The Academic Bill of Rights is a statement that conservatives are pushing in order to return intellectual freedom to campuses, liberating it from the liberal stranglehold on American Universities (see David Horowitz’s claim that a Stanford study reported the ratio of liberal to conservative junior profs on college campuses is 30:1). Legislation is being pushed in state legislatures around the country to get these ideas instituted as law for University practice.
Of course, liberal university professors are taking exception to the ABOR. There are money raising campaigns, plus David Horowitz’s supportive comments of this effort at Frontpage Mag. The basic tenets of the ABOR can be summarized this way:
- Hiring, firing, promoting or granting tenure shall be on the basis of performance – not on the basis of political or religious beliefs. An absolute must to protect academic freedom!
- Tenure, search and hiring committee meetings will be recorded and available to duly authorized authorities empowered to inquire into the integrity of the process. Once again, political philosophy or religious beliefs may not enter into the picture.
- Students will be graded on their work … not their political beliefs or religion.
- Course content and reading lists in humanities and social sciences will reflect diverse concepts and viewpoints – not just the overwhelmingly leftist content that is being fed to our college students today.
- Selection of speakers, allocation of funds for speaker activities and other student activities will observe the principles of academic freedom and promote intellectual balance. A CSPC review of major university commencement speakers revealed that 99 percent were self-identified Democrats or liberals.
- Academic institutions and professional societies should maintain a posture of organizational neutrality.
In theory, many of those suggestions are great – the question is whether granting the state power to regulate will make the situation worse or further politicize the process. For instance, one could easily imagine that state legislatures could really make a lot of mischief trying to implement the meritocracy principle.
The one wherein Horowitz urges state-mandated reading lists is just stupid, though.
David Horowitz isn't serious – a few weeks ago, he claimed that one in eight U.S. professors was a terrorist sympathizer. Seriously, the man just isn't serious. He believes that any professor that is liberal is thus punishing conservative students in class. This, of course, is malarkey.
He doesn't care about academic freedom. He just wants his own positions presented as fact in more college classrooms.
I dunno, we legislated quotas – oh yeah, that was bad too.
But I'm not sure how serious Horowitz is – he may have some good ideas, but he may be a crank too, I'll have to look into it a bit if he pops up any more.
Horowitz was a joke when he was a left-wing radical and he's still a joke now that he's a right-wing radical.
Seeker, I like your wording: there is a "liberal stranglehold" on universities. Hmm..places where intellectual inquiry, truth and creative insight are valued tend to not be Republican. No surprise there buddy!
just don't forget the old phrase about ultimate power – I think that's a danger for our liberal universities now – ultimate corruption! 30:1 sounds like hegemony.
Universities are not liberal bastions. Current thinking just happens to align with liberal positions. Horowitz declares professors "liberals" for believing in something like evolution, instead of teaching the alleged "science" of creationism.
In my previous post, I cited some studies that indicate that university profs are overwhelmingly liberal, and this study that Horowitz cites indicates that the future is even dimmer – 30:1. How can you say that's not a bastion? :D
Because I don't think politics plays a part for professors who teach Art, or chemistry, or any of a number of other pursuits. Horowitz believes that professors who identify as liberals are then forcing their students to be liberals. There's no evidence for this however.
And, of course there are terrible professors. There are terrible doctors too, and policemen, and everything else. So what?
Finally, if Horowitz is so concerned about the overwhelmingly liberal professors, he must be equally concerned about professions in which the participants are overwhelmingly conservative…right? I mean, I'd be willing to bet that the professors at Liberty University are right-leaning. Is Horowitz recommending a reverse hiring policy there?
The problem with Horowitz's idea is that he wants to legislate academic neutrality. Whatever you think about his politics or the politics of academia, legislating curriculum and taking the decision away from the experts–the professors–is surely the wrong way to go. See a letter I've written. –Ben Bayer
Ben,
I agree that you can't legislate curriculum, or force teachers to teach the "other views".
But college students are not mindless drones. Students may decide that a professor speaks hogwash, and decide to drop the class.
They may not be mindless drones, but they are impressionable drones. If 90% of the faculty is liberal because of unfair hiring processes that select for liberals, students may get the impression that the majority opinion they experience on campus is the actual majority opinion, and may therefore give it more credence than it deserves. I mean, if most of the eductated people they are exposed to hold a similar world view, do you think you are really giving them a fair shake at "deciding for themselves"? I doubt it.
Again, I think the problem is not w/ the curriculum, as much as it is with the hiring process – it's basically become a "good old boy" network for liberals. If we fix that, the curriculums will fix themselves.
Institututional pressure against conservative thinking is not good, esp. when we have what amounts to a hegemony.
If college students aren't active-minded enough to realize that what the majority thinks isn't necessarily the truth, they've got bigger problems than whatever liberal lies they happen to accept.
I think that betrays the responsibility of teachers – you are teaching them *how* to think, not *what* to think. And you expect way too much maturity from an 18 year old with probably little real-world experience.
If faculty are not worried about training students to be active-minded, rather than expecting a bunch of 18 year-old einsteins, then I'd say that's the bigger problem.
With all respect, I mean, these students should be treated as young adults, both responsible for forming their own views, but dependent on faculty to provide them with more than one-sided liberal indoctrination. Professors are more influential than they think, and to think that these young, largely immature students have well developed analytical skills and baloney meters is presumption. It may mask itself as "respect for the student's abilities", but really, I think it is abdication of the professor's responsibility to teach, and intellectual laziness that leads to indoctrination instead of creating true thinkers.
And we need to provide a richer, and diverse experience for students, not just a viewpoint given primarily by liberal, sometimes activist professors. College should be about exposure to lots of ideas, not just liberal views.
Both of my parents were career college professors (surprise surprise eh Seeker?:). There is a reason for a 30:1 ratio, and it's not just colleges, it's through out the education system. The reason is you have to be idealistic to be a teacher and idealism is the domain of liberals. I mean, how many neo-con artists do you know? :P
But lets forget about that, lets pretend that there are just as many conservative teachers as there are liberal teachers. What exactly would they want changed?
Science? – I bet they would want to change Darwin to allow for creationism or something like it.
English? – No more Harry Potter books or any number of books they deem unfit. Edgar Allen Poe did drugs!
Political Science? – Could Civil War be Good for Iraq? (Actual news topic from Fox)
History? – The Bible explains a lot of it :P
I think the only subject I would be comfortable learning from a Neo-Con born again Christian intent upon espousing his views over the "rampant" liberalism in colleges would be calculus because thats really hard to screw up.
Now the reply to this post will be, why are you bringing religion into it? It's a post about too many liberals in colleges. Well look at the points in the original post carefuly, the first three have clauses for religion in them.
If you really wanted to correct the imbalance of liberals over conservatives in colleges then I would suggest start being as passionate about teaching Shakespeare, Darwin, and Newton as you are about teaching Jesus. Otherwise it's just another example of conservatives trying to promote their agenda. Now if you had posted about the ROTC not being able to recruit on campuses as an example of colleges being too liberal, I would have agreed with you.
Economics? – Trickle down baby!
The fact that you can barely conceive of a more conservative position in the areas where it counts, the humanities, shows the hubris of liberal thinking. No one has mentioned religion except you in this thread, I think.
One of the BEST classes I had in college was a class taught by a liberal, but it was notable because it was the ONLY class taught on Contemporary Science and Human Values. He asked a lot of bright questions, though he often gave very liberal answers. But I wonder what I could have learned if the university was more open to a broader scope of idealists.
I had a public speaking teacher who would NOT let me preach the gospel for a motivational speech (how open minded!), so I had to give a speech on something more politically correct. I had a botany teacher who took one day to teach on a creationist interpretation of the fossil record, and you should have seen the student hostility. Why? Because they weren't taught to think, they were taught to *believe*, and he was threatening their beliefs.
As for liberals being more idealistic, that's a nice picture to paint, but I think that this sidesteps the issue brought up in the article – that there is a liberal bias in the way we select for professors, and that hegemony exists, NOT because there aren't idealistic conservatives, but because they are not really interested in anything but group think. It's very human.
The fact that you paint all of these fear-based ideas about how conservatives would pollute the disciplines is just liberal nonsense, fear-mongering to keep power.
The fact that you paint all of these fear-based ideas about how conservatives would pollute the disciplines is just liberal nonsense, fear-mongering to keep power.
Untrue because the author of the academic bill of rights says this…
Do we just give up on our colleges and accept that the radical, anti-American left is in charge of teaching our nation's future leaders?
Being called anti-american shows this stuff is coming from a loon and justifies fear from the left. Getting called Anti-American is a step away from being accused of Treason (Senator McCarthy) What do you expect?
Give me some specifics about what you are asking for in the classroom so that we can discuss them. Like I said, I think this quote academic bill of rights unquote is just a smokescreen to promote a conservative agenda, religious or political, both words mentioned prominently in the points you outline. It's trash and I think Seeker you may be able to give people some better examples of your point than this nut did.
He may say that, and it is a probably a poor statement. But the Academic Bill of Rights does not state such.
And he has a point. I mean, not too long ago, a significant portion of University Professors were outright Marxists, condeming the "greedy, unjust capitalist system." I would consider that anti-American. And those liberals? They were WRONG about the goodness of Communism. I think some of the "anti-american liberal" nametag is leftover from the vietnam era, even if most of today's liberals are not commies ;)
I am not asking for anything in the classroom. I am asking for fair hiring practices.
But things that might change are things like conservative economics (emphasizing personal responsibility, virtue, saving, giving, maybe proper de-regulation), discussions of the role of morality in government and law, a more balanced perspective on what separation of church and state means, a clear examination of the religious and scientific suppositions behind modern science, a clear discussion of the differences between empirical science, historical sciences, and philosophy of science (things which today's Darwininsts consistently fail to separate), a more rigorous look at what the scientific method is and what it is not, and applying the rules of science to modern questions to see what is science and what is conjecture (like macroevolution).
How about studying the classic western literature, the stuff that "made the west great" rather than making such stuff a sidebar in literature studies? I mean, we can and should study minority literature (women, gays, racial minorities), but how much has classic literature been sidelined and in some cases shunned because it is "white or patriarchal?"
These are just a few examples of how hiring conservatives might shift the balance of what is taught in our universities – without such diversity, we are merely indoctrinating. That's the point.
And he has a point. I mean, not too long ago, a significant portion of University Professors were outright Marxists, condeming the "greedy, unjust capitalist system." I would consider that anti-American. And those liberals? They were WRONG about the goodness of Communism.
Did you do your duty and report them to Senator McCarthy? He would have put them on trial for being un-American.
Okay, you mention a lot of things but not what you mean exactly. For example,
discussions of the role of morality in government and law
What is the role of morality in government you suggest?
a more balanced perspective on what separation of church and state means
What would a more balance perspective be?
a clear examination of the religious and scientific suppositions behind modern science, a clear discussion of the differences between empirical science, historical sciences, and philosophy of science (things which today's Darwininsts consistently fail to separate)a more rigorous look at what the scientific method is and what it is not, and applying the rules of science to modern questions to see what is science and what is conjecture (like macroevolution)
Most people feel all these things are not broken. It really is only born again Christians, as a group, who even question their validity. I've read a lot of your posts on this stuff and I agree with none of it. Specifically, you mention the scientific method which is:
The scientific method is the process by which scientists, collectively and over time, endeavor to construct an accurate (that is, reliable, consistent and non-arbitrary) representation of the world.
Recognizing that personal and cultural beliefs influence both our perceptions and our interpretations of natural phenomena, we aim through the use of standard procedures and criteria to minimize those influences when developing a theory. As a famous scientist once said, "Smart people (like smart lawyers) can come up with very good explanations for mistaken points of view." In summary, the scientific method attempts to minimize the influence of bias or prejudice in the experimenter when testing an hypothesis or a theory.
1. Observation and description of a phenomenon or group of phenomena.
2. Formulation of an hypothesis to explain the phenomena. In physics, the hypothesis often takes the form of a causal mechanism or a mathematical relation.
3. Use of the hypothesis to predict the existence of other phenomena, or to predict quantitatively the results of new observations.
4. Performance of experimental tests of the predictions by several independent experimenters and properly performed experiments.
Would you have an extra step added? The scientific method was created to prevent exactly what I think you want to do with it.
How about studying the classic western literature, the stuff that "made the west great" rather than making such stuff a sidebar in literature studies? I mean, we can and should study minority literature (women, gays, racial minorities), but how much has classic literature been sidelined and in some cases shunned because it is "white or patriarchal?"
So, what would you add and what would you remove, if anything?