[IP] Op-ed: Ideologues at the lectern
Begin forwarded message:
From: Paul Saffo <paul@xxxxxxxxx>
Date: January 22, 2006 11:37:07 AM EST
To: Dave Farber <dave@xxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: Op-ed: Ideologues at the lectern
This will inflame the ignorant...
-p
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/sunday/editorials/la-op-
horowitz22jan22,0,1196177.story?coll=la-home-sunday-opinion
From the Los Angeles Times
Ideologues at the lectern
By David Horowitz
David Horowitz is publisher of www.frontpagemag.com and author of
"The Professors," to be published later this month by Regnery.
January 22, 2006
STEPHEN ZELNICK is a political moderate who has taught in the English
department at Temple University for 37 years. He has served as
president of the faculty senate, as director of the university's
writing programs and, more recently, was vice provost for
undergraduate studies.
On Jan. 10, Zelnick and I testified as witnesses before a
Pennsylvania House Committee on Academic Freedom, possibly the first
such committee in the history of higher education in America.
Zelnick told the legislators that as director of two undergraduate
programs, he had observed the classes of more than 100 teachers. He
had "seen excellent, indifferent and miserable teaching," he said.
But in all those courses, he added, "I have rarely heard a kind word
for the United States, for the riches of our marketplace, for the
vast economic and creative opportunities made available for energetic
and creative people (that is, for our students); for family life, for
marriage, for love, or for religion."
I wasn't particularly surprised to hear that. The hearings in
Pennsylvania are a direct outgrowth of the campaign I launched in
September 2003 to persuade colleges and universities to adopt an
"Academic Bill of Rights" to protect students from unprofessional
political indoctrination by their professors. My bill said, for
example, that students should be exposed to "the spectrum of
significant scholarly viewpoints" and not force-fed an orthodoxy on
matters that are controversial.
I began the campaign by trying to convince university trustees and
administrators directly that a student's right to an intellectually
honest, intellectually diverse education was in jeopardy because of
professors — particularly from the left — who were determined to
indoctrinate students with their own political opinions. But I turned
to legislatures when I found the schools unwilling to listen.
Two years later, more than a dozen legislatures have considered
"academic freedom" legislation, including Florida, Indiana, Maine,
Missouri, Tennessee and other states. Universities in Colorado and
Ohio have adopted new academic freedom rules (after we withdrew
legislation that would have forced them to do so), and Pennsylvania
has been holding academic freedom hearings as a result of our efforts.
In California, a bill to create an academic bill of rights didn't
make it out of committee in the Legislature last year, but is to be
reconsidered in the weeks ahead.
University administrators like to suggest that we are wasting our
time trying to solve a non-problem. In the fall of 2003, I visited
Elizabeth Hoffman, then president of the University of Colorado, who
told me, "David, we have no problem here." A year and half later, one
of the many extremist professors on her faculty, Ward Churchill,
became a figure of national notoriety when the public learned that he
had referred to the victims of 9/11 as "little Eichmanns," and had
argued that Americans deserved even worse.
As a result of the public outcry, Hoffman was forced to resign.
Churchill resigned as head of the ethnic studies department, but is
still on the faculty.
The American public understands that a university should be a
marketplace of ideas, and that people on both sides of the spectrum
will go off the deep end at times. But they will not be so charitable
if they believe that the universities are becoming partisan themselves.
Yet the one-sided nature of university faculties has now been the
subject of several academic studies. A 2003 study by professor Daniel
Klein of Santa Clara University, for instance, found that around the
country Democrats outnumbered Republicans about 30 to 1 in the field
of anthropology, about 28 to 1 in sociology, and about 7 to 1 in
political science.
Another study, conducted by professors at Smith College, the
University of Toronto and George Mason University, looked at data
from a large national sample of professors and found that professors
of English who identified themselves as leaning left outnumbered
their conservative-leaning colleagues by 30 to 1; professors of
political science by 40 to 1; and professors of history by 8 to 1.
The Churchill problem is not unique to Colorado but reflects a
systemwide intellectual corruption in the academic world. Churchill
could not have been hired, promoted, given tenure or been made
chairman of his department without the support of his entire
department, his dean, the university administration and about a dozen
scholars in the field of ethnic studies, all of whom would have had
to support him in each step of the process.
The Academic Bill of Rights is a modest attempt to improve a bad and
deteriorating situation on our campuses. It would restore the idea of
intellectual diversity as a central educational value. It would make
students aware that they should be getting more than one side of
controversial issues and that they should not be browbeaten (or
graded) on the basis of their political opinions.
Opponents of the Academic Bill of Rights — including radicalized
organizations that now represent the academic profession, such as the
American Assn. of University Professors, American Historical Assn.,
Modern Language Assn. and American Federation of Teachers — have
attempted to block its progress by waging a campaign of gross
misrepresentation and falsehood, accusing me of seeking to put the
government in control of university curricula, and of trying to have
left-wing professors fired.
They say that our campaign would require universities to teach such
minority positions as Holocaust denial and intelligent design. These
claims are patently untrue. Anyone who wants can read the Academic
Bill of Rights (which is posted at http://
www.studentsforacademicfreedom.org .) There is not a single sentence
in it that would substantiate their charges.
The creation of the Pennsylvania committee was the work of a former
Marine, Republican state Rep. Gibson C. Armstrong. In the summer of
2004, Armstrong was approached by a constituent named Jennie Mae
Brown, a student at the York campus of Penn State who complained to
him about a physics professor who, she told the New York Times,
regularly used class time to "belittle President Bush and the war in
Iraq." According to the article, "as an Air Force veteran, Ms. Brown
said she felt the teacher's comments were inappropriate for the
classroom."
Although many professors put activism before scholarship, and are
indeed guilty of such unprofessional abuses of their classrooms, I
believe they represent a minority of faculty, part of an academic
subculture that confuses political consciousness-raising with education.
I believe that the majority of university professors in this country
are people of goodwill, and the campaign I have launched is designed
to encourage them to take a stand in defense of educational values
and academic freedom in the classroom.
*
ON THE WEB
For the Smith College, University of Toronto and George Mason
University study: http://www.bepress.com/forum/vol3/iss1/art2/
For the Santa Clara University study: http://www.ratio.se/pdf/wp/
dk_ls_diverse.pdf <252>
And here is the side-table:
IS AMERICA'S IVORY TOWER LEANING LEFT?
Do Democrats and liberals dominate campus faculties in America?
Here's what some studies show:
Among faculties
Academics who identified themselves as left or liberal
• in 1984 39%
• in 1999 72%
Academics who identified themselves as right or conservative
• in 1984 34%
• in 1999 15%
Among campus faculties in 1999, Democrats outnumbered Republicans 5 to 1
The Democratic advantage by department in 1999
• English: 35 to 1
• History: 17.5 to 1
• Biology: 4 to 1
• Engineering: 3 to 1
• Computer science: 2 to 1
• Chemistry: 1.5 to 1
• But in agriculture, Republicans held a 1.3 to 1 edge.
In 2004, employees of the University of California and Harvard
University were John Kerry's largest dollar contributors and among
Howard Dean's top five.
Among students,
Incoming freshmen who identified themselves as left or liberal
• in 1984 22%
• in 2004 30%
Incoming freshmen who identified themselves as right or conservative
• in 1984 21%
• in 200424%
Sources: Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching (1984);
Stanley Rothman, S. Robert Lichter and Neil Nevitte (1999); Harris
Poll (1984, 2004); Center for Responsive Politics (2004); Higher
Education Research Institute (2004).
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