Commencement Lies

The Young America's Foundation is out with its annual report claiming liberal domination of commencement speakers, and the distortions are common. YAF claims, "in the rare instances when conservatives were invited—and we do mean rare—liberal students and administrators went berserk," citing the "fact" that at the University of Vermont, Ben "Stein’s invitation was eventually rescinded." In reality, Stein himself decided to withdraw after his anti-science views caused controversy. Oddly, YAF ignores the fact that President Obama's speech at Notre Dame drew the greatest controversy and calls for censorship in the country.

YAF also claims that only "Five recognizable to barely-recognizable conservatives at the nation’s leading universities" gave commencement addresses among the top 250 universities. This is plainly false. A quick glimpse at YAF's list of speakers shows many more Republicans and conservatives speaking. At Stanford University, Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy, a Reagan appointee and moderate conservative, spoke. At USC, Republican governor Arnold Schwarzenegger spoke. At the University of Washington, it was Robert Gates, who YAF lists simply as "Obama’s Defense Secretary" omitting the fact that he is a Republican who was also Bush's Defense Secretary. Carl Schramm, President of the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation & conservative writer, spoke at the University of Illinois. At Virginia Tech, Gen. Lance L. Smith (Retired United States Air Force) spoke and according to one report "was quite conservative." Florida State University's speaker was Lt. Gen. Jay Garner, who was part of the Bush Administration's efforts in Iraq. And there's many, many more military people, corporate CEOs, and other conservatives who spoke at commencements. It may be the case that there were more liberal speakers this year as the conservative movement falls into a sharp decline in both intellectual power and popular support, but YAF certainly hasn't proved anything.

YAF calls it "another dose of leftist indoctrination." In fact, no one is compelled to agree with any commencement speaker, and the vast majority of commencement speakers are centrists and celebrities saying little of importance.

Horowitz Victory Short Lived

A few moments ago, the new College of DuPage Board of Trustees voted 4-3 to reverse the previous board's passage of David Horowitz's Academic Bill of Rights. It was a victory for academic freedom, and a decisive defeat for Horowitz and his friends, such as outgoing trustee Kory Atkinson, founder and president of the Intellectual Diversity Foundation, who paid for Horowitz to speak at a private event on campus and pushed his agenda. He attended the Board meeting while wearing a T-shirt that read, “Stop Faculty Pay to Play,” an apparent reference to the fact that the faculty union had donated money to help elect trustees who support academic freedom. (Classy exit, Kory!)

The real defeat for the Academic Bill of Rights had come at a polling booth last month. On April 7, voters completely rejected the old board and its right-wing ideologues. Nancy Svoboda led with 46,654 votes, more than twice the number of outgoing chair Michael McKinnon, who finished fifth with only 21,756 votes.

In response, the conservatives on the Board decided to make their legacy a fit of ideological pique. On April 16, against the urging of three upcoming board members who had been elected, the outgoing board voted 6-0 to impose the new Board Policy Manual on the College of DuPage, including suddenly reimposing the original Academic Bill of Rights that they had previously watered down.

This attack on academic freedom has been criticized by groups across the spectrum, including the Illinois AAUP and the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education.

At the May 4 meeting, the new Board was forced to confront the issue because of a motion to accept the previous board policy. They voted 4-3 to rescind the controversial policies objected to earlier, including the Academic Bill of Rights (and tabled the discussion of the remaining policies).

Earlier today, the national AAUP and the National Education Association's National Council for Higher Education sent a letter to the College of DuPage trustees, urging them to overturn this terrible mistake. Fortunately, the will of the people and the voice of reason triumphed over the efforts of right-wing Republicans to silence free speech on campus.

Illinois AAUP Calls for New College of DuPage Board to Rescind Policies

The Illinois AAUP has sent a letter to the members of the College of DuPage Board of Trustees, which will be meeting on Monday, May 4 and may reconsider its decision at the last meeting to impose the Academic Bill of Rights and other unconstitutional policies on the college. Several of the existing board members were badly defeated in the election last month, and there's a hope that the new board will re-examine the policies.

Here is the full text of the Illinois AAUP letter:

To the Trustees of the College of DuPage

The Executive Committee of the Illinois Conference of the American Association of University Professors is deeply disappointed by the action taken by the outgoing Board of Trustees at the College of DuPage on April 16 to adopt a new policy manual containing several provisions that threaten the quality of education at the College. In our letter of March 16 we noted in particular detail how certain proposed provisions interfered with academic freedom. At the subsequent Board meeting the challenged provisions were tabled for further review. As we understand it, no further discussion took place with any persons or organizations that had raised questions about the policies. This despite the fact that the AAUP and others had indicated that the policies raised serious constitutional concerns, in addition to concerns about the impact of these changes on the quality of the education available to the students. Then, with minimum notice and no further discussion the flawed proposals were approved by the “lame duck” Board. Should this decision stand the College would be the first and only college or university in the country to have adopted these very controversial policies.

As our initial letter pointed out the American Association of University Professors has strongly opposed the Academic Bill of Rights, and in 2003 the AAUP’s Committee A on Academic Freedom and Tenure issued a statement calling it “improper and dangerous” and noting that the principles in the Academic Bill of Rights “contradict academic freedom.”(http://www.aaup.org/AAUP/comm/rep/A/abor.htm)

AAUP’s commitment to excellence in higher education and its experience in matters of academic freedom and governance lead us to join in support of the faculty, students, and staff who oppose these policy changes. Further, the lack of respect for the principles of shared governance in changing these policies over the past year is a serious violation of academic norms as emphasized in the march 18 letter of the AAUP National Office, and contrary to the College of DuPage’s obligations to the faculty union. It is also obviously, contrary to the maintenance of a good working relationship with the faculty, staff, and students, and with the local community.

We strongly encourage the new Board of Trustees to vote on May 6 to overturn the provisions in the “Academic Bill of Rights,” and the other policies which threaten academic freedom. We also urge that the Board overturn all of the policy changes enacted by the previous Board without adequate input from campus constituencies and begin a new process in accordance with the principles of shared governance we have commended to your attention.

Respectfully submitted
Illinois Council AAUP
By Walter J. Kendall lll
President

Conservative Stupidity While Googling

Sometimes you have to admire the idiocy of people who despise Barack Obama and universities so much that they imagine a vast conspiracy out there. Such is the case with Mal Kline of Accuracy in Academia who declared:

Google the phrase “college and university courses in community organizing” and you get 9,990,000 entries, at least as of today.

Candace de Russy of National Review's Phi Beta Cons blog proclaims:

Quite a few people on campuses seem to taking to heart President Obama's agenda, according to Mal Kline. To wit:
Google the phrase “college and university courses in community organizing” and you get 9,990,000 entries.

Here's a little lesson in technology for de Russy and Kline. When you Google "college and university courses in community organizing" without quotation marks you get 23 million results, including a handful of actual courses. Most of the 23 million responses include every reference to a college, a university, courses, community, or organizing anywhere on the internet.

If you actually Google “college and university courses in community organizing” utilizing quotation marks you get two responses. One is to Kline's statement, and the other is to de Russy's comment on it (there are also 30 duplicate references on Free Republic to their claims).

The most disappointing thing to me about this Google search is that there isn't a vast conspiracy out there in higher education to teach people the kind of skills that most Americans desired to have in a president. A New York Times article reports a growing interest in the subject among students. Although colleges routinely have entire majors devoted to vapid fields such as public relations that serve corporate America, you'll look in vain for any majors in community organizing. After all, there aren't a lot of wealthy community organizers out there to fund these programs.

That's what really needs to change. We need colleges to meet this demand for community organizing, and give it the serious academic attention it deserves.

When that happens, de Russy and Kline can cry out with pride that they discovered the problem before it ever existed.

Crossposted on Daily Kos and ObamaPolitics.

Indiana AAUP Statement on Obama and Notre Dame

Here's a statement by the Indiana AAUP on efforts to ban President Obama from speaking at Notre Dame's commencement:

The Academic Freedom Controversy at Notre Dame

The Indiana Conference of the American Association of University Professors expresses its support for University of Notre Dame President the Rev. John Jenkins in standing by the university's decision to invite President Barack Obama to speak at its May 17 commencement. We are concerned by the efforts of external groups to prevent President Obama or any other invited guest from speaking on campus.

For almost a hundred years, the AAUP has defined for colleges and universities the meaning of academic freedom through its policy statements and procedural guidelines. We hold that the freedom of faculty and other members of the campus community to conduct research, publish, and exchange ideas, especially highly controversial ones, without outside interference or censorship is the lifeblood of the university and is essential to the production and dissemination of knowledge. The fact that American universities have such an enviable world-wide reputation is in no small part due to our practice of academic freedom.

While the AAUP recognizes that religious colleges and universities have the right to propagate their special faith, these institutions must also protect and model free inquiry and open dialogue. Notre Dame's embodiment of these values has helped earn it a reputation as one of the premier
Catholic universities in the United States. In 1967, Notre Dame President the Rev. Theodore Hesburgh and other leaders of Catholic colleges and universities proclaimed in the Land O'Lakes statement that "the Catholic university must have a true autonomy and academic freedom in the face of authority of whatever kind, lay or clerical, external to the academic community itself. To say this is simply to assert that institutional autonomy and academic freedom are essential conditions of life and growth and indeed of survival for Catholic universities as for all universities."

But does this freedom apply to outside speakers? According to the AAUP's 2007 statement on the subject: "As part of their educational mission, colleges and universities provide a forum for a wide variety of speakers. There can be no more appropriate site for the discussion of controversial ideas and issues than a college or university campus....Invitations made to outside speakers by students or faculty do not imply approval or endorsement by the institution of the views expressed by the speaker." Notre Dame has a worthy tradition of inviting new presidents to speak at commencement even though none agree with all aspects of Catholic dogma. To disinvite a commencement speaker over public policy disagreements is an anathema to open discourse.

AAUP affirms the right of those who disagree with a speaker to protest.

But prohibiting or censoring a controversial speaker is a violation of the free exchange of ideas. For that reason we support Notre Dame's defense of academic freedom.

Richard Schneirov
President, Indiana Conference of the AAUP

Cary Nelson
President, AAUP

Repressive Policies Approved at College of DuPage

David Horowitz has emerged victorious at the College of DuPage, but only thanks to underhanded actions by a group of right-wing trustees in their last meeting as lame ducks after they were thrown out of office by the voters. The College of DuPage Board last night not only passed the destructive 10 policies (pdf, pp. 203-221) that the Illinois AAUP had objected to, they approved the original Academic Bill of Rights after having earlier watered down its provisions. Let's hope that the new Board at the May meeting will immediately repudiate these unethical provisions and avoid legal action against the College of DuPage.

Three Academic Freedom Events

1) Free Speech Forum, NEIU, Chicago, Thurs. April 16, 5-6pm, where I'll be speaking.
2) IL AAUP Annual Meeting featuring AAUP head Gary Rhoades, Sat. April 18, 1:30pm in downtown Chicago
3) Reworking the U conference, Minneapolis, April 24-26 (I'll be speaking on 4/24)

Here are the details:

1)
Coalition United for Free Speech presents:
Free Speech Forum

Speakers Scheduled to Attend:
NEIU President, Dr. Sharon K. Hahs
NEIU Professor, Dr. Brett Stockdill
Air Force Veteran and student, Cassandra Cantú
Founder of College Freedom blog John K. Wilson
More To Be Announced

Q&A immediately following

Thursday April 16th, 2009; 5pm - 6pm
Northeastern Illinois University Cafeteria - SU003
5500 N St. Louis Ave, Chicago IL

2)
Illinois AAUP Annual Meeting
Saturday, April 18, 2009
1:30PM
Roosevelt University
Gage Building, 3rd Floor Commons Room, 18 S. Michigan Ave., downtown Chicago

Featured Speaker:
Gary Rhoades
General Secretary, AAUP

Followed by a panel discussion on transparency. Free and open to the public. The annual meeting concludes with the Illinois AAUP business meeting


3)
Rethinking the U conference, University of Minnesota, April 24-26
free and open to all
I'll be speaking about "Academic Freedom and the Military on Campus" on April 24.

Which Side Is Censored More?

John Leo argues, “Most of the speakers disinvited by colleges and universities are on the right, given the politics of our campuses.” I wonder where his evidence is for that claim. It seems clear that the two most frequently disinvited speakers in recent years are Ward Churchill and Bill Ayers. The category of college most likely to disinvite or ban a speaker clearly seems to be the religious college.

It is true that speakers who are heckled, shouted down, or pied are heavily on the right, but certainly heckling is far less repressive than being disinvited. Leo complains that the Minutemen were stopped from speaking at Columbia “all without a peep of protest from the left.” In fact, I have noted that Columbia “has to its eternal shame failed to bring the Minutemen back to campus to speak their views.”(http://collegefreedom.blogspot.com/2007/10/downs-on-aaup-donald-downs-wrote-essay.html)

But cases like this seem to be rarer than the onslaught of disinvited speakers, including the recent efforts to ban Barack Obama from Notre Dame University. It's good to see John Leo defend the free speech rights of liberal speakers, but he ought to provide some evidence before claiming that conservatives face great censorship.

Bill Ayers Banned Again

UPDATE: Boston College has banned Ayers from speaking even via satellite. This is an outrageous attack on academic freedom and free expression on campus, and a direct violation of Boston College's own STATEMENT OF RIGHTS AND RESPONSIBILITIES which proclaims that students have:
"The right to be free of any action that unduly interferes with a student's rights and/or learning environment."
"The right to express opinion, which includes the right to state agreement or disagreement with the opinions of others and the right to an appropriate forum for the expression of opinion."
"The right to have access to a process through which to resolve deprivations of rights..."
I can't see how banning a speaker due to "emotional scars" is in any way compatible with Boston College's rules.

Bill Ayers is being banned from speaking again, this time by the administration at Boston College. But the “reasoning” given is particularly odd: "As a university, we pride ourselves on the free expression of ideas and on the prestige that Boston College holds as a destination of choice among prominent speakers. But we are also aware of the obligation we hold to be respectful of our host community. The emotional scars of the murder of Boston Police Sergeant Walter Schroeder, allegedly at the hands of the Weather Underground, which left nine children fatherless in the shadows of this campus, was an issue that we could not ignore."

As InsideHigherEd reports, Ayers had nothing to do with Schroeder’s murder in 1970, so this makes the ban particularly odd. This kind of repression of free speech should appall everyone. The “obligation” to the “emotional scars” of a “host community” could justify banning every speaker. Suppose there is a Vietnamese person in Boston who lost a relative in the Vietnam War: Would anyone who supported the war (or who supported the Vietcong) be banned from speaking? If an Iraqi lives in Boston, would anyone who supported the war in Iraq be banned from speaking? If a Palestinian (or an Israeli) lives in Boston, should anyone who has taken one side in that dispute be banned?

There is one difference between all of these examples and Bill Ayers: Ayers had absolutely nothing to do with the killing of this police officer. So now we’re dealing purely with three degrees of guilt by association: because Ayers was involved in the Weather Underground, and someone else involved in the Weather Underground was involved in a bank robbery where someone killed a police officer, therefore Ayers should be banned from speaking in Boston. If somebody involved in the Republican or Democratic Party committed a murder (and obviously they have), would that mean all Republicans and Democrats should be banned from giving speeches?

The absurdity of Boston College’s stance is so obvious, it should embarrass anyone associated with the institution.

Of course, Bill Ayers does have free speech elsewhere, and he will be speaking via satellite off-campus tonight.

The real victims here are the faculty, staff, and students of Boston College, who are being told by their university that if they have ever held unpopular views, they can be silenced by the administration.

"SCANDAL: Obama to Deliver Notre Dame Commencement"

That's the headline in an email today from the Cardinal Newman Society (CNS), announcing their opposition to having President Obama give the commencement address at the University of Notre Dame on May 17. They've even created a website to “Help Stop the Scandal at Our Lady's University.” The website urges right-wing Catholics to 1) sign a petition; 2) invite friends to sign the petition; 3) “Contact Fr. Jenkins: Call him at 574.631.5000, fax him at 574.631.2770, write a personal email president@nd.edu”; and 4) “Pray for Our Lady's intercession that Notre Dame, who is named after our Lady, will stay true to their Catholic heritage and identity.”

According to the letter, “It is an outrage and a scandal that 'Our Lady’s University,' one of the premier Catholic universities in the United States, would bestow such an honor on President Obama given his clear support for policies and laws that directly contradict fundamental Catholic teachings on life and marriage.”

As I note in my book, Patriotic Correctness: Academic Freedom and Its Enemies, the Cardinal Newman Society is a right-wing Catholic group (actually, it's a guy named Patrick Reilly and a few of his right-wing friends) that, often successfully, lobbies Catholic colleges to censor liberal views (needless to say, it's never called for banning conservative supporters of the death penalty from speaking on campuses, even though they violate Catholic doctrine).

The group even attacks conservatives. Quincy University commencement speaker (and well-known conservative radio legend) Paul Harvey withdrew in 2003 after the group’s criticism of his pro-choice beliefs. Reilly called upon Catholic University of America in 2006 to ban politician Bob Casey from speaking on campus. Although Casey is a Catholic who opposes abortion rights, Reilly proclaimed that “Bob Casey has no business delivering a lecture on public morality” because Casey does not want to ban contraceptives.

The Cardinal Newman Society demands that all Catholic colleges impose an unprecedented regime of censorship; in 2005, the Society presented a list of 18 professors at Catholic Colleges that the group believes should be fired because these professors took a position on the Terri Schiavo case contrary to that of the Vatican. These attacks have had a strong influence on Catholic Colleges, and administrators fear being the next target of the group.

Perhaps the most dramatic case of the Cardinal Newman Society’s attack on academic freedom came at the University of St. Francis in Chicago in spring 2004. Dr. Nancy Snyderman was dis-invited from giving the commencement address four days before graduation after a campaign against her by the Cardinal Newman Society. A surgeon, author and former ABC medical correspondent (she's now featured on NBC Nightly News), Snyderman, who is personally opposed to abortion, had mentioned in a medical report on ABC's “Good Morning America” on Oct. 30, 1997 that some doctors recommend “selective reduction” via abortion for a woman pregnant with septuplets because of the high risk in having seven babies. A letter to Snyderman from the university read, “The university recently received information … containing comments by you on the topic of abortion, and these comments appear to be contrary to the teachings of the Catholic Church. As a Catholic university, we have no choice but to rescind our invitation." When a journalist and doctor is banned from a campus for accurate reporting on abortion issues, it indicates how far the repression of freedom at Catholic colleges has gone.

In 2005 the St. Elizabeth College of Nursing in New York invited Rep. Sherwood Boehert as commencement speaker. But under pressure from local bishop James Moynihan and the Cardinal Newman Society, St. Elizabeth’s president, Sister Marianne Monahan, banned Boehert from speaking.

Another form of retaliation used by the Cardinal Newman Society is to remove institutions from official designation as Catholic colleges, hurting their recruiting and fundraising. In 2003, the Cardinal Newman Society was able to pressure to have Marist College removed from the list after Eliot Spitzer was allowed to speak at its graduation. In 2005, Marymount Manhattan College was similarly de-recognized after it allowed Hillary Clinton to speak. This kind of intimidation forces colleges that wish to remain Catholic to censor the speakers allowed on their campus on the orders of a right-wing splinter faction.

But the group, although adept at getting publicity, is far outside the Catholic mainstream. The Association of Catholic College and Universities denounced the Cardinal Newman Society for making accusations that are “distorted, inaccurate and in some cases simply untrue.”

Thanks to Reilly, Eve Ensler's “The Vagina Monologues” is the most frequently banned play in America. The Cardinal Newman Society has taken credit for “a marked decline in planned performances of the Monologues” at Catholic colleges. In recent years, the play has been banned at the University of Portland, Iona College, the College of New Rochelle, Loras College, Rivier College, Xavier University (Ohio), Catholic University of America, Providence College, Loyola University of New Orleans, Emmanuel College, St. Ambrose University, St. John’s University, St. Joseph’s College (Indiana), Wheeling Jesuit University, Alverno College, College of Saint Mary (Nebraska), Edgewood College, Fontbonne University, Loyola Marymount University, Marquette University, the University of St. Francis, and several other institutions. Censorship has discouraged students from trying to organize performances at many other colleges.

It's time for Catholics and anyone concerned about academic freedom and free speech in this country to speak up and say that the Cardinal Newman Society is wrong. There shouldn't be repression of different views at Catholic colleges. And Notre Dame should be proud that Barack Obama has chosen to honor its campus by giving the commencement address.

Crossposted at ObamaPolitics and Daily Kos.

Distortions about the AAUP and the College of DuPage

Peter Schmidt at the Chronicle of Higher Education reports on last night's College of DuPage board meeting.

Sara Dogan, National Campus Director of Students for Academic Freedom, also writes a response today. After erroneously referring to Illinois AAUP president “Robert Kendall” (it's Walter Kendall), Dogan writes, “Ironically, while both Kendall and Westman urge the DuPage Board of Trustees to use AAUP statements as models for the policy manual at DuPage, they both vilify the Academic Bill of Rights, which is explicitly drawn from these same AAUP statements.” that's not true. The Academic Bill of Rights is not drawn from the current AAUP standards. Some of its language is similar to historical documents that are no longer in force with the AAUP, but it does not meet AAUP standards at all.

According to Dogan,

Consider the AAUP’s claims about policy 15-335, which states that “Faculty members have a duty to present controversial issues in an unbiased manner which respects their students’ rights to academic freedom to determine for themselves the proper resolution of such issues.” ...
Returning to policy 15-335, the Illinois AAUP claims with extreme pretention that “Many of the revered books of our civilization are ‘biased’; the great thinkers all had a point of view. This policy, if taken as written, would have prevented Jefferson from teaching our Declaration of Independence at the College….it would appear that under this policy, a creationist student could assert the right to disagree with the scientific reality of evolution in a biology class.”
Reading this passage, one would conclude that the Academic Bill of Rights is opposed to “biased” books. But the word “biased” appears nowhere in the Academic Bill of Rights, nor does it appear in the original version of the policy proposal at DuPage. When the school policy refers to an “unbiased manner,” this is clearly defined as one “which respects their students’ rights to academic freedom to determine for themselves the proper resolution of such issues.” Note that this clause applies not to every issue, but only to the presentation of “controversial issues” in the classroom. Since the theory of evolution is no longer considered a controversial issue in the realm of biological scholarship, this policy would not allow for creationist students asserting their right to disagree with an instructor over the theory of evolution, which is supported in scientific scholarship by overwhelming evidence.

However, Dogan is wrong. The policy says nothing about limiting the rule to what is controversial within an academic discipline. It refers to all “controversial issues,” and no one would deny that evolution is controversial in America. Even if the policy were limited to controversies within a discipline, it still would present a dangerous power. Any professor who failed to include a view espoused by any scholar in a field might be subject to an investigation or even a lawsuit. The result would be a chilling effect designed to silence faculty from raising controversial issues in the classroom. The fact that the ABR doesn't mentioned “unbiased” is hardly relevant to the debate about this policy, which does.

It is notable that even Dogan admits to serious flaws in the DuPage proposal: “The AAUP may be correct that the wording is confusingly vague, but the overall point remains that a protection should be put into place guaranteeing students the right to disagree with professors on matters of opinion –as opposed to issues of settled fact – in the classroom.” However, the policy says nothing about “settled fact”--any potential disagreement, if deemed political, could be regarded as a form of discrimination, and put professors in legal trouble if they fail to obey student demands.

Dogan complains, “There has never been an effort to make the Academic Bill of Rights statutory law. While versions of the Academic Bill of Rights have been introduced by state legislators, each of these has taken the form of a non-binding resolution, not a statute.” This is an outright lie that she and David Horowitz repeatedly assert. As I have previously noted, the Ohio and Tennessee proposals were both statutes, and her own Students for Academic Freedom Handbook states, “The passage of a state statute, however, creates a new law, usually proscribing or requiring certain behavior, and imposing penalties for non-compliance. Both are approaches that many state legislators could pursue, and you and your SAF organization need to be ready to support and assist legislators in their efforts.”(page 41)

It's difficult to take seriously someone who engages in this kind of distortion. But Dogan's analysis is notable for several reasons. First, she refuses to defend most of the policies critiqued by the Illinois AAUP. Second, the few areas relating to the Academic Bill of Rights are only half-heartedly defended by her, and even called "confusingly vague." FIRE called the proposal "far from constitutional and far from ready for approval." FIRE is right, and the College of DuPage needs to abandon these unconstitutional and badly worded restrictions on intellectual liberty.

College of DuPage Policies Delayed and Enacted

I'm told that at last night's Board of Trustees meeting at the College of DuPage, 230 or so new policies were enacted without discussion, against the opposition of Trustee Kathy Wessel. 10 of the policies identified by the Illinois AAUP as problematic were tabled until the April meeting while the campus lawyer examines them (rumors are that the College has already spent $50,000 on legal expenses dealing with this unnecessary policy change). This is very troubling. The Illinois AAUP's letter wasn't meant to be a comprehensive evaluation of all possible problems with the College of DuPage policies. In fact, the letter noted the concern that with so many new policies, poorly written policies may slip by unnoticed. Nor is it likely that the Board will listen to reason next month, especially if their only concern with the policies is whether they are unconstitutional, as opposed to unwise.

Paranoia, Lies, and David Horowitz


David Horowitz has a blog entry where he calls me a “paranoid professor” and then admits his title is inaccurate: “He is not himself a professor but he is an academic,” whatever that means. Horowitz also makes the common error of stating that Illinois Academe is “a publication of the American Association of University Professors.” Illinois Academe, which I edit, is published by the Illinois AAUP, not the separate national AAUP organization.

But my key complaint about Horowitz is not these small inaccuracies or his insults against me: “I'm attributing paranoid tendencies to Wilson because in person he's a civilized individual and I don't like to call him a liar.” I would like to thank David Horowitz for displaying the kindness of calling me insane rather than a liar. Being called paranoid by David Horowitz is like being called an asshole by Dick Cheney.

What bothers me is Horowitz's denial of everything he's stood for. Horowitz complains, “no matter how many times I say that I do not advocate and would be adamantly opposed to governance of the university by legislatures or any other outside agency, people like you refuse to believe me.” There's a reason why I refuse to believe Horowitz. It's because he's lying. Can the man who formulated the Academic Bill of Rights and tried to have it passed by state legislatures seriously claim that he is “adamantly opposed to governance of the university by legislatures”?

Recall that Horowitz tried to get the Academic Bill of Rights enacted by legislators around the country after seeking to have trustees at only one institution enact it: the State University of New York. Is Horowitz now repudiating his past activities and urging legislators to oppose imposing the Academic Bill of Rights on universities? If he is, that's major news. But somehow I suspect that Horowitz is just engaging in more deception.

It's undoubtedly true that Horowitz would prefer to have faculty themselves engage in political repression. That's probably because he has failed miserably to convince trustees and legislators to enact his reforms. In his interview with me, Horowitz claims that he wants “faculty peers” to ban the courses he dislikes. But in his new book, and in everything he has said in the past, Horowitz has a very different answer.

In his chapter on Columbia University (which he calls “Uptown Madrassa”), Horowitz writes, “faculty activists have had to violate (and administrators have had to ignore) explicit Columbia regulations that obligate professors to observe an academic discipline in the classroom.”(63) Repeatedly, over and over again, Horowitz declares that these courses violate the university’s policies on academic freedom and demands that administrators and faculty step in to stop them: “It is disturbing that the university has allowed them to proceed for so long.”(231) He writes about “the abdication of university authorities and the shirking of their legal obligations to students and the public.”(253) He concludes, “Most disturbing of all is the unwillingness of administrators and trustees to defend their institutions and enforce the professional standards of a modern research university.”(278)

If Horowitz relies solely on “faculty peers” and doesn't want administrators and trustees to intervene and suppress “political” courses, why does he repeatedly denounce administrators and trustees for failing to intervene and "enforce" Horowitz's delusions about professional standards?

As I note in my book, Patriotic Correctness: Academic Freedom and Its Enemies, this is not the first time Horowitz has deceived people about his repressive goals. Horowitz proclaimed in 2004, “There is no enforcement proposed in the Academic Bill of Rights. This would be up to the institutions that adopt it. Horowitz even declared, “My Academic Bill of Rights explicitly excludes private institutions,” despite the laws proposed in Ohio, Tennessee, and other states imposing it (and requiring grievance procedures) on private colleges that were enthusiastically supported by Horowitz.

If Horowitz is now opposed to legislative interference, why does his Students for Academic Freedom website continue to promote the legislation imposing it on colleges?

If Horowitz is opposed to legislative interference, then it's strange that his website promotes the Students for Academic Freedom Handbook which states, “The passage of a state statute, however, creates a new law, usually proscribing or requiring certain behavior, and imposing penalties for non-compliance. Both are approaches that many state legislators could pursue, and you and your SAF organization need to be ready to support and assist legislators in their efforts.”(page 41) Does that sound like someone who is “adamantly opposed to governance of the university by legislatures”?

I am happy to debate Horowitz anytime, anywhere, in any forum. I would certainly like to hear him explain his contradictory statements and why anyone should believe what he says.

"A Defender of Classroom Indoctrination" Replies

Imagine my surprise this morning on the front page of FrontPage Magazine where I read that “AAUP spokesman John Wilson attempts to justify the political corruption of the academic curriculum.” I am not a spokesman for the AAUP. I do not work for the AAUP. I am the editor of Illinois Academe, which is published by the Illinois AAUP, which is a distinct 501(c)4 and a separate entity from the AAUP. (I am also not a spokesperson for the Illinois AAUP, just the editor of its newsletter with my own views).

This is only the beginning of the errors in Jacob Laksin’s retort to my review of the book he and Horowitz wrote. Ironically, Laksin calls my review “dishonest or just plain careless” while his attacks are both dishonest and careless. For example, Laksin accuses me of “ad hominem invective” against Horowitz (no examples are given, perhaps because Laksin doesn’t understand what an ad hominem argument is).

Laksin claims, “It is Wilson who is apparently unaware that this corruption of the profession of academic geography is precisely our point.” No, I’m perfectly aware of the point. I simply dismiss the archaic notion that geography professors can only teach about maps without teaching about the social connections of people to land. Laksin and Horowitz want the dumbing down of an entire profession in order to banish interdisciplinary teaching.

Laksin repeats the belief that classes in “Global Feminisms” and how revolutions are organized should not be allowed in higher education. Here again, we disagree. I am troubled by some, but not very many, of the courses in Laksin and Horowitz’s book, just as I am troubled by the way some business and economics and agriculture and other classes may be taught in a doctrinaire, pro-corporate way. But I don’t believe that the solution to a flawed class is to impose a repressive system aimed at banning any class deemed “one-sided” by a critic in its reading list or course description.

According to Laksin, “We have never called for the banning of left-wing speech; we do not call for the imposition of any apparatus, let alone a repressive one; and far from attacking academic speech, we seek to restore it. Our aim in One-Party Classroom is to hold schools accountable to the very standards by which they professedly abide.” Exactly how do you hold schools accountable to standards with imposing “any apparatus”? One may argue that an apparatus is a good thing, but please don’t accuse me of a “fertile imagination” when you’re confirming exactly what I say.

My objection to Laksin and Horowitz is not that they criticize these classes, however inane and anti-intellectual their opposition often seems. My complaint is that they repeatedly in the book demand action to be taken to get rid of such classes they dislike, action which they say should be taken by faculty, administrators, trustees, and even accrediting agencies. Then, when I point out the danger of this approach, Laksin first denies it and then immediately re-affirms that this is exactly what they want.

Illinois AAUP Letter to the College of DuPage Trustees

The following letter was sent by the AAUP-American Association of University Professors Illinois Council to the Board of Trustees of the College of DuPage. As you know they are considering the adoption of what the controversial polemicist David Horowitz calls an academic bill of rights. Rather it is in our opinion an attack on academic freedom, teaching, and scholarship. Its adoption will put COD outside the mainstream of education in Illinois and the US. More importantly it will diminish the quality of education available to the students at COD. We the Illinois Council of the AAUP hope you will editorialize against the proposed policy changes being considered on the 19th by the Board of Trustees.

Respectfully,
Walter J. Kendall
President AAUP Illinois Council


Dear College of DuPage trustees:

The state council of the Illinois conference of the American Association of University Professors wishes to express our deep concern about the proposed policy changes reflected in the new Policy Manual for the Board of Trustees. We believe it represents an extraordinary attack on academic freedom, shared governance, and intellectual liberty on campus. We believe that the changes would put the College of DuPage outside the mainstream of colleges and universities in the state and in the country.

We recognize that the proposed policy manual makes some improvements over the original proposal in areas such as student publications and educational philosophy. However, there are still many serious threats to academic freedom contained in these policies.

The most disturbing proposals give the administration extraordinary power to ban speakers and protests, ban any discrimination based on “viewpoint or opinion,” and prohibit “demeaning” behavior. These policies will most certainly create a litigation nightmare for the College of DuPage as censored speakers or disgruntled students and applicants sue for “opinion discrimination.”

The sheer number of proposed policies that fail to meet AAUP - recommended standards relating to intellectual freedom is a matter of deep concern to us. The Board of Trustees should drop this effort at wholesale, and unfortunately unwarranted, revision of the campus policies in this manner, and instead begin a process of working with campus constituencies, particularly the faculty to revise individual policies. We also encourage the Board to utilize AAUP statements (available at www.aaup.org) as models for these policies.

Below we list in detail some of the objectionable proposed policies and why we believe that they are flawed. We encourage members of the Board of Trustees to contact us if you have any further questions about this issue, and we would be happy to open a dialogue about the College of DuPage Policy Manual.

Sincerely,
Illinois AAUP State Council
by Walter J. Kendall III, President

Specific analysis of College of DuPage proposed policies by the Illinois AAUP:

5-30
“Board members and employees of the College are required at all times to perform their duties in such a manner that they present a proper and ethical image to the community and avoid even the appearance of impropriety.”


Requiring employees to meet an undefined standard of “a proper and ethical image” could easily be abused to punish employees based on “image” alone.

5-30
A. 1.
“No Board of Trustee member or employee shall use or permit to be used College equipment, materials, services, or other property for personal convenience, benefit, or profit.”

This policy is far too restrictive, and needs to be brought in line with modified policy 15-25 by adding “while working” and removing “convenience.”

5-30
A.3.
“No Board of Trustee member or employee shall practice dishonest or demeaning behavior.”

This policy is too vague in banning all “demeaning” behavior without defining the term. Certainly, it is not intended to ban satire and humor, even though it can have a bite, so to speak.

10-110
“The rights of free speech and lawful assembly do not confer upon those who exercise these rights a license to limit, interfere with, or infringe upon the equal rights of others.”

This confusing and unnecessary policy is extremely vague, and should be eliminated.

10-110
“The President and/or his authorized representative reserves the right to invite, acknowledge, or deny requests for assemblage as well as the right to control the time, place and manner of the assemblages.”

Under the Supreme Court rulings about the First Amendment, there can be reasonable regulations of time, place, and manner. But this does not mean a public college has total arbitrary power over the time, place, and manner of assemblies. Nor can the President be given complete authority to deny requests for assemblies. Only in very rare cases, where public safety is immediately endangered, can a public college prohibit an assembly or protest.

10-115
“The President and/or his authorized representative reserves the right to invite, acknowledge or deny requests for outside speakers or programs as well as the right to control the time, place, and manner of the speaker or the program to be presented.”

This repeats the same flawed policy that gave the administration absolute power to ban protests.

10-115
“No person shall be required to listen to a speaker or participate in a program that he/she finds objectionable.”

This policy in effect is the antithesis of education. Education is about the wisdom and skills of the ages, and challenging the students to grow and develop in their mastery thereof. See the further comment in 15-10 below. Certainly, faculty members may require members of a class to listen to a particular speaker, just as they can require students to read a particular book, even if a student finds the views objectionable.

10-115
“The President may deny a particular speaker or program on campus if it reasonably appears that such speaker or program would advocate:” followed by a long list of reasons, including “violation of any federal, state or local laws.”

Any rule imposing censorship based on guesses about what a speaker might say is a threat to both academic freedom and the First Amendment. The list of historical figures who could be banned under this rule includes all of the Founding Fathers, Abraham Lincoln, and Martin Luther King, Jr. It could be used to justify enormous censorship. For example, because waterboarding is a form of torture and therefore illegal, any member of the Bush Administration who defended waterboarding could be banned under this rule. If someone breaks the law in a campus speech, legal authorities can deal with that speaker. But preemptive, speculative censorship is never acceptable.

10-115
“Any expense incurred as the result of scheduling a speaker or program on campus will be the responsibility of the sponsoring individual/group.”

This is vague and troublesome in that at other campuses, controversial speakers have effectively been banned by imposing extreme security costs on sponsors. Colleges should not charge student groups for the security required to protect controversial speakers.

10-125
“Posting and display of materials on campus shall be governed by the procedures and regulations established by the Office of Student Activities and published in the Student Handbook.”

This rule does not establish the First Amendment rights of the campus community to post and display materials.

15-10
“The College will not tolerate discrimination and harassment based on an individual’s viewpoint or opinion.”

The essence of education is discriminating between truth and falsity. Policy 25-135 declares that a central mission of the College is “the pursuit of truth.” But under policy 15-10, a Holocaust denier could sue the College for not being hired as a history professor, and a creationist could sue for not being hired to teach evolutionary theory. A student with the “opinion” that 1+1=3 could sue if a math professor gave that student a failing grade. No college has ever imposed such a doctrine of total relativism.

15-25
“No volunteer, officer or employee shall engage in dishonest or demeaning behavior in the workplace.”

This policy is too vague in banning all “demeaning” behavior without defining the term.


15-170
Among the list of reasons for termination is the vague category of "unprofessional conduct." This term is vague and not defined.

15-335
“Faculty members have a duty to present controversial issues in an unbiased manner which respects their students’ rights to academic freedom to determine for themselves the proper resolution of such issues.”

Faculty members should be evaluated on the basis of competence and professional and disciplinary standards. Many of the revered books of our civilization are “biased”; the great thinkers all had a point of view. This policy, if taken as written, would have prevented Jefferson from teaching our Declaration of Independence at the College. As we all know, in James Madison’s word we are not “angels” and thus, it is almost impossible to be “unbiased.” Further, it would appear that under this policy, a creationist student could assert the right to disagree with the scientific reality of evolution in a biology class. This academic freedom policy also omits several important provisions of the AAUP standards for academic freedom, such as the protection of extramural speech.

20-5
“The College will also prohibit discrimination based on an individual’s viewpoint or opinion.”

The danger of adding “viewpoint or opinion” to the list of prohibited acts is that quite obviously there are correct and incorrect opinions about reality. Certainly the Professor’s job is to discriminate between them. Students are in school to learn how to discriminate between them. If they fail to do so, of course they will be “discriminated” against – questioned in class; or get a poor grade, for instance.

25-135
“Academic Freedom -The Concept - Academic freedom and intellectual diversity are values indispensable to the American college.”

The inclusion of the term “intellectual diversity” into the discussion of the philosophical, conceptual, and contractual meaning of “academic freedom” is to either add a vague and thus potentially confusing redundancy, as the word “diversity” is used in other places in the document; or to attempt to change the settled meaning and understanding of the term. Neither is warranted, and the words “and intellectual diversity” should be deleted from this policy.

My Response to Bauerlein on Horowitz

Mark Bauerlein has an essay defending Horowitz on Minding the Campus. You can read my reply to his essay.

One-Party Analysis: Reviewing David Horowitz

Reviewed by John K. Wilson
Illinois Academe, Spring 2009

David Horowitz’s new book, One-Party Classroom, represents a dramatic expansion of his war on academic freedom. In his earlier book, The Professors, Horowitz sought to banish left-wing speech he disagreed with that was irrelevant to course material. Now, Horowitz wants to go a step further and ban academic speech itself and entire courses, programs, and fields of study that he deems to be too left-wing, particularly the field of women’s studies.

Horowitz (with the help of his employee Jacob Laksin) has written a disturbing attack on politics in academia. He examines course syllabi at a dozen major university, and reports in excruciating and repetitive detail what he thinks about the course description and books being assigned. Horowitz never bothers to talk to any students (and in many cases, obviously hasn’t even read some of the books he attacks) or attend any classes, yet he evinces a magnificent psychic power to determine precisely that a long list of abuses are certain to occur.

It may be tempting to ignore Horowitz and hope that the vast repressive apparatus he proposes will never be enacted, that we will not have administrators and trustees scrutinizing reading lists and ordering professors to ban the books deemed to be too liberal. But Horowitz has tremendous political influence on the far right, and his attacks, even when unsuccessful, create an atmosphere of fear to raise political issues.

Horowitz’s definition of illegitimate, political stands by professors is breathtaking. Horowitz objects to geography classes dealing with social issues, apparently unaware that geography professors have gone beyond merely studying maps for many decades. He objects to women’s studies dealing with the “unproven” claim that gender is “socially constructed,” apparently unaware that this merely the uncontroversial fact that biology is not the sole determinant of gender differences. One-Party Classroom is a perfect example of why uneducated outsiders such as Horowitz and his allies on Boards of Trustees and legislative bodies should not be able to decide what courses qualify as academic.

Horowitz even objects to a conference entitled, “Africana Studies Against Criminal Injustice: Research-Education-Action” and writes, “an open academic inquiry would not be ‘for’ or ‘against’ anything.”(80) In Horowitz’s view, it is improper for any professor to be against the wrongful conviction of innocent people, and to hold a conference that seeks action against it. This is an ideal of “objectivity” taken to the absurd extremes of relativism.

Horowitz condemns a professor for assigning a textbook that argues whites are “dominant” in America, a claim that Horowitz disputes.(105) It may seem strange that anyone could look at a meeting of CEOs or the U.S. Senate and conclude that whites are not dominant in America, but it’s downright bizarre to write that a professor should ban a book from a class because it makes this obviously true assertion.
Horowitz complains in one case: “Professor Okonkwo, however, is not a historian, let alone a historian of colonialism. He brings no observable academic expertise to bear on the subject.”(226) This is a course on “The Colonial Encounter in African Fiction.” Horowitz is arguing that English professors should ignore the history of colonialism in teaching African novels about colonialism. It’s difficult to imagine a more mouth-dropping display of anti-intellectual sentiment. Horowitz would rather have students remain ignorant about the historical context of a novel than allow an English professor to mention a word about a topic beyond Horowitz’s narrow vision of academic specialization.

Horowitz similarly objects to an English professor teaching Studies in Gender: “This is another professor teaching her ignorance in the fields of sociology (‘race’), political science (‘nationalism’ and ‘militarism’), and economics and geopolitics (‘globalization’).”(235) By Horowitz’s logic, English professors should be banned from teaching anything about race, nationalism, militarism, and globalization—which would make it rather difficult to teach a number of great novels that focus on these topics.

Horowitz also is clear about his target: Left-wing professors. Horowitz reprints an exchange of letters with a Penn State dean who pointed out that business classes are biased toward capitalism, and Horowitz wrote: “The Business School is a professional school whose purpose is to train students in accepted business practices so they can pursue careers in the business world. Students enroll in business courses to learn these practices, not to examine the philosophical or sociological foundations of the business system....The purpose of a professional school is to train graduate students for a career in their chosen profession.”(111) But business is an undergraduate major (one of the biggest in the country, in fact), and not just a graduate specialization. Moreover, Horowitz’s view that balance or academic freedom applies only to the liberal arts is distinctly strange. Neither the AAUP nor any campus academic freedom provisions nor any major organization makes such an odd division. The problem for Horowitz is that a genuine commitment to his espoused ideals would require a similar intervention in business classes to ensure that the anti-capitalist viewpoint is fully presented.

Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of Horowitz’s book is how little in the book is appalling. There are no stories of students punished for disagreeing with their professors, no stories of censorship at all. That’s because Horowitz knows that actual violations of student rights in the classroom are rare and grievance mechanisms are typically effective. Horowitz has a much more radical goal: He wants to revolutionize the idea of academic freedom and declare that students have a right to be free from “biased” comments or readings in class, and even a right to be free from “biased” departments such as Women’s Studies, and that professors have an enforceable obligation to be silent about “political issues,” which can encompass almost anything.

Even if we accepted Horowitz’s argument that these 150 courses (out of more than one million faculty teaching millions of college courses every year) are the “worst” in America (and many of these classes seem intellectually exciting and valuable), why should we believe that a regime restricting academic freedom and banning “politicized” classes would be any better? Freedom is an imperfect system. It allows some professors to occasionally teach goofy courses with goofy books from a goofy perspective. But academic freedom is far better than some kind of centralized “Big Professor” who will tell faculty what books are allowed and banish alleged “bias” from the classroom.

It doesn’t really matter whether it’s legislators or trustees or administrators or other faculty who do the job of banning books that are too “left-wing” and imposing balance in the classroom. No matter who does it, it’s a form of censorship, and it’s destructive to the entire enterprise of education.

Horowitz, like many conservatives, relies on selectively using a paragraph about indoctrination from the 1915 AAUP Statement of Principles, and claims: “This statement, issued in 1915, has provided the template for the academic freedom policies of most American universities ever since.”(7) This is not true. The 1915 AAUP Statement was not the foundation of university policies. That’s why the AAUP issued its 1940 Statement, which goes unmentioned by Horowitz because it removes the flawed section on indoctrination. That 1940 AAUP Statement, unlike the 1915 one, really is the foundation of university policies.

Horowitz’s love for the 1915 AAUP Statement is highly selective. For example, he ignores a provision of it that says the classroom should be regarded as a private space and what happens there should be confidential. So Horowitz’s entire book is a massive violation of the 1915 AAUP principles that he thinks should be imposed.
Of course, the 1915 statement was flawed, both in its attempts to limit undefined “indoctrination” and its efforts to keep the classroom private. The AAUP’s later staements helped to create the modern conception of academic freedom, while Horowitz wants to drag academia back into an ugly past of political repression.

If anyone has ever believed Horowitz’s occasional claims that he is not calling for administrators and trustees to step in and infringe academic freedom, this book makes the facts crystal clear. In his chapter on Columbia University (which he calls “Uptown Madrassa”), Horowitz writes, “faculty activists have had to violate (and administrators have had to ignore) explicit Columbia regulations that obligate professors to observe an academic discipline in the classroom.”(63)

Repeatedly, over and over again, Horowitz declares that these courses violate the university’s policies on academic freedom and demands that administrators and faculty step in to stop them: “It is disturbing that the university has allowed them to proceed for so long.”(231) He writes about “the abdication of university authorities and the shirking of their legal obligations to students and the public.”(253)

He concludes, “Most disturbing of all is the unwillingness of administrators and trustees to defend their institutions and enforce the professional standards of a modern research university.”(278)

Even though Horowitz would love to see faculty impose the kind of censorship he wants, it’s explicit that he wants administrators and trustees to step in if the faculty fail to act. And it’s clear that he wants legislators to step in with his “Academic Bill of Rights” legislation if administrators and trustees fail to suppress the kind of academic speech and courses he dislikes.

By almost any standard, One-Party Classroom is the worst book David Horowitz has ever written. Not only does it have the usual intellectual dishonesty and superficial analysis, but it commits the most appalling crime of all: It’s boring. Wading through a twisted set of course descriptions, watching Horowitz condemn the social construction of gender twenty times without ever getting a clue, reading about the books Horowitz doesn’t like–all of it is mind-numbing in its dullness. The only thing exciting about this book is waiting for some classic Horowitzian expression of academic ignorance and knowing that behind this rambling, pathetic, anti-intellectual tirade is a vast political crusade to crush academic freedom. Horowitz proves with this book only the tedium of totalitarian ideologies.

An Interview with David Horowitz

Illinois Academe editor John K. Wilson interviewed David Horowitz via email about his new book, One-Party Classroom: How Radical Professors at America’s Top Colleges Indoctrinate Students and Undermine Our Democracy (Crown Forum).

Q: What, exactly, should be done to the professors teaching these classes? Should they be banned from teaching these classes? Should they be fired? Should their course readings be controlled by someone else?

A: The university presents itself as an organization of professionals with standards of performance and excellence. If professors fail to meet these standards what is the remedy? Isn’t that a question for the organization itself to answer? Contrary to the misrepresentations of my efforts by many of my opponents I have never suggested that universities be governed by outside authorities whether governmental or otherwise. The best remedy in my view would be for these problems to be handled by faculty at the departmental level. However, that requires an interest from faculty in holding itself accountable. So far I have seen very little interest on the part of faculty in correcting the malpractices documented in One-Party Classroom. In some cases such as Women’s Studies, moreover, the violation of long-standing academic standards takes place at the departmental level itself. In these cases there would have to be an academic committee consisting of faculty peers at the level of the college, or even the university. However, I am optimistic by nature (otherwise I wouldn’t be spending my time banging my head against these stone walls) and don’t see why it shouldn’t be possible to change these attitudes and get on with the task.

Q: Who, exactly, should have the authority to do any of these actions to these professors? Should it be faculty in the department, faculty senates, administrators, trustees, accreditation agencies, legislators?

A: This is the same question, probably because no matter how many times I say that I do not advocate and would be adamantly opposed to governance of the university by legislatures or any other outside agency, people like you refuse to believe me. But that’s my position and that’s what I think. As to how academic standards are enforced by the academic community, that is properly a question for the academic community to answer.

Q: You “extrapolate” that there are up to 10,000 classes “whose primary purpose is not to educate students but to train them in left-wing ideologies and political agendas.”(6) How did you get that number? And considering that there are more than one million faculty across the country teaching millions of classes every year, this is far less than 1% of all classes.

A: In One-Party Classroom, Jacob Laksin and I examined roughly 150 courses offered at 12 universities. This comes out to about 10 indoctrination courses per school, although this does not represent all the indoctrination courses that violate academic standards at the 12 schools, but rather the ones we could identify with the resources we had. Since we picked the universities at random and they reflect a fair sampling, public and private, of university offerings, it is reasonable to extrapolate what we found by multiplying that figure by the number of colleges and universities nationwide. I believe there are over 4000 universities in America. If you do the multiplication that comes to roughly 40,000 courses. Some of the schools we examined were quite large, and there are many small colleges; none of them were religious however. So in our view 10,000 courses was a conservative estimate. We probably should have used a figure closer to 20,000. I am puzzled by the percentage question. If it was one course rather than 10,000 it would or should still be a problem. Moreover, entire fields — Women’s Studies would be the prime example — have been corrupted by the intrusion of ideological agendas, and the ideologues associated with these fields have been integrated into other fields as well.

Q: You attack a class for assigning a book written by “an `investigative journalist’ with the Chicago Reporter, a local throwaway published by a community activist group.”(106) The Chicago Reporter is a highly respected, award-winning magazine, not a local throwaway, and it is strange to dismiss a book based on where the writer is employed rather than the content of the work. Did you actually read this book? If not, how can you claim that “this course is not interested in educating students in the range of factors that affect minority health, including inadequate care.”

A: This is an answer posing as a question. We did not attack the class in “Minority Health” for assigning a book. We pointed out that according to the instructor’s own course description, the class was not an academic inquiry but the exposition of an ideological point of view — the view that racism causes minority groups “to have much higher rates of disease than other groups.” Instead of asking the question, the instructor precludes the possibility that a question exists and proceeds to give his answer and his answer alone. The fact that this is a propaganda exercise not an academic course is further evidenced in the requirement of two course texts that reflect the instructor’s prejudices - one by the notorious Marian Wright Edelman who claimed that Clinton’s welfare reform would result in the death by starvation of a million minority children, and the other by a journalist who worked for an activist publication with similar views.

Q: You claim that in a Penn State Women’s Studies class, “students have no option to take different or dissenting views.”(96) Where is your evidence for this claim? Did you talk to any students in this class?

A: The course is billed by the instructor as an “introductory feminist survey course,” in other words not a dispassionate analytical course about feminism, but an indoctrination in feminism. The instructor declares that her intention is to “examine (and challenge) the nature of power and privilege in our lives and institutions.” The course agenda is to “challenge” power and privilege, not to examine whether power and privilege may have useful and beneficial functions, as well as negative ones. Since the course is set up to provide only radical feminist answers to the questions it poses - that is to deny legitimacy to alternative views, the answer to your question should be self-evident.

Q: You complain that in Women’s Studies programs, “gender is regarded not as a fact of nature but as an artificial construct that society imposes on individuals or that individuals choose for themselves.”(196) In reality, this just seems to be the dictionary definition of gender: “the behavioral, cultural, or psychological traits typically associated with one sex”(http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/gender). I understand why you might make the common mistake of confusing sex and gender, but do you (or anyone else) actually believe that there is no such thing as the social construction of gender, and that everything associated with gender in our society is biologically determined?

A: It is you who are confused, since it is clear from this question that you believe the social construction of gender is a scientific fact. It isn’t. The claim that gender traits, which are behavioral and psychological (I think your dictionary has been seduced by feminist fashions when it includes cultural traits) are environmentally determined is just that — a claim. It has been proven empirically wrong in many crucial areas by modern neuroscience and biology. As to whether I believe that all gender traits are biologically determined, the answer is no.

Q: You object to a women’s studies course because “the course does not ask whether and how women have been subordinated, but accepts that subordination as a given.”(81) Are you arguing that women are not subordinated anywhere in the world, and have never been subordinated in history?

A: Since I have conducted a national campaign to protest “the oppression of women in Islam,” why would you even ask me such a question?

Q: You complain that the University of Missouri Women’s and Gender Studies Program has a website that includes links to feminist groups, and promotes a racism workshop on its newsgroup.(206) What’s wrong with having links on a website, or mentioning controversial events on a newsgroup? Who do you think should be given the power to regulate what links are permitted on websites, and what events should be allowed to be mentioned on a newsgroup?

A: Our complaint was about the Women’s and Gender Studies Program itself. It describes itself as a program to indoctrinate students in feminism, which is a violation of fundamental professional guidelines and academic standards. The links on its website are merely expressions of its ideological agendas. No link is in itself illegitimate if the purpose of the link is to give students the opportunity to examine critically its contents. That is not the case here where the object of the Women’s Studies Program, as clearly laid out in its Mission Statement, is to recruit students to feminist causes. This is the third time you’ve asked me who should enforce academic standards. Obviously in the case of Women’s Studies, since the entire field has been defined in a way that is political rather than academic, we have a much bigger problem that cannot be resolved at the departmental level. I leave it to the academic community — whose credentials and prestige are undermined by the current practices in Women’s Studies — to figure this one out.

Q: You claim that the UC Santa Cruz Department of Community Studies is “requiring students to adhere to a political orthodoxy” and assert, “The way the department frames the subject matter automatically excludes students who do not subscribe to this left-wing party line.”(255) Where is your evidence of this? Why would the framing of subject matter “automatically” exclude students who disagree?

A: Regarding your first question, you should re-read the section of our book on the Department of Community Studies, where the answer is self-evident. As to the second, if the subject matter of the course is framed entirely within one ideological perspective, where is there intellectual room for the student to challenge it, since the ideology is not presented as an ideology but as a scientific point of view?

Q: You claim it would be indoctrination to “examine the doctrines of conservatism from an exclusively conservative perspective.”(210) Many years ago, I took a course on “Conservative Jurisprudence” at the University of Chicago Law School. It was taught by Michael McConnell, who is now a judge in Utah, and I recall that the readings were overwhelmingly made up of conservative thinkers taught sympathetically by a conservative professor. Do you think conservative courses and programs should be prohibited in academia?

A: I didn’t take Professor McConnell’s course so I can’t comment on the way it was taught. I don’t think a conservative or for that matter a leftist is incapable of teaching the subject of conservatism or leftism in properly academic and professional way. I don’t even believe it is wrong to teach a course in feminist thought — provided the subject is approached critically and analytically — so why should I think that conservative thought should not be examined in a critical and scholarly way as well?

Q: You have in this book, by my count, exactly zero instances where a professor unfairly graded a student, or prohibited a student from disagreeing in class with a professor. If a student voluntarily takes a class and knows what’s in the class, and is free to disagree with the class readings or comments, why shouldn’t a professor be free to teach the relevant books he or she wants to, even if these texts don’t represent the full spectrum of possible perspectives about the topic?

A: This is many questions. First we did not deal with grades or professorial abuse in class because the past response of organizations like the AAUP to our evidence that students are unfairly graded and otherwise abused in class has been to call our students liars - or more precisely to call us liars for representing their cases. One-Party Classroom demonstrates, clearly and definitively that indoctrination on a massive scale is taking place in our universities, without recourse to student testimonies. Second, the idea that a student takes a course knowing what’s in it is preposterous. Many students don’t know what was in the course after they took it. Third, what does “free to disagree” mean when the professor holds the grade in his or her back pocket, particularly in the cases under discussion where the very framework of the course expresses the ideological prejudices of the instructor and presents them as scientific facts? Fourth, professors are and should be free to teach the relevant books they want to, including texts that have one ideological bias and do not represent a spectrum — provided the purpose of assigning the book is to examine it analytically and critically and not to recruit students to its ideological agendas.

Q: You twice object to geography professors discussing social movements with “no professional credentials” to do so.(214, 256) You seem to think that a geography professor should not discuss anything related to race, gender, class, sociology, anthropology, or economics. Is that correct? What do you think a geography professor should be teaching?

A: Geography.

Q: You often condemn teachers for dealing with issues you believe are out of their expertise, yet you assert, “Most disturbing of all is the unwillingness of administrators and trustees to defend their institutions and enforce the professional standards of a modern research university.”(278) How can administrators and trustees impose academic standards in fields where they have no academic training to determine what is the “proper” content of a course?

A: We didn’t say that administrators and trustees should define what is the proper content of a course. We said they needed to defend the professional standards of a modern research university. How? One example of the way to fulfill this responsibility occurred recently at the University of Colorado where administrators assembled a panel of Ward Churchill’s faculty peers to inquire whether he had violated those standards, and concluded that he did.

FIRE's Failure at NYU

Will Creeley of FIRE has written a disturbing defense of NYU suspending students without a hearing. I cannot believe that this actually fits with FIRE's philosophy at all.

These students have been declared persona non grata: that means they're not only suspended but entirely banned from stepping foot on campus. And they're not only banned from campus, but evicted from their homes, all without any disciplinary hearing. (It's rather bizarre for Creeley to excuse this because they are offered other university housing--if they're really a threat to the University, why would they be less of a threat in another university apartment building?)

Creeley writes: "Insofar as the students were physically occupying University property in an action that was presumably designed precisely to disrupt 'public order,' this seems like a reasonable application, and it is difficult for the occupying students to argue that such a punishment isn't authorized by NYU's code."

Creeley has got this completely wrong. The students were not occupying any property when they were suspended. They were suspended as punishment for previously occupying property. The right to suspend must apply only to a reasonable expectation of future threats, not to past actions. Otherwise, NYU could suspend anyone suspected of any violation of the rules because they violated "public order."

Secondly, Creeley offers no criticism of NYU for having an extraordinarily vague code allowing suspension. Instead, he gives us the kind of circular reasoning that FIRE usually mocks: "because NYU's policies provide for summary suspension of students engaged in such activities, it is difficult to argue that they have been mistreated by NYU." If NYU had a speech code allowing students to be suspended for offensive speech, would FIRE argue that it's acceptable to suspend students because NYU policies allow it? Of course not. So why is FIRE failing on this issue?

Creeley is mixing up two issues: the legal rights of students at a university, and the moral rights. He might be right (although I disagree) that NYU is not violating its own legal obligations by suspending the students. However, it is obvious that NYU's rules are a violation of the standards of FIRE ("immediate danger to persons or property") for suspension. FIRE routinely criticizes private colleges that have vague and poorly interpreted rules, even when they are legal. So why isn't FIRE criticizing NYU's policies?

It's true, as Creeley notes, that student protesters must be willing to suffer the consequences of illegal action. But it's also true that they should never be punished BEFORE a legal hearing finds them guilty.

NYU's Violation of Student Rights

I was not a fan of the student occupation of a New York University cafeteria. I didn't like the incoherent list of bizarre demands, and I don't like the use of occupation as a tactic in general. But the response of NYU in suspending 18 students, who were arrested when the occupation was ended, is a gross abuse of due process.

At a university, a suspension pending a disciplinary hearing is much like holding a prisoner without bail. A suspension prior to a hearing should be used in only the most extreme circumstances, when an individual poses a violent threat to the community. No one imagines that this describes any of the student protesters.

The suspension of a student mid-semester is particularly alarming because of the harm that it causes to a student seeking to complete classes. By suspending these students, NYU is effectively dictating a severe punishment before they are ever found guilty of any offense. All students, even those who strongly disagreed with the protest, should be alarmed at this arbitrary and unnecessary violation of student rights by NYU administrators.

Me at the NAS Conference

Video of my appearance at the National Association of Scholars conference has just been posted. You can also watch the other presentations about the University of Delaware Residence Life program here.

It's not my best appearance, certainly, since I was in the difficult (but necessary) position of defending a deeply flawed program. Unfortunately, the video doesn't seem to have the question and answer period, where Cary Nelson criticized me (and Delaware) for not believing that the faculty should control all educational programs on campus.

Pennsylvania Republicans Threaten Funding for Millersville University Over Ayers Speech

Republican legislators in Pennsylvania have sent a letter to the president of Millersville University and chancellor of the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education threatening to cut state funding unless Bill Ayers is banned from speaking on campus.

The letter calls the invitation (which came before Ayers became a high-profile part of national politics last year) “patently offensive” and “Inappropriate promotion” of Ayers: “It is simply not acceptable that a taxpayer owner and operated institution of higher learning would invite a man who engaged in domestic terrorism to its campus.” Of course, Ayers has never been convicted of any such charge, and plenty of people who plotted terrorism to kill people (which Ayers never did) have been invited to speak at public universities, from Henry Kissinger to Oliver North to G. Gordon Liddy, and no one has sought to ban these speakers.

Interestingly, the letter condemns Ayers not only for his radical past but for his “education philosophy which promotes student and parental political activism instead of achievement testing.” The legislators even attack Ayers’ role as an advocate of the “small schools” movement because it allegedly “includes building individual schools around specific political themes.”
In fact, the letter from these legislators devotes more space to attacking Ayers’ educational philosophy than his role with the Weather Underground.

So the Republican legislators aren’t just interested in banning ex-radicals; they also want to ban campus speakers with liberal educational philosophies. In fact, they write that if Millersville University includes such “radical components” in its urban education program, “then we believe a full curriculum review is necessary.” The idea of legislators investigating education programs to purge them of liberal ideas is particularly frightening.

Although Ayers’ speech is privately funded by a foundation, the legislators conclude their letter with a particularly ominous and direct threat to cut state funding for Millersville University unless Ayers is banned: “we are interested to receive your input into how we can defend the Commonwealth’s significant investment of taxpayer monies toward the State System of Higher Education in light of this issue.”

This threat is both loathsome and unconstitutional. The government cannot punish a public university for allowing free speech on campus. These Republican legislators are an embarrassment to the state of Pennsylvania, and let’s hope that their demands for repression are not just ignored, but condemned, by the people of Pennsylvania and conservative and liberal groups alike.

Bill Ayers Banned Again

Bill Ayers is quickly surpassing Ward Churchill as the most banned speaker on college campuses. Administrators at Georgia Southern University have banned Ayers from speaking, claiming that they cannot afford $13,000 in security costs for his speech. The use of "security costs" to ban a controversial speaker is a serious threat to free speech. All anyone at Georgia Southern needs to do in order to get rid of a speaker or a professor is simply make a threat. The notion that security would cost $13,000 and require shutting down several parking lots is simply absurd. Exactly why would any parking lot need to be closed? And $13,000 would, by my calculation, allow you to hire more than two hundred security guards for three hours at $20 an hour. Is all that security really necessary?

Academic Freedom Under Attack in Illinois

Illinois state Sen. Larry Bomke doesn’t like the fact that ex-radical William Ayers is teaching at the University of Illinois at Chicago, and so he’s proposed SB 41, the Prohibition on University Employment Act, in order to fire Ayers. The entire text of the bill declares, “A university is prohibited from employing a person who has committed an act of violence against the government of the United States of America or the State of Illinois.”

Ayers called the bill “frivolous.” Actually, it’s not frivolous at all. It’s dangerous.

There is no such thing as violence against the government. The government is not a person. Violence can only be committed against people. Now, it is possible to damage government buildings, but that’s called vandalism. The notion that somebody could be banned from employment at a university for committing vandalism but not for murder is a rather odd formulation.

Bomke’s bill applies not only to public universities, but also any private university that receives state funds. Since all private colleges in Illinois receive some state funds through financial aid for students, this bill represents a serious expansion of government power over private institutions.

It’s also notable that Bomke only proposes to limit such employment for universities, and no other parts of government. Perhaps that’s because it’s quite appropriate for ex-criminals to have jobs.

And Bomke’s bill is particularly alarming because it defies our system of justice, which holds that no one should be penalized unless they are proven guilty in a court of law. Bomke’s bill mentions nothing about this, and its target, Bill Ayers, was never found guilty in any court. Under Bomke’s bill, all public colleges in the state would be forced to look for any employee who might have committed “violence” against the government and fire them. It’s a bad bill, badly written, by a bad, pandering politician who has no intention of seeing it passed.

Conference on Higher Education, Call for Submissions

Reworking the University: Visions, Strategies, Demands
Call for Ideas - Please Distribute Widely!
A Conference, April 24-26, 2009, University of Minnesota

The current “financial meltdown” has exacerbated the ongoing crises within the university, resulting in even greater budget cuts, tuition hikes, hiring freezes and layoffs. Responses from university administrations have been predominantly reactive and have served to fortify the university as an institution of neoliberal capitalism. The administration and others have narrated this crisis as an external force that, while dramatic in the short run, can nonetheless be managed properly. It is clear to many, however, that the neoliberal logic that has been used to transform the university over the past few decades has failed at a systemic level; the neoliberal death spiral has come home to the university.

In contrast to these reactionary responses, we seek to create a space for collective re-evaluation of the university in crisis as an opportunity for real transformation. Last year’s conference, “Rethinking the University: Labor, Knowledge, Value” (April 2008), sought to challenge the supposed inevitability of the neoliberal university. As a continuation of this project, “Reworking the University” seeks to draw together academics, artists, and activists, to share and produce political visions, strategies and demands for building an alternative university in common.

“Reworking the University” seeks to generate a vibrant, political exchange by troubling the traditional format of the academic conference. To this end, we hope to produce spaces for individuals and groups from different backgrounds and across a variety of institutional boundaries to converge. While the conference will include the presentation of papers on the topic of “Reworking the University,” the committee’s selection process will prioritize workshops, roundtables, trainings, art installations, film screenings, performances, and other forms of creative engagement.

The conference organizing collective has selected several questions and themes that emerged out of the 2008 conference that we will address in various formats. If you have interest in participating, please provide us with a description of your proposed contribution. We encourage you to self-organize a session (i.e. a performance, workshop, roundtable, training, etc.) and submit it as a whole. Feel free to use the blog (http://rethinkingtheu.wordpress.com) to help facilitate session organizing.

Below is a list of possible topics and we, of course, welcome additional suggestions. In submitting your ideas for sessions, please give us as much information as possible—suggestions for themes, other participants and the session format.

The Reworking the University conference coincides with “Reclaim Your Education – Global Week of Action 2009” (April 20-27: http://www.emancipating-education-for-all.org/). Organizers also encourage suggestions for additional actions as part of this event.

Send your submissions (of up to 500 words) to comradmn@gmail.com. The deadline for submissions is February 10, 2009.

- Confronting American Apartheid: Access to education
- The financial crisis and the university
- Counter/Radical Cartographies and Disorientation Guides
- Corporate funding and the university
- Autonomous/Open/Free Universities
- The Poverty of Student Life
- Post-Enlightenment Visions: Beyond the Liberal Model
- Anarchism and Education
- Adjunct Unionization
- Organizing Across Campuses, Cities, and Regions
- Post-Antioch Universities/the Antioch Legacy
- Anti-militarization Movements in the University
- Prisons and Education
- Undergrad Education Beyond Commodification
- Historical Struggles in the University: May ’68 and beyond
- Autoreduction and Tactics for Direct Action in the Workplace
- Contemporary Struggles in the University: The Anomalous Wave & Movements in
Italy, Greece and elsewhere
- Expropriating Institutional Space
- Graduate student unionization and Radicalizing the Academy
- Anti-professionalization; Anti-disciplinarity
- Student Debt
- Pedagogy of the crisis
- Creating Radical/Open Access Publications and the Politics of Citation

The schedule and proceedings from last year’s conference can be found at:
http://www.makeumnpublic.org/conference.htm

Sincerely,

Committee on Revolutionizing the Academy (ComRAD)
comradmn@gmail.com