protess is ongoing (which would make the suspension illegitimate under Northwestern's rules).

The fact that Protess is deeply despised by powerful political interests for his activism on the death penalty makes the violation of University procedures in this case all the more troubling. Is the Administration making a sound academic judgment about the qualifications of a journalism professor, or is it seeking to punish a professor who it believes may have embarassed the institution? Northwestern University needs to immediately overturn this suspension and restore David Protess to his classroom until it can prove misconduct that justifies such a penalty in accordance with proper procedures.

My Campaign for the AAUP National Council

2011-03-09T12:27:00.001-06:00

I'm running for the AAUP's National Council, for one of the at-large seats. If you're an AAUP member, please vote for me. I also encourage anyone to email me at collegefreedom@yahoo.com with any questions, comments, or ideas for changing the AAUP, and I'll respond on this blog.

Here is my statement and biography:

John K. Wilson, Education, Illinois State University

Candidate Statement

I am running for National Council because of my
commitment to the AAUP's ideals and my
expertise in academic freedom. As a student of
the AAUP's history, I believe that the AAUP
must become a more active force in this century
in order to protect academic freedom and
improve higher education.

The AAUP cannot be a top-down organization,
no matter how wise our current leadership or
how hardworking the AAUP staffers are. The
strength of the AAUP is in its members, and we
must utilize our members to help the AAUP in its
advocacy, investigations, and recruitment. I
would like to help start an AAUP speakers
bureau to encourage our members to organize
events across the country and speak out. I am
currently working on starting an independent
group blog about higher education with the help
of many AAUP folks, because I believe the
AAUP members and leaders must reach out to
the public. I want to bridge the gap between the
National Council and state conferences and
chapters by working to aid them with my
experience in creating newspapers, email
newsletters, and websites.

I encourage you to read my books on higher
education or my blog at
http://collegefreedom.blogspot.com. Even if you
don't plan to vote for me, email me at
collegefreedom@yahoo.com with your
suggestions for improving the AAUP, and I will
post your views on my blog along with my
response.

The AAUP must revitalize itself, with a renewed
attention to recruiting adjunct faculty and the
graduate students who will form the future
generations of AAUP members. We need to
enhance the racial, gender, and class diversity of
the AAUP, encourage conservatives to join with
the AAUP's principled defense of academic
freedom, defend the rights of everyone in the
academic community, and expand the AAUP's
work. The AAUP has been most successful in its
history when it stands up for its principles,
speaks out against attacks on higher education,
and fights for academic freedom. I hope to do
this as part of the National Council, and
encourage all AAUP members to do the same.

Candidate Biography

John K. Wilson is a PhD student in Educational
Administration and Foundations at Illinois State
University, completing his dissertation on the
history of academic freedom in America. He
holds BAs in History, Philosophy, and Political
Science from the University of Illinois at
Urbana-Champaign, and has also attended the
University of Chicago. He has previously taught
education and political science classes as an
adjunct at Illinois State University.
He is the author of seven books, including The
Most Dangerous Man in America: Rush
Limbaugh's Assault on Reason (Thomas Dunne
Books, March 2011). His first book, The Myth of
Political Correctness: The Conservative Attack
on Higher Education (Duke University Press,
1995), won a Myers Center Award for the Study
of Human Rights in North America. He has also
written books about Newt Gingrich, Barack
Obama, and progressive politics, as well as
Patriotic Correctness: Academic Freedom and
Its Enemies (Paradigm Publishers, 2008).
His essay on “Marketing McCarthyism: The
Media's Role in the War on Academic Freedom,”
appears in the new book, Academic Freedom in
the Post-9/11 Era (Palgrave Macmillan,
November 2010).

He has previously served on the Illinois AAUP
Council, on the national AAUP's Committee on
Graduate and Professional Students, and as editor
of Democratic Culture, the journal of Teachers
for a Democratic Culture. He currently serves on
the Association of State Conferences Awards
Committee, the Illinois AAUP's Committee A,
and has been editor since 2003 of the awardwinning
state conference newspaper, Illinois
Academe.

He is founder of the blog College Freedom
(collegefreedom.blogspot.com), and has been a
leading public advocate of academic freedom,
appearing on C-SPAN, the O'Reilly Factor, and
numerous radio and TV shows.

Academic Freedom for Sex Toys

2011-03-03T15:47:00.001-06:00

The use of a sex toy on a woman in front of a group of students after a class at Northwestern University has, understandably, aroused a lot of attention amid calls for the firing of the professor

After the institution initially issuing a strong defense of academic freedom yesterday, Northwestern President Morton Schapiro today harshly condemned Professor J. Michael Bailey for "extremely poor judgment."

Although Schapiro hasn't sought to fire Bailey, this kind of condemnation is rather extraordinary in academia. And part of Schapiro's statement raises some serious concerns about academic freedom: “I have directed that we investigate fully the specifics of this incident, and also clarify what constitutes appropriate pedagogy, both in this instance and in the future.” Any investigation of a professor for activity protected by academic freedom should alarm us. And the suggestion that an administration must “clarify” what “constitutes appropriate pedagogy” is equally alarming, since this decision should remain the province of individual faculty members guided by a larger discussion about pedagogy.

The fact that this happened in a voluntary session after class that no student was required to attend makes the defense of it even stronger. The fact is that the issue being debated by this demonstration, women's sexuality, was directly relevant to a class on human sexuality.

I can say with absolute certainty that having sex is not illegal. Having sex while people watch you is not illegal. There was nothing illegal about any of this.

Sexuality is among the most controversial issues in academia. Roger Bowen, then president of the SUNY-New Paltz and later head of the AAUP, was forced out of his job by Candace de Russy and other conservatives because he defended the freedom of a 1997 feminist conference that included instructional workshops on sex toys.

No, sex toys don't have academic freedom, nor do the people who utilize them. But professors and students do. And academic freedom includes the fact that a class on human sexuality can include a demonstration of human sexuality. Whether it is deemed necessary or good judgement is something for the professor running the event to decide.

Northwestern needs to have a broader discussion of good pedagogy and academic freedom, to help the faculty and the administration understand what is the best way to teach and why providing freedom on campus is the necessary for a free society.

Gay Instructor Fired

2011-02-28T12:43:00.000-06:00

Chestnut Hill College, a Catholic institution in Philadelphia, has fired an instructor for being gay.

It's proof once again that the worst violations of academic freedom in America are aimed at leftists and members of minority groups hated by the right, such as gays and lesbians.

The law may certainly allow the bigots at this college to fire a professor for the crime of being gay. But that doesn't make it right. And everyone, Catholic or not, gay or not, should speak out against it.

As for the notion that a college isn't really Catholic unless it fires everyone who dissents from a single Catholic doctrine, I doubt that very many students or faculty would remain if that was the case. In reality, a truly Catholic college is willing to listen to people with different points of view, and those who demand the firing of all gay people are the ones violating the Catholic ethic and attacking academic freedom.

The Sarcasm Police

2011-02-26T08:51:00.000-06:00

Peter Wood's disturbing attack on the AAUP draft statement on politics in academia reveals a lot of what's wrong with the conservative approach to academic freedom. There's plenty to criticize in what Wood details, but I'll focus on just one thing Wood writes: “Overbearing sarcasm, attempts to humiliate, favoritism, factionalizing students and setting them against each other in an effort to advance a political agenda—all apparently fair pedagogy and no grounds at all for 'adverse action' in the AAUP’s view.”

Wood is revealing the kind of speech code he wants to see at universities to punish faculty (what else could we call a demand for “adverse action” against such faculty?), and it should be disturbing to everyone concerned about academic freedom. I have no idea what “factionalizing students” means, or even why it's a bad thing (uniting students to agree on everything seems far worse). But the idea that someone might trust college administrators to punish or fire faculty for the inexplicable thoughtcrime of “factionalizing students” is incredible. Equally vague are the prohibitions on “favoritism” (would this prohibit a teacher from praising a student in class unless all students are praised equally?) and “attempts to humiliate” (I can imagine the professor from “The Paper Chase” being hauled before a Woodian disciplinary committee right now). Perhaps my response is a prohibited form of humiliation because it's too effective at showing what a dumb statement Wood made.

But by far the worst idea in Wood's statement is the idea that professors should be punished if they use “overbearing sarcasm.” I know there's a lot of bad things in academia today--low standards, bad teaching, etc--but I had no idea that sarcasm was the biggest threat we face. Of course, Dr. Wood is not completely repressive: he does not wish to ban all sarcasm, just the “overbearing” kind, and I'm sure we all know “overbearing” sarcasm when we see it.

Oh, I'm sorry, is my sarcasm getting too overbearing to be allowed in academia? Please, Dr. Wood, don't turn me in to the sarcasm police if any college ever hires me. I promise that in the future, I'll give an idiotic idea like a proposal to ban sarcasm the full respect that it deserves.

Brooklyn College Reverses Its Error

2011-01-31T17:19:00.005-06:00

Kristofer J. Petersen-Overton, the Brooklyn College teacher removed from his class scheduled to start next week because of objections to his criticism of Israel, announced in an email that he will be hired back by Brooklyn College.

The case revealed some of the defenders and opponents of academic freedom. FIRE sent a letter written by Adam Kissel to Brooklyn College, expressing concern and asking administrators to explain what happened. The NAS wrote in Petersen-Overton's defense. By contrast, KC Johnson, writing for Minding the Campus, did not utter a word of criticism for the firing of this professor. Instead, Johnson denounced as "groupthink" the decision to hire him in the first place.

A Purge Grows in Brooklyn

2011-01-28T10:07:00.000-06:00

The case of a Brooklyn College professor fired from a class for being too critical of Israel is covered today by Inside Higher Education and Salon.

The instructor, Kristofer Petersen-Overton, was dismissed from teaching the class after a student who had looked at the syllabus complained to state legislator Dov Hikind, who wrote to the university calling Petersen-Overton an "overt supporter of terrorism" and demanding his dismissal.

There's no doubt about this being an academic freedom issue when pressure from a politician was paramount in this case.

I'm particularly amused by this line from the Inside Higher Ed article: “The issue isn't one of academic freedom; in fact, Thompson said, the course will continue under a different faculty member.” Obviously, academic freedom is involved when a teacher is removed for political reasons, even if the course continues to be taught by a different faculty member.

As for complaints about the syllabus, the fact is that plenty of teachers use controversial syllabi. The proper response is to criticize the teacher and encourage them to change the syllabus, not to fire the teacher.

The excuse that this professor was removed from the class solely for lacking a Ph.D. is ridiculous.
1) Ph.D.s are not required to teach in academia, not even in graduate-level courses. Our Ph.D. obsession, sadly, leads some people to think otherwise.
2) The teacher's alleged qualifications only became an issue once there was criticism about the ideology of the teacher.
3) Plenty of other teachers of master's courses at Brooklyn College, past and present, do not have Ph.D.s.

Here's a petition on academic freedom at Brooklyn College.

The Failing of "Male Market Share."

2011-01-19T22:44:00.001-06:00

Lionel Tiger, professor emeritus of anthropology at Rutgers, has a particularly bad article at Minding the Campus titled "Male Market Share and the Failure of Women's Studies."

Rarely have I ever read an essay quite so stupid as Prof. Tiger's embarrassing attack on women and their corrupting influence on academia. Let's begin with the first claim that “female interests have dominated administration policy, including who gets accepted to college and who graduates.” Huh? Anybody with a brain understands by now that colleges give preferential admissions to men, not women, in a misguided attempt to maintain gender parity. Beyond the disturbing sexism involved in anyone worrying about “female interests” dominating administration policy, what has this got to do with graduation rates?

Prof. Tiger's theory that men don't graduate from college because their vulnerable feelings are hurt by the presence of a small number of women's studies classes is positively crazy. And he offers some oddball chest-thumping vision of “male studies” as if this will somehow cause men to graduate from college.

Tiger's essay is full of incoherent and frankly bizarre transitions. In one paragraph, he complains that anthropologists might not call themselves scientists, and then in that same paragraph denounces seminars about rape for demeaning men. I'm sorry to have to inform Prof. Tiger that the people who commit rape are disproportionately male, but he seems to want facts to be denied if it might harm the feelings of men.

Finally, he concludes this mess of an essay by declaring that colleges need to be more like General Motors and bow to the demands of men to appease the gods of “male market share.” If we were to ask, “what do men want?”, it's probably not more classes about men's “eventful reproductive strategies.” Instead, men and women want and need the same thing from college: high-quality education that challenges their ideas instead of trying to coddle them like children.

Who Is Censored More?

2011-01-18T13:37:00.000-06:00

Greg Lukianoff, director of FIRE, did an interview recently on the new web video program “Inside Academia.” Greg made this comment: “You're definitely more likely to get into trouble for expressing a socially conservative viewpoint, no two ways about that.”(at 10:40)

This remark is at the heart of my long-running argument with Greg and FIRE. I admire much of what FIRE does, and wish that a liberal civil liberties group could join them to tag team on these issues. But Greg's remark, if taken to cover all of higher education, is simply false. The worst speech codes in the country, without question, are found at conservative, religious colleges. FIRE often forgets about these cases because they categorically refuse to criticize such colleges unless they claim to protect student freedom.

The only issue in debate is whether Greg would be right if we limited his statement to public colleges and secular private colleges. That's harder to determine. We simply don't have the information available to determine whether liberal or conservative views get censored more often. (And, no, the cases reported to FIRE are not a representative sample because they're a conservative civil liberties group with strong ties to campus conservative groups and therefore more likely to hear from censored conservatives.) But my belief is that students on both the right and the left face censorship, and it's difficult to make any overall judgment about who is censored more. I document plenty of examples on both sides in my books on The Myth of Political Correctness and Patriotic Correctness. Ultimately, we don't need to fight about who is censored more; we need to stop all censorship.

But that doesn't mean comments like Greg's are unimportant. When erroneous and unproven claims are made that only conservatives are censored on campuses, it lends support to the repressive forces on the right, such as David Horowitz, who want to impose more conservative control over campuses. If you believe that only liberals engage in censorship on campus, then it might seem reasonable to say that conservatives need to be given more power over academia, that conservatives need preferential hiring and support on campus. But if the real problem is censorship, not too few conservatives in charge, then giving the right more authority only exacerbates the problem of unchecked power. We need an accurate assessment of who is censored in academia, and we need a consistent, principled effort to protect freedom on campus.

Marketing McCarthyism and Rush Limbaugh

2011-01-09T11:19:00.001-06:00

My essay "Marketing McCarthyism" appears in the new collection Academic Freedom in the Post-9/11 Era. It appeared earlier in Works and Days.

You can read an interview with the authors at Inside Higher Education.

In other John K. Wilson news, my book, The Most Dangerous Man in America: Rush Limbaugh's Assault on Reason, will be published March 1 by Thomas Dunne Books. Anyone interested in bringing me to speak on a campus or other group about the book, please let me know.

My Debate with Peter Wood on Affirmative Action for Conservatives

2010-12-24T07:31:00.003-06:00

David Horowitz's website has published (with our permission) an exchange via email I had with NAS head Peter Wood about his fawning review of David Horowitz's book that he printed on David Horowitz's website, focusing on the question of whether conservatives should receive hiring preferences for visiting professor positions, an idea that Horowitz proposes and Wood, to my great surprise, also endorses.

The exchange omits an additional comment I had in response to Peter Wood that I reprint below:

You write, “Your argumentative point seems to be that ‘visiting professors’ are ‘faculty members.’” Yes. That’s because visiting professors are faculty members. That’s not “sophistry.” In some places, “visiting professors” are the term used for most adjunct faculty. It’s true that visiting professors do not have the same power as tenure-track faculty. But it’s the principle of hiring based on merit, not politics, that matters. Low-level college administrators don’t have the same power as faculty, either, but they should never be hired or fired based on their political affiliation.

Imagine if a college president of a public college in a very conservative area decided that the faculty were too conservative, and therefore the college would hire only left-wing visiting professors and ban conservatives from holding these posts, in order to promote fostering a plurality of views. I suspect that you and Horowitz would be outraged by a president replacing academic merit with political ideology in any hiring decisions, and you would rightly worry about this political hiring carrying over to tenure-track positions. I would be outraged, too. So why doesn’t the same outrage apply to pro-conservative discrimination?

Now, to the question of anti-conservative discrimination, which I write about at length in my book Patriotic Correctness. Clearly, conservatives are underrepresented in academia, albeit not to the degree Horowitz and some others claim. Like other underrepresented groups, such as blacks and women, this raises the possibility of ongoing discrimination, but does not prove it. Unlike blacks and women, there is no irrefutable historical legacy of past discrimination against conservatives in academia.

You are right that conservatives are not inherently stupid or anti-social. I’m not so sure about materialism, though. In general, it appears that conservatives are more likely to seek out higher-wage professions. Materialism is not a bad thing; you could argue that only liberals are stupid enough to seek careers in academic fields. For example, in K-12 teaching, there is also a clear liberal tendency among teachers. Yet K-12 has none of the same scrutiny of faculty hires by alleged tenured radicals in higher education which is said to cause underrepresentation of conservatives. But it has a similar result, which indicates that culture and money is a much more likely explanation for conservative underrepresentation in teaching generally than discrimination.

An example of anti-conservative prejudice, no matter how appalling, is not proof of systematic discrimination. I could summon all kinds of anecdotal examples of sexism in academia, yet you probably believe that women generally receive preferences in hiring. There are ways to try to try to prove discrimination against conservatives, such as by surveying the views of students receiving Ph.D.s and determining who is hired for academic positions. Similar surveys have indicated levels of ongoing sexism in academia. But no one has ever shown this prejudice toward conservatives. Is it possible that conservatives are discriminated against in certain fields at certain colleges? Yes. Is it possible that left-wingers are discriminated against in certain fields at certain colleges? Yes. (I personally doubt that a Marxist would be hired today by the University of Chicago Department of Economics. And I would criticize them for this. But I would oppose any action to force them to hire Marxists.) But we need evidence before we can prove it. And even if we do prove it, then we need to take the appropriate actions to prevent it, and not just start hiring based on political ideology.

You claim, “Liberals and leftists view it as perfectly acceptable, even moral, to twist the rules of academic appointment to exclude conservatives.” Absolutely not. I’ve never heard anyone defend this idea. It is fundamentally immoral and unacceptable to exclude conservatives or discriminate against anyone based on political views in academic hiring of any kind, whether it’s for tenure-track positions or visiting professors. You and Horowitz are the only two people I’ve encountered in my life who justify this concept. We need to hold academic merit as the basis for academic hiring, and reject political discrimination of any kind. And that’s why I criticize you and Horowitz for demanding conservative preferences in hiring visiting professors.

Why does all this matter? The Chronicle of Higher Education (Dec. 3, 2010) recently did a story (registration required) about what happened last year to 29 Ohio State Ph.D.s. It found that 13 got jobs as "visiting faculty" and only 8 as tenure-track faculty. So the proposal by Horowitz and Wood to favor conservatives in hiring visiting professors would have a dramatic effect on stifling the academic careers of non-conservatives at the start. The most likely effect, if I may perversely quote Stanley Fish here, will be that "we're all conservatives now," at least when trying to get a job.

The first comment on the Wilson/Wood exchange on Horowitz's site is this:

JOHN WILSON: "Intellectual pluralism is important. But achieving it by hiring based on explicitly political criteria is dangerous to the academic mission."
And of course Mr Wilson, this NEVER happens in the halls of academe today, does it?

Here's my response:

Yes, it does happen sometimes in academia, to people on both the left and the right. But I've never seen a college explicitly favor an ideology at the imposition of president following the demands of political activists, as Horowitz and Wood call for. We need all faculty to be hired based on academic merit, not politics, and condemn anyone who violates this standard. And that's why I'm condemning Horowitz and Wood.

UPDATE: The NAS has also published the earlier version of the exchange. And on this blog, I've corrected my mistaken reference to Steve Balch, another NAS leader whom I was arguing with at the same time on a related topic. I meant Peter Wood, of course.

We're All Progressives Now

2010-12-21T14:01:00.001-06:00

Stanley Fish has written in his New York Times blog about a new book, Academic Freedom in the Post 9-11 Era, in which I have an essay.

Here's the comment I wrote on Fish's blog:

As one of the authors quoted by Fish, I appreciate his praise for this book. What I disagree with is his presumption that progressives who defend academic freedom are “conservative.” It’s true that a liberal like myself, and the leftists who contributed to this book, are defenders of academic freedom. This separates us from a small minority on the left who believe in censorship of conservative ideas, and it joins us with the conservatives (mostly libertarians) such as FIRE who embrace academic freedom. But that means we’re (almost) all progressives now in embracing free speech, not that we’re conservative.

Fish falsely equates Cornel West, Noam Chomsky, and David Horowitz as people we don’t need to fear. I’d like Fish to tell me, when have West and Chomsky proposed legislation to suppress political speech of anyone, as Horowitz have done? When have West and Chomsky sought campus policies to prohibit conservative professors from assigning conservative texts, as Horowitz has urged? When have West and Chomsky declared that conservative fields of study are illegitimate, as Horowitz has claimed about women’s studies? When have West and Chomsky called for conservative student groups to be banned, as Horowitz has done with the Muslim Student Association?

We don’t need to fear Horowitz’s conservative ideas or West and Chomsky’s liberal ones. But we do need to fear Horowitz’s proposals for campus policies and legislation that threatens academic freedom, as I write in my book Patriotic Correctness: Academic Freedom and Its Enemies. This isn’t demonizing Horowitz; it’s describing what he does and why we should worry about his attacks on academic freedom.

Why Conservatives Are Wrong about Penn State's HR 64

2010-12-20T11:57:00.000-06:00

In response to my critique of the essay by him and Ashley Thorne, Steve Balch has written a response which often distorts what I believe, and offers a twisted picture of academic freedom.

Balch correctly describes the historic position of the AAUP's founders, that the scientific spirit is “the persuasive argument” for academic freedom. I would cynically add that the AAUP embraced science so strongly because scientific progress was seen as more popular and easy to gain approval for than the idea of political freedom. But political freedom--the idea that professors should be able to criticize the government and express controversial ideas in the classroom without losing their jobs--is the real meaning of academic freedom. The scientific model was just an easier defense to make for that freedom. The truth is that the greatest threats to academic freedom over the years were aimed at professors punished for their extramural speech, not any research or classroom statements.

Balch claims that all of the AAUP statements are “primarily admonitions to the faculty.” Nothing could be further from the truth. AAUP statements overwhelmingly proclaim how institutions should function and what individual faculty rights are. At its origins, such as the 1915 Statement, the AAUP included a few declarations about how faculty should act. The AAUP has gradually reduced such declarations in its statements about policy, out of a legitimate fear that admonitions to faculty have been used to justify punishing faculty deemed guilty of some vague charge of “indoctrination” or other thought crimes.

And where the AAUP makes its rare admonitions, such as in a tiny proportion of the 1915 statement, it is clear that these admonitions must be moral duties of the faculty member and not something imposed by institutions: “The responsibility of the university teacher is primarily to the public itself, and to the judgment of his own profession; and while, with respect to certain external conditions of his vocation, he accepts a responsibility to the authorities of the institution in which he serves, in the essentials of his professional activity his duty is to the wider public to which the institution itself is morally amenable.”

So the AAUP's founders would disagree strongly with Balch and the NAS about the need to give administrators powerful authority to control how professors teach. Yes, professors have a moral duty to teach well, but it is a duty that the individual must fulfill.

Balch writes, “John Wilson apparently believes that administrative correction of erring faculty members should be ruled out across the board as inherently too dangerous.”

Absolutely not. I never said such a thing, and I do not believe it. First, “correction” is a fundamental right protected by academic freedom. Administrators certainly have the right to express to faculty members, privately or publicly, their views about pedagogy and the instruction provided by faculty. What academic freedom protects faculty from is formal punishment for expressing controversial views in class. That's what HR 64 is all about, and what David Horowitz is demanding.

According to Balch, “total immunity from oversight is never healthy.” That's certainly true. But there is no total immunity from oversight for faculty. The entire process of hiring and tenure is a form of oversight, based on faculty control and utilizing academic rather than political values.

Also, formal punishment is appropriate when erring faculty members are failing to do their jobs or are violating the rights of others, especially students. These are the “duties correlative with rights” that the AAUP recognizes. So, a professor who fails to teach the subject matter of the class, or who is incompetent at the job, has no defense. And HR 64 (along with numerous AAUP statements) is clear about this fact. If a professor grades a student based on politics, or prohibits students from disagreeing for that reason, then that's wrong and it is appropriate to step in. But what we're debating here with HR 64 has nothing to do with grading or student speech. It's all about classroom assignments and whether administrators can force faculty to change their syllabi according to political criteria.

Balch writes, “As for screening Al Gore’s 'Inconvenient Truth' in an English department writing class, it certainly smacks of abuse to us – a sentiment we bet would be concurred in by a large majority of working academics. There would be nothing wrong with administrators at least asking some questions about it.”

This was an English 202A class called, “Effective Writing in the Social Sciences,” and I can't imagine why watching an Oscar-winning documentary about global warming and asking students to write about it is an “abuse” to the NAS or to the “large majority of working academics.” How is it an abuse? I assume Balch doesn't agree with David Horowitz's insane theory that global warming isn't related to the social sciences. So where is the abuse? Should a professor be forced to assign a documentary or readings that say global warming is a hoax, even though that position is scientifically baseless? Personally, I would love to see more professors, left and right, teaching a diverse range of perspectives. What worries me is the compulsion to do it.

The Failings of “Compulsory Debate”

The mistake Balch and others make is to assume that if some idea is good, then forcing all faculty to do it, with a vast administrative apparatus, is also good. That's completely wrong. While we should encourage faculty to offer a wide range of ideas in the classroom, we can't force it. As David French once noted when he was head of FIRE, “A faculty member’s academic freedom is unquestionably threatened if a school requires an individual professor to teach in a more balanced manner.”
https://www.thefire.org/article/5667.html

The reason is simple: the demand for debate never ends. If you have to include the anti-global warming folks in a debate about global warming, then you also need to include left-wing critics of Al Gore who want to abolish capitalism, along with every other position along the spectrum. If a professor is forced to include classroom assignments doubting global warming, then why not force business professors to assign communist literature or force biology professors to assign creationist writings or force history professors to assign Holocaust deniers? Once you take away the professor's ability to decide what is a good work to assign, whom do you trust to impose this on all faculty?

One of the essential jobs of a professor is to decide when a film or a text meets the quality levels adequate for a class. Forcing everything to be debated with every point of view ulitimately is pure chaos—and the result is likely to be that only politically powerful ideas are the ones imposed by higher-ups, and only controversial professors will have debate forced upon them.

The irony in all of this is that I'm one of the few advocates of debating the conflicts in the classroom who actually teaches that way. I've assigned David Horowitz's critique of the Communist Manifesto along with that work in a class on political theory. I've assigned James Loewen's Lies My Teacher Told Me along with Diane Ravitch's The Language Police in an education class.

Balch claims, “Scholars tend to have a high level of self-regard – and they should. But it can easily descend into a belief that nothing would be better than their being wholly left to themselves. John Wilson, Cary Nelson, and the AAUP seem to subscribe to this comforting conceit.” No scholars are, or should, left wholly to themselves.
Mark Bauerlein has written a short piece about HR 64 at Minding the Campus. According to Bauerlein, the reforms of HR 64 are bad because straying for even a minute from the syllabus might leave students on “uncertain grounds.”

Worse, Bauerlein fears, controversy might create “an antagonistic atmosphere in the room.” It's difficult to imagine a more mind-numbing, politically-correct approach to the college classroom than someone who worries about antagonism. The biggest problem in higher education is the lack of antagonism, the lack of debate, the pure apathy and robotic head-bobbing that goes on when students and faculty alike should be constantly questioning one another and starting arguments. And Bauerlein wants to do everything possible to stop antagonism, even if it means sacrificing academic freedom. But Bauerlein at least worries a little about the “unscrupulous administrator.”

Balch has no such healthy fear of centralizing power over the classroom, and concludes, “Academic freedom, to repeat, is an institutional as well as an individual possession. We should never lose sight of that.”

Actually, we should lose sight of that immediately. “Institutional academic freedom” is a fraud and a scam, one that the AAUP has never endorsed and I hope the NAS never will. Ironically, “institutional academic freedom” was created in the past few decades to justify prohibiting judicial scrutiny over affirmative action at public colleges, one of the things that the NAS strongly opposes. I defend affirmative action, but I think “institutional academic freedom” is a terrible justification for it.

Since the 1970s, administrators at public colleges and courts have sought to expand the idea of “institutional academic freedom” in order to increase their power and justify censorship of individual faculty and students. Yes, public colleges are deserving of some institutional autonomy under law to help protect individual academic freedom. But this is a very limited right, not one that supercedes the academic freedom of individuals, as the NAS imagines.

Several members of FIRE recently published a law review article explaining the history of “institutional academic freedom” and critiquing how it is used:
http://www.thefire.org/index.php/article/12546.html
Perhaps Balch ought to read this important work before blindly declaring the importance of “institutional academic freedom.”

And perhaps Balch ought to read the long litany of administrator abuse on FIRE's website before he blithely proclaims, “Surely administrators are capable of recognizing flagrant abuses of academic authority,” and assumes that we can trust all administrators not to abuse this incredible power to control the classroom. Balch thinks we should trust administrators to determine whether or not faculty have a “scientific spirit.” But the “scientific spirit” is one of the vaguest terms I've ever come across.

Balch himself thinks that my consistent and quite traditional defense of individual liberty in the classroom is a stand that “had very little, analytically speaking, to recommend it.” If Balch can't see anything analytically worthy in my defense of academic freedom, how can we trust him (or any administrator) to intuit the “spirit of science” of a faculty member? I think Balch is wrong, and his stand would be dangerous to academic freedom in practice. But I would never question his analytic abilities or his “scientific spirit.” Instead, I would publicly criticize his views and try to persuade him to change his approach to the topic. That's what should happen, as Penn State is doing with these laudable reforms. Individual liberty and academic freedom ought to prevail, and we should not allow administrative control over faculty to prevent controversial views in the classroom.

The NAS Rejects Academic Freedom at Penn State

2010-12-15T11:52:00.000-06:00

Yesterday's article by Ashley Thorne and Stephen Balch on Penn State's revision of HR 64 marks one of the worst statements by the NAS in its history. The NAS has always been a conservative group, but in the past they have been a group that at least had a casual acquaintance with academic freedom, speaking out in its defense and never to my knowledge calling for the repudiation of academic freedom.

When David Horowitz pushed for his “Academic Bill of Rights,” the NAS maintained a wary distance from him, never criticizing his attacks on academic freedom but refusing to join with him in denouncing the rights of professors to speak freely. Now that's changed, and the NAS seems to have become a purely political vehicle for right-wing ideology even when it attacks academic freedom.

The Thorne and Balch article is particularly insulting toward me personally, referring to “Cary Nelson, his groupie John K. Wilson....” I am hardly a “groupie” for Cary Nelson. The term “groupie” is meant to dismiss me as some kind of follower incapable of having my own ideas. The truth is that I published my first book on academic freedom in 1995, before Cary Nelson ever got involved with the AAUP and academic freedom issues. My second book on academic freedom, Patriotic Correctness, was published in 2008 and doesn't even mention Nelson. I'm clearly not a groupie, and such dismissive terms don't belong in an intellectual debate.

Ashley Thorne and Stephen Balch, for example, are not “groupies” of David Horowitz, although I'm shocked by their effusive praise for him. They call Horowitz “a longtime champion of academic freedom.”

In my book Patriotic Correctness, I note the numerous conservatives who criticized Horowitz's heavy-handed and repressive attempt at legislating the Academic Bill of Rights, including the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities, the Association of Jesuit Colleges and Universities, John Leo of Minding the Campus, Harvey Silverglate of FIRE, Jesse Walker of Reason, David Beito, KC Johnson, and Ralph Luker.

The NAS apparently is now embracing Horowitz as a “champion” of academic freedom. I would challenge the NAS to read the chapter in my book about Horowitz and explain whether they endorse all of Horowitz's views about silencing political speech on campuses.

Thorne and Balch write, “We can only conclude that the AAUP has repudiated its original document on academic freedom and is opting for more 'living,' evolving definitions.” Yes, that's exactly right. In fact, the AAUP repudiated its original document more than 70 years ago. The 1915 AAUP Statement was great for its time, but it proved to be flawed when turned into operational campus policies rather than a guide for professors. That's why the AAUP moved to its 1940 Statement. And when that statement proved to be too limiting for academic freedom, the AAUP amended it with the 1970 Interpretive Principles. And the AAUP has constantly put out statements and reports updating the meaning of these words. There is no “irony” in Cary Nelson rejecting certain flawed language in a Statement that the AAUP long ago rejected. If we accepted the Supreme Court's view of the First Amendment in 1915 as the true meaning of free speech, rather than the evolving definitions developed since then, the entirety of First Amendment law protecting individual liberty would be sweeped aside. Sometimes, change is good.

Most of the 1915 Statement is still excellent, but a few provisions are deeply flawed. For example, the 1915 AAUP statement declares about professors speaking in the classroom, “Such utterances ought always to be considered privileged communications. Discussions in the classroom ought not to be supposed to be utterances for the public at large.” The Statement adds, “As a matter of common law, it is clear that the utterances of an academic instructor are privileged, and may not be published, in whole or part, without his authorization. But our practice, unfortunately, still differs from that of foreign countries, and no effective check has in this country been put upon such unauthorized and often misleading publication.”

I completely disagree with the AAUP's 1915 Statement on this point. I am disgusted by the idea that anyone would try to ban the publication of a professor's classroom statements. Does the NAS endorse this terrible idea? If not, aren't they guilty of repudiating the AAUP's 1915 Statement and (gasp!) updating the meaning of academic freedom?

The NAS also endorses this line from the 1915 AAUP Statement: “The claim to freedom of teaching is made in the interest of the integrity and of the progress of scientific inquiry; it is, therefore, only those who carry on their work in the temper of the scientific inquirer who may justly assert this claim.” The NAS tries to explain this further: “faculty members should use rigorous intellectual methods and arrive at their conclusions through logic and evidence.”

Well, of course, everyone thinks faculty (and everybody else) should use rigor and logic and evidence. The question is, how do you enforce this? Does the NAS really believe that academic freedom only exists for faculty who have “the temper of the scientific inquirer”? Do they trust administrators to enforce policies about the “temper” of faculty and whether it is adequately scientific? Do you want professors to be investigated and brought before a campus hearing on charges of not using “rigorous intellectual methods” in the classroom? Or do they believe, as I do, that professors should have academic freedom and their alleged lack of logic and evidence in the classroom should be debated in the marketplace of ideas, not decided in the repressive realm of disciplinary hearings?

Restrictions on political bias are dangerous (and wrong) in general, and can be used against liberals and conservatives alike. In my first book, The Myth of Political Correctness, I denounced Stanley Fish, the man who was the director of my publisher, Duke University Press, and who was responsible for my book being published, because he had proposed banning NAS members from campus committees due to their political bias. Fish argued, “you wouldn't want on a personnel or curriculum committee somebody who had already decided, in terms of fixed political categories, what is or is not meritorious.”(54) Fish was wrong. And his mistake reveals the danger of trusting administrators to judge whether someone has the proper “temper” and “scientific inquiry” rather than political attitudes. Fish's argument (then and now) embodied the errors of the 1915 AAUP Statement, and it appalls me to see the NAS embracing today an argument that was once used to justify repression against its own members.

The NAS is offended at this line being dropped from HR 64: “No faculty member may claim as a right the privilege of discussing in the classroom controversial topics outside his/her own field of study.” Does the NAS really believe that university administrators should be given the power to prohibit faculty from discussing controversial topics in the classroom? Does the NAS agree with Horowitz's efforts at Penn State to declare that showing “An Inconvenient Truth” in a social studies class violated this rule because environmental issues are outside the field of the social sciences? Who does the NAS trust to enforce a ban on controversial topics?

Thorne and Balch argue about me and others, “They do not realize that freedom without responsibility is cheap, and that professors lose respect when they use their positions to advance off-hand views unrelated to the subjects they’ve presumably mastered. Once that respect is lost, academic freedom is likely to follow.”

This is an ancient argument, and one that inspired the original flawed phrases in the AAUP 1915 Statement now embraced by the NAS as if it were some kind of original intent evidence of the “pure” form of academic freedom that the AAUP today sullies. The truth is, I agree that professors do lose respect when they say stupid things in their classes, and academic freedom is likely to be harmed by irresponsible behavior.

The same argument could be said about freedom of speech in general. When people say stupid and irresponsible things, then other people are more likely to support censorship. But it makes no sense to support censorship in order to prevent censorship. I defend the rights of Muhammad cartoonists (and I have published them myself) even though it causes some people to be deeply offended and urge restrictions on free speech.

The NAS is pushing the coward's approach to academic freedom, declaring that we must limit academic freedom to what is popularly acceptable in order to preserve it. I disagree. I think we must expand academic freedom to be exactly what it should mean and then educate the public about the reasons why academic freedom is so important.

Horowitz's whole crusade, as he repeatedly has declared, is to turn the AAUP's archaic moral statements of faculty responsibility in the classroom into enforceable policies (either at the campus or legislative level) so that students can file complaints and set a repressive bureaucracy in motion whenever a student thinks that a professor has expressed a political opinion or assigned a controversial book.

Does the NAS endorse this stand? Does it support Horowitz's efforts at Penn State to have the showing of “An Inconvenient Truth” by itself be deemed illegitimate and prohibited by the administration? That's what Horowitz's vision of HR 64 stood for, and until now I could never have imagined that the NAS would embrace such attacks on academic freedoms.

Let's hope that the NAS as an organization, and Thorne and Balch as individuals, will re-think where they stand and join the efforts at Penn State and elsewhere to expand academic freedom for everyone.

Penn State Senate Moves to Restore Academic Freedom

2010-12-12T17:28:00.000-06:00

This past week, the Penn State University system moved to dramatically improve what had been one of the worst speech codes on faculty in America, HR 64. After being overwhelmingly approved, now it goes to President Spanier for approval.

Here are the proposed changes to HR 64:
http://www.senate.psu.edu/agenda/2010-2011/dec2010/appd.pdf

There were some minor amendments (not yet printed) during the debate over the resolution. (See the discussion here; it begins with slide 6, 27:40 into the meeting.) But the most important changes remain.

Absolutely appalling attacks on academic freedom are now removed, such as this provision:
“No faculty member may claim as a right the privilege of discussing in the classroom controversial topics outside his/her own field of study. The faculty member is normally bound not to take advantage of his/her position by introducing into the classroom provocative discussions of irrelevant subjects not within the field of his/her study.”

Other provisions are dramatically improved. Here's the original wording: “Hence, in giving instruction upon controversial matters the faculty members is expected to be of a fair and judicial mind, and to set forth justly, without supersession or innuendo, the divergent opinions of other investigators.”

Here's the much better revised version of HR 64, without the bizarre “judicial mind” requirement and the broad ban on “innuendo”:
“Faculty members are expected to present information fairly, and to set forth justly the divergent opinions that arise out of scholarly methodology and professionalism.”

And provisions are added to protect the freedom of faculty to discuss governance issues without fear of retribution. The statement of purpose at the start puts academic responsibility where it belongs, as a moral demand on faculty rather than an enforceable right imposed by the administration.

David Horowitz, in his new book, Reforming Our Universities, writes at length about HR 64 and his efforts to convince a student to file a complaint about a class in which the documentary An Inconvenient Truth was shown, even though the students were encouraged to express their views

In my interview with Horowitz, he claims that he didn't try to ban the showing of Gore's documentary. It's hard to see how getting a student to file a formal complaint against allowing the documentary to be shown is anything but that. Horowitz writes that “the Gore film was not about social science issues” and therefore it was not “pertinent to a class devoted to teaching students how to write papers in social science.” Of course, the notion that global warming has nothing to do with the social sciences is both idiotic and insane.

Under the old HR 64, any student could file a Horowitz-style complaint about any class which had readings or assignments they didn't like. Horowitz's 11-month crusade aimed at bureaucratic censorship of faculty at Penn State is an example of the dangers involved in making reasonable classroom assignments the subject of grievance procedures. Penn State's revision of HR 64 needs to be approved in order to enhance academic freedom protections for everyone.

Interview with David Horowitz

2010-11-28T14:24:00.002-06:00

I (JKW) interviewed David Horowitz (DH) via email about his new book, "Reforming Our Universities" for the Fall 2010 issue of Illinois Academe. Below is the full, unedited text. In the comment section, I will post my response to what Horowitz said, and invite him to respond.

John K. Wilson: In your new campaign to “Adopt A Dissenting Book,” you urge students, “If your professor refuses to grant your request, appeal to the next higher authority, which would be the Department Chair, and after that the Dean of Students. If you are unsuccessful with this appeal, then take the request to the university administration beginning with the Provost or President, then the Board of Trustees.” What power do you think that administrators or trustees should have to order faculty to add books to (or subtract other books from) a course?

David Horowitz: I don't think that administrators or trustees should have direct power over faculty in the selection of books in the classroom. The point of this exercise is to find people within the academic community who will encourage recalcitrant faculty to do the right thing, the liberal thing by providing students with texts that reflect more than one perspective on controversial matters so they can draw their own conclusions.

I would like to see an office of academic standards created by the administration with a review board whose majority would be faculty with representation from the administration and student body. The standards should be set by faculty. It’s important that they be written and made public within the university community. A grievance procedure should be provided for students or faculty members feel they are not being observed. A review committee composed of a faculty majority should then examine complaints and this board should be empowered to make recommendations in a manner suited to the requirements of academic freedom.

JKW: It's clear from your book that you think the documentary “An Inconvenient Truth” should be banned from all social science courses in the entire country, and only allowed in environmental studies if critical views of the documentary to oppose it are included. What punishment do you think should be imposed on a professor who illicitly shows the documentary?

DH: I said no such thing, nor have ever suggested anything like it. I have never called for the banning of any book or reference material from any course nor would I. I believe that academic standards and academic freedom principles require that students be provided with materials that will allow them to think for themselves. Consequently a controversial film such as "An Inconvenient Truth" should be accompanied by critical materials that provide students with the means to compare claims and evidence and make up their own minds. I think this is particularly true when the film is shown in social science courses whose instructors are not professionally qualified to evaluate climatological claims. This is probably where your misunderstanding of my intentions originates. I have never suggested any “punishments” for any teachers. In the only specific case I have been involved in regarding an infringement of academic freedom by a professor I endorsed without reservation the course of action taken by the Dean (in this case of Penn State’s College of Liberal Arts and Sciences) who was a faculty member herself. I have described this case and its result at length in my book.

JKW: You write, “I had a talk delayed for twenty minutes by demonstrators at the University of Chicago and had to deliver my speech while a large undergraduate stood in the middle of the room with her back to me in protest (she was not removed by the Dean and police officers present because she was black, and they feared adverse publicity).”(10) Why would a person standing in silent protest prevent you from speaking, and how do you know that the university refused to remove her because she was black?

DH: I did not say that I was prevented from speaking. I said my talk was delayed -- which it was -- until a group of demonstrators (with the exception of this one student) were persuaded to sit down. The twenty minutes were taken up by a university provost (or perhaps its was a dean) attempting to persuade the demonstrators to allow me talk. The lone remaining protester did not prevent me from speaking, nor did I say she did. I knew the campus police were deterred by the fact that she was black because I asked them why they had not enforced university rules and removed her and they told me of a recent similar incident which had resulted in a photograph in the campus paper, The Daily Maroon, with a caption that referred to them as the campus "gestapo." Obviously it’s not good pr for a campus authority to be portrayed as a Gestapo oppressing a minority.

JKW: You write, “The legislative resolutions I had sought were merely instrumental—a way of getting universities to focus on the problem and take steps towards a solution. It was never my intention to seek government management of universities, as my opponents claimed (and continue to claim).”(72) Yet the Students for Academic Freedom Handbook currently on your website notes that legislators might pass the Academic Bill of Rights as a state law “imposing penalties for non-compliance” and declares, “you and your SAF organization need to be ready to support and assist legislators in their efforts.” Aren't you expressing support for government management of universities?

DH: Although the fact remains and the record will show that I have never supported legislative control of university curricula or government penalties for non-compliance with the Academic Bill of Rights, you have certainly embarrassed me with this one. I had never read those sentences before and no one before you ever brought them to my attention or referred to them in a critique of my efforts. They do not appear in any of the previous attacks on my campaign and if they had I would have removed them from this particular document at the time. I have already done so now, having been alerted by your comment. I apologize for this oversight, but since you are the only person who has ever raised it, I cannot think the sentences have resulted in any damage, particularly since I have said so much to the contrary since the beginning of my campaign. This lapse has been generally overlooked.

The handbook you mention was not written by me and does not list me as one of the authors. I did write a guide for our students which is listed on our website as “Mission and Strategy” and can be found here: http://www.studentsforacademicfreedom.org/documents/1917/pamphlet.html Section 4 of this document is titled: “To Secure the Adoption of "The Academic Bill of Rights" as University Policy” This reflects the unwavering aim of my academic freedom campaign which has been to make academic rights for students university policy. I have never said that the wording of the Academic Bill of Rights is the only wording of an academic freedom policy that would be acceptable to me. I have said yes on each and every occasion where university officials have asked us to withdraw our legislation if they would put their own version in place. I cannot see how I could be any clearer about my intentions. The phrase you single out does not reflect anything that I have written or said in the seven years of my campaign. I have never sponsored legislative measures that would be statutory or include penalties, and never supported such an idea. I have never supported the idea that government should manage universities. It is an idea that I find both dangerous and absurd. I have from the beginning of my campaign and in all my public statements said very clearly that I believe universities themselves should establish academic freedom standards for students where they do not already exist -- which today is everywhere in the university system except for the public universities in Ohio and Pennsylvania that our campaign has directly affected.

JKW: You recount your conversation with Elizabeth Hoffman, president of the University of Colorado: “I was quick to point out that I was not asking her to hire conservative faculty. I said the university could insulate itself from an attack by...bringing conservative academics to campus as visiting professors.”(67) Isn't hiring conservatives as visiting professors precisely a demand to hire conservative faculty?

DH: Hardly. A visiting professor is a visiting professor. He or she is brought to a university to provide a fresh or unrepresented perspective or experience, and is not brought in as a permanent member of the faculty. That’s the difference. Aren’t you and other members of the AAUP – as self-professed “liberals” – even slightly embarrassed by the fact that university faculties in the liberal arts have become so monolithic in recent decades? That most students go through four years of a university education without ever encountering a conservative adult? How do you think faculties got that way? In a fit of absent-mindedness?

JKW: You also celebrate Hoffman being “fired” because she failed to get rid of Ward Churchill quickly enough as “an important message to university administrators.”(115) This isn't actually true (Hoffman resigned), but why would you support the firing of presidents who refuse to immediately purge left-wing faculty?

DH: I have never called for the purging of leftwing professors, although this is a frequently deployed AAUP slander. I publicly defended Ward Churchill and UC Irvine Law School dean Erwin Chereminsky when efforts were made to dismiss them for their extreme leftwing political views. I would never support the firing of a professor or the firing of a president for refusing to purge faculty for their political views. Where did you get such an idea? I did not ask Elizabeth Hoffman to get rid of Ward Churchill, either before or after the fracas over his Internet article.

Not did I ever celebrate Hoffman’s departure from the University of Colorado. I suggested that if she had followed my advice and found ways to encourage intellectual diversity at her campus (by methods short of hiring faculty for their political views) she would have been in a better position to defend herself from public attacks when the Churchill scandal broke. I never said I supported such attacks. The message her dismissal sent was that having an intellectually diverse academic community would insulate universities against such attacks.

You are correct in pointing out that she wasn’t formally “fired” (and I accept that I should have made that clear in my text). Nonetheless, her “resignation” was a mere formality. She was forced out. Hers was not a voluntary departure.

JKW: You claim that “Contracts had been signed which allowed government officials to decide whom universities could hire, what salaries they could pay, who they could admit as students to their institutions, and even what kind of statements teachers could make in the classroom.”(96) The footnote you offer for this statement is about high school proficiency exams, and has nothing to do with higher education (or anything you wrote). You also claim that “diversity statutes” such as Title IX “gave large government bureaucracies power over such matters as curriculum, course content, and faculty personnel decisions.”(147) Since you offer no footnotes, I was curious to know in what contracts or cases has Title IX or other statutes given the Executive Branch control over college curricula, courses, or personnel decisions?

DH: C’mon. The diversity policies of the federal government and diversity investigations conducted by the Department of Education have had a profound effect on the hiring of faculty at universities and you know it. Do I need to burden my text to provide chapter and verse of specific cases to make this point? In fact I did give a horrifying example in my text of the chilling impact of federal sexual harassment statues on classroom discourse by noting that Alan Dershowitz had been forced to tape his rape law lectures to protect himself from harassment suits by over-zealous feminists and that one of his colleagues had stopped teaching rape law all together for this very reason.

JKW: You denounce AAUP president Cary Nelson as “politically correct” because he changed his view of a poet after discovering some of her anti-war poetry.(143) You seem to think that Nelson changed his view of the poet solely because she opposed World War I, rather than because of the quality of the newly discovered poetry. How do you know this?

DH: I didn’t denounce Cary. I suggested that his attitude towards the poet Sara Teasdale was dictated by political rather than literary judgments. He said that he had regarded her as a “sentimental poet” until he discovered she had written anti-war poems. Since he didn’t explain how adopting an anti-war position was not sentimental or how the texts of these poems were not sentimental I think the evidence speaks for itself.

JKW: You praise schools such as Temple and Ohio's colleges for adopting a variation of your Academic Bill of Rights to allow student grievances. Can you name one example where any college has enforced any of these new provisions to stop the kind of “indoctrination” you oppose?

DH: As I explained throughout my book, the problem of indoctrination on college campuses is a failure of universities to enforce the very principles of academic freedom and academic professionalism that they claim to honor. In my book I describe a case at Penn State, which has the best academic freedom policy in the nation, and is only one of a handful of universities that even recognize a student’s right not to be indoctrinated. I advised a student named A.J. Fluehr through the Penn State grievance process and won a ruling from Dean Susan Welch that a professor in the communications department had infringed the First Amendment rights of Mr. Fluehr, in effect requiring him to subscribe to the instructor’s point of view. I believe there have been several cases of successful complaints regarding students’ academic freedom at Temple, which is the only other Pennsylvania University to recognize such rights.

JKW: You criticize the College of DuPage trustees for going too far in response to their concerns about too many liberal speakers on campus, and you cite a forum where three speakers were critical of Israel and claim that the trustees could “employ the language of the [American Council on Education] to require that DuPage programs support intellectual pluralism.”(211) Does that mean that you think trustees should be able to ban a forum on campus if it doesn't include an opposing point of view? And isn't that a strange attitude considering that the AAUP defended you when St. Louis University banned you from speaking for that very reason?

DH: No, I don’t think trustees should be allowed to ban a forum they disagree with. Supporting intellectual pluralism means just that: supporting ideas not banning them. I think it’s deplorable that panels are called “academic” when they are entirely one-sided, but I have never called for banning them. I have never supported opinion bans and I am sorry that the AAUP feels it necessary to keep suggesting that I do. Perhaps this is because the AAUP can’t handle the intellectual argument I have actually put forward. I have publicly praised the AAUP’s stance in defense of free speech at St. Louis University much as I have deplored the AAUP’s stance against academic freedom at DuPage and elsewhere.

JKW: You attack the Illinois AAUP's letter to the DuPage trustees expressing concern about a ban on “opinion” discrimination: “In the AAUP's view, apparently, a student failing to grasp the 'correct opinion' about 'reality' should expect to receive a failing grade. This was about as succinct a definition of indoctrination as one could ask for—imposing a matter of opinion as though it were a statement of fact.”(213) But the problem is that anyone can claim that a statement of fact is simply a matter of opinion and then demand the right not to be discriminated against, such as claiming that evolution is an opinion and creationism must receive the same grade in a biology class. How do you easily distinguish between facts and opinions? And do you think that adding “opinion discrimination” to anti-discrimination laws and rules is a good idea?

DH: Anyone can claim anything. That doesn’t mean we can’t distinguish opinion from fact, even if there are gray areas where making the distinction may not be so easy. The theory of evolution is a theory but the scientific community has a way of establishing theories via the assembling of compelling evidence. It is an established fact – not an opinion --that the universe is not 6,000 years old as creationists maintain. The theory of “intelligent design” is not accepted as a scientific fact by the scientific community. This does not mean it should not be discussed but it does mean that in the view of the biological sciences it is an opinion not a fact.

I never suggested that we add “opinion discrimination” to anti-discrimination laws. I have said that instructors should not present their opinions as scientific facts, which means that they should make students aware of the existence of divergent opinions (and not necessarily all such opinions) in a fair-minded manner, and should assign students texts and materials, which would allow them to compare opinions and make up their minds for themselves. I believe this is precisely what the AAUP’s 1915 “Declaration on the Principles of Academic Freedom and Tenure” both states and intends.

JKW: You wonder, “Why had the AAUP and the faculty unions eschewed a path of negotiation and compromise and decided to conduct a political war instead?”(217) Actually, didn't you start the political war by proposing legislation about the Academic Bill of Rights before you ever contacted the AAUP and faculty unions? And why exactly should the AAUP compromise academic freedom at all?

DH: No I didn’t. I first approached the AAUP – that is, before I published the Academic Bill of Rights or approached any legislator. I vetted it with Michael Berube, Todd Gitlin, Eugene Volokh, Alan Kors and Stanley Fish – and removed any wording that was unacceptable to any one of them. The AAUP met my overtures with silence. More to the point, as I indicated in my book, no one in the AAUP has ever contacted me since its publication or suggested changes or offered to engage in a constructive dialogue about these issues. I, on the other hand, have made several efforts to start such a discussion with Cary Nelson, Robert Post, Roger Bowen, Michael Berube and William Scheuerman and have been rebuffed by all of them.

I have never asked the AAUP to compromise academic freedom principles. My Academic Bill of Rights is entirely composed of the academic freedom principles laid down in the 1915 Declaration. The AAUP’s responses to my bill have consisted of gross misrepresentations (claiming that I want to fire faculty liberals, require the hiring of Nazis, force professors to teach intelligent design or holocaust denial, and reject the idea that there is such a thing as provable “knowledge”). As I document extensively in my book, the AAUP has acted in bad faith throughout this campaign. If they are prepared now to sit down in good faith and undertake a serious discussion of these issues, I am more than ready to do so.

Thank you for taking the time to read my book and come up with these questions. I will take it as a testament to the accuracy of my text that these are the most important quarrels you have with what I have written. If the AAUP had been as forthcoming from their side as you have we would be much further advanced in addressing the problem of classroom indoctrination than we are.

AAUP Conference and Nomination Deadlines

2010-10-28T10:24:00.000-05:00

The AAUP's Annual Conference (June 8-12, 2011, in DC) is accepting proposals for individual papers and sessions through October 31. I encourage everyone interested in higher education to submit proposals. Note that the conference registration fee is $275.

I am working on ideas for a variety of proposals, including the future of ROTC on campus, the CLS v. Martinez decision on religious freedom, and graduate student organizing on campus. If you have suggestions for speakers, let me know.

I am also considering running for the AAUP National Council. So if you're an AAUP member and would like to nominate me, send an email to me at collegefreedom@yahoo.com nominating me for National Council with "the name of the person nominating you, an email contact for that person, their institutional affiliation, and their AAUP membership status." The deadline for nominations is Nov. 1, so please run for the AAUP council if you're interested in helping shape the future of the AAUP.

Wise Words on ROTC

2010-10-25T15:37:00.000-05:00

The New York Times this week featured a thoughtful analysis of ROTC by Diane Mazur. I've long been irritated by people who fail to understand that the Pentagon banned ROTC programs, not colleges, as I've written. Even Barack Obama got drawn into this false claim.

Mazur is the author of a new book, “A More Perfect Military.” She is also a law professor at the University of Florida and a former Air Force officer. Hopefully, her accurate history of military education will help people understand what really happened with ROTC and what colleges and the military should do to improve ROTC once Don't Ask Don't Tell is finally abolished.

AAUP Conference Proposals, and Illinois AAUP Fall Meeting, October 2, Illinois Wesleyan University

2010-09-29T12:38:00.000-05:00

Some AAUP announcements: The AAUP is taking proposals for its annual conference (June 8-11, 2011 in DC) through October 31.

The Illinois conference of the American Association of University Professors will hold its fall meeting on the campus of Illinois Wesleyan University on Saturday, Oct. 2. The event is free and open to the public and runs from 2-4pm at the IWU Center for Natural Sciences (201 E. Beecher St., in Bloomington).

Scheduled speakers for the meeting include:

Jim Matthews, Illinois Wesleyan University, "The Role of Faculty in Accreditation."

Harry Hilton, professor emeritus, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, "The University of Illinois and the Religious Foundations

Leo Welch, chair of the Board of Trustees, Eastern Illinois University, "Legislative Update on Current Issues in Illinois Higher Education."

A Call for "Aggressive Oversight" of Professors' Ideology by Trustees

2010-09-29T12:28:00.000-05:00

K.C. Johnson has written a screed against Bill Ayers that may stand as the worst thing he's ever penned. There is so much wrong with what Johnson says, from claiming that one misguided 2006 appeals court ruling ends all discussion of what is unconstitutional, to his bizarre assertion that trustees and personnel committees should use non-academic political writings from 36 years ago, rather than academic merit, to judge the qualifications of academic candidates.

But by far the worst part comes at the end. After noting the respect for Ayers' views on education among many education scholars, Johnson writes, "the harm that Ayers' approach has done to American schoolchildren will continue, without more aggressive oversight by boards of trustees around the country." This is an incredibly frightening attack on academic freedom. Johnson is calling for trustees to purge thousands of education scholars from every college in the country for the thoughtcrime of agreeing with Ayers' rather mild advocacy of small schools and liberatory education.

I despise Ayers' days with the Weather Underground, but we cannot punish professors for the politics of their past history. I'm not a fan of Ayers' views on small schools and similar matters, but I hardly consider them harmful to education. Even if I did, academic freedom requires us all to defend the liberty of those we disagree with, even when we imagine their ideas are harming the country.

We should all stand up against Johnson's belief that trustees need to exercise "aggressive oversight" of the ideology of left-wing professors and ban controversial thinkers from academia.

Bill Ayers Illegally Denied "Emeritus" Status by Illinois Trustees

2010-09-25T10:04:00.001-05:00

The University of Illinois Board of Trustees this week voted unanimously to deny “emeritus” status to Bill Ayers, who just retired from the institution. But the decision appears to violate the University of Illinois' policies and the First Amendment protections of free speech.

Trustee Christopher Kennedy declared, “I intend to vote against conferring the honorific title of our university whose body of work includes a book dedicated in part to the man who murdered my father, Robert F. Kennedy.”

Kennedy is certainly correct to condemn Ayers for bizarrely including Sirhan Sirhan among a list of “political prisoners” listed in the dedication of a 1974 book Ayers co-wrote as part of the Weather Underground. But if that was the basis of the denial of Ayers' emeritus status, then it is clearly wrong and unconstitutional. The University of Illinois requires merit to be the basis of emeritus status. And the First Amendment prohibits using political criteria for employment decisions at public colleges. Using a book dedication written years before Ayers became a professor cannot possibly be a judgment of his performance at UIC. This is the first time in memory that the Board of Trustees has ever rejected an “emeritus” appointment, and the role of politics in the decision is unmistakeable.

As UIC professor Barbara Ransby noted, "It is a real threat to academic freedom, and the foundation of a democratic university, when we begin to make professional and institutional decisions based on personal or political sentiments, however strongly felt they may be."

There's another problem with the vote by the Board of Trustees. It appears to violate the University's policy. According to the University of Illinois policy, "Recommendations for emeritus/emerita designation must be made by the employing department with the approval of the appropriate college dean, the chancellor and the president."

The Board of Trustees does not have any authority to grant or remove emeritus status. A footnote in the policy seems to confirm this by identifying the only case where the Board is involved in emeritus status: "The president of the University is an exception. Approval for a president's emeritus/emerita status is granted by the Board of Trustees."

The UIC faculty handbook does give the Board of Trustees the final authority. But the university-wide policy would be superior to what's listed in a campus handbook. (University of Illinois officials did not respond yet to my request to clarify what the emeritus policy is.)

However, the technically illegal actions of the University of Illinois trustees in violating their own emeritus policy are secondary to the fact that a politically biased motivation in this case violates the First Amendment.

To be honest, despite a lifetime spent around academia and many years studying it, I had no idea that “emeritus” was an honorific title bestowed by anyone. I always assumed it was a routine term used to describe any retired faculty. And that's the way it should be. There's no reason for the university to make involved decisions about who deserves or doesn't deserve a status that is ultimately symbolic.

But symbolism does matter sometimes. And in this case, the University of Illinois trustees are taking a symbolic stand against academic freedom, announcing their determination not to allow controversial figures to have any role at the University. And that's what makes the symbolism of this case alarming to anyone committed to intellectual freedom.

Crossposted at DailyKos.

K.C. Johnson's Critiques

2010-09-17T11:47:00.000-05:00

I'm troubled by a lot of what K.C. Johnson writes in his latest essay on the Brooklyn College common reading program. First of all, he falsely implies that Bayoumi claimed that Johnson "clearly hadn't read" his book. Bayoumi said that about the right-wing blogosphere in general, almost all of whom hadn't read the book, not Johnson. Second, Johnson continues to falsely describe the book as being “mandatory” reading, even though there are no requirements for students to read it.

But Johnson also asserts that in my quick comment on his essay, I lied about what he thinks. According to Johnson: “My posts, which Wilson presumably read, never claimed that 'there was no surveillance of Arab Americans in the 1990s.'" But Johnson did reject Bayoumi's claim that there was substantial surveillance of Arabs in 1990s (“no” surveillance is obviously an exaggeration), and my point was that Johnson's argument was incredibly stupid: “In the 2000 election, a plurality of Arab-Americans voted for George W. Bush; in the 1990s, more Arab-Americans registered Republican than Democratic. Those are hardly the political preferences of an ethic [sic] group alienated by a pervasive sense of victimization flowing from past treatment by the government.” Johnson's denial of surveillance against Arabs during a Democratic administration was based on their support for a Republican, which makes no sense. Bayoumi might be wrong, but Johnson's argument is nonsensical and offers no evidence to refute it.

Johnson also claims I'm lying because “The posts never linked Bayoumi's anti-Israel extremism...to his statements about Palestinian self-determination.” Really? Here's what Johnson wrote: “Regarding U.S. involvement in the affairs of the Middle East, 'the core issue remains the rights of the Palestinian people to self-determination.' For an anti-Israel extremist like Bayoumi, such a statement comes as little surprise.” I can't see how that's anything but a link of Bayoumi's anti-Israel extremism to his statements on Palestine.

As for the censorship charge, there is certainly a right-wing censorship campaign to ban Bayoumi's book from the common reading program at Brooklyn College. The only question is whether Johnson supports it, or opposes it. The fact that he refuses to criticize the crusade to ban Bayoumi's book from the program, despite numerous posts on the topic exclusively attacking Bayoumi, certainly indicates his embrace of censorship. If it is an unfair charge, then Johnson can finally say that he doesn't like Bayoumi's views, but he doesn't think it (or any other book) should be banned from common reading programs for being controversial.

Ridiculous Repression at Christian Colleges

2010-09-15T08:46:00.002-05:00

As I noted in my book, Patriotic Correctness, the worst repression at American colleges is unquestionably found at Christian institutions. Anyone who doubts this fact need only look at Calvin College, which this week cancelled a planned concert by The New Pornographers solely because of the name of the band. The college explained in an official statement: "the irony of the band's name was impossible to explain to many." I'd be hard pressed to find any secular college in the country that has ever banned a band due to the inability to explain irony.

Calvin College in the recent past has censored its student newspaper, and it has a student code of conduct (pdf) that easily ranks as one of the worst in the country, disciplining students for any conduct on or off campus that "violates Biblical standards" or "adversely affects the Calvin College community."

Crossposted at Daily Kos.

Duke College Republicans De-Funded

2010-09-10T08:25:00.000-05:00

Below is a letter I've sent to the Duke Chronicle about the de-funding and proposed de-chartering of the Duke College Republicans after they were accused of impeaching their president because he is gay. The principle that students get to pick their leaders may surprise some people considering my strong support for the CLS v. Martinez decision preventing discriminatory student groups. But there's a key distinction to make: in the CLS case, the issue was whether the constitution of the student group could ban dissenters from holding office. The Duke College Republicans have no such ban; the bigotry they exhibit was the result of student decisions, but never written into the policies of the organization. In both cases, I stand for the principle of student democracy, that students should make the decisions about their leaders without being overruled by higher authorities.

To the Editor of the Duke Chronicle:

I am no defender of the College Republicans (I wrote an admiring book about Barack Obama), and I despise the homophobia that apparently motivated the impeachment of their president. But I also wrote a book about free speech on campus called “Patriotic Correctness,” and I believe that student freedoms and student democracy are at stake here. Students in the College Republicans should be free to elect (or impeach) anyone they want for any reasons they want. The College Republicans deserve condemnation in the court of public opinion. But they must not be denied funding or banned entirely over speculation about the reasons for their selection (or impeachment) of leaders. In our society, we prohibit discrimination by employers. But we never overrule electoral decisions even when clear evidence of discriminatory motivations exist. The College Republicans should be free to pick their leaders.

The vague language of a “culture of discrimination” is particularly alarming. It should not surprise anyone that a student group for a Party seemingly devoted to bigotry might have such a culture. But we need to criticize this culture, not ban it. The facts are definitely in dispute, and there are many legitimate reasons given on the surface by the Republicans for the impeachment. Finding the true reason for the impeachment requires an act of mind-reading, and no one should trust a political body such as the Senate to do this fairly. But even if we were certain that homophobia motivated the impeachment, the actions of the student senate would be wrong. In a free society, and at a free university, we must defeat hatred with better ideas, not banishment.

John K. Wilson
Evanston, IL

The Hatred of Controversy at Brooklyn College

2010-09-02T16:36:00.000-05:00

The Brooklyn College controversy, which I blogged about earlier this week, has broadened into a profound attack on academic freedom.
Ronald Radosh calls it a "scandal" in the New York Post. Radosh writes, "No one at the college is asking that Bayoumi be dismissed, or that his work be censored." I can't quite see how a demand not to ask students to read a book is anything but censorship. An alumnus is rescinding his donation over the book. But I'll focus on K.C. Johnson's misguided attack on the book, which concludes with this speculation about a book on Jewish immigrants: "Does anyone believe that such a book would even be considered for a common-reading selection, must less survive the process and ultimately be chosen?"

I believe that a similar book by a Brooklyn College professor about Jewish immigrants would certainly be considered for a common-reading selection, and I hope it would be chosen. Unfortunately, after a series of attacks by K.C. Johnson and the NAS and Ronald Radosh and a donor who is now withdrawing funds because of this book, I doubt any college will be willing to select controversial books.

If there is an excellent conservative book that has been banished from a common reading program due to its politics, I would be happy to condemn that. But K.C. Johnson offers no such example, just his insults and speculations.

As for the utter nonsense that English professors are not competent to choose books with political views in them, I ask: Should English professors be unable to select books such as "War and Peace" because they are not experts on war and peace?

It's time for all of us to speak out against anyone, left and right, who thinks controversial books should be banished (or "not selected") for their politics. And K.C. Johnson needs to clarify whether he stands on the side of freedom or censorship, or if it depends on which side he agrees with politically. By declaring that a college "deserves criticism" for assigning a controversial book, Johnson is certainly not setting a high standard for his college.

A Good Ruling on Religious Freedom

2010-09-01T15:41:00.002-05:00

The 7th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled today that the University of Wisconsin at Madison must fund religious activities by a Catholic student group.

In the past, Madison officials had rightly rejected funding requests from the predecessor to Badger Catholic on the correct grounds that students did not fully control the organization. But a reorganization means that students now run the group, and the funding must be allowed.

Religious speech should be treated exactly the same as all other speech. That was the foundation of the Supreme Court's correct ruling in CLS v. Martinez, Rosenberger, and numerous other cases. We must regard religious speech as equal for two reasons. First, because it is equal. And second, because the attempt by a public university to distinguish between religious and non-religious activity puts public officials in the impossible position of judging what religion is and what it means.

The judge who wrote the ruling in the Madison case, Frank Easterbrook, was also the author of the deeply flawed majority opinion in Hosty v. Carter, where he decreed that student newspapers could be controlled by the administration at whim. That ruling was a terrible defeat for student freedom on campus, and I certainly wonder if Easterbrook's opinion in this case reflects his personal support for conservative religious groups rather than the principle of freedom on campus. Amazingly, Easterbrook actually cites the Hosty case in his Madison opinion as if it were a defense of free speech on campus, rather than the opposite.

But regardless of his motives, Easterbrook's opinion in this case is right.

In dissent, Judge Williams makes a number of valid arguments defending the Madison decision to deny funding for some activities involving "worship, proselytizing or prayer." And it is true that Badger Catholic receives an absurd amount of funding, and that these religious activities may not have met the standards for funding. Williams claims that the problem was only in how the religious activities were described. However, Madison must use neutral reasons to deny funding requests; if valid reasons exist, then they can be used, but denying funding for religious activities is absolutely not acceptable.

NAS Denounces Liberal Books, Again

2010-08-31T16:38:00.000-05:00

The NAS is at it again, denouncing colleges for the horrible crime of encouraging students to read books with a point of view. This time it's Brooklyn College, which is asking students to read How Does It Feel to Be a Problem? Being Young and Arab in America, by Moustafa Bayoumi, a Brooklyn College professor.

Ashley Thorne's attack on the book embraces the views of Werner Cohn, Professor Emeritus of Sociology at the University of British Columbia, who wrote: “If this is required reading for all of your students, it needs to be balanced by other points of view. Any other course of action will amount to indoctrination and subversion of education.”

Cohn is doubly wrong. This isn't required reading, because no students are punished for failing to read it. And it is absolutely not the case that a solitary book or speaker amounts to “indoctrination and subversion of education” unless a counterveiling viewpoint is provided. I'm a big advocate of debate on campus, and bemoan the lack of it, but it makes no sense to say that any activity short of a debate amounts to indoctrination.

Oddly, Cohn actually praises the book: “I have now had a look at the book in question. While much of it is interesting and informative, the 'afterword' is a harshly-worded polemic against US foreign policy and against Israel.”

So here we have a book whose harshest critic admits is mostly “interesting and informative,” but which conservatives claim should be banned from a common reading program because it is expresses a left-wing point of view in one small section of the book.

Controversy Taxes

2010-08-03T16:15:00.000-05:00

The 5th Circuit Court of Appeals ruling in Sonnier v. Crain is not a monument for free speech, but the court gets it partly right on a side issue: the unlimited power of colleges to impose security fees on student groups and others against their will.

As I commented on the Inside Higher Ed story, while I'm disturbed by the 7-day advance notice requirements on speakers, the security fee part of the ruling is fairly good. However, the title of this article should be "You Can't Arbitrarily Charge for Controversy." It will be quite easy for colleges to produce guidelines that don't give the university arbitrary authority on security fees; this is just another legal hoop to jump through, not a fundamental change in legal rules.

The courts should go even further and ban the use of university-imposed security fees altogether. After all, the university can't charge a professor for security if he's controversial and receives threats. A university can't charge the victims of crime for receiving threats or anything else against them. A university can't charge the organizers of a protest for the police sent to monitor that protest. So why should they be able to charge for the security that the university deems necessary to protect an event? If you want to encourage threats and discourage free speech, security fees are probably the best way to do it. As another comment noted, it's quite easy to bankrupt a typical student group with security fees and make it impossible to organize events. All an administration would need to do is declare it controversial and require obscene amounts of security. All an individual would need to do is make a vague allusion to a threat and suddenly a speaker gets canceled for financial reasons. This is why all reasonable unusual security fees must be paid for by the university (or the local police) for normal activities.

U of Illinois Reinstates Howell

2010-07-30T08:25:00.000-05:00

The University of Illinois has announced that Kenneth Howell will be reinstated to teach his class this fall on Catholicism, the Chicago Tribune and Inside Higher Ed report.

The decision to end the Catholic Church's control over a course on Catholicism at a public university is unquestionably correct. The bigger question that remains is, should the person hired by the Catholic Church under this illegitimate relationship remain in place as the teacher of the class, particularly when there are academic freedom concerns about his termination? I am troubled by the fact that the administration is declaring Howell to be the teacher of the course before a committee investigating the case has reported. We do not really know, despite all the suspicions, whether Howell was legitimately removed from his post, since we do not know the reasons. However, I think the administration's is both wise and justified, both because of the political pressure and out of fairness to the students and teachers who wish to prepare for the fall semester. And no guarantee of future teaching can be made, nor should it be.

I think the University of Illinois deserves praise for its decision: in response to an allegation of an academic freedom violation against an adjunct, it quickly appointed a faculty committee to investigate. In response to a long-standing practice that violated academic standards, it quickly followed a faculty committee's recommendation to end it. Many other universities would do well to state clear policies that any teacher (tenured, adjunct, or graduate assistant) can file a complaint about academic freedom and have it taken seriously and investigated.

There is only one more thing that the University of Illinois and other colleges should do: require that when an adjunct's contract is not renewed, that adequate reasons are given for the decision. This would help protect adjuncts against arbitrary firings.

The Other Academic Freedom Scandal at the University of Illinois

2010-07-18T12:27:00.002-05:00

When I learned of Kenneth Howell's dismissal from the University of Illinois, I was immediately sympathetic. Violations of the academic freedom of adjunct faculty are far too common, and this appeared to be yet another case. (An internal investigation led by notable academic freedom scholar Matthew Finkin will uncover all the facts within a few weeks.) Although Howell's email to the students in his Catholicism class was both idiotic and offensive, academic freedom must include the right to express opinions that are stupid. Unlike many conservatives, who have argued that professors should not be allowed to express their political opinions in class, I strongly defend the right of anyone, including Howell, to speak out.

But then I read one odd sidenote to the story: because he lost his adjunct position, Howell was also fired from his position as director of the Institute of Catholic Thought at the St. John’s Catholic Newman Center. According to Howell, “I was told, because there was no more teaching, and that was my primary job, I would cease at the end of the month.” This seemed very strange. Why would the Catholic Church fire someone because a public university had infringed upon their academic freedom rights to express orthodox Catholic views?

There turned out be a very good, but shocking, reason: Howell was being paid by the Catholic Diocese of Peoria, rather than the University of Illinois, to teach the class. And there's an even more appalling detail: The Chicago Tribune reveals today (and I had confirmed it on my own yesterday) that the Catholic Church, not the University, had picked Howell to teach the class.

In my mind, this scandal is worse than the U of I admissions scandal that led to the resignation of the university president. In that case, wealthy and powerful individuals got their children admitted to the University of Illinois. But the corruption was purely on the administrative end; nothing about U of I academics were implicated at all. Once admitted, the students had to take classes and earn their grades like anybody else.

In this case, the University of Illinois was selling out a part of its academic mission to appease the powerful interests of the Catholic Church. Allowing influential outsiders to determine the hiring of faculty is a far greater threat to academic standards than giving outsiders influence over the admissions process.

This is also a violation of shared governance. It is a long-standing tradition that faculty are always hired by academics qualified to judge their intellectual standards. Whether it is a faculty committee or a faculty chair, such decisions are never handed over to an outside organization.

Perhaps Howell was and is the most qualified person to teach the class. But we can never know if the Catholic Church, rather than the University of Illinois, is the one who gets to pick him. Even if the University retained some kind of veto power, that is completely insufficient because the Catholic Church maintained the ultimate power to choose faculty members and obviously vetoed anyone who questioned Vatican doctrines.

Academic freedom is also at stake here. A professor cannot have freedom in teaching a class about Catholicism if his salary depends upon agreeing with the Catholic Church. And students are deprived of a critical view of the Catholic Church when the instructor is compelled to deliver the party line.

This arrangement has been in place since at least 1971, but this is a tradition that needs to end. It violates not only the separation of church and state for a public university to hand over its classrooms to a religious sect, but it also violates the standards of academic integrity when the instructor of any course is selected by an outside organization with a direct interest in the subject matter.

The Catholic Church was paying a lot of money to influence the education of students. On a radio show, Howell estimated that because the Catholic Church was paying his salary, “Somewhere between 750,000 and a million dollars in labor have been donated to the university by the Catholic Church.” That's an astonishing number for an adjunct teaching two classes per year. Howell had been teaching for 9 years, which would mean his annual salary and benefits were $80,000-$110,000 per year—or roughly $35,000-$45,000 per class, making Howell one of the highest-paid adjunct professors in the country. (Howell did not answer my questions about his exact salary.)

But it doesn't matter how much money was at stake. No university can ever accept the “gift” of a free class if the donor demands to decide who can be the professor.

So, no, Kenneth Howell should not have been fired for his email, if that is what happened. But he should never have been teaching the class in the first place according to this arrangement. If the class is a legitimate class to offer (and it seems to be, although no other class about one religious sect is taught in the department), and if Howell is the best qualified instructor (which he is probably is), then the University of Illinois should pick Howell as the instructor, restore him to his post, and pay him the standard adjunct's salary for his job.

UPDATE:

I wrote a post on the Save Dr. Ken facebook page which prompted some interesting responses. I'll post my reply to them in the comments below. I was informed that Howell's estimate of the Catholic Church's donation of teachers probably included a second professor who was teaching there until recently. So my estimate of his salary should probably be cut in half if that's the case.

Commentary on CLS v. Martinez

2010-06-29T19:07:00.003-05:00

The CLS v. Martinez case brought the usual mainstream media coverage from the New York Times and the Chronicle of Higher Education. InsideHigherEd covered the news extensively, and had an interesting follow-up that quotes the president of the Christian Law Student Association at Southern Illinois University: “We have no requirements. If you want to come, you are welcome to come." Expressing openness to all is much wiser than four Supreme Court justices and a whole host of pundits crying out falsely about political correctness and freedom of association. One important fact to point out in all of this was that the national Christian Legal Society imposed these rules on their students; the students never came up with the code of conduct on their own. SIU's decision to allow discriminatory groups is a bad one imposed by a misguided judge, and it should be reversed even if the campus CLS has disappeared. Legal principles do matter, and a law school in particular should adopt the right principles.

Anne Neal of ACTA asks, “If student organizations are not allowed to have a coherent set of beliefs, can there in fact be intellectual diversity?” But this is wrong: student organizations are fully allowed to have a coherent set of beliefs under the Court's ruling. If the CLS Code of Conduct had been part of the group's founding documents as expressing its set of beliefs but not imposed on members or leaders, then there would have been no serious objection to CLS and I would defend CLS against any attempt to deny it recognition. The question is, are exclusionary membership rules necessary to have a coherent set of beliefs? I don't see why. There's no reason why CLS can't have a coherent set of beliefs based on free acceptance of them rather than imposition by some external authority. I would argue that freely accepted beliefs are much stronger, and the danger posed by administrators enforcing these rules is so great, that intellectual diversity will not only exist, but in fact will be stronger because of the Supreme Court's ruling in CLS, if colleges overturn their cowardly compromises with CLS and similar groups. We should trust the students to select their leaders and follow their hearts.

A similar kind of misunderstanding is offered by Roger Pilon at CATO: “if students, whatever their interests or values, cannot form organizations limited to people who share those interests and values, what’s the point of having student organizations at all?” I have never heard of a student organization where the purpose was to find people who believed exactly the same thing you did and tolerated no dissent. Organizations can have a common interest and values without compelling every member (or leader) to obey a narrow code of beliefs.

Pilon was part of the parade of misguided libertarians on the wrong side of this case, including Jacob Sullum of Reason. FIRE's press release quotes President Greg Lukianoff: "FIRE will continue to fight for the rights of expressive campus organizations to form around shared beliefs and for the principle that the College Democrats have the right to be Democrats, the College Atheists have the right to be atheists, and the College Christians have the right to be Christians."
Yes, the College Democrats have the right to be Democrats, but that doesn't mean they should ban all non-Democrats. Would a registered Republican who decided to become a Democrat be banned? Would someone who criticized a Democratic president be banished? Let's face reality: the CLS decision won't prevent the College Atheists from being atheists. In fact, for the very first time the Supreme Court has decreed that colleges must prevent hostile takeovers of student groups.

Meghan Grizzle of FIRE has an essay on hostile takeovers where she claims that "Justice Ginsburg Disregards Serious Threat of Hostile Takeovers." How serious is this threat? Grizzle cites the famous Central Michigan case (where a student on facebook suggested doing a hostile takeover, but nothing actually happened) and then offers six additional cases "all of which involved students or administrators who called for derecognition of certain student groups, presumably because of their respective hostility toward those groups." In reality, these were six cases like CLS, where student groups refused to follow the standard policies. There's no evidence of "hostility" and they have nothing to do with hostile takeovers. In fact, I dare FIRE or anyone else to give me a single successful example in the history of public higher education where a student group was destroyed or zombiefied by these hostile takeovers. Perhaps someone will help me out by finding a single example, but the fact that I've never heard of one indicates just how rare they are. More importantly, the Court majority declared in the CLS case for the first time that public colleges must stop hostile takeovers from occurring.

Richard Epstein in Forbes claims that Hastings has “a policy that treats CLS as pariahs within its rank” and “second-class citizens.” This misses a basic fact of the case: Hastings didn't want to ban CLS. CLS forced the ban by refusing to obey the rules. Right now, CLS could immediately restore itself as a student organization simply by allowing students to join without restraint and giving its own members the freedom to choose their own leaders.

Epstein argues that this is a disparate impact case: “even if Hastings' antidiscrimination norm is neutral on its face, its impact on a religious group is not. In dealing with associational freedoms generally, the Supreme Court has recognized that the ability to choose your members is critical to your ability to maintain group identity.”

Wendy Kaminer in the Atlantic noted, “CLS appears to have been denied recognition and benefits because state university officials disapproved of its ideological opposition to homosexuality.” In reality, there is no real evidence to support this smear against Hastings. It's quite clear that CLS was denied recognition because they openly refused to follow the rules required of every other student organization.

Kaminer writes, “If Alito's account of the facts is accurate, then the Court has ruled on a case not exactly before it, (and arguably in bad faith), subordinating fundamental First Amendment rights to a particular vision of equality.” Actually, this precisely describes Alito's dissent: he tried to rule on the case he imagined to exist, rather than the facts before him, and did so in bad faith to pursue an ideological agenda, and he subordinated First Amendment rights of students to his particular vision of equality that favors religious groups.

More arguments against the majority's decision are made by the Christian Right. David French of the ADF writes at the National Review, “This forced-funding regime is unique to student organizations on our nation’s campuses. In virtually no other context are citizens directly forced to fund expression they may abhor.” How ridiculous. All taxpayers are forced to fund expression they abhor. Creationists are forced to fund scientific research on evolution. Pacifists are forced to fund press releases justifying violence. Liberals are forced to fund the McLaughlin Group, and conservatives are forced to fund Bill Moyers. Professors are public colleges are funded by taxpayers. Our country is full of forced funding of ideas many people dislike, and it's a wonderful thing.

French writes, “the Court ignores the fundamental reality of an all-comers policy: Distinct student organizations exist at the whim of the majority. If 'all comers' can join, then the majority can override the speech of any student group.” Fundamental reality? The “override” French speaks of, this hostile takeover of a student group, is extraordinarily rare, if it ever happens.

French also wrote for Minding the Campus. And he wrote a column for Townhall.com where French attacks Kennedy's concurring opinion and his declaration that "The era of loyalty oaths is behind us.” French claims that the Supreme Court justices take an oath to uphold the Constitution. But that's a bad comparison. No one is enforcing that oath by, say, removing justices for failing to adhere to a specific theory of constitutional interpretation. The same is true of the military oath, or the Apostle's Creed. No one wants to ban people from voluntarily making an oath about their faith; but when that creed becomes an enforceable oath at a public university, that's a serious problem. French actually worries, "Can the government not condition the receipt of its 'benefit' of tax exemptions for churches on the abandonment of creeds, of statements of faith?" No, because these are private groups, unlike the state-run registered student organizations at public colleges.

Carol Platt Liebau, also at Townhall.com, urges right-wingers to start invading liberal groups, apparently unaware that the court explicitly rejects allowing this.

There were a few comments defending the Supreme Court
Gabriel Arana at the American Prospect defends the Hastings nondiscrimination policy. And Michael Olivas at InsideHigherEd made a thoughtful quick analysis of the CLS case, but I disagree with his suggestion that a "deliberate strategy" is in evidence. Considering Michael McConnell's desperate efforts to backtrack from the "all-comers" stipulation, I can't see much plotting there. I also disagree with Olivas' criticism of the fact that "the Religious Right has systematically sought for many years, including their efforts in Widmar and Rosenberger, to seek full public funding and special pleading with regard to student organizations." I strongly supported the religious right in Widmar and Rosenberger, which were about special restrictions on religious groups, not special pleading. But CLS was about giving special treatment to religious groups rather than equality, and that's ultimately why the Court correctly ruled against it.

Perhaps the most disappointing and overwrought analysis of CLS came from one of my favorite organizations, the Student Press Law Center. Attorney Adam Goldstein wrote, “the rationale of this opinion could end up doing more violence to student expression rights than any decision in the last 22 years.” That's just ridiculous. Goldstein gives far too much attention to off-hand remarks in the court's decision rather than the core reasoning of it. It's true that the Court's decision would have been far better if it had expressed the First Amendment association right of students to join a student organization at a public college, but nothing about the case threatens student expression.

Goldstein writes, “it helps no one to assert that public colleges can limit the constitutional rights of students whenever they can rephrase their desire to exclude viewpoints as a desire to include individuals. A college with a different ideological basis could just as easily require all groups that discuss sexuality to include members that oppose alternative lifestyles, and the outcome would be just as counterproductive.” What ideological basis? There's no evidence of any at Hastings. Hastings already does require all groups that discuss sexuality to allow members that oppose alternative lifestyles, and there's nothing counterproductive about the outcome.

But Goldstein's most ridiculous claim comes at the very end: “Students and prisoners are the only two groups with diminished First Amendment rights, and man, today, there's a lot of inmates thanking their lucky stars that they aren't in college.” Does Goldstein actually believe that prisoners have more rights than college students? If there are forced strip searches and imprisonment of college students, I've missed a lot of news lately. And the idea that college students have diminished First Amendment rights is completely wrong.

The rights of college students far exceed those of anybody else. Try exercising your free speech in the workplace (including if you're a public employee) or a shopping mall, and you'll discover just how absurd much of the rhetoric about repression on college campuses really is. American universities are the freest places in the world, and the criticism I make of them when they fall short only reflects the high expectations we should have. Anyone who compares college to prison simply can't be taken seriously.

The CLS decision didn't diminish First Amendment rights for students; it expanded them. It guaranteed the right of association for individuals to join student groups even if they held unpopular views within the group. It guaranteed the right of students to elect their own leaders rather than having them banned by vague “codes of conduct.” And it guaranteed the right of students to be able to speak freely without fear of being punished by banishment from a student group for their opinions. This is a total victory for student rights and the First Amendment.

What amazes me in all of these arguments is that none of the critics of Hastings have ever answered (in any of the briefs or the voluminous writings about the case) what to me is by far the most important question raised by the CLS case: who is empowered to interpret and enforce these codes of conduct? As I've written before about the CLS case, this is the key issue. The students can't enforce these rules by majority vote because these bylaws are designed precisely to overrule majority will. Under the by-laws imposed by the national CLS, the national organization is given total power to interpret the rules; but this, I would argue, cannot be constitutional: a public college simply cannot give an outside group the power to interpret student group constitutions. This leaves the administration to interpret these rules, which raises both the threat of censorship and the extreme difficulty of having the administration decide who is and who is not a Christian.

I've never heard a plausible response of any kind to my objection. It was completely ignored in all of the CLS litigation, and yet I can't think of a more practical or important issue to address in this case.

CLS v. Martinez case decided today by Supreme Court

2010-06-28T09:40:00.009-05:00

Today, the Supreme Court released its decision in Christian Legal Society v. Martinez.

Wow, it's a 5-4 decision against CLS. A victory for student individual liberty and student democracy against discriminatory groups!

A very divided court, so not much precedence will be set by this case: "GINSBURG, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which STEVENS, KENNEDY, BREYER, and SOTOMAYOR, JJ., joined. STEVENS, J., and KENNEDY, J., filed concurring opinions. ALITO, J., filed a dissenting opinion, in which ROBERTS, C. J., and SCALIA and THOMAS, JJ., joined."

Ginsburg wrote: "Compliance with Hastings’ all-comers policy, we conclude, is a reasonable, viewpoint-neutral condition on access to the student-organization forum."

In this case, Michael McConnell for CLS tried to go back on an earlier stipulation made by CLS that focused on the All-Comers policy. McConnell had the right idea for winning the case, but the Court didn't go for it. Ginsburg noted, “CLS’s assertion runs headlong into the stipulation of facts it jointly submitted with Hastings at the summary judgment stage.” There's a big-time smackdown of McConnell here for trying to backtrack on the stipulation: “We reject CLS’s unseemly attempt to escape from the stipulation...”

Ginsburg noted that the case was distinguished from Healy, Widmar, and Rosenberger: “In all three cases, we ruled that student groups had been unconstitutionally singled out because of their points of view.”

Ginsburg dismisses the hostile takeover argument: “Students tend to self-sort and presumably will not endeavor en masse to join...” And as Ginsburg wrote, “If students begin to exploit an all-comers policy by hijacking organizations to distort or destroy their missions, Hastings presumably would revisit and revise its policy.” This is very good: hostile takeovers are extremely rare, but if they happen, colleges are obliged to prevent them.

Ginsburg leaves open one last hope for CLS, the argument that the Hastings policy was a pretext for targeted religious discrimination: “On remand, the Ninth Circuit may consider CLS’s pretext argument if, and to the extent, it is preserved.” Unfortunately for CLS, there's no evidence to support this argument, even though many of the Justices probably believed it was true. So they're very unlikely to prevail on appeal, and even if they do, it won't set a precedent for allowing discrimination on campus.

Ginsburg even describes the dissenters' argument as “desperate” at one point. Clearly, this was a case that deeply divided the court in fairly nasty ways.

Up next: the concurring and dissenting opinions.

Concurring, Stevens takes a more liberal position arguing (correctly) that Hastings' original non-discrimination policy is legitimate. This is important, because it does point out how restrictive the Supreme Court actually is in this decision: unless a college explicitly adopts an All-Comers Policy (which colleges generally have in practice, as far as I know), they have to allow groups like CLS to discriminate. So this case, despite the good outcome, will have colleges scrambling to formalize what an All-Comers Policy means, exactly.

Concurring, the swing vote of Justice Kennedy was swayed by the importance of the ideal of a university where students debate ideas and encounter other ideas: “A vibrant dialogue is not possible if students wall themselves off from opposing points of view.” Kennedy wrote quite powerfully, “The era of loyalty oaths is behind us.”

Kennedy also noted the importance of stopping hostile takeovers: “petitioner also would have a substantial case on the merits if it were shown that the all-comers policy was either designed or used to infiltrate the group or challenge its leadership in order to stifle its views." But ultimately Kennedy refused to engage in speculation: “But that has not been shown to be so likely or self-evident as a matter of group dynamics in this setting that the Court can declare the school policy void without more facts.”

But overall, Kennedy's concurring opinion reinforced and expanded the majority's analysis (rather than offering caveats). So I take back my earlier guess that CLS v. Martinez might not stand as a solid precedent due to the divided court. These are five very solid votes rejecting the CLS argument. Kennedy's concurring opinion was definitely the best-written and most thoughtful opinion in this case.

Now, the dissenters. Alito writes the dissent, predictably joined by Roberts, Thomas, and Scalia.

Alito's obnoxious dissent begins in a laughably hyperbolic way, claiming that the decision will result in “no freedom for expression that offends prevailing standards of political correctness in our country’s institutions of higher learning.” This is ridiculous on its face. First of all, restrictions on registering student organizations do raise important First Amendment concerns, but they don't amount to “no freedom of expression.” Groups are perfectly free to express anything they want to; this is all about exclusionary membership, not freedom of expression.

Alito calls the Court's majority “deeply disappointing.” Alito imagines a vast conspiracy at Hastings to attack CLS. His evidence? That other groups temporarily were allowed to have discriminatory membership requirements until it was brought to the attention of administrators. Alito claims, “Since Hastings requires any student group applying for registration to submit a copy of its bylaws.... Hastings cannot claim that it was unaware of such provisions.” Really, this is supposed to be a serious argument? Alito actually believes that Hastings administrators carefully read every word of every student group constitution and could not possibly have overlooked one line in any time. By contrast, ignoring CLS' massive code of conduct in the student group bylaws would have been much more difficult to do. Alito's baseless smears of Hastings administrators is simply ridiculous, and totally inappropriate for a Supreme Court decision, which deals with legal principles, not speculation about motives.

Conveniently, Alito simply ignores the stipulation that this case was about the All-Comers Policy: “What was admitted in the Joint Stipulation filed in December 2005 is that Hastings had an accept-all comers policy. CLS did not stipulate that its application had been denied more than a year earlier pursuant to such a policy.”

Alito's argument makes no sense. Even if what Alito is claiming was true (and again, the Supreme Court is not the proper forum for such issues of fact, and the majority leaves open on remand for the issue to be addressed), it would have no relevance to the legal issues at hand. If Hastings in 2004 had discriminated against a religious group, that should have no bearing on whether colleges in general can have All-Comers policies.

Alito goes on to smear his colleagues as anti-religious bigots: “This leaves just one way of distinguishing Healy: the identity of the student group.” This claim is absurd on its face. Healy was arbitrarily denied recognition because the administration disliked SDS. CLS was denied recognition purely because it failed to meet the neutral rules of the campus. CLS could simply make its code of conduct non-binding, and it would be fully permitted to operate on campus as a registered student group tomorrow.

Alito calls this decision “a serious setback for freedom of expression in this country” and bizarrely attributes this to some kind of “international norm.” He's wrong. It's exactly the opposite. If Alito's view had prevailed, it would have been a serious setback for free expression on campus (albeit not the entire country), as national groups forced students to impose highly restrictive rules designed to promote thought policing of students. CLS v. Martinez is a great defense of free expression for students.

Overall, a fantastic decision by the Supreme Court, with very well-written concurring decisions by Stevens and Kennedy. The only disappointing part is the point made by Stevens, that the Court effectively indicates that neutral nondiscrimination policies for student organizations are now unconstitutional, unless all student groups have an all-comers policy applied.

David French of the Alliance Defense Fund argues that this is a very narrow decision. I disagree with him on how broad this ruling is. In fact, the all-comers policy is effectively how most campuses operate, and how all of them will if CLS challenges them. The remand is strictly to deal with the dubious allegation of religious discrimination by pretext, and even if CLS won, that would be unique to Hastings.

This will require some thoughtful analysis by lower courts, which doesn't happen much in higher education cases. For example, Greek organizations, athletic clubs, and honor societies all fail to meet a restrictive All-Comers standard with restrictive membership (however, as Alito notes, the current Hastings policy gives them some wiggle room for restrictions not based on status or belief). This means that public colleges will need to adopt rules that make these distinctions comprehensible. The Stevens approach would have been better for following the Constitution and for the practical realities of running a university without fear of needless litigation.

I would have preferred a decision that emphasized the right of individual students to join student organizations, the right of students to democratically elect their leaders, and the dangers involved in allowing public institutions to impose religious tests on students created by national organizations.

But I'm quibbling here. Based on the oral argument, I expected a terrible result utilizing Alito's misguided and ignorant approach. Instead, we got the right result for promoting student liberty and the rights of students in organizations to determine their own leaders.

Debating on Fox News Channel

2010-06-25T15:51:00.000-05:00

Yesterday, I appeared on Fox News Channel to debate Ashley Thorne of NAS about their study of summer reading programs:

It wasn't much of an argument, since the segment lasted four minutes and included an odd question about Frankenstein that I had to ignore, since I had no idea if that qualifies as an approved classic for the NAS.

Watching this segment, Nicole Hungerford of David Horowitz's Newsreal Blog denounces me as a “Left-Wing Academia Crusader” and writes about me as “founder of the absolutely absurd and manifestly gratuitous 'College Freedom Institute' which focuses on conservatism’s 'onslaught' on free education. (Give me a break.) Given the state of our campuses today, I can only conclude that this is some sort of hyperbolic delusion.”

I can't imagine what is “absolutely absurd” and “manifestly gratuitous” about defending freedom on campus. My website and my book, Patriotic Correctness, critique all attacks on academic freedom, from both the left and the right. I argue that the conservative threats are greater, but I can't see how that's “absurd.” I would challenge Hungerford, or any other conservative, to actually read my book and tell me which of the conservative attacks on academic freedom I document are fake, and what threats to freedom on campus I overlook.

As for my critique of the NAS report, the NAS still refuses to disclose exactly how they defined books (which they haven't read) as conservative or liberal, or which books they declared to be liberal. They must have a list. Why don't they reveal it?

As I pointed out on Fox News, is a brilliant graphic memoir like Persepolis “liberal” because it attacks the repressive regime of Iran, or “conservative” because it attacks the repressive regime of Iran? (The NAS classifies it as “Fantasy/SciFi” which proves they haven't read it or don't understand it.) If you define supporting freedom as “liberal” and supporting authoritarianism as “conservative,” then picking Persepolis is evidence of a “liberal bias.” However, I don't hold conservatism in such little regard.

Hungerford claims, “If we want to avoid controversy, then we accept that racial minorities and woman are systemically oppressed.” Actually, I'd love to know which of the books on the NAS list actually espouse this view (which is true, by the way). Does This I Believe? The Omnivore's Dilemma? The Last Lecture? Certainly, Three Cups of Tea probably argues that women are oppressed in Afghanistan. Would any sane person disagree?

Throughout all of this, I have argued that colleges should ask students to read more controversial books from both the left and the right, and they should hold debates about these important issues.

My Appearance on Fox News

2010-06-24T09:46:00.002-05:00

I'm scheduled to appear today (Thursday) on Fox News Channel at 12:20pm to discuss the NAS report on summer reading programs.

The Problem with Punishing Groups

2010-06-15T15:23:00.000-05:00

Inside Higher Ed has a story about the University of California at Irvine punishing the Muslim Student Union (MSU) for disrupting a speech by Michael Oren, Israel's Ambassador to the United States.

I'm quoted in the piece, but here are some further thoughts about the issue.

I haven't seen an unedited video of the event, but if you watch the edited video posted by a pro-Israeli group, it appears that the disruptions only last a few seconds, and the protesters are very cooperative with the police. Altogether, the speech was disrupted for only a few minutes, and most of that came from faculty and administrators urging the disruptions to stop. Erin O'Connor writes, “This was classic heckler's veto behavior.”

No, it's not. A heckler's veto must include a veto. That is, it must effectively prevent a speech going forward. In this case, the speech went on. And it appears that a protest, not a veto, was the intention of the students, who decided: “If you complete your statements without being escorted out, then simply sit back down.”

So it was not aimed at silencing anyone. But it was a serious, multiple disruption of a speaker that certain deserves condemnation and is subject to minor punishment (although I think the proper reaction is criticism, and not punishment of any kind).

Heckling is not a legitimate form of free expression. It is disruptive, and annoying. However, in a free society we generally tolerate a certain level of heckling, and impose only minimal penalties on those who engage in it.

As for the punishment for the student organization, I don't believe in collective punishment, including bans on student groups. First, it's possible that there were innocent members of this group who will now suffer despite not being involved. Second, I can't see how anything prevents members of the Muslim group from creating a new, separate Muslim student organization. (It would obviously be unconstitutional for the university to ban other Muslim groups from being started.) So it's easy to evade any punishment of a student group.

Peter Bonilla at FIRE has a rather disturbing reaction to the punishment: “this episode serves as a reminder that attempting to silence the speech of others may only result in being excluded from the conversation.” That's a very odd statement from a civil liberties group, and it reflects the danger here. No university should ever be trying to exclude anyone from a campus conversation, even if they have previously acted rudely.

The best penalty for any student organization that engages in organized heckling is condemnation, which is exactly what happened here. Michael Oren wasn't silenced. To the contrary, he won a tremendous propaganda victory thanks to the foolishness of his opponents. Instead of talking about how the Israeli government suppresses dissent, among Palestinians and others (such as Norman Finkelstein and Noam Chomsky, who were banned from entering Israel to speak), we're talking (in very exaggerated terms) about repression by Muslim students. I don't think anyone is going to imitate the idiots who heckled anytime soon at UCI.

Universities should speak out against hecklers, but any punishment of organizations is misguided, and even punishment of individuals seems unnecessary in this case.

AAUP Censures Universities for Mass Firings

2010-06-12T10:27:00.001-05:00

At its annual meeting, the AAUP voted unanimously this morning to censure Clark Atlanta University (for firing 55 faculty without due process or respect for tenure. New faculty members were appointed to the positions of tenured faculty who were fired, and the university continues to advertise for these positions. Committee A found that the “enrollment emergency” claimed by the administration was “largely nonexistent.”

The AAUP also unanimously censured the University of Texas medical branch at Galveston for firing more than 120 faculty members, with one-third of them having tenure, in the wake of Hurricane Ike and a declaration of financial exigency. The AAUP criticized the failure of the institution to follow adequate procedures, and noted that the administration had begun firing new faculty without providing for faculty recall.

The AAUP unanimously added Antioch University to its separate list of institutions sanctioned for infringing on governance standards. The Committee on College and University Governance condemned the decisions of the administration and the board of governors that led to the shutdown of Antioch College. Larry Gerber, chair of the Committee, noted: “Recently, the Association is paying increasing attention to shared governance.”

Typically, AAUP sanctions deal with cases of individual faculty who are punished for expressing unpopular ideas. This year's cases reveal the new trend in higher education: mass firings of faculty, including tenured professors, using financial problems as the excuse. If anyone ever imagined that tenure provides “a job for life,” these incidents prove that's not true even for faculty who have done nothing wrong.

AAUP President Cary Nelson noted, “hardly a day begins in which we do not encounter some kind of shared governance or financial assault on members of the academy.” Nelson observed, “we're looking at dark days” but said “this is an opportunity for us.” Faculty are realizing “they can't just do their own work anymore” and must join together to fight attacks on academia. Nelson said, “we're doing more organizing than I remember us doing for the last 20 years.”

In other news, the AAUP's membership has held steady during the current recession, and the AAUP today adopted a new progressive dues structure for advocacy members based on income, ranging from $45 a year (for those making less than $30,000) to $225 a year (for those making more than $120,000). The new dues structure is designed to be revenue neutral, but it will encourage more members at low-paying institutions and among contingent faculty.

After three years of running annual deficits over $200,000, in 2009 the AAUP had a $97,392 profit. This was in spite of the fact that the AAUP had to write off $268,000 in uncollectible bad debts from past years, so the financial picture for the AAUP is even brighter. The operating income went from negative $54,391 in 2008 to positive $133,983 in 2009. Total net assets increased dramatically, from $357,930 in 2008 to $822,129 in 2009. The AAUP is also forecasting a surplus for 2010. The AAUP is much stronger than most other nonprofits, since the AAUP has added money to reserves rather than liquidating assets or borrowing money.

The AAUP's 2nd annual conference on higher education also featured 250 presentations by scholars across the country, a substantial increase from last year. However, approximately 100 faculty who planned to make presentations had to cancel, primarily due to cuts for conference travel funds on their campuses.

There will be a November 12-14 AAUP conference and workshop on shared governance in Washington DC, and the AAUP wants to recruit faculty leaders and Faculty Senate leaders to participate. They also have a call for proposals (due by July 15) to present at this conference. The massive cuts to higher education across the country show that academic freedom, shared governance, tenure, and financial exigency are all linked together.

A Biased Study on "Dumb" Liberals

2010-06-11T15:56:00.000-05:00

Libertarian economics professor Daniel Klein puts on his ideological blinders in a highly dubious study (promoted by him in the Wall Street Journal) claiming to prove that liberals are stupid about economic facts. Klein's simplistic libertarian ideology does not make him "better informed" than those who disagree with him. To the contrary, I think his assumption that an ideological disagreement makes those who disagree intellectually inferior makes him less informed about economics.

Those of us who are well-informed about economics understand how complex many of these issues are. I am a liberal libertarian, and therefore I perform slightly better on this libertarian-biased test than the average liberal. But my belief is that with one possible exception (the monopoly question), none of the answers offered on either side are stupid. But Klein's analysis, published in his own journal and in a Wall Street Journal op-ed, represents a serious violation of academic norms for accuracy and intellectual honesty.

Klein claims that he used a "Zogby International survey" with more than 4800 respondents. That's a damn big number for a poll, which would normally be very expensive. But this wasn't a real poll, it turns out. It was a Zogby Interactive poll. "Interactive" in this case means "crap." Basically, Zogby has a pool of self-selected individuals who desire to participate in polls. Then cheap-ass people hire Zogby to send out questions to this group, which is not a representative sample. Absolutely no Zogby Interactive poll can be regarded as trustworthy in any way. It is no different than the "polls" on the local news asking viewers to call in with a response. (Note, this critique does not apply to Zogby's regular polls, but Zogby is widely regarded as a lousy pollster.)

Polling genius Nate Silver of 538 calls the Zogby internet "poll" "by far the worst polling instrument that they could have selected."

Any political reporter who invokes a Zogby Interactive poll as providing reliable numbers must be dismissed as a lousy journalist. Any academic who purchases such an unreliable "poll" is almost certainly an ideologue interested in getting a result rather than the truth. Any academic who uses a Zogby Interactive "poll" without mentioning the fact in the op-eds he writes about it has engaged in a serious act of dishonesty and poor scholarship. (I should be clear that I firmly oppose any investigation or punishment for this kind of dishonesty; condemnation alone is the only proper response.) Klein needs to offer a correction and an apology for deceiving his readers.

Now, it is quite possible that the numbers found by this "poll" are accurate even though the "polling" apparatus was terrible. However, that's only the beginning of Klein's distortions. His statements are not objective economic facts; they are simply a list of libertarian talking points.

Here's the list of Klein's eight statements, followed by my answer and explanation. Let me be clear here: my disagreement with Klein's questions has nothing to do with ignorance. Instead, it reflects my considered judgment on economic questions.

"Mandatory licensing of professional services increases the prices of those services (unenlightened answer: disagree)."
Somewhat agree: yes, this is technically true, but it's a very odd question. I assume that letting faith healers declare themselves to be medical doctors and practice medicine would reduce prices: quackery comes cheap. But it's a very strange thing to desire as a good thing and assume that price should be the only consideration.

"Overall, the standard of living is higher today than it was 30 years ago (unenlightened answer: disagree)."
Somewhat agree: I'm working on a computer right now that I consider a great improvement on my living standards, something that didn't exist 30 years ago. However, I'm also aware that for the average person in America (which is how I define "overall"), the levels of wealth and wages after accounting for inflation have not increased substantially and indeed may have decreased. Certainly technological improvements may make up for that, but I think it's a reasonable issue to disagree about.

"Rent control leads to housing shortages (unenlightened answer: disagree)."
Somewhat disagree: I'm not a fan of rent control, and I think it does create some problems, including the potential for housing shortages. However, it's not inevitable that rent control would cause an actual housing shortage in every case, which is what this statement declares.

"A company with the largest market share is a monopoly (unenlightened answer: agree)"
Strongly disagree. Yes, this is a stupid thing to agree with, but the odd wording may have confused some people because having the largest market share is a necessary but not sufficient condition for a monopoly. Basically, since libertarians generally don't believe in or care about monopolies, they would usually answer "disagree" even if they didn't understand the concept, so it was a question designed to make liberals look stupid.

"Third World workers working for American companies overseas are being exploited (unenlightened answer: agree)."
Strongly agree: What is exploitation? Let's stick to the easy ones. I believe that child labor is a form of exploitation. Can anyone claim that there is no child labor in the world? I also believe that workers are exploited if they are denied the fundamental right to choose whether or not to form a union, or if they are brutally treated by their employers. Again, it's quite certain that this happens at times. Now, reasonable people can disagree with me on these points. But it doesn't make them smart and me stupid because we have an ideological disagreement about deeply ideological terms.

"Free trade leads to unemployment (unenlightened answer: agree)."
Somewhat disagree: Obviously, free trade (like any change in trade rules) creates labor force changes. Some people do become unemployed as a result of free trade. However, I'm assuming that this question refers to overall unemployment rates, and the strong wording of the statement makes me somewhat disagree.

"Minimum wage laws raise unemployment (unenlightened answer: disagree)."
Somewhat disagree: yes, minimum wages will cause some hiring that would have occurred at lower wages to cease. However, that doesn't automatically increase unemployment rates. People who get higher wages may not need to work multiple part-time jobs, allowing more people to get a job. Others may have an incentive from a higher minimum wage to give up unemployment compensation or welfare payments. So, unemployment rates could actually decrease because of a minimum wage increase, although it's not very likely. Scientifically, if we look at the unemployment rates in the wake of minimum wage increases, there is far from any clear-cut correlation that I'm aware of. So the strong assertion of this statement seems unsupported, and therefore I somewhat disagree.

So, I finished with four "right" and four "wrong" answers. (To be more precise, I think that Klein finished with four "right" and four "wrong" answers, and that conservatives and libertarians were "dumber" than liberals according to this survey. But I disagree with Klein's notion that this test reveals ignorance about basic economic facts.)

I could easily design questions to make conservatives look stupid. For example, "do increases in income tax rates cause decreases in tax revenue?" The correct answer is clearly "disagree," as the Clinton Era shows beyond any doubt. Does anyone wonder which ideology would come up with the wrong answer to this kind of question, which is far less biased and more of an economic fact than Klein's questionnaire?

Klein's claim that "the left flunks Econ 101" only shows the ideological bias of mainstream economics teaching in America. Some may argue that professors in the humanities are similarly biased toward liberalism. But I've never seen a liberal academic come up with such a simplistic questionnaire about, say, sociological facts, and conclude that anyone who disagrees is an idiot.

Mark Bauerlein at Minding the Campus argues about the Klein "poll," "the survey does support the notion of factual blind spots, and we may infer that in more or less closed bodies such as academic departments in which one ideology reigns, the blind spots can dilate, progressively turning into accepted wisdom."

No, it doesn't. The Klein "survey" has nothing to do with academics. Even if Klein was correct in identifying liberal economic views as stupid (and he's not), Bauerlein has no reasonable basis for concluding that all economists who vote for Democrats would answer the same way as bozos on the internet who volunteer to take polls. The only blind spot here belongs to Bauerlein, who uses his ignorant assumptions about Democrats to smear all professors.

It's really annoying when ideological disagreements become the basis for accusations of stupidity. Now, I like to call people stupid as much as the next person (probably more). But I never use that word simply because of an ideological disagreement where there is plenty of room for rational debate.

But Bauerlein is right to use the phrase, "a formula for intellectual weakness." When a shoddy, dishonest "poll" is falsely used to smear all liberals as idiots, and the conservative movement promotes this superficial analysis as proof of the evils of liberal academics, it shows the intellectual weakness of the right-wing today.

Crossposted at DailyKos.

The Tale of the Whining Librarian

2010-06-08T06:48:00.001-05:00

In the wake of the NAS Report on common reading programs, there's the result of a lawsuit involving one such program: in this case, a librarian on a selection committee at Ohio State decided he wanted to be a jackass and propose a right-wing book promoting a gay conspiracy controlling America. After a loud outcry and charges and counter-charges of harassment, the librarian, Scott Savage decided to make himself a victim by quitting his job and filing a lawsuit. Here's my thought: if you want to be a homophobic asshole, that's fine, but don't quit your job and expect a free ride from a lawsuit.

In the case of Savage v. Gee, the Court reached the right result for all the wrong reasons.

First, the court invoked Garcetti and claimed, "Issues involving curriculum, scheduling, and routine academic matters are not generally considered to be matters of public concern." Yes, they are. But the court did decide that this was an issue of public concern.

Second, the court claimed, "Savage’s expression, although it addressed a matter of public concern, was not protected under the First Amendment under the rule of Garcetti, unless some exception to that rule is applicable." Wrong again. Garcetti does not apply to the college environment, and the Supreme Court has never ruled this to be the case.

Third, the court declared, "Savage’s recommendation of a book for a book list
cannot, in the opinion of this court, be classified as 'scholarship or teaching,' however." Asking students to read a book isn't teaching? How can it not be a form of teaching?

But here's where the court finally gets it right: "There is thus no objective evidence that Savage’s employer took any action intended to force him out of his job." Savage's dean expressed support for him. The university, quite properly, rejected all of the harassment charges made by Savage or his critics.

Savage decided not to return to his job because of the “nasty and derisive tone of the University’s attorneys." Oh, please. I really wonder how the court could have satisfied Savage's demands: was the judge supposed to order all the faculty, staff, and administrators at Ohio State to refrain from criticizing this whining idiot?

Let's be clear here: there is a legal right to academic freedom; it covers everyone, not just faculty; it covers all academic activities, not just teaching and research; and the right to academic freedom absolutely does not include a right to be free from offense or criticism.

And that's what this frivolous lawsuit should have been all about.

The NAS Responds to Me

2010-06-07T15:08:00.000-05:00

The National Association of Scholars has responded to me.

I thank the NAS for their reply to my critique, although people who denounce books as not being “serious” without reading them surely should not be falsely accusing me of repeating their error by wondering “whether he’s actually read our report.” I have the report, and disagreement doesn't make me ignorant.

According to the NAS, “Wilson also writes, 'The NAS doesn't mention any contemporary conservative books they think deserve to be included.' No we didn’t, because that wasn’t our purpose. Unlike so many in the contemporary academy, we don’t think everything can be reduced to transient political categories.”

Excuse me? A report whose primary headline is that 70% of the common reading program books are liberal and only 2% conservative isn't reducing anything to “transient political categories”? That's exactly what the NAS is doing. As I noted, many of these books aren't explicitly liberal at all, despite what the NAS claims (the NAS still hasn't released a detailed explanation of which books are “liberal” and why, perhaps because they did so based on a summary online rather than after reading the book).

Obviously, the NAS wants to have classical books used in these programs, although the chances of getting students to voluntarily read Burke and Rousseau during summer vacation seem very low. Colleges are trying to get students to read something serious over the summer by asking them to participate in this program, assigning a contemporary book that deals with a hot topic, and then bringing the author to campus to engage with the students. That seems to me like a great idea. If the NAS wants more conservative books taught, they need to suggest contemporary conservative authors with a serious approach, and there simply aren't many of them.

The NAS claims, “The top two books in the study are This I Believe, a collection of essays on personal philosophy solicited by NPR and CBS; and Enrique’s Journey, LA Times journalist Sonia Nazario’s account of an illegal immigrant boy’s journey from Honduras to the U.S. Both books undoubtedly contain moving and interesting stories—but little if any intellectual substance. If Wilson thinks these are serious, college-level books, this only confirms the dismal state of what is considered to be 'college-level.'”

Actually, if you look at the best-seller list on college campuses over many years, it typically includes cartoon collections, Harry Potter books, and novels that movies have been made from. Compared to what college students normally read for pleasure, these books are indeed, very serious work about serious topics. I haven't read those two books, but they seem to have a lot of intellectual substance despite being non-academic books. I wish more college courses assigned this kind of serious, well-written journalism rather than the dumbed-down textbooks that are all too common (albeit more so in secondary education). I don't see anything dismal intellectually about the books on the NAS list. These kind of books are precisely the kind of serious, well-written works that should serve as writing models for college students who get a heavy diet of textbooks, academic writing, and archaic classics that are not the best models for contemporary writing. So I'm quite happy to defend these books overall.

The NAS takes my comment that critiquing traditional values can be a good thing as some kind of “look-down-your-nose disdain for all traditional values.” I really can't figure out what books on the list are disdainful of traditional values. Perhaps if colleges were assigning Hitchens or Dawkins (which would be wonderful), that might be true. But colleges appear to run scared from any lefty (or right-wing) political book or atheist critique of religion.

And running scared is the whole issue here. Yes, the NAS gave a tepid endorsement to having these common reading programs (however, the report says that to be “genuinely worthwhile, the choice of books must be improved”). The bulk of the report is devoted to trashing these programs as too liberal, and the NAS still refuses to condemn the right-wing efforts to censor common reading programs deemed too controversial. Denouncing reading programs as liberal and stupid isn't exactly the best way to encourage colleges to continue them. Enraging conservative alumni and legislators is not going to help colleges who want to adopt these programs, nor will it encourage the selection of strong-minded, well-written controversial books that are essential to provoke serious discussions and debate on campus.

Scholars on the Beach

2010-06-04T07:13:00.003-05:00

I read the NAS' latest report, “Beach Books,” denouncing books assigned as common summer reading at various colleges, and I expected them to have a point. I expected to find a bunch of mediocre books. Instead, I looked at the list of books and thought, “What a great collection of books. I wish I had read all these books. I wish colleges had been encouraging reading like this when I was in college.”

No, they are not the classics held in worship by the NAS. No, they are not always my favorite books. But they are serious-minded, well-written books that colleges should be encouraging students to read. Amazingly, the NAS manages to smear the best, and most intellectual, development in higher education in recent years.

The NAS claims, “We are not sure whether the colleges that have created these programs are aware of either the political slant or the triviality that characterizes many of the books they choose.” Triviality? The top books deal with religion and ethics, immigration, Afghanistan, the environment, Katrina, and many more important topics. There's a lot of trivial books out there, but this list has almost none of them.

According to the NAS, “It is hard to find anything on the list that poses even a modest intellectual challenge to the average reader.” Oh, what bullshit. These are serious books. No, they are not academic books (not that the NAS would approve of any of those, either). But if this is what NAS thinks are “beach books,” they need to spend more time on a beach, or look at the list of best-sellers on college campuses, where Nicholas Sparks' The Love Song is #1 but nowhere on the list of common reading programs.

It's not clear that the NAS writers have read the books that they dismiss as anti-intellectual. I'd love to see the NAS writers admit which of the books they haven't read. The NAS condemns the popular book “This I Believe” because of the “disdain for traditional values.” It doesn't appear that anyone at the NAS actually read the book, since the report relies on a few excerpts on the NPR website. It is notable that the NAS report is highly selective, omitting for example “the retired Army lieutenant general believes hard work helps build character, strengthen communities and promote freedom.” If that's not traditional values, I don't know what is. I haven't read the book, either, but I have heard the essays on NPR over the years, and I've found them thoughtful and diverse, and often quite supportive of traditional values. Of course, disdain for traditional values is part of what any college education should include.

The one accurate charge in the NAS report is the accusation of “present-ism.” Yes, these are contemporary books, not the classics. There's a reason for that: all of these common reading programs require the voluntary participation of students. If you start trying to assign homework, like the NAS wants, not many students are going to read it. Perhaps more colleges should try asking students to read classic books. But instead of attacking these excellent programs, the NAS should be encouraging every college to adopt a common reading program.

Instead, they give tacit approval to the right-wing attacks on these programs. The NAS report notes, “On a few occasions, such readings have sparked controversy. When UNC‐Chapel Hill assigned socialist Barbara Ehrenreich’s Nickel and Dimed in 2003, a student group, the Committee for a Better Carolina, protested the assignment as an 'intellectually dishonest' attempt to sway student opinion. The students took out full‐page newspapers ads and stirred up considerable public opposition to the assignment of Ehrenreich’s book.”

The NAS doesn't mention the fact that Republican legislators sought to have Ehrenreich's book banned, or that David Horowitz has declared that the use of Ehrenreich's book in these common reading programs is “expressly forbidden under the principles of academic freedom.” Nor do they mention the lawsuit filed a year earlier at UNC seeking to ban a book about the Koran from being used, or the vote of state legislators to ban funding for the program if the book was used.

The NAS claims, “Of the 180 books, 126 (70 percent) either explicitly promote a liberal political agenda or advance a liberal interpretation of events.” The NAS doesn't identify its methodology or what books are deemed “liberal.” Is “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks” too liberal? Is “Persepolis”, the graphic novel depicting the authoritarian regime of Iran, too liberal for NAS? Is “Three Cups of Tea”, about building schools in Afghanistan, a liberal plot to undermine America? Of course, the NAS doesn't even regard “Freakonomics”, the libertarian tome, as a conservative book, so there's a clear bias here.

The reality is that leftist political books seem to be excluded from these reading lists. Naomi Klein's “The Shock Doctrine” is probably the most highly regarded progressive book of the past decade, yet it's not assigned anywhere. The same for Thomas Frank's work. Colleges appear to have learned a lesson from UNC: they're choosing centrist best-sellers rather than challenging students with more political work.

Are conservative books excluded? The NAS doesn't mention any contemporary conservative books they think deserve to be included. That's probably because they're aren't any. Conservative intellectual life is dying, and the conservative best-sellers today are the idiocy of Ann Coulter and Glenn Beck, or the far right conspiracy theories of Jerome Corsi. Surely the NAS shouldn't stand for the belief that conservative books ought to be assigned even if they aren't intellectually deserving of inclusion.

What colleges ought to do is use common reading programs to promote the idea of intellectual debate. They ought to move away from the centrist best-sellers and instead offer a reading program with two (or more) books offering sharply opposing views on a particular topic. Unfortunately, the NAS report fails to mention this possibility, just as it fails to offer a serious critique of common reading programs or a condemnation of the book censorship called for by other conservatives.

It's important to remember that common reading programs are an innovation that, even if flawed, represent a great improvement upon the absence of summer reading that existed before they were started. It's time to give these programs the praise they deserve, and the critique they need, but the NAS report falls short in both respects.

Censorship By FERPA

2010-05-24T11:46:00.002-05:00

UPDATE: The judge has now banned two newspapers with no connection to the college from running stories about the incident, which is an astonishing act of judicial misconduct. This is all a misinterpretation of FERPA, and even if it wasn't, FERPA doesn't overturn the First Amendment. Apparently the restraining order on the non-student newspapers has been dissolved.

The censorship of a student newspaper in the name of FERPA by Laramie County Community College shows how ridiculous the abuse of FERPA's provisions has become. FERPA was intended to protect students by requiring colleges to keep some information about these student private. Now it's being used to ban a newspaper from embarrassing the college's president with the truth. That's something FERPA was absolutely never intended to do.

First of all, there's no basis for the argument that the newspaper was going to publish any information about students that would violate their privacy. Prior restraint requires a very strong hurdle to overcome, and this doesn't even come close.

Second, student newspapers are not part of the university. The student newspaper represents an independent voice, not the official word of the administration. Therefore, what the student newspaper does not create a litigation threat for the university. This has been determined in student newspaper cases where the college does not face a defamation suit for what the newspaper publishes--unless the college intervenes to control the content of the newspaper.

So not only are the FERPA rules inconsistent with this case, the FERPA rules cannot apply to student newspapers.

It's bad enough that college administrators are suing their own student newspaper to suppress legitimate news. It's even worse that a judge is helping them censor the press.

Everybody Draw Muhammad Day Under Attack

2010-05-20T08:07:00.002-05:00

At InsideHigherEd.com, Eboo Patel condemns college administrators for failing to condemn students who are participating in “Everybody Draw Muhammad Day.” Considering that the day hadn't happened yet, his pleas may be premature.

But I suspect that real reason that administrators are unlikely to speak out against the drawing of Muhammad cartoons is because they're afraid of drawing attention to their campus for fear that it might lure violence and threats. That's because violence and threats have been among the responses to these drawings, which the entire reason for this day.

I've printed the Muhammad cartoons in two different newspapers along with articles about the censorship of them, and although it has caused some outrage, so far I have yet to receive even one letter to the editor trying to make an intellectual defense of censorship. That's because there isn't one, and even Patel fails to make one.

Instead, Patel insults the students (“who believe they are crusaders for free speech” and operate under “the cover of darkness”) and proclaims, “A college quad is a public place where there is an implicit promise by the university that students of all backgrounds will feel safe and accepted.”

No, it isn't. Safe, yes. Accepted, not necessarily. Not if feeling “accepted” is conditioned upon not having your beliefs challenged. There is no right to be free from offense. And that's what is at stake here.

Patel claims, “the only identity you can openly insult on a campus without inviting social outrage is religion.” That's absolutely not true. It is also important to remember that Patel's generalizations certainly don't apply to religious colleges, where there is the worst regime of censorship among all campuses. After all, the Vagina Monologues are banned at dozens of Catholic colleges; St. Louis University recently banned David Horowitz from speaking because of his hateful statements about Muslims.

And even at secular colleges, administrators are just as quick to condemn hateful actions against Jews, Muslims, and Christians as they are to condemn hateful actions against racial minorities. In fact, FIRE details cases at NYU and Century College where administrators not only spoke out but actually engaged in censorship over the cartoons, even though there was no hatred expressed against Muslims.

FIRE has also rightly condemned UCSD's repressive response to the racist “Compton Cookout,” which Patel invokes as his ideal for how college administrators should react to the Muhammad drawings.

The difference here is that drawing a picture of Muhammad is not the same as a cookout invoking racial stereotypes. Drawing this picture is a statement about free speech, not expressing hatred of Muslims. If anything, administrators should be speaking out to defend free speech.

Religious identity, like political identity, can be insulted because it is essential to free exchange of ideas to allow such criticism. Religious identity, unlike race, gender, or sexual orientation, is (or should be) freely chosen.

This is not an attack on Muslims; it is an attack on censorship by a fringe group of authoritarians. Even if the ban on the depiction of Muhammad was a genuine Koranic doctrine (and it's not), it still isn't acceptable to demand censorship. On a college campus, everyone should be free to criticize religious or political doctrines.

Plenty of homophobes love to redefine their hatred as religious devotion; so do a lot of sexists and, until recent decades, so did racists. Should drawings of gay men kissing on campus be condemned by administrators because it offends the religious beliefs of certain Christians (and Muslims)? Should denouncing genuine Christians (or Muslims) who believe in homophobia as a Biblical (or Koranic) doctrine be deemed an insult to their religion?

Patel claims, “Shouldn’t universities be boldly advancing the narrative of actions that build an inclusive campus vs. actions that marginalize a community?” Yes. Universities should have an inclusive campus where everyone is free to express themselves, whether they are offended Muslims or “aggressive” atheists. They should defend freedom of speech, and they should organize events to discuss ideas, not condemn the discussion of ideas. They should promote understanding of Islam, and understanding of free speech. And “Everybody Draw Muhammad Day” is a great example of that.

Attacking Student Rights and Student Unions

2010-05-11T13:00:00.000-05:00

K.C. Johnson writes at Minding the Campus with an attack on graduate student unions. He has both his facts and his morals confused. First, grad students at NYU are much better off because of the union activism and the resulting increase in fellowships. This hasn't prevented students from teaching, and there's no evidence of any harm to their job prospects.

But the deeper error by Johnson is his embrace of repressive administrators banning graduate student unions. If unions are truly bad for graduate students, then the proper response for an intellectual is to logically convince graduate students by persuasion to vote against them. Banning a union ("union" in the patronizing rhetoric of Johnson) only shows the willingness of some conservatives to abandon student rights whenever it suits their ideology.

Dershowitz "Muzzled" By Criticism

2010-05-06T07:21:00.001-05:00

Alan Dershowitz is whining that Tikkun Magazine “is now trying to silence me by employing old fashioned McCarthyism tactics.” The reason? Some Tikkun writers are blaming Dershowitz, via his harsh criticism, of inspiring a group of vandals who glued posters to the home of editor Michael Lerner. According to Dershowitz, “On a scale of one to ten, having a few posters glued to your house ranks at about a one for seriousness. Lerner went to the press and is trying to use it to bully me into silence.” Actually, having your own home vandalized with posters denouncing you is a frightening and threatening act, as Dershowitz no doubt would realize if it happened to him. Dershowitz is correct when he says that he's not to blame for the actions of others.

But he is guilty for his own actions, including this absurd charge of “McCarthyism.” Actually, McCarthyism is when you try to silence your opponents by having them fired or their books banned. In other words, McCarthyism is what Dershowitz has done to Norman Finkelstein.

Finkelstein made some ridiculous charges against Dershowitz, such as claiming that his analysis of Dershowitz's book amounts to “conclusively documenting Dershowitz's plagiarism.” Finkelstein shows that Dershowitz isn't much of an original scholar, and that he makes shoddy use of footnotes. But none of it is plagiarism nor remotely close to research misconduct. Finkelstein also takes his charges against Dershowitz to absurd levels, falsely claiming that “he almost certainly didn't write the book.” However, in a free society, people are entitled to misuse the term “plagiarism” according to their own definitions, and to make claims they can't back up.

But none of that justifies Dershowitz's crusade against academic freedom. In 2004, Dershowitz wrote a personal letter (signed “Alan”) to California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger asking him to intervene in the “impending scandal” of the Finkelstein's book being published by the University of California Press. Without ever mentioning that he was the subject of the book, Dershowitz declared: “If you can do anything to help prevent this impending tragedy, I know that many of your constituents would be very pleased, as would I.”

It's rather sickening to realize that a man who once was one of the leading First Amendment lawyers in the country actually wrote a letter to a government official asking to have a book banned because it dared to engage in criticism. It's even worse that this egomaniac regards it as a “tragedy” for a book to be published denouncing him. It takes some chutzpah for the man who tried to have the governor of California ban a book and then got Finkelstein fired to claim that he is being "muzzled" by criticism.

More Debate on CLS v. Martinez

2010-04-21T08:40:00.000-05:00

John Rosenberg argues at the Discriminations blog,

writing today on Inside Higher Ed John K. Wilson asks whether student groups “must be given special rights due to their religious orthodoxy,” and if they are, he concludes ominously, “the practical effect of embracing religious oaths for student groups” [do colleges “embrace” the views of all the groups they recognize?] would be “a violation of individual rights, an attack on student democracy, and a potential increase in administrative power.”
As I said, I don’t want to argue the merits or the law here. But I do want to emphasize an irony that Silverglate noted in his concluding sentence: “If the Supreme Court decides that public colleges may deny religious groups the same rights as any other group on campus, the result will be less, not more, genuine diversity on campus.”

No, colleges do not embrace the views of the groups they recognize. I'm not talking about that. But they certainly do embrace the enforcement structure of the by-laws for the groups they recognize. For example, if the by-laws of a student group require the president to be elected every year and an individual declares himself president for life of the group, then you would go to the college administration for relief and they would investigate and if the by-laws were violated, compel an election to take place.

So what happens when you compel certain beliefs in the by-laws? Well, then someone can go to the administration and demand that they investigate the beliefs of a member of the group and then compel their removal for incorrect beliefs.

As I have argued, this is a dangerous and impermissible power for a public college to have. It violates the individual rights of students who would be banned from student groups. It violates student democracy by overruling the student choices for leaders. And it gives administrators enormous power to control student groups.

The alternative is to let the national CLS make decisions for students (which is what CLS demands), an approach I believe is both illegal for a public college and contrary to student rights. Or we can just let the students decide who their leaders are, which is the democratic solution I propose.

As for Silverglate's argument about enhancing diversity, I don't think it's very plausible. There are two parts to it: if student groups are forced to have disbelievers in their midst, it will stop their activities. I don't think this is true. After all, actually disruptive people can legitimately be removed from a student group. And I don't believe that a student group needs homogeneity or unanimity to function.

The second part is the hostile takeover. As I've noted, this is so rare that no one can cite a successful case of it happening, and the CLS rules don't necessarily stop it. If it's a problem then colleges can simply adopt a rule prohibiting people from taking over student groups in order to destroy them.

I would like to see Rosenberg argues about the merits and the law here. So far, the conservatives (and liberals) who think CLS is an obvious case have yet to respond to any of the problems I raise about who enforces these rules.

2010-04-19T15:50:00.003-05:00

Oral Argument in CLS v. Martinez

Today's oral argument before the Supreme Court in the case of Christian Legal Society v. Martinez reveals why the Supreme Court should stay out of micromanaging college campuses: they don't know what they're talking about, and they live in a world far from reality. If Tim Gunn was a Supreme Court justice, he'd probably rule the case a "hot mess."

My former professor Michael McConnell ran immediately into a buzzsaw arguing for CLS, and it seemed at first that McConnell made a big mistake in trying to push the idea that Hastings had a discriminatory policy rather than focusing on Hastings' espoused “all-comers” policy. Even Scalia seemed very dubious (and even angry) that McConnell was confusing everyone: “if that was it you should have brought in some -- some evidence of -- of different treatment of other groups.” Considering that CLS had stipulated to the “all-comers” policy earlier on (before McConnell joined the legal team, I think), it was a very hard argument to make.

Justice Kennedy, the most likely swing vote, also seemed very skeptical: “Your argument at its most fundamental level is that religious organizations are different because religion is all about belief. But at that point don't we also have a tradition of separation? That's the whole reason why church and state for many purposes are kept separate, so that States are not implicated with religious beliefs. And it -- it -- it seems to me we have to consider that when we are considering your argument.”

Justice Scalia tried to push the idea that any all-comer policy violated free speech, rather than the special rights of religious groups: “as I understand your argument on the all-comers policy, it is not an argument that -- that is based upon the religious nature of CLS. You would make the same argument of unconstitutionality with respect to the student Republican Club, wouldn't you?” That may be an argument that could draw Breyer and Kennedy in, but it doesn't make much sense at all.

Gregory Garre, representing Hastings, faced his own problems. Justice Breyer, normally a liberal vote, said: “So with that great unclarity, asked to decide a constitutional issue where I feel I need more facts and I don't have them, the more justification to know what it really is, which I don't have, what should I do?”
Justice Kennedy wondered, “And what if we think that the policy has not been evenhandedly applied? Can't we decide the case on that basis?”

McConnell quashed that idea in his rebuttal: “the Court must -- needs to reach the constitutionality of the all-comers policy as applied to CLS in this case.”

But Justice Breyer said: “I tend to sympathize with your view that it's so hard to believe that they really hold it, maybe they do.” It's incomprehensible to imagine why an “all-comers” seems so unreasonable to Breyer and the other justices, to the point that they would set judicial precedent without any evidence to support it.

McConnell's attempt to re-litigate the question of what is Hastings' real policy seemed like a mistake at first, but it turned out to be brilliant strategy. Because the “all-comers” policy had been stipulated, the Hastings side has never put together the legal evidence supporting the reasons for that policy. And McConnell effectively convinced the Court that “all-comers” was just a pretext for discriminating against a religious group, when there's no evidence to support that idea and it has nothing to do with the legal principles at stake here.

Sadly, it seems like the Supreme Court is determined to find some sort of legal pretext for ruling in favor of CLS, even though they lack the evidence and they don't believe in the legal principles behind it. I count six weak votes for CLS (including Kennedy and Breyer), and what will no doubt be a very short and vaguely-worded opinion that tries to avoid the mess both sides made of this case. However, there is some hope that the justices will take a stand of not getting involved in ordering around a public college without having sufficient evidence to support their stand. So it could easily swing 6-3 the other way, if Justice Stevens can find some persuasive arguments for his center-right colleagues.

Ultimately, I suspect that the Supreme Court, so deeply confused and annoyed by the facts in this case, will order it re-argued in the fall, without these stipulations, so that the real story can be determined. That's the wisest and fairest approach to take.

2010-04-19T06:26:00.000-05:00

CLS v. Martinez Argued Today

Today, the Supreme Court holds oral argument in CLS v. Martinez. I have an essay at InsideHigherEd.com about the case.

I should add that this is really a case about student control of their own organizations. The national CLS demands the power to remove any student leaders even against the will of the students, and decrees that the national CLS can violate the student group's constitution if it so wishes: "Any conflict or disagreement among chapter officers or members as to the meaning or interpretation of this Constitution shall be submitted in writing to the CLS Executive Director, through the LSM Director. The decision of the CLS Executive Director resolving the conflict or disagreement shall be final. In the event of any conflict or inconsistency between this
Constitution and the CLS bylaws, the terms and provisions of the latter shall control."

This is really astonishing, that interpretation of a student group's constitution must be handed over to its national affiliate. Ultimately, students should be the ones to control their own student groups, and that's what is at stake in CLS v. Martinez.

2010-04-11T09:44:00.000-05:00

Cary Nelson Speaking in Chicago

AAUP President Cary Nelson will be speaking this week in a couple of free events open to the public, discussing and signing copies of his new book, No University Is An Island.

Friday, April 16, 2010 12:00 PM - 2:00 PM
NATIONAL-LOUIS UNIVERSITY
122 S. MICHIGAN AVENUE, Chicago
room 5006 - Lecture Hall

Illinois AAUP State Meeting and Conference
Saturday, April 17, 2010

St. Augustine College, Chicago, IL

1:00 p.m. Dr. Kevin Mattson, Ohio University, Connor Study Professor of Contemporary History,

“The Corporatization of Higher Education”

1:45 Rima Kapitan, attorney at CAIR-Chicago

“Academic Freedom and Contingent Labor: A Case Analysis”

2:30 AAUP National President Cary Nelson discusses his new book No University is an Island.

Introduction by Peter N. Kirstein, Vice-President, IL-AAUP

3:30 IL-AAUP Business Meeting—elections, delegates to annual conference, acknowledgements

3:45 Adjournment

The conference is free and open to the public.

St. Augustine College is located at 1345 W. Argyle, Chicago, Il. 60640, north of downtown Chicago. http://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en&tab=wl

The Red Line El stops 3 blocks east of the College at Argyle St. The College is also accessible by CTA buses on Clark, Broadway, Lawrence, and Foster.

If you are driving there is free parking at the College. From downtown exit Lake Shore Drive at either Lawrence or Foster Avenue.

The conference will take place in the historic Charlie Chaplin Auditorium. For more information email Lee Maltby at lmaltby@staugustine.edu, or phone, 773-878-3728.

2010-04-08T14:56:00.001-05:00

Live Beneath the University

An excellent conference just started in Minneapolis today, Beneath the University, the Commons. It's streaming live on Ustream. For the full schedule through April 11, click here.

2010-04-07T07:40:00.000-05:00

Bill Ayers Speaks Out on Wyoming Ban

Bill Ayers has a remarkable essay on Ragblog about the prohibition on having him speak at the University of Wyoming. And I still wait for the conservatives to condemn what happened and to condemn the Republican politicians who called for him to be banned.

2010-04-06T18:58:00.000-05:00

UIC Graduate Students Reach Agreement

University of Illinois at Chicago graduate assistants have reached an agreement with the administration to avoid a strike. Kari Lydersen at the In These Times labor blog wrote earlier about the dispute and the students' demands.

2010-04-01T09:34:00.000-05:00

Trudge Toward Freedom

Earlier this week, I posted about the disinviting of Bill Ayers from the University of Wyoming, and expressed my hope that conservatives would speak out against it.

Part of the answer can be found in a post by John J. Miller of the National Review on the blog Phi Beta Cons. Miller writes, “Okay, but he never should have been invited in the first place, not as long as this 'former 1960s radical' who was in fact a domestic terrorist proposes to lecture students and others on, as the article puts is, 'social justice issues.'"

So there we have it. Miller thinks it's “okay” to ban speakers from a public college campus. In fact, the only thing he finds objectionable about the whole episode is the fact that Ayers was ever invited to speak.

He's wrong. It's never okay to ban speakers. The title of Ayers' cancelled speech? “Trudge Toward Freedom.” What a beautiful title. We should try doing that.

Other conservative and libertarian commentators weren't much better.

Accuracy in Academia reported on the ban, but without a word of criticism.

Erin O'Connor managed to point out that Wyoming folks were “disorganized hypocrites." But more disturbing is O'Connor's claim that “Wyoming should have thought about the inevitable controversy before inviting Ayers--and should have decided either not to bring him in at all, or to weather the objections with ringing endorsements of free inquiry and open debate.” Really? A public college disinvites a speaker, and your reaction is that preemptively banning controversial speakers is the moral equal of defending free speech? Not wise, not fair, not useful, not good.

2010-03-31T14:20:00.001-05:00

Administrator Academic Freedom

Peter Wood of the NAS argues that the AAUP and others fail to defend the academic freedom of administrators, citing a Chronicle of Higher Education essay that makes this assertion.

Wood is wrong on several accounts.

First, the AAUP has never said that only faculty have academic freedom. In 2000, the AAUP created a committee on academic professionals to address their academic freedom. As Ernie Benjamin points out, "The AAUP adopted a policy statement endorsing academic freedom for non-instructional academic staff entitled 'College and University Academic and Professional Appointments' in 2002. It may be found on pages 93-97 of AAUP Policy Documents and Reports, 10th Ed. It applies to those academic administrators who are not 'senior administrators.' It provides that 'those with significant academic responsibilities should have academic freedom in the discharge of those responsibilities and in their civic lives.' It further provides that 'colleges and universities should recognize the free expression rights of all their employees.' And, it recommends appropriate procedural protections and safeguards."

Second, Lernfreiheit was never a concept about student free speech. It promoted the belief that students were adults who should be able to decide on their course of study (actually, conservative groups such as the NAS and ACTA tend to violate this principle by arguing for more universal requirements on college students).

Third, the AAUP defended the rights of students in its 1967 Joint Statement on the Rights of Students.

Fourth, Summers resigned from Harvard, albeit under pressure. Anyone who voluntarily resigns has a weak claim on academic freedom. However, the key event that led to a faculty vote against him was Summers' removal of a dean. What about that dean's academic freedom? Moreover, Summers was a notoriously bad administrator, which raises the question of whether incompetent administrators should keep their jobs. It is noteworthy that no one ever challenged Summers' tenured position as a professor of economics, which he retained. And plenty of "liberal" adminstrators get fired or pushed out, such as the Republican president of the University of Colorado who got forced out of office for not immediately firing Ward Churchill.

Finally, Wood is right when he writes that academic freedom "is a constitutive principle of higher education itself." It's unfortunate that he wants to limit it only to those whom he deems "dispassionate" rather than embracing the idea of academic freedom for everyone, passionate or otherwise. The AAUP, the NAS, and many others need to broaden their notions of academic freedom to see it as a foundation of higher education that must be intertwined with every activity on campus.

2010-03-30T16:05:00.001-05:00

Bill Ayers Banned Again on Campus, and Norman Finkelstein, Too

The University of Wyoming has banned UIC professor Bill Ayers from speaking on campus. University of Wyoming President Tom Buchanan declared, "The University of Wyoming is one of the few institutions remaining in today's environment that garner the confidence of the public. The visit by Professor Ayers would have adversely impacted that reputation." Buchanan is wrong, both in his ridiculously inflated opinion of the University of Wyoming, and in his wrongheaded belief that censorship enhances the reputation of a college. To the contrary, the University of Wyoming will forever be known as the college run by small-minded fools who think that banning speakers is a substitute for intellectual engagement.

This is not new for Bill Ayers. He has been banned by Boston College, Georgia Southern University, and the University of Nebraska. Republican legislators in Pennsylvania threatened to cut the funding of Millersville University unless they banned Ayers. An Illinois legislator introduced a bill designed to have Ayers fired.

Ayers is not the only figure facing campus bans. Norman Finkelstein, after being denied tenure by DePaul University and then banned from teaching there in his terminal year, reached a confidential settlement with DePaul. One part of that settlement has recently come to light: Finkelstein is banned from setting foot on DePaul's campus.

This DePaul ban came up because DePaul students wanted to invite Finkelstein to speak. Unable to have him speak on campus, they arranged to rent a church not too far from campus; however, that church decided to ban Finkelstein's speech due to the controversy surrounding him.

By banning Finkelstein, DePaul University is not only violating his rights, but it is also violating the academic freedom of faculty who might wish to have him appear as a guest in a class, and DePaul is violating the academic freedom of students who want to invite him to speak on campus and are being prohibited from doing so. As the AAUP's Joint Statement on Student Rights declares, "Students should be allowed to invite and to hear any person of their own choosing....The institutional control of campus facilities should not be used as a device of censorship." (DePaul refused to respond to my query about the Finkelstein ban; the students have apparently found another location for Finkelstein's speech on April 16.)

Ann Coulter, the victim of a recent repulsive act of censorship for “security reasons” at a Canadian university, has claimed, “There is not a conservative in America who can go to a college campus in America without a bodyguard.” This, of course, is ridiculous. Plenty of conservatives speak on campuses without a bodyguard, and some liberals speak with one. But it does raise an interesting question: if conservative speakers really are threatened more than those on the left, why is it that the speakers banned from college campuses are overwhelmingly leftists such as Ayers and Finkelstein?

Let's hope that all the conservatives who denounced the ban on Ann Coulter will speak out with equal vigor against the speaker bans imposed without any security reasons by the University of Wyoming and DePaul University.

Crossposted at DailyKos.

2010-03-29T08:07:00.000-05:00

The Threatener's Veto

The performance of the play "Corpus Christi" at Tarleton State University in Texas has been cancelled due to death threats.

It's sickening to hear of yet another event at a university cancelled due to threats, although it's understandable why the professor in charge did so. However, this should not be the end of this.

First, the university should aggressively seek out and demand the prosecution of every single person who made a threat (and if they're associated with the university, kick them out).

Second, the university should make a video of the students performing the play, even if there is no audience. They should post the video on YouTube and prominently link to it from the front page of the university's website.
Third, the university should invite a series of speakers to campus in the next academic year to talk about censorship and why we need to protect free speech. (I'm happy to volunteer to be the first.)

We can't allow threats and intimidation to silence speech, especially on a college campus.

2010-03-29T07:36:00.002-05:00

Movie Review: American Radical: The Trials of Norman Finkelstein

(from the Spring 2010 issue of Illinois Academe)

Note: "American Radical" will be screened @ 6pm on Thursday, April 1, at Chicago's DePaul University in the Student Center room 314A and will include a panel of his former students who will discuss what happened during his tenure process at DePaul and it will follow with an open discussion on academic freedom. It is free and open to the public. “American Radical” will also be shown in Chicago as part of the Palestinian Film Festival at the Gene Siskel Film Center. For more screening info, see the movie's website.

“American Radical” is a powerful new documentary about the limits of open debate in America and in academe. The tenure denial by DePaul University of political science professor Norman Finkelstein marked one of the disturbing attacks on academic freedom in recent years. DePaul openly declared that it was Finkelstein's lack of “Vincentian values” (his rudeness toward other scholars in his research) that led to the dismissal, followed by the ban on having Finkelstein teach in his terminal year.

However, academic freedom is only a small part of “American Radical.” The movie follows Finkelstein as he travels around the world, arguing with his critics.

Finkelstein is a fascinating figure, because of his extraordinary intensity and uncompromising attitudes. He is not always pleasant, at least not to his public critics. But his critics are equally vituperative toward him. He is routinely called “poison”, “self-hating Jew” and even a Holocaust denier despite the massacre of most of his family during the Holocaust.

Although sympathetic to Finkelstein as the focus of the documentary, the film is surprisingly even-handed and offers extensive time to his critics, in public debates and sit-down interviews. Alan Dershowitz, the Harvard Law Professor who ultimately got Finkelstein fired from DePaul, appears in the movie to declare, “Norman Finkelstein is a classic anti-Semite.” Finkelstein, to his credit, is willing to take on all critics and all arguments.

After one speech, Finkelstein says, “believe me, sometimes I wonder whether it’s worth it.” Today, Finkelstein is banished from academic jobs, and limited to giving speeches around the world. In 2008, Finkelstein was banned from entering Israel for 10 years due to “security concerns.” The Jewish Defense Organization has sought to have Finkelstein evicted by his landlord from his Coney Island apartment, putting up flyers in his neighborhood attacking him.

Finkelstein is only the most prominent of the scholars who have seen jobs disappear and speeches cancelled for their views on the Arab-Israeli conflict. Ultimately, “American Radical” paints a complex picture of Norman Finkelstein, but a much more disturbing portrait of academia and the limits of debate.

2010-03-25T14:34:00.000-05:00

College of DuPage Passes Limits on Academic Freedom

As I noted last month, the College of DuPage board was considering some Horowitz-style restrictions on academic freedom. Last week, they passed the new policy on educational philosophy without any changes. The union at CoD has filed an unfair labor practices complaint about these various changes to campus policies that violate the faculty contract. So there's still hope that these changes will be stopped.

2010-03-16T19:42:00.001-05:00

Why Direct Student Lending Doesn’t Threaten Academic Freedom

As a sideshow to health care reform, advocates for student affordability may finally get a great reform that’s taken years to accomplish: direct student lending. For years, private banks have loaned money to college students, while the federal government guaranteed the money. All profit, no risk. No wonder they’re desperate to hang onto a program when an estimated $67 billion could be saved by taxpayers over the next 11 years. Even in Washington, that’s what they call real money. Conservatives in Congress are the biggest advocates of this crony capitalism, disproving once and for all the laughable claims of Republicans to be the fiscally-responsible party.

But like everything else in this extended silly season of politics, the far right is attacking direct student lending as a vast government conspiracy to take over higher education in America.

Peter Wood, head of the National Association of Scholars, worries about "the specter of federal control of American higher education. ‘Obama loans’ may seem benign but they threaten academic freedom and may compromise the quality of academic programs." Wood is dead wrong. There is no possible threat to academic freedom or the quality of academic programs from reforming the student loan system. Ultimately, it doesn’t matter to students or colleges whether the check comes from a bank or the federal government. It only matters to the taxpayers (and the bank’s investors).

Yet according to Wood, "It will make American higher education extraordinarily vulnerable to political interference. Will Congress, presidential administrations, and the Department of Education resist the temptation to misuse their new power?" What new power? There has been only one clear-cut abuse of the old power the government has always had since student loan program began, and it was cheered by conservatives. Conservatives didn’t mind when the Solomon Amendment forced all private colleges that accept any federal funds to allow discriminatory military recruiters on their private property, nor did conservatives mind when the Supreme Court upheld this violations of private property rights by the government. However, this threat had absolutely nothing to do with the manner of financing student loans.

The real fear of the right is that more students may get a college education. Wood proclaims, "Voila! The great majority of college students are instantly long-term government clients who will spend the first decades of their working lives paying down their debt to Obama Loans." Voila? College students already are government "clients" who owe money to the government if they fail to pay their loans. Under the Bush Administration, did Wood denounce the "Bush Loans" students received?

Sadly, the right wing has become so hateful of academia that they actually oppose Obama’s idea of encouraging more students to attend college. Thus, we get nonsensical blathering like Wood’s claim that "Obama Ed threatens to destroy higher education by making it the intellectual equivalent of today’s high schools. College for everyone regardless of ability is college for no one." Expanding access to higher education doesn’t lower the quality of education. This was the fear expressed by many elitists after World War II when the GI Bill was passed, and it turned out to be completely wrong.

According to Wood, "The Direct Lending system would create an unparalleled choke point over higher education....the choke point will be used to force colleges and universities to scale up and eliminate obstacles to expansion." What nonsense. Exactly how can the federal government force any colleges to accept more students? Never mind the fact that many colleges are thrilled to have more students, but all of the paranoia in the world still won’t help this absurd theory make any sense.

Wood claims, "We might well end up with the educational equivalent of ‘death panels.’" I couldn’t have come up with a better analogy than that. Just as "death panels" were a purely imaginary lie spouted by half-wit right-wing nutjobs like Sarah Palin, Wood’s conspiracy theories are its educational equivalent.

Wood’s theory (and the support from other thoughtful conservatives, such as the blog Critical Mass) reveals a worrisome development on the right, where implausible conspiracy theories are becoming the dominant ideology of the Republican Party, pushed on a daily basis by Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh, who actually imagines that Barack Obama is intentionally destroying the economy to solidify his power.

Encouraging more students to get a college education will not lead to the death of civilization. A change in accounting practices for student loans will not cause the federal government to take over higher education. And Direct Student Loans will not destroy America.

Crossposted at DailyKos.

2010-03-14T11:10:00.000-05:00

Illinois AAUP Annual Meeting

Illinois AAUP Annual Meeting
Saturday, April 17, 2010
St. Augustine College, Chicago

1:00 p.m. Dr. Kevin Mattson, Ohio University, Connor Study Professor of Contemporary History, "The Corporatization of Higher Education"

1:45 Rima Kapitan, attorney at CAIR-Chicago "Academic Freedom and Contingent Labor: A Case Analysis"

2:30 AAUP National President Cary Nelson discusses his new book No University is an Island.
Introduction by Peter Kirstein, St. Xavier University, Vice-president, ILL-AAUP

3:30 IL-AAUP Business Meeting-elections, delegates to annual conference, acknowledgements

3:45 Adjournment

The conference is free and open to the public.

St. Augustine College is located at 1345 W. Argyle, Chicago, Il. 60640, north of downtown Chicago. http://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en&tab=wl

The Red Line El stops 3 blocks east of the College at Argyle St. The College is also accessible by CTA buses on Clark, Broadway, Lawrence, and Foster.

If you are driving there is free parking at the College. From downtown exit Lake http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=5452233Shore Drive at either Lawrence or Foster Avenue.

The conference will take place in the historic Charlie Chaplin Auditorium. For more information email Lee Maltby at lmaltby@staugustine.edu, or phone, 773-878-3728.

2010-02-18T08:18:00.001-06:00

College of DuPage Proposes Stealth Horowitz Rules Against Academic Freeedom

Today is another meeting of the College of DuPage Board of Trustees, which means that it’s time for them to pass yet another terrible policy that violates the First Amendment. This time, it’s Policy 10-126 on Electronic Communications (pdf, page 109), which gives the administration total power to deny access to informational technology on campus (an essential part of almost anyone’s teaching, research, and voice for free speech) without any due process or appeal procedures.

But the bigger news is what’s on the information agenda for the March meeting. The College of DuPage Board of Trustees is proposing a stealth version of David Horowitz’s Academic Bill of Rights, full of many of the same attempts to restrict political speech, but with slightly different wording. (See the full policy below.)

Perhaps the most extraordinary thing in the policy being proposed is a total ban on bias: faculty “shall present facets of controversial issues in an unbiased manner within the scope of College-approved course objectives.”

The policy would require professors in a German history class to teach the views of Holocaust deniers without “bias” against them. After all, the Holocaust is undeniably a controversial issue, Holocaust deniers are undeniably a facet of that issue, and bias is now forbidden. The same is true of requiring creationism to be taught in biology classes addressing the controversial topic of evolution, and pretty much any other topic. In fact, it’s almost impossible, and often undesirable, for faculty to be “unbiased” about a controversial issue. The key intellectual freedom question is whether they force students to agree with them. Requiring that faculty never reveal their views on any controversial issues is the clearest possible violation of academic freedom that you can imagine.

This rule goes even further in compelling the limits to teaching to “College-approved course objectives.” What does this mean? It could mean that unless the administration thinks that a controversial issue is part of the course objective already approved in the course description, a professor can’t teach it. It could mean that even if you could teach a controversial matter in an “unbiased” way, and even if it was related to the subject of the class, it still could be banned if it wasn’t listed as part of the course objectives.

The proposed educational philosophy also declares, “It is the obligation of faculty members and students to be accurate, to exercise appropriate restraint, and to show respect for opinions of others.”

This is similar to a rather flawed part of the AAUP’s 1940 statement about professors: “they should at all times be accurate, should exercise appropriate restraint, should show respect for the opinions of others…” But there’s an important difference here. In the AAUP statement, the word is “should” and it is clearly intended as a moral obligation, not something imposed by universities. For the College of DuPage, this becomes an “obligation” imposed by the administration.

Even worse, it becomes an obligation on students. I can’t imagine why the Board of Trustees (and especially the student trustee) wants to have students silenced in the classroom by the order of the administration. Will students be disciplined for writing something inaccurate in a term paper? Will students be brought up on charges of disrespect whenever they dispute something a professor or a fellow student says? No one knows, since no public college has ever imposed such a broad speech code in the classroom on students before.

But the bigger speech code is against faculty in the classroom. Another red flag is the rule requiring materials “pertinent to the subject and level taught.” This provision is likely to contribute to the dumbing down of the College of DuPage. The “level” rule means that the administration can order teachers not to assign difficult readings on the grounds that it is inappropriate for the level of the students. These kind of “level taught” rules are used to justify censorship in elementary school, but until now, I’ve never seen anyone apply it to college students.

This educational philosophy, if ever put into practice, might be stopped by union appeals and lawsuits. And if the US courts still protect the First Amendment on campus (and after the Garcetti case, that’s a big “if”), the rules of a repressive administration might be overturned. But its passage will have an immediate chilling effect on the faculty and students at the College of DuPage. Many faculty members are quiet cowards who want to obey the rules and never raise a peep against the administration for fear of retaliation. These faculty will think twice before assigning controversial materials and will back down at the first complaint from the most hyper-sensitive student offended at hearing a contrary idea. The result will be an intellectual decline at the College of DuPage. Good teachers will avoid taking jobs at a place where their teaching is restricted by a conservative administrative, where have to fight to have controversial ideas in their classes. Good students will search out better colleges where the administration doesn’t try to pass a gag rule on faculty (and on students themselves).

There’s an easy fix to this proposed policy. The first paragraph is a perfectly good statement on academic freedom, as is this line: “Faculty members and students are citizens. When a faculty member or student, speaks, writes, or acts as a citizen, all should be free from institutional censorship and/or discipline.” Just get rid of the phrase “as a citizen” and remove all of the Horowitz-inspired additional sections which restrict free expression, and the College of DuPage will have an excellent statement on educational philosophy.

Or here’s a better idea: if you’re creating an “educational philosophy” for the College, why not listen to the educational experts called professors who know what they’re doing?

Last year, the voters repudiated the Horowitz-style attempts at right-wing thought control over the College of DuPage. Now their elected representatives aren’t listening, and are pushing through the same kinds of unconstitutional limits on academic freedom. David Horowitz would be proud of both the political subterfuge and the severe limits on political speech in the classroom. Now it’s time for the Board of Trustees to decide: do you represent the interests of a right-wing administration, or do you represent the faculty, students, and public of the College of DuPage?

Here's the full policy proposal:

Policy No. 25-135 on “Educational Philosophy” (pdf, page 105)

Institutions of higher education are conducted for the common good, which depends on the search for truth and its free exposition. Academic freedom is essential to these purposes and carries with it responsibilities and duties as well as rights. The College of DuPage recognizes that academic freedom in the classroom entails both the freedom to teach and the freedom to learn. The classroom environment is one that is conducive to free discussion, inquiry and expression for all students.

Academic freedom is guaranteed within the discipline subject matter for which faculty members are employed. Academic freedom shall be guaranteed to all faculty members and students, and no arbitrary limitations shall be placed upon study, investigation, presentation and interpretation of facts and ideas concerning humans, societies, the physical and biological world, and other branches of learning. Faculty members shall be free to present instructional materials which are pertinent to the subject and level taught and shall present facets of controversial issues in an unbiased manner within the scope of College-approved course objectives.

Faculty members and students are citizens. When a faculty member or student, speaks, writes, or acts as a citizen, all should be free from institutional censorship and/or discipline. It is the obligation of faculty members and students to be accurate, to exercise appropriate restraint, and to show respect for opinions of others.

2010-01-29T00:37:00.000-06:00

Giggle-worthy theories

Daniel Klein argues in a Minding the Campus essay that liberals dominate academia because of ideological bias in hiring rather than conservatives being afraid that people will "giggle" at their ridiculous jobs in academia. Klein is right to reject the giggle theory, but for all the wrong reasons. Klein cites his evidence that non-academics who are members of disciplinary organizations are slightly more likely to be Republicans than academic members to be the "smoking gun" evidence.

What Klein calls "smoking gun" evidence of ideological exclusion is, in fact, not very persuasive, as I note in my Patriotic Correctness book. Klein somehow thinks that work in the private sector or conservative think tanks provides far less income and inferior jobs in every way, and these jobs are only taken by those shunned by academia.

There's not the slightest evidence to support such an assumption. For example, most professors would jump at a chance to become a highly-paid fellow at the Hoover Institution, freed from the demands of teaching and academic research.

Klein's smoking gun could easily be evidence of the opposite effect: that liberals are more often excluded from private sector jobs than conservatives. It could also be evidence that people in academia become more liberal and people in the private sector become more conservative over time due to their colleagues. But to assume that ideological bias in hiring as the sole explanation cannot be justified.

I agree with Klein that the giggle theory is garbage. To answer the question, we need to look at the fact that among students entering college, both liberals and conservatives express a strong desire to teach. Yet conservatives rarely enter either academia or K-12 teaching. Since the barriers to jobs in K-12 teaching are much, much lower with no serious allegation of systematic ideological bias in hiring that I've ever heard, it suggests that a common answer explains the lack of conservatives in all teaching fields. Money appears to be the key answer as far as I can see.

2010-01-22T08:11:00.000-06:00

Collegiality Under Fire

InsideHigherEd.com has a story about a professor at Ohio University who may be denied tenure because his colleagues dislike him. Among the charges filed against him was a comment he made about one day getting revenge on the professors who opposed him by making them teach on Friday afternoons.

Wow, a hypothetical threat to make a professor work on a Friday afternoon...I can see how that would justify formal charges of harassment and bullying.

The AAUP has always taken a strong stand against the collegiality nonsense. So I can't quite understand why they continue using the language that collegiality is somehow acceptable if it's not an "independent" criteria. What the AAUP means is that if someone's lack of collegiality somehow causes their teaching to falter (because they're a jerk to students) or to produce bad research (because no one will read their papers to help improve them) or to fail to engage in service (because they refuse to be on any committees or otherwise serve the university), then all of that will show up in ways that can be evaluated separate from collegiality. But by suggesting that collegiality is still acceptable as long as it's not an independent criteria, the AAUP's position might be misinterpreted to mean that collegiality can be part of a larger evaluation that includes other criteria. It would be better if the AAUP simply said, "No collegiality considerations, nowhere, not ever."

And if collegiality was a legitimate criterion, it would mean the opposite of what most people think. True collegiality doesn't mean being nice. It means challenging the ideas of your colleagues in order to help strengthen them. That's the duty of a colleague at a university. So the real violation of collegiality comes when a professor is nice to everyone and never criticizes the views of other professors in a department.

2009-12-08T00:41:00.001-06:00

Speaker and Movie Bans at the College of DuPage

On Thursday, December 10, the ongoing disaster for free speech makes its monthly attack at the College of DuPage Board of Trustees meeting.

This month is a particularly dreadful month for freedom of expression. First, there's the return of policy 15-10 (pdf, page 109), which was originally scheduled for debate last month. In November, I wrote:

In policy 15-10, the problematic provision declares, “The College will protect an individual’s right to express their viewpoint or opinion, so long as it does not violate State or Federal law and is not detrimental to the College.” This policy is better than the original wording proposed last month, “The College will not tolerate discrimination and harassment based on an individual’s viewpoint or opinion.”

So what is the College of DuPage planning to do? Yes, you've guessed it. They've returned to the original, terrible wording declaring that they will not tolerate discrimination based on viewpoint or opinion. The problem with this approach is that all of academia depends upon discriminating based on viewpoint. For example, the viewpoint that astronomy is real and astrology is myth must be fundamental to any scientific program, but according to this proposed policy, it will no longer be tolerated at the College of DuPage. Essentially all judgments in grading and hiring are effectively prohibited by this policy. Since that's obviously ridiculous, how will such a policy be enforced? Probably by administrative fiat against anyone deemed controversial or by the threat of litigation. It's a litigation nightmare.

And then there's the horrifying spectacle of Policy 10-115 (pdf, page 107).

So what are all the problems with this policy?

First, it gives the president the power to ban any speakers or programs, and the power to control the time, place, and manner of all programs. That kind of absolute power is strictly prohibited by numerous court rulings, but apparently the College of DuPage likes employing a lot of lawyers to defend unjust policies.

Second, the policy prohibits anyone from being required to listen to a speaker “that he/she finds objectionable.” This is a clear attack on the academic freedom of faculty to determine what happens in their classes. In many cases, it is highly appropriate for a professor to have a guest speaker or show a movie or artwork in class. Under this rule, any student who wishes to can skip class, and the professor would not only be prohibited from admonishing the student, but would be unable to have any references to the guest speaker or film or artwork in any test, since that would constitute requiring a student to participate in a program.

Although the policy gives the president absolute power to ban any program for any reason, it goes on to list some specific reasons (presumably to encourage more censorship on campus) to ban an event “if it reasonably appears that such speaker or program (including films, art exhibits and plays) would advocate” a series of things, including “violation of any federal, state or local laws.” Beyond the problem of requiring a psychic president to guess at what a speaker might talk about, this last provision is particularly problematic. For example, it would have prohibited Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. from speaking on campus because he advocated nonviolent disobedience of laws compelling segregation.

Why is the College of DuPage so afraid of having free expression on campus? Why can't it adopt a simple policy in accordance with the First Amendment protecting free speech rather than these elaborate violations of Constitutional rights?

2009-11-24T09:28:00.000-06:00

Turning Academia Into Wal-Mart

Naomi Schaefer Riley writes on Minding the Campus about the AAUP's evil belief that professors should be able to criticize administrators. Riley wonders, "Why don't managers at Wal-mart get the protections of academic freedom if they want to criticize their higher ups at that company?"

Here's the comment I made:

It's refreshing to find a conservative who openly declares that she is opposed to academic freedom and wants professors to be treated like employees at Wal-Mart. Refreshing, but extremely disturbing. Academia should be a place where people have "complete latitude to publicly criticize their bosses, no matter what the reason." I wonder what academic "bosses" Riley trusts to have the power to fire their critics, and whether Riley would applaud so heartily when conservatives are fired for challenging their academic bosses.