| Introduction 
A poster that questions the objectivity of a course at Ball State University shows students getting high grades if they follow their saxophone-playing professor's ideology. Students for Academic Freedom contend the course in peace studies is biased because it discusses only peaceful means of resolving conflict, a charge the university rejects. The group says a nationwide campus climate stifles conservative ideas. (Students for Academic Freedom) | Bolstered by studies that show college instructors are overwhelmingly left-leaning Democrats, conservative groups are raising alarms about what they call political indoctrination on campus. Students who complain that professors ridicule their conservative religious and political views have turned for protection to campus speech codes instituted in the 1980s to protect women and minority students. Other groups are pushing hard to get the codes eliminated, arguing that they enforce left-wing ideological conformity. A growing number of Web sites collect and publicize reports of politically biased professors, courses and departments, as conservatives accuse academics of voicing opinions that could weaken public resolve in a time of war. In response, Congress and 18 states are considering legislation that would require publicly funded universities to ensure there is a diversity of opinion on campus and that students don't feel put upon by professors' views. Go to top Overview When 17-year-old Kuwaiti immigrant Ahmad Al-Qloushi handed in the final paper for his American government course at California's Foothill College last November, he never expected what happened next. The professor “verbally attacked me and my essay,” the freshman — an Arab Muslim — wrote in the online FrontPage Magazine, published by the conservative Center for the Study of Popular Culture. Al-Qloushi's assignment had been to demonstrate that the U.S. Constitution represented elite interests, excluding most people who lived in America at the time it was written. But Al-Qloushi refused to accept that interpretation, which had been put forward by authors the class had studied. During his high school days in Kuwait, he recalled, “Many of my teachers were Palestinian; they hated America, they hated my world-view, and they did their best to brainwash me.” Al-Qloushi decided that he had not left his home country to come to the United States “to receive further brainwashing.” So he wrote the paper on his own topic — a defense of “the U.S. Constitution as a pioneering document, which has contributed to extraordinary freedoms” both in the United States and elsewhere. But according to Professor Joseph Woolcock, the essay didn't meet his course standards. “When I read the paper, it became clear to me that it did not respond to the question,” Woolcock wrote. 
Remarks about women's science aptitude by Harvard President Lawrence Summers last January ignited protests from students and faculty as well as charges from conservatives that some liberals were trying to chill free speech on campus. (Getty Images/Jodi Hilton) | Faced with a failing grade and what he saw as Woolcock's attempt to intimidate him by demanding that he see a therapist, Al-Qloushi went public. (Woolcock says he only recommended counseling because of fears and agitation the student expressed during their meeting.) The Foothill College Republican Club, of which Al-Qloushi was president, told reporters Al-Qloushi had been harassed by a left-wing professor because he wrote a pro-American essay. The story quickly became a hot topic on political blogs (Web journals) as David Horowitz and other conservative commentators leaped to Al-Qloushi's defense. But other analysts — including self-described centrist and conservative political science professors — argued that the freshman deserved his failing mark on purely academic grounds. Steven Taylor, an associate professor of political science at Alabama's Troy University, wrote that he would have given the essay “a low score, maybe even a failing score” because Al-Qloushi “did not answer the question” and the essay was “fluffy and subjective.” According to Taylor, rather than constituting America-bashing, Woolcock's essay question “notes, correctly, that the Constitution . . . was written by the elites of the day and . . . limited democratic participation. Regardless of one's political point of view, there is no denying . . . these facts.” The dust-up is part of a new wave of campus wars between professors claiming academic freedom — the right to make educational and research decisions based on their professional expertise — and critics who argue that unchecked left-wing political bias at liberal arts colleges creates a threatening environment for conservative students and discourages them from expressing their views. The controversies usually surround such polarizing issues as the war on terror, the Iraq war, the increasing popularity of fundamentalist Christian views, the growing clout of feminists and gays and the Middle East conflict. “The fact that this student was failed . . . is an indication of how disingenuous Ahmad's professor is,” wrote Horowitz, president of the Center for the Study of Popular Culture, which has been leading the charge against liberalism among academics. He cites Al-Qloushi's article in FrontPage as evidence of the student's writing ability. Horowitz, a 1960s left-winger-turned-conservative, founded Students for Academic Freedom (SAF), which — along with similar conservative groups — publicizes such incidents to reveal what they claim is a nationwide campus climate that stifles conservative ideas. For instance, the American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA) — founded in 1995 by former National Endowment for the Humanities chairwoman Lynne Cheney, wife of Vice President Dick Cheney — publicized studies showing that a large majority of liberal arts professors have left-leaning views.  | According to ACTA and other groups, the silencing of conservatives is particularly dangerous in a post-Sept. 11 era and during wartime, because authority figures should foster patriotism during such times of crisis. A month after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, for instance, ACTA published “Defending Civilization: How Our Universities Are Failing America and What Can Be Done About It” — detailing more than 100 examples of allegedly dangerous, left-wing preference for criticism over patriotism on campus. “While America's elected officials from both parties and media commentators . . . condemned the attacks and followed the president in calling evil by its rightful name, many faculty demurred. Some refused to make judgments,” ACTA charged. “Many invoked tolerance and diversity as antidotes to evil. Some even pointed accusatory fingers, not at the terrorists but at America itself.” This response reveals an academia overrun by the left and “increasingly unfriendly to the free exchange of ideas.” But many free-speech advocates argue that it's precisely in times of crisis — or when Americans are being sent off to war — that hearing all sides of the argument matters most. “A university in which students and faculty have any fear of reprisal for discussing controversial topics is one that is rendered impotent to address society's most crucial issues,” wrote Greg Lukianoff, legal and public-advocacy director of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), in a letter protesting the University of New Mexico's investigation and discipline of a history professor who made a strong, unpopular comment about the Sept. 11 attack on the Pentagon. Republican lawmakers around the country, however, are heeding the warnings about a dearth of conservative voices on campus. In the past two years Congress and at least 18 states have considered legislation to combat what is seen as one-sided campus debate and to strengthen the hand of political and religious conservatives by introducing bills based on an Academic Bill of Rights (ABOR) developed by SAF. For instance, a House education panel — but not its Senate counterpart — has approved a “sense of Congress” provision urging colleges to ensure that students are not intimidated or disadvantaged because of their political or religious views. The House also approved establishing a national oversight board to ensure that diverse views are represented in international-studies programs. State lawmakers in Georgia and Pennsylvania approved non-binding measures urging ideological diversity on campus, and Florida legislators considered an ABOR-based bill this year that was ultimately rejected by the state Senate. In addition, faced with possible passage of ABOR-based legislation, state universities in Colorado and Ohio have pledged to take steps to protect students from political or religious discrimination. Many in academia are dismayed by the demands for external controls on campus speech. While most agree that some professors do push agendas, most say that politicization of courses or grading is the rare exception, not the rule, and that the new Horowitz-inspired bills are the real examples of politicization. “Let's be clear about Mr. Horowitz. He's not St. Peter,” says University of Southern California professor of higher education William Tierney. “He's the academic equivalent of Howard Stern. He does not have a dispassionate, 'I'm just a guy who wants to create a better climate on campus' approach.” But if professors are distressed by some conservative students' demands for protection, they have only themselves to blame, says David French, president of FIRE, which advocates and litigates for free campus speech. French says conservatives today are merely taking advantage of a serious breach in academic freedom that liberals began creating in the 1980s: imposing speech codes that banned so-called hate speech to protect students who claimed they were harassed on the basis of gender or race. “For two decades universities have been running around telling people they have a right not to be offended,” he says, “so they have only themselves to blame” if conservative students echo the same cry. Meanwhile, gender- and ethnicity-speech battles continue. Horowitz says a particularly troubling example involved Harvard University President Lawrence Summers. In January Summers became the target of outrage when he suggested that “intrinsic differences” between men and women may account for the low representation of women at top levels of science. Women's groups and some faculty members loudly called for his resignation, and Summers ended up issuing repeated apologies. The story demonstrates that a vocal minority of liberal faculty themselves have tried to stifle academic freedom, with chilling results on speech, says Horowitz. “Most faculty are not ideologues, but the others said that you shouldn't even discuss an academic idea,” he says. “The idea that you're going to vomit if somebody even mentions something like this should set off alarm bells for everybody.” As colleges and lawmakers debate the nature and limits of academic freedom, here are some questions being discussed: Should universities add conservative professors and courses to ensure ideological balance? Some students, conservative activists and state legislators say liberal arts faculties are dominated by left-leaning professors and that the bias intimidates conservative students, shuts down worthwhile ideas and discourages conservatives from teaching. But many academics say critics can cite few actual incidents of ideologically based hiring or grade discrimination and that professors' political views seldom affect their teaching. Horowitz claims left-wing domination of liberal arts faculties is accelerating, as current faculty exclude would-be conservative teachers. “You would pretty much have to have your head examined to pursue a Ph.D. in fields like history, for example, which are dominated by Marxists” and other liberals sympathetic to them, he says, “who . . . have no interest in a plural intellectual universe.” While a 50-50 balance isn't necessary, universities must make an effort to include conservative faculty or they will lose public support, according to David Gelernter, a Yale computer science professor. “When a university is overwhelmingly dominated by the left, balance becomes an issue,” he said. For its own good, a university should ensure that every political viewpoint “with a significant constituency . . . has at least a toehold, a self-sustaining outpost” on campus. But Stanley Fish, professor of humanities and law at Florida International University, says allowing demographics or political influences to shape university decisions abandons the key principle of academic freedom: that professors, as the top experts in their fields, must be allowed to pursue knowledge in their own way. The primary educational imperative “is to seek the truth about a body of materials or texts” and teach students according to the findings, Fish says. Doing otherwise exchanges the educational imperative for a political imperative, he says. Other academics argue that the conservatives are overreacting. Evidence of ideologically based discrimination is nearly non-existent, they argue. “There are very few documented cases that I've been able to find,” says Richard De George, a University of Kansas philosophy professor and author of a book on ethical issues related to academic freedom. “I'd like to see some evidence that indoctrination is taking place.” And, while studies show that a vast number of academics vote Democratic, he says, there is no evidence that departments ask for applicants' party affiliation during the hiring process. But Students for Academic Freedom says bias is evident in curriculums that reflect only liberal points of view. For example, the SAF contends that a course in peace studies and conflict resolution at Indiana's Ball State University is unacceptably biased because it discusses only peaceful means of resolving conflict. The course reinforced “the idea that non-violent means were the only legitimate sources of self-defense,” wrote Ball State student Brett Mock, whose complaint launched SAF's campaign. “This seemed to me to be indoctrination rather than education.” A course in conflict resolution that focuses entirely on peaceful means is “illegitimate” for a liberal arts curriculum that promises “broad” studies approaching issues with “neutrality,” says Horowitz. Offering such a course in a liberal arts context was “a kind of consumer fraud,” he said. But Ball State President Jo Ann Gora wrote that the course content was broader than Mock and Horowitz describe and that no false advertising occurred. On the midterm exam, for example, students were asked to use the philosophical concept of a “just war” to argue both for and against the Iraq war, Gora pointed out, and the course's syllabus clearly stated that the course would emphasize the “study of peace initiatives and mediation.” As tuitions rise, the politicization of curriculums is increasingly troublesome to parents and students, according to Steven Roy Goodman, an independent education consultant in Washington, D.C. “Where it was once students who did the acting out . . . now the professors and administrators are more likely to be playing politics, and more and more Americans with college-age kids are getting fed up with it,” he wrote. “I counsel families of all political stripes . . . but they all agree on one thing: The overly politicized atmosphere on campuses is distracting colleges from providing a solid education.” Professors argue, however, that the essence of academic freedom lies in their ability to shape their curriculums according to their own reasoned conclusions. For example, university departments seek intellectual “balance” among teachers, but not the kind of political liberal/conservative “balance” perceived by the public, said Fish. “Many political science departments . . . are divided by whether or not they favor quantitative or qualitative methods of research and analysis. So in a department where 95 percent of the professors voted for [Sen. John] Kerry, there will be a 50/50 split,” but it will not track “partisan politics, it will be a split that tracks disciplinary politics.” Critics are taking a U.S.-centric worldview, while scholars must take a global view, says Robert Jensen, a journalism professor at the University of Texas, Austin. In fact, he points out, from a worldwide perspective there is very little far-left activity in U.S. politics. Thus, while U.S. faculties may be more left-leaning than the general population, they are not considered ultra-left when compared to left-wing views widely held by faculties in the rest of the world. In universities, “there has to be some acknowledgment of the wider world,” he says. Moreover, there is more to a university than its liberal arts courses, and conservative views dominate in other departments, adds Jensen, who has drawn criticism for speaking out on issues such as his opposition to the Iraq war. “I'm not neutral in the classroom,” he says. “But nobody else is either.” One member of Jensen's department teaches media management from the industry point of view, “and in that class no critique of the industry is ever raised. My colleague is teaching the conventional wisdom, but nobody ever says, 'You're a running dog of capitalism.' ” Likewise, he says, conservative viewpoints are never challenged in business schools. “If you want to find political correctness, go to the business school and propose to offer a course on worker-owned corporations.” You'll be turned down flat, Jensen says. But Horowitz rejects the idea of bringing ideological balance to business and professional courses, where the objective, he says, is “training,” not education. A “diversity of viewpoints” is only necessary in liberal arts colleges, he said, “where it is appropriate to look at society and its institutions in a philosophical way.” Even some professors who generally disagree with Horowitz's tactics agree that some professors cross the line toward political indoctrination. It's possible to teach the most controversial topics without forcing a point of view, says De George. “I teach Marxisim. I've never had any complaints from anybody, and I have had Marxists, anti-Marxists and military people in the class.” William Van Alstyne, a professor of constitutional law at Virginia's William and Mary School of Law, says, “My field is, in my own professional view, seriously corrupted. Professors are devoted to their own visions of social justice, and students quickly get the idea that analysis will be in terms of social justice” rather than purely legal reasoning. Such an approach compromises the definition of academic freedom and exploits “a semi-captive group,” he says. Should students be protected from speech that offends them or their beliefs? Beginning in the 1980s, colleges around the country adopted so-called speech codes, most of which remain in force today. Intended to make campuses more hospitable places for women, gays and racial and ethnic minorities, the codes generally banned speech that amounts to ridicule, promoting stereotypes or — in some cases — simply makes someone feel bad. In a March 2001 ruling, the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals endorsed the idea that students have a right to be protected against at least some classroom speech. “Speech that . . . creates a hostile learning environment that ultimately thwarts the academic process is speech that a learning institution has a strong interest in preventing,” wrote the court. The case involved John Bonnell, a literature professor at Michigan's Macomb Community College, who was suspended after a student complained that sexual language Bonnell used in his classroom was “offensive . . . and degrading to women.” “The college's interest in preserving a learning environment free of sexual harassment, among others, outweighs” Bonnell's “claimed free speech and academic freedom interests,” wrote Judge Eric L. Clay in overturning a lower court's order that the college reinstate Bonnell. Nowadays, few university administrations or academics openly support speech codes. Nevertheless, bans on speech or writing deemed hateful or harassing still exist on many campuses, and both liberal and conservative students and faculty often seem happy to appeal to those principles to squelch speech they object to. Last year, for example, the University of Utah began exempting students with religious objections from certain class assignments after a five-year court battle with Christina Axson-Flynn, a Mormon theater student who complained that drama professors harassed her because of her religious views. Until recently, those who've filed grievances generally complained of feeling harassed on the basis of gender, ethnicity or sexual orientation. In the past few years, however, some students have begun seeking protection from professors they say harass them because of their conservative political or religious views. Today learning is stifled by widespread intimidation of conservative students by professors who have the life-shaping power to grade students' work, according to Luann Wright, a California-based writer. After her son complained about discrimination in his college classes, Wright founded the Web site NoIndoctrination.org to publicize politically biased classes. Since September 2002, the site has listed 166 such courses nationwide, representing about 30 percent of complaints submitted. Wright posts only complaints she deems substantial. “The university should be a marketplace of ideas, a safe place to explore a variety of perspectives. But I don't see that happening,” Wright said. Instead of feeling free to join academic discussions, conservative students keep their opinions to themselves, out of fear. “There's so much of it out there.” Wright's aim: “To give a voice to the voiceless. Too often college courses . . . promote blatant sociopolitical agendas with alternative viewpoints being ignored, dismissed or ridiculed.” If a student's views are not “radically liberal, feminist or environmentalist,” they do not speak out in class out of “fear of being shot down or having our grade lowered,” a University of Washington student wrote on the NoIndoctrination.org Web site, describing his experience in a psychology course. “I strongly urge religious and conservative students . . . to avoid this course. I really have no idea if [the professor] would actually lower a student's grade based on their opinions . . . but you cannot be sure.” The student said that while he received an excellent grade in the course, he felt “gypped” for not feeling free to express his opinions. Speech-code skeptics — who today come from all sides of the political spectrum — have long complained that the bans, while intended to promote justice, in fact constrain academic discussion and professors' academic freedom to run classrooms according to their professional judgment. And students who seek protection against speech that makes them uncomfortable misunderstand the purpose of education, say other academics. “Often students think they have the right not to be challenged,” but being educated requires it, says Jensen of the University of Texas. Kevin Mattson, a history professor at Ohio University, opposes speech codes because he sees them as representing “the therapeutic view” of education — that college classes should “be all about building your self-esteem by hearing your own views echoed.” But “at the college level . . . it really should be about being challenged.” Other academics argue that those who ban certain types of speech become harassers themselves. “History has shown time and time again that when you try to censor speech in the name of feelings, you end up becoming a bully,” says Donald Downs, a professor of law, political science and journalism at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Under the school's now-defunct speech code, for example, numerous faculty members say they were dragged through painful, years-long investigations of allegedly harassing classroom behavior before eventually being cleared of all wrongdoing. And, by trying to protect students from speech that troubles them, “you infantilize them,” argues Downs, who led a successful 1999 effort to repeal his university's speech code. “We respect students as being young adults who have the capacity to handle discussions, but if they're going to run to Big Brother and complain, we can't.” Universities have a responsibility to foster civil discussion, but that doesn't mean banning tough or unpopular debate, says Downs. “Civility doesn't mean we're always going to be nice,” he says. “There's nothing wrong with heated, strong criticism and argument, and when it is over, we retreat back into our social selves. If we're afraid of offending someone, there isn't going to be free thought.” “No one denies that a college can and should ban true harassment,” according to FIRE's Lukianoff and Boston-based attorney Harvey Silverglate, who coauthored a book on campus speech. But “it should be obvious that allowing colleges to promulgate broad and amorphous rules that can punish speech . . . will result in self-censoring and administrative abuses.” The result, they argued, will be an entire generation of American students “who are learning that its members should hide their deeply held unpopular beliefs, while other students realize that they have the power, even the right, to censor opinions they dislike.” Should academic free speech be limited in times of war or national emergency? Historically, the strongest challenges to free speech and academic autonomy have occurred during wartime. Supporters of curtailment warn that if authority figures like professors voice too much dissenting opinion, the country is weakened. Many in academia, however, argue that refraining from critical speech just when national passions run highest risks silencing criticisms that may be crucial to decision making. Donald Kagan, a professor of history and classics at Yale University, says too many academics opted to criticize U.S. policies rather than to offer patriotic support in the wake of the September 2001 terrorist attacks. Academics should squelch their desire to criticize during such times, for the good of the country, Kagan contended. “Most Americans “unequivocally supported their government's determination to prevent future attacks by capturing or killing the perpetrators . . . and removing the leaderships of states that gave refuge to these people,” he wrote. But “that is not what we have seen . . . from the faculty of most elite universities. Their first concern has been to discuss the motives of the attackers. We need, they say, to reflect on the deeper causes of this conflict.” Rather than fostering patriotism, such ideas have made faculties “part of our country's problem” in the campaign against terrorism, he concluded. Others want academic institutions to actively squelch such dissenters. Voicing harsh criticisms of U.S. policy surrounding the Iraq war should be a firing offense at universities, said Rep. J. D. Hayworth, R-Ariz. After Nicholas De Genova, an assistant professor of anthropology at Columbia University, said at a 2003 teach-in that the “only true heroes” of the Iraq war “are those who find ways that help defeat the U.S. military,” Hayworth circulated a petition in Congress urging Columbia to fire De Genova. (It didn't.) “As for academic freedom, what exactly is academic about wishing a bunch of young Americans slaughtered in battle?” Hayworth said. Horowitz says there's a difference between thoughtful, patriotic criticism of the nation's war plans and criticisms that cross the line into treason, though he admits that the distinction can be hard to draw. On the treasonous side, he includes criticism that President Bush deceived the nation into supporting the war with Iraq, saying that such attacks on the nation's leader during wartime “sap our will” and “undermine patriotism,” potentially weakening the resolve of soldiers and citizens alike. With the war on terror in progress, the country is not well served by partisan academic attacks on the president that may “make us vulnerable to an enemy that wants to destroy us,” he says. But defenders of academic free speech say that it's especially valuable in difficult times. It's precisely when people's passions are running high and mostly in the same direction that it's most important to “raise the critiques of the dominant culture,” because that is when vital critical questions are most likely to be overlooked, says Jensen of the University of Texas. It's far too easy to accept the majority view “as neutral . . . apolitical” while trying to squelch critics by accusing them of “proselytizing” for extreme opinions, he says. Today's political debates often sound like “two drunks in a bar,” says Jensen. But encouraging university faculty and students to be more politically outspoken could bring “a deeper and richer sense of argument” to political discourse. Instead, debates over war too often lead only to charges that critics “aren't American.” “Intellectual freedom — the freedom to ask questions, to uncover facts, to speak independently without fear — is the foundation of our democracy and remains of critical importance, especially in a time of crisis,” reads a resolution adopted by the scholarly group the American Studies Association in November 2002. Rather than limiting professors' freedom to express their views, including in political speeches made off campus, universities' primary duty should be to protect academic speech, whose fragility and value both become clear in times of crisis, according to University of Pennsylvania history professor Alan Charles Kors. The idea that the off-campus political speech of professors should be silenced on the grounds that academia should speak with a single voice in troubled times “is absurd, immoral, and an invitation to a mediocre professorate,” he wrote. “Free speech is indispensable to a free and, in the deepest sense, adaptive society.” But students don't seem to buy this argument. Another fast-growing trend on campuses is shouting down invited speakers because of their political views. Conservatives like Horowitz are frequently victims of this tactic, but liberals, such as Iraq war opponents, also have been shouted off campuses in recent years. Go to top Background Professional Conduct The roots of academic freedom date back nearly 1,000 years in Western culture. But the concept developed slowly in the United States and was not recognized by the courts until the 1950s, when the so-called Red Scare triggered by U.S. Sen. Joseph R. McCarthy, R-Wis., spurred states to ban communists from teaching. The idea that scholars themselves should decide how to teach and what questions to research — free from outside coercion — began in Europe in the Middle Ages. But the concept of academic freedom did not begin to gain wide acceptance until the 19th century, when research became a primary mission in some universities, first in Europe and then in the United States. In the United States before the Civil War, church leaders — not professors — had the final say on curriculums because most institutions of higher learning were run by religious denominations. Around the turn of the 20th century, professors, like other professionals such as lawyers and doctors, began establishing professional standards in the form of a “social compact” to govern their behavior. College faculty members pledged to pursue knowledge without bias and to educate students, says Neil Hamilton, a law professor at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minn., and author of two books on academic freedom and ethics. In return, courts and governments take a largely hands-off policy toward faculty members regarding their on-the-job conduct. Professors were granted academic freedom to develop their own curriculums and research agendas — even at government-funded institutions — under the implied understanding that they were “the most knowledgeable members of society in their own fields,” says De George of the University of Kansas. Academic freedom was granted not for the benefit of the professors but for the benefit of society, he says, which “has an interest” in the new knowledge professors develop. As a result, professors were allowed to explore ideas outside of conventional boundaries. A faculty “is employed . . . to test and propose revisions in the prevailing wisdom, not to inculcate the prevailing wisdom in others,” wrote William and Mary's Van Alstyne. Similar to the role devil's advocates played in churches, “universities are licensed truth-hunters defined and bound by academic freedom.” Professors Under Fire As professors began to establish this social compact threats to academic freedom arose, mostly from college trustees. In the late 19th century, religious fundamentalists among university trustees and administrators began to challenge professors' right to freely challenge prevailing opinion, wrote Robert Ivie, a professor of rhetoric and public culture at Indiana University. By the turn of the 20th century, trustees — who were “unfettered capitalists” — sought to silence professors with different economic views, and during World War I an “outbreak of patriotism” was accompanied by widespread suppression of civil rights, including academics' right to speak freely and still keep their jobs, according to Ivie. Partisan politics was also bouncing some professors from their jobs. After the Populist Party won big in the 1896 Kansas state elections, all faculty contracts at Kansas State University were canceled. Some professors were later rehired, but all Republicans were banished from the economics department and the administration. However, in an election a few years later Republicans emerged victorious, and they shifted the faculty balance again. Disturbed by the threat of losing their jobs because of their opinions, professors from around the country came together in 1915 to codify the principles for professional academic conduct that had developed over several decades. Led by two philosophy professors — Arthur Lovejoy of Johns Hopkins University and John Dewey of Columbia — the group formed the AAUP and quickly published the “General Report of the Committee on Academic Freedom and Academic Tenure” — outlining most of the standards still espoused by the profession today. Trustees govern colleges and universities but do so as “a public trust,” according to the report. Thus, according to AAUP guidelines, trustees cannot behave in their own proprietary interest but must respect colleges' academic freedom and allow them to advance knowledge and teaching and develop “experts for various branches of public service.” Trustees “have no right to bind the reason or the conscience of any professor.” Dewey expected the AAUP's main role to be making the case for scholarship to the American public, according to Tierney, at the University of Southern California. “In his inaugural address to the AAUP Dewey dismissed the idea that they would need to have as a major focus the investigation of violations of academic freedom,” Tierney wrote. But a year later, “he acknowledged that he had made a miscalculation.” In its first two years of existence, the AAUP had to deal with more than 30 cases of infringements of academic freedom. A primary reason for the high volume of early cases was patriotic fervor accompanying World War I. In 1917, for example, the president of Columbia University declared an end to academic freedom on his campus for as long as war raged. In a commencement address, President Nicholas Murray Butler acknowledged that part of a university's mission is to protect academic speech. But that mission ended in wartime, he declared. “What had been tolerated before becomes intolerable now. What had been wrong-headed was now sedition. What had been folly was now treason.” In 1940, the AAUP argued that a tenure system — in which qualified faculty would hold their jobs permanently after a probationary period — would help to uphold professors' academic freedom to investigate and speak. Legal Rights In the 1940s and '50s, a new era of academic suppression began, launched by state governments seeking to keep communists or their sympathizers from teaching in tax-supported institutions. New York's 1949 Feinberg law, for example, banned the employment of anyone who belonged to a group advocating the forceful overthrow of government. The earliest legal challenges to such laws occurred when the McCarthy anti-communism era was going strong in Washington, and in those cases the Supreme Court generally upheld the teaching bans. As the Red Scare died down, however, the court began to uphold academic-freedom rights of professors and universities, and in 1967 it overturned the Feinberg law. But even as the early-1950s court upheld the right of states to ban teachers with unpopular views, justices who disagreed were defining academic freedom for the first time as a legal — not just a professional — concept, according to William and Mary's Van Alstyne. For example, in a 1952 case involving the Feinberg law, Adler v. Board of Education, Justice William O. Douglas, who had been a professor, wrote of academic freedom as a “distinct, identified subset” of the First Amendment right to free speech. In 1957, in Sweezy v. New Hampshire, the court's majority came down on the side of academic freedom, blocking New Hampshire legislators from investigating the political views of Paul Sweezy, a Marxist Harvard University economist, based on an allegedly subversive lecture he gave at the University of New Hampshire. In a concurring opinion in that case, Justice Felix Frankfurter, also a former academic, wrote of the primary importance of academic freedom. He cited “grave harm” that could result “from governmental intrusion into the intellectual life of a university” and the “dependence of free societies on free universities,” concluding that government intervention is not allowable, whether it is overt or occurs through measures that merely “[tend] to check the ardor and fearlessness of scholars.” Since the Supreme Court first began defining and then defending it, the court has put academic freedom “on a higher plane than other rights,” allowing universities to exercise special rights if they are key to carrying out universities' responsibility to educate and seek knowledge, says Van Alstyne. For instance, he explains, the court has allowed public universities to make racial distinctions — such as through affirmative-action programs — even though outside of education the government generally loses cases where racial distinction is involved. The court has accepted affirmative-action programs on academic-freedom grounds, he says, by arguing that the programs have the educational purpose of “building in a new cadre of people who will enhance the university's mission.” Political Correctness Since the late 19th century, there have been six or seven major cycles of crackdowns on academic autonomy, but only in the past few decades have attacks come from university students and faculty rather than from “outside the walls,” says Hamilton of the University of St. Thomas. In the 1970s, for instance, students and professors opposed to the Vietnam War called on universities to shut down the activities of professors who pursued military-related work. In the 1980s, academia faced strong internal challenges to academic freedom, as liberal students and faculty pushed for adoption of so-called speech codes aimed at making campuses more hospitable to female and gay students and students from racial and ethnic minorities. Ironically, faculty that had long fought to maintain their academic freedom of speech were now in favor of banning supposedly harassing speech. “For the first time there was a significant group of professors on the side of limiting” freedom, says Hamilton. The University of Wisconsin at Madison was the first campus to adopt codes banning harassing speech. The university adopted a general anti-harassment code in 1981, which covered speech, and a formal hate-speech ban in 1989. Those who favored the speech codes said they were necessary to prevent a rise in discriminatory harassment,” as female and minority students entered university life in greater numbers, wrote David Hudson, a research attorney for the Arlington, Va.-based First Amendment Center. The center is run by Vanderbilt University and the Freedom Forum, a foundation that advocates for free speech and freedom of the press. But conservative critics said the codes were part of “a general movement of political correctness.” By 1995, about 350 campuses had adopted speech codes. Speech codes were one of the few attacks on academic freedom launched by liberals from inside the university, says the University of Wisconsin's Downs. But they are just as wrong-headed as censorship measures imposed by conservatives, he says. However, speech codes are harder to fight, he says, because they “are established in the name of social justice.” The Supreme Court has never ruled on college speech codes. But, when challenged in court, they generally have been struck down. In a 1989 case, Doe v. University of Michigan, the federal court for the eastern district of Michigan invalidated a 1988 ban adopted after students threatened to sue over several racially motivated campus incidents, including distribution of fliers using virulently racist epithets and calling for “open season” on blacks. A graduate student, known only as John Doe, challenged the speech code, arguing that it could squelch discussion of such valid topics as individual differences in humans' mental abilities. The court agreed, saying that it was “sympathetic to the university's obligation to ensure equal educational opportunities for all of its students” but that “such efforts must not be at the expense of free speech.” Likewise, in 1991 a federal district court declared the University of Wisconsin's 1989 hate-speech ban unconstitutional. But the school's anti-harassment code remained in place for another decade. Many faculty members had disconcerting run-ins with the code, wrote Lester Hunt, a philosophy professor at the University of Wisconsin. In 1992, Hunt's department chair warned him that a Native American student had accused him of using “anti-Indian language” in his lectures, discussions with the student and in the margins of her papers. Although Hunt was “eventually found to have done nothing that deserved discipline,” he writes that the months-long ordeal of serial interrogations “was as painful as any experience I have had.” By 1997, some Wisconsin faculty members were arguing strongly for repeal of the code, and — after two years of intense debate — the faculty voted to end the program in 1999. Also in 1999, Boston attorney Silverglate and the University of Pennsylvania's Kors established the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) to litigate against attacks on academic speech, especially those triggered by speech codes. FIRE's litigation project scored its first win in June 2003, when Citrus College in California agreed to eliminate its code in response to a FIRE lawsuit. Since then, at least four other colleges have rescinded their codes after suits were filed. Go to top Current Situation States Step In While many campuses have retained their speech codes, which originated among liberals, the latest wave of threats to faculty autonomy is coming from conservatives. Since 2004 bills have been introduced in at least 18 states that would give lawmakers or committees more oversight on hiring and other practices at publicly funded schools. While the measures vary, all of them are modeled on the Academic Bill of Rights (ABOR) promoted by Horowitz and some of the SAF's 150 local chapters. Arguing that today's campuses are overrun with left-leaning faculty who politicize classes, harass conservative students and refuse to hire or promote conservative professors, ABOR supporters call for universities to pledge themselves anew to principles that SAF says would restore healthy intellectual diversity on campuses. The ABOR bills call for universities to observe several key principles designed to protect intellectual diversity, which Horowitz says are based on the AAUP's principles of academic freedom. These include ensuring that “no faculty . . . be hired or fired or denied promotion or tenure on the basis of his or her political or religious beliefs” and that students be “graded solely on the basis of their reasons, answers and appropriate knowledge, rather than on their political or religious beliefs.” The proposals also ask that humanities and social sciences reading lists provide students with “dissenting sources.” They also urge that the selection of speakers and allocation of funds for student activities “promote intellectual pluralism.” Horowitz says he did not originally intend to advance his proposal as legislation, but wanted university administrators, not faculties — “I have no hope for faculties” — to adopt the principles voluntarily. But after “a year of frustrating discussions with people in academia” and not convincing a single university president to push for an academic bill of rights, he turned his attention to seeking a legislative solution. Horowitz admits that the administrators' lack of interest may reflect their skepticism of his motives. “I am the wrong person, probably, to be the messenger here,” he says, acknowledging that he has a reputation as a no-holds-barred street fighter for right-wing causes. Horowitz has a long history of political activism, first as a leftist and then — after a friend was murdered in the 1970s by a member of the leftist Black Panthers — as a vociferous right-winger, whose projects are largely backed by conservative organizations like the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, the John M. Olin Foundation and the Sarah Scaife Foundation. Regardless of Horowitz's motivations, the threat of legislative action has spurred university administrators in two states to act. Early last year, the Republican majority of a Colorado legislative committee approved a bill requiring state colleges to establish special grievance procedures for students who believe faculties have created a “hostile environment toward their political or religious beliefs.” Immediately following the committee's 6-5 vote, Elizabeth Hoffman, then president of the multi-campus University of Colorado system, asked lawmakers whether they would withdraw the bill if the university pledged to provide protections on its own. In March 2004, the presidents of Colorado's public colleges promised bill sponsor state Rep. Shawn Mitchell that they would review students' rights and campus grievance procedures to ensure that political diversity is recognized and protected and that the colleges will offer equal support — including a percentage of student activity fees — to all student groups, regardless of their viewpoints. This year an inter-university council in Ohio announced that public-college administrators will sign a similar resolution in October. In response, Republican State Rep. Larry Mumper has stopped pushing for his Horowitz-inspired bill, saying that he prefers the universities' compromise action. Most other legislation is either still pending or has been shelved for this year. Only in Georgia and Pennsylvania have lawmakers approved bills. In March 2004, Georgia legislators passed a non-binding resolution recommending that all public universities adhere to ABOR principles. In July 2005, the Pennsylvania House of Representatives approved formation of a select committee of lawmakers to examine intellectual-diversity issues at state-affiliated institutions. The committee will not necessarily propose legislative or regulatory action following its analysis. The Pennsylvania vote is a step toward stopping “what we consider the abuse toward students,” said Brad Shipp, SAF national field director. In other recent action, after a Florida House committee approved an ABOR bill in June 2005, the state Senate responded to faculty outcries by refusing to consider the legislation, killing it for now. Many academics are leery of any measure that might threaten professional autonomy. “Some — alumni, legislators, states — are trying to force [universities to ensure their faculties represent] a diversity of opinions,” says De George of the University of Kansas. “But I question: 'Do they know what they're doing?' There would be no way to implement that.” Legislators “don't know how specific courses should be taught.” Congressional Concerns Congress also is considering policing academic freedom and diversity. Bills pending in both the House and the Senate to reauthorize federal higher-education programs would require diversity of viewpoints on campus — provisions that trouble the AAUP. In July, a House committee passed HR 609, which expresses the non-binding “sense of Congress” that colleges should ensure that students' work is evaluated “without regard to their political, ideological or religious beliefs” and that the selection of speakers and allocation of student activity funds “include diverse viewpoints.” When House members were drafting the bill in July, Massachusetts Democratic Rep. John Tierney tried unsuccessfully to remove the language, arguing that colleges already have systems in place to protect students. But panel Republicans stood strong behind the provision. California Rep. Howard “Buck” McKeon — a GOP author of the final language (somewhat softened from earlier versions) — said that college students with dissenting political views too often are “being treated unfairly.” The bill, he said, would send “a clear signal” that discrimination based on political beliefs will not be tolerated. On Sept. 8, a Senate panel approved its version of the measure, which promises “protection of student speech and association rights” but excludes references to political and religious beliefs. Unlike the House bill, the Senate measure passed unanimously. The Senate language sticks close to a resolution endorsed in June by the American Council on Education and other university groups, including the AAUP, urging colleges to facilitate the “free and open exchange of ideas” and to ensure that students are not “intimidated, harassed, discouraged from speaking out or discriminated against.” While the AAUP prefers the Senate language to the House provision, it wants lawmakers to eliminate both proposals. In a Sept. 8 letter to the Senate education panel the group said it fears that governmental oversight of curriculum, coursework and classroom discussions threatens “the well deserved reputation for excellence” enjoyed today by U.S. higher education. Other academics say academic diversity measures could end up backfiring on conservatives. Just as conservatives are now using the liberals' speech codes to impose conservative viewpoints on liberal campuses, liberals may decide to use the diversity laws to force conservative colleges to bring in liberal speakers. Many academics also oppose another House provision that would establish an International Higher Education Advisory Board. Concerned about Islamic terrorism and the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian struggles, some Middle East analysts — especially those with strong pro-Israel leanings — want Congress to monitor international-studies programs to ensure that they are not taken over by pro-Islamic and pro-Arab scholars. The board would monitor and evaluate a representative sample of federally funded international-education programs. While it would be prohibited from influencing curriculum, says House Education Committee Chair Rep. John Boehner, R-Ohio, such a board is needed because international-studies programs are the major force shaping U.S. students' understanding of global issues. But Matthew Owens, AAUP senior federal relations officer, said the panel's very broad powers to demand information would allow it to “go on a witchhunt on any kind of issue.” Heat Over Warming Congress doesn't have to enact legislation to cast a pall on scholars' courage to follow research where it leads. Lawmakers have the power to pressure researchers in other ways, as a Capitol Hill flap that began this summer shows. Scientific associations and the GOP chairman of the House Science Committee claim that House Commerce Committee Chairman Joe Barton, R-Texas, is trying to intimidate three climate scientists who published studies showing a sharp rise in global temperatures over the past few centuries. The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change recently cited their findings, among others, in suggesting that fossil-fuel consumption contributes significantly to climate warming. On June 23, Barton, a critic of the idea that human activity accelerates global warming, demanded a decade's worth of detailed data from all studies the three scientists had authored or coauthored, as well as computer programs they used for climate analysis. Barton has not issued subpoenas for the material, but he has the authority to do so. The scientists — University of Virginia Assistant Professor of environmental science Michael Mann, University of Massachusetts at Amherst Professor of geosciences Raymond Bradley, and University of Arizona Prof. Malcolm Hughes, a specialist in tree-ring research — have responded that, as with most scientific research materials, their data and working materials are all available on publicly accessible Internet sites. Barton wrote the scientists after a Feb. 14, 2005, Wall Street Journal article raised questions about “methodological flaws and data errors” in the researchers' work. The U.N. climate panel used data from the studies to conclude that 20th-century temperature increases in the Northern Hemisphere likely were the largest in the last 1,000 years. Barton said he wanted to review the data because the dispute surrounding the studies “bears directly on important questions about the federally funded work upon which climate studies rely.” But groups like the National Academy of Sciences and the American Association for the Advancement of Science argue that Barton is simply using congressional power to intimidate professors whose research conclusions he disagrees with, despite widespread expert opinion to the contrary. House Science Committee Chairman Sherwood Boehlert, R-N.Y. — who favors cutting greenhouse-gas emissions to help slow global warming — agrees, noting that the criticisms in The Wall Street Journal article were raised by an economics professor and a retired mining executive “whose claims have been widely contradicted by respected experts.” Barton's demand constitutes a “misguided and illegitimate investigation” that could set a “chilling” precedent for academic freedom, Boehlert wrote to him on July 14. “Are scientists now supposed to look over their shoulders to determine if their conclusions might prompt a congressional inquiry, no matter how legitimate their work? If Congress wants public policy to be informed by scientific research, then it has to allow that research to operate outside the political realm.” Go to top Outlook New Age? As long as there are controversial issues and professors who take unpopular stands, fights over academic freedom will recur. Some analysts warn that many professors may not pay sufficient attention to the responsibilities that academic freedom entails, notably, the requirement to avoid indoctrinating students or dragging irrelevant topics into the classroom, especially politicized ones. Conservative critics' best argument “is that the professorate is corrupted, and there's some evidence that this may be the case,” says law professor Hamilton of the University of St. Thomas. The “social compact” must be renewed in each generation, he says, because some professors are clueless about the responsibilities that accompany the concept of academic freedom. “Some will say, 'Academic freedom means I can say what I darned well please.' ” Misunderstandings aside, many professors believe academic freedom will survive in much the same form as we know it today. “I taught during the Cold War,” another era when lawmakers fretted about academic subversives, says De George of the University of Kansas. “And sometimes I worried a little bit. Should I publish or not? Is there a chilling effect every now and then? There might be. But we'll ride out these little periods.” Others, however, suggest that we may be entering a new academic age, driven in part by widely available Web sites that let students air their views about professors. “Teachers are doing things they've always done, but now those things are turning up on the Internet,” says French of FIRE, “so they do feel a chill” on their activities. But, he asks, “Is [it] a bad thing . . . to make you think twice about what you say? I don't think so.” But he is quick to add that if sharing information about professors on the Internet leads one to argue for censorship, “we are against it.” He envisions a new world of information that “creates market-based incentives for change” at universities, coming from people with different political ideologies who are struggling to pay for their children's educations. Universities must soon re-evaluate whether they're upholding their end of the social compact — fulfilling their public mission — says Harvard Law School Prof. Lani Guinier. “Many external pressures are pushing universities to play a role in educating the larger society — their consistent, historical role” required as a result of the subsidies universities receive. But, university presidents, who used to be thought leaders, now are mainly fund raisers, she says. “They don't seem to be focusing their institutions on being an arm of democracy.” Meanwhile, Horowitz of the Center for the Study of Popular Culture predicts that Academic Bill of Rights laws will increase ideological diversity on campus, and “it's going to happen more quickly than you can imagine.” But there's a twist. More ideological diversity on campus will mean that the best ideology — conservatism — will win the public debate, he says. “My view is this: Once there is a fair intellectual debate with relative parity — or we're only outnumbered 3-to-1 — then we win hands down. The left is intellectually bankrupt.” Go to top Pro/Con Pro
President, Center for the Study of Popular Culture. From testimony before the Education Committee of the Ohio Senate, March 1, 2005 | An education — as distinct from an indoctrination — makes students aware of a spectrum of scholarly views on matters of controversy and opinion, and does not make . . . answers to . . . controversial matters the goal of instruction. This is sound doctrine and common sense, and in one form or another it is recognized in the academic-freedom guidelines of all . . . institutions of higher learning in the United States. Unfortunately, it is a principle increasingly honored in the breach and not in observance in American universities today. All too frequently professors behave as political advocates in the classroom, express opinions in a partisan manner on controversial issues irrelevant to the academic subject and even grade students in a manner designed to enforce their conformity to professorial prejudices. . . . An education should make students aware of the range of scholarly views on a subject, teach students how to marshal evidence on behalf of a point of view and instruct them on how to make a logical case for their conclusions. An education is not about providing students with the “correct” conclusions on controversial matters. We live in a democracy that is based on the proposition that there is no correct conclusion available to ordinary mortals; that no one — not even professors — [possesses] absolute truth. If there [were] only one correct conclusion to all controversial issues, there would be no need for a multi-party democracy. . . . The only party necessary would be the one with the truth. No such party exists. No such professor exists. . . . We don't go to our doctors' offices expecting to get a lecture on politics. That is because doctors are professionals whose responsibility is to minister to all their patients regardless of their patients' political beliefs. Introducing passionately divisive matters into a medical consultation can injure the trust between doctors and their patients, which is essential to the healing mission. Why is the profession of education any different? When students go to their professors' offices, for example, they go for advice and help. When professors plaster their office doors with partisan cartoons that mock the deeply held beliefs of students on matters like abortion and party affiliation — which they regularly do — this creates a wall between faculty and students, which is injurious to the counseling process. How can a professor teach a student whom he regards as a partisan adversary? The answer is he cannot. | Con
President, United Faculty of Florida. Statement on legislation introduced in the Florida legislature, April 5, 2005 | The so-called Academic Bill of Rights drafted by self-proclaimed conservative activist David Horowitz is a template for legislation that attacks free inquiry and endangers academic freedom in the name of defending academic freedom in universities and colleges. It steals language academic organizations have used for decades to articulate and defend academic freedom and uses this language to mask an attack on intellectual freedom. [This attack] holds the potential for limiting what can legitimately be discussed in the classroom and mandating what must be discussed. . . . Controversial issues need to be discussed in classrooms, and it is dangerous to draw boundaries in the law over how and when they should be introduced. The legislature should not become involved in defining or shaping what is controversial, or, for that matter, whether it should be heard or how it should be handled. This violates constitutional rights and undermines . . . the [academy's ability] . . . to explore and investigate freely and make public the results without political sanctions limiting what is permissible. The “balance” requirement, which demands opposing sides of every controversial issue in the classroom be heard and given equal time, reduces all discussion of controversial issues to a debate over stereotypical versions of extreme alternatives. . . . This will, if written into law, cause a dumbing down of the mental life of students to the cartoon version of intelligence we find on right-wing talk shows. [Here], everything controversial is broken into categories such as conservative vs. liberal, religious vs. secular humanist, or American vs. communist. It forces classrooms to waste time giving equal time to aberrant opinions when there could be a developed discussion of alternatives . . . viable from an academic point of view. The legislation has the effect of undermining mature discussion; in other words, it . . . undermines academic freedom while claiming to promote academic freedom. Insisting that the legislature use its powers to make rules for academic freedom is a serious mistake. The effect of this legislation, with its requirement of a grievance procedure that enforces a laundry list of expectations of what life will be like for the student, is that litigation proliferates. . . . This legislation jeopardizes all that faculty have done in recruiting efforts to build their universities and colleges into viable institutions. This political clampdown on intellectual freedom will kill our recruiting efforts, accelerate the exodus of faculty that is already occurring due to salary conditions and destroy the quality of academic life. | Go to top
Chronology
| | | | 1860s-1910s | U.S. professors develop principles of academic freedom and ethics, but some trustees with church and industry ties continue to fire professors with unpopular views. | | 1894 | The University of Wisconsin becomes an early defender of academic freedom when it declares that faculty members may express their intellectual opinions without fear of reprisals. | | 1901 | Stanford University fires economist Edward Ross due to his liberal views on finance and his support for eugenics. | | 1915 | The American Association of University Professors (AAUP) is formed, with the aim of educating the public about the value of scholarship and academic freedom. | | 1920s-1960s | Campus speech is suppressed by state and federal governments that target professors suspected of being communists. | | 1949 | New York enacts the Feinberg law, forbidding public employment to members of any organization that advocates violent overthrow of the government. | | 1950-1953 | Sen. Joseph R. McCarthy, R-Wis., leads congressional investigations of suspected communists, about a fifth of whom are from academia. | | 1951 | William F. Buckley Jr. publishes God and Man at Yale: The Superstitions of 'Academic Freedom,' a book arguing that Yale University is overrun with leftist professors. | | 1952 | In Adler v. Board of Education, the U.S. Supreme Court upholds New York's Feinberg law. Justice William O. Douglas' dissenting opinion marks the first time a justice asserts academic freedom as a right protected by the First Amendment. | | 1960s-1970s | The first attacks on academic freedom by faculty and students occur as some protest their universities' involvement in defense projects related to the Vietnam War. | | 1980s-1990s | As more women and minority students enter universities, campuses ban speech that feminists, homosexuals and others consider harassing or hateful. | | 1999 | Faculty at the University of Wisconsin-Madison vote to repeal their 1981 speech-harassment code. | | 1999 | The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) is founded to protect free speech on campus. | | 2000s | After the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and political victories that give conservative Republicans control of Congress and the White House, politically and religiously conservative students begin to claim that campus speech codes should protect them from ideologically based harassment. | | November 2001 | The conservative American Council of Trustees and Alumni publishes more than 100 faculty remarks made after Sept. 11 that the group says undermine the U.S. response to Islamic terrorism. | | 2002 | Conservative scholar Daniel Pipes establishes the Campus Watch Web site to track anti-Israel bias in university programs. | | 2003 | California's Citrus Colleges eliminates its speech code after FIRE files a lawsuit. Conservative activist David Horowitz establishes Students for Academic Freedom to push for ideological diversity in college faculties. | | 2004 | Georgia legislature passes a resolution, based on Horowitz's Academic Bill of Rights (ABOR), urging colleges to ensure ideological diversity. After a Colorado legislative committee backs ABOR legislation, the state's public colleges endorse their own diversity plan. | | 2005 | A Florida Senate committee refuses to consider an ABOR bill that passed a state House committee. . . . Pennsylvania House approves a new ABOR-inspired committee to examine diversity issues on campus. . . . After Ohio legislators consider an ABOR bill, the state's public colleges pledge to develop their own plan for promoting ideological diversity. . . . New studies show that college faculties are more left-leaning than ever. | | | | Go to top Short Features Corporate funding of university research is on the increase, and increasingly restricting academic freedom — the ability of scientists to follow their research wherever it leads — according to a new Harvard University study. For example, around 70 percent of clinical drug trials in the United States are now funded by the pharmaceutical industry, according to the Harvard School of Public Health study. And while many universities seem determined to maintain professors' independence when pursuing corporate-funded research, others seem willing to allow corporate funders to make crucial decisions, the study says. The differences between schools' approaches “raises the possibility that industry sponsors could 'forum shop,' channeling their studies to relatively permissive institutions,” according to the study. Some responses to the Harvard survey raise questions about just who is running the show at some research institutions — the scientists or the companies funding their studies? Half of the schools responding to the study said they would allow corporate sponsors to draft the papers that report professors' research, limiting the academic investigators' role to suggesting revisions. But 40 percent of the schools responding said they wouldn't give funders such latitude. Twenty-four percent of the schools would allow industry funders to insert their own statistical analysis of data into research manuscripts, and 41 percent would allow sponsors to prohibit academic researchers from sharing their data with others even after a study was over. Some scientists consider sharing data with third parties to be “important for verifying research findings,” the study authors note. Academic freedom “boils down to freedom of inquiry, exploration, investigation, research, expression, publication and dissemination,” said Lisa Bero, a pharmacy professor at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). “If you are receiving money, there should be no strings attached that can get in the way of any of those things.” However, strings are attached, Bero said. Bero contends that some studies are funded specifically to add to research that will bolster a funder's policy or business objectives, rather than to seek new knowledge. Sponsors also get too involved in analyzing data and sometimes allow only positive data to be submitted for publication in peer-reviewed journals, she says. When psychologist William Pelham, of the State University of New York at Buffalo, conducted pharmaceutical industry-funded research on attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, he said the company pressured him to revise three journal articles he'd written about the research, to minimize the contribution that non-drug treatments made to patients' outcomes and to cast the company's drug in a positive light. Further casting doubt on professors' ability to conduct agenda-free research are the financial rewards academics can receive from working on industry-sponsored projects, such as stock options and consulting contracts, Bero suggested. Such personal financial ties between corporate funders and academic researchers “are increasing all over the country among all sorts of academics,” Bero said. At UCSF, for example, about 30 percent of faculty had such personal financial ties to research funders in 2002 and 2003, she estimated. Corporations only fund about 7 percent of academic research, but “that percentage has grown more rapidly than support from all other sources over the past two decades” and is expected to continue its fast growth, according to the American Association of University Professors. Corporate funding focuses on medicine, biology, chemistry and engineering. Meanwhile, overall industry funding at universities — not only of research but also of buildings, professorships, academic programs, think tanks and more — has become “omnipresent,” says Larry Soley, a journalism professor at Marquette University and author of a 1995 book on corporate funding of academia. “It's reached the point where every time you turn around, you see a donor's name on something.” Soley says the influx of corporate funding has skewed university research portfolios toward applied studies such as drug development and away from basic science and also contributed to the growing imbalance in pay between high-paid research professors and a growing cadre of non-tenured and adjunct faculty who are “exploited” financially while doing the lion's share of teaching. Worse, “faculties don't even speak about” the transformation, says Soley. Nevertheless, when it comes to research funding, “partnerships between industry sponsors and academics are absolutely essential” to the advancement of science, and “the public benefits incalculably from them,” the Harvard study says. However, the relationships do “have to be carefully managed.” It's vital that professors consider their public role in the new world of corporate funding, says Bero, adding that researchers have more responsibility than ever to think twice about whether their academic freedom is being compromised. “The key here is whether it is OK to take money from anybody if there are strings attached,” she says.
Go to top Some of the fiercest disputes over academic freedom in the United States have revolved around the Iraq war, Islamic terrorism and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Perhaps the most controversial question is how much freedom professors should have to make politically charged statements in times of national emergency. Another is whether pro-Muslim and pro-Arab scholars are dominating Middle East-studies programs and marginalizing pro-Israel scholars. For example, in 2002 the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC) recommended a book on Islam — Approaching the Qur'an: The Early Revelations — for all freshman and transfer students. In response, a state legislative committee voted to terminate some of UNC's funding, arguing that assigning the book for orientation-week discussions constituted indoctrination. Ultimately, the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals backed the university. And at Minnesota's St. Olaf College, two students complained after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks that professors were making students feel uneasy by questioning the Bush administration's response to the attacks. The dean of students agreed, saying that students “were just scared, and an intellectual discussion of the political ramifications of this was not helpful for them.” Meanwhile, here are some of the professors who have achieved notoriety in the academic-freedom debates: Ward Churchill — The controversial professor of ethnic studies at the University of Colorado, Boulder, drew national attention after he wrote that victims of the attack on the World Trade Center were appropriate targets for the terrorists' rage, which he said was triggered by America's attempts at global financial domination. Colorado Gov. Bill Owens and others called for Churchill's dismissal, and he resigned as his department's chair. In Churchill's defense, the Foundation for Individual Rights on Campus noted, “An investigation of protected speech is itself improper and has a chilling effect on the free on exchange of ideas.” Sami Al-Arian — The professor of computer science at the University of South Florida (USF) was accused of having links to Palestinian terrorist groups during the 1990s through the think tank he founded — World and Islam Studies Enterprise. Shortly after 9/11, videotape of anti-Israel statements by Al-Arian came to light, and the university quickly put him on paid leave. In February 2003, the federal government charged Al-Arian with conspiracy to commit murder because of his alleged efforts to raise money for a suicide attack on Israel. Within a week, the university fired him. The case raises “grave issues of academic freedom and due process,” according to the American Association of University Professors. The group rebuked USF for firing Al-Arian before he could defend himself in court. “We ought not to eliminate basic precepts [of justice] when it is inconvenient or we find troubling the messenger's message,” wrote William Tierney, a University of Southern California professor of higher education. Daniel Pipes — The conservative scholar founded the Campus Watch Web site in 2002 to track anti-Israel bias on U.S. campuses. Pipes accuses many Middle East studies programs of promoting extreme views, such as that many Muslims around the world “are at the mercy of U.S. foreign policies,” according to Hamid Dabashi, a professor of Iranian studies at Columbia University, and cited by Campus Watch. The site became highly controversial after Pipes published “dossiers” giving contact information for professors holding what he said were suspect views. Pipes removed the individual listings after critics accused him of “blacklisting” professors for their views. The American Civil Liberties Union says Campus Watch “threatens to suppress discussion about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict” by encouraging “citizen informant” behavior, which Pipes denies. Richard Berthold — The University of New Mexico (UNM) history professor found himself at the center of a hot debate over academic freedom on Sept. 11, 2001. “In front of perhaps 100 students, I . . . uttered the remark that brought me my 15 minutes of fame — or, better, infamy: 'Anybody who blows up the Pentagon gets my vote.' ” The university suspended Berthold from teaching freshmen, and UNM President William Gordon said he “failed to carry out his responsibility to his students, when he made gratuitous remarks that were . . . potentially hurtful in the classroom.” But academic-freedom watchdogs criticized the university's quick move to discipline Berthold. The university had both the moral and the legal obligation, under the First Amendment, not to “initiate any action, or even threaten any action, against a professor on the basis of his or her clearly protected political statements, regardless of the offense given to others,” wrote Greg Lukianoff, director of legal and public advocacy at the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education.
Go to top Go to top Conservatives have complained for years that liberal academics dominate campuses, but now there is proof, according to a new survey. Along with other studies, the survey indicates that liberals and Democrats greatly outnumber conservatives and Republicans and that the difference extends beyond humanities and social-science departments into areas such as science and accounting. Stanley Rothman, an emeritus professor of government at Smith College, and other researchers did the analysis. The findings suggest “that complaints of ideologically based discrimination in academic advancement deserve serious consideration and further study” and that “a sharp shift to the left has taken place among college faculty in recent years.” From 1984 to 2004, the percentage of faculty describing themselves as politically left-of-center increased from 39 percent to more than 70 percent while conservatives declined from 34 percent to 15 percent. That makes college professors about four times as liberal as the general public, where 18 percent of people describe themselves as liberal, while 33 percent say they are conservative. The data also show that in addition to courses that traditionally were taught by liberals, such as humanities and social sciences, other fields of study such as science, mathematics, engineering and business are catching up. Liberal faculty now outnumber conservative by 51 percent to 19 percent among engineering faculty and 49 percent to 39 percent among business professors. In biology departments, Democrats outnumber Republicans by more than 4-to-1, and in physics departments by nearly 10-to-1. Agriculture is the only field in which Republicans outnumber Democrats, by 31 percent to 24 percent. The ratios are likely to continue shifting leftward, according to a recent study by economist Daniel Klein of Santa Clara University. Surveying only younger faculty members at Stanford and the University of California, Berkeley, Klein found a ratio of 30.5-to-1 in favor of Democrats, concluding that “Republicans are an endangered species” on campuses. Why the liberal shift? The possibility that faculty groupthink is pushing out potential Republicans could explain the phenomenon, according to the Rothman survey. It found that political conservatives — along with women and practicing Christians — are disproportionately employed by less prestigious colleges than their levels of scholarly achievement would seem to warrant. While the analysis is a preliminary one, it appears that female, conservative, Republican and actively Christian faculty all face a disadvantage in the job market, the authors wrote. Another unanswered question is how much faculty political beliefs affect teaching. According to a 2004 survey conducted for the conservative American Council of Trustees and Alumni, professors' politics do affect undergraduates' classroom experiences, said council President Anne Neal. For example, 29 percent of students felt they had to agree with their professors to get good grades, 48 percent said that they'd observed campus presentations on political issues that seemed completely one-sided and 46 percent said they had seen professors use the classroom to present their own political views. Other observers remain unconvinced that students are reporting actual political indoctrination rather than simply a disconcerting first exposure to new ideas. Recalling a course he once taught on the Vietnam War, Roger Bowen, general secretary of the American Association of University Professors, said that many students registered disbelief when he suggested that the Johnson and Nixon administrations might not always have told the truth about the war. “They come from high schools . . . where they heard something very different,” making it “impossible to imagine that your government might lie to you,” he said. “When you hear that, what is the assumption? The professor must not be telling the truth, or the professor is biased.”
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Bibliography
Books
Downs, Donald A. , Restoring Free Speech and Liberty on Campus , Cambridge University Press, 2004.
A University of Wisconsin political science professor discusses the history of campus hate-speech codes, the philosophical and ethical issues they raise and strategies for expanding free speech on campus.
Hamilton, Neil , Academic Ethics: Problems and Materials on Professional Conduct and Shared Governanc , Praeger, 2002.
A professor of law from Minnesota's University of St. Thomas discusses the professional ethics of academia, including the rights and responsibilities connected to academic freedom.
Hofstadter, Richard, and Walter P. Metzger , The Development of Academic Freedom in the United States , Columbia University Press, 1955.
Two Columbia University historians describe how the concepts of academic freedom and tenure developed in America, up to around 1940, when both became generally accepted ideas.
Kors, Alan Charles, and Harvey A. Silverglate , The Shadow University: The Betrayal of Liberty on America's Campuses , The Free Press, 1998.
A University of Pennsylvania history professor and a civil-liberties attorney detail the history of campus hate-speech codes.
Washburn, Jennifer , University, Inc.: The Corporate Corruption of American Higher Education , Basic Books, 2005.
A journalist chronicles corporate influence on universities and universities' growing tendency to model themselves on for-profit businesses.
Articles
“Affirmative Action: When Campus Republicans Play the Diversity Card,” Harper's
, September 2005, p. 64.
In a forum conducted by Harper's magazine, professors from Florida International University, Harvard, Yale and the University of Colorado debate the current state of academic freedom in hiring and curriculum decisions and the future development of universities.
De George, Richard T. , “Purely Academic: Even Professors Misinterpret This Freedom,” The Washington Post
, May 15, 2005, p. B3.
A University of Kansas philosophy professor analyzes the academic-freedom case of Harvard University President Larry Summers, who suggested that innate differences might account for differences between men and women.
Goodman, Steven Ray , “Hey, Profs, Come Back to Earth,” The Washington Post
, April 10, 2005, p. B1.
A college-admissions consultant describes politicization that he says is causing the public to question whether universities are fulfilling their mission.
Hentoff, Nat , “Whose Academic Freedom?” Liberty Beat, Village Voice
, Dec. 17, 2004, www.villagevoice.com/news/0451,hentoff,59370,6.html.
A longtime commentator on civil-liberties issues discusses the controversy over alleged anti-Israel bias in Columbia University's Middle East studies program.
Horowitz, David , “In Defense of Intellectual Diversity,” The Chronicle of Higher Education
, Feb. 13, 2004.
The driving force behind current efforts to promote ideological diversity on campus argues that his Academic Bill of Rights is part of a long university tradition of protecting academic freedom and explains why the proposal is needed today.
Jacobson, Jennifer , “What Makes David Run,” The Chronicle of Higher Education
, May 6, 2005.
The writer describes the development of David Horowitz's public relations and legislative campaigns to promote ideological diversity on university campuses.
Reports and Studies
“Academic Freedom and National Security in a Time of Crisis,” American Association of University Professors, www,aaup.org/statements/REPORTS/911report.htm, 2003.
A special committee of the professors' organization reports on potential threats to academic freedom by government and from within universities after Sept. 11, 2001, and recommends actions to bolster freedom of inquiry while protecting national security.
“Science Under Siege: The Bush Administration's Assault on Academic Freedom and Scientific Inquiry,” The American Civil Liberties Union, June 2005.
One of a series of ACLU reports on post-September 2001 government actions that suppress civil liberties, the report describes legal and regulatory actions that limit researchers' pursuit of and access to scientific information.
Martin, Jerry L., and Anne D. Neal , “Defending Civilization: How Our Universities Are Failing America and What Can Be Done About It,” American Council of Trustees and Alumni, February 2002.
The conservative nonprofit group discusses examples of academic speech it says could undermine public will in wartime and describes proposals for developing university curricula that foster patriotism.
Go to top The Next Step Academic Freedom and the Middle East Dobbs, Michael , “Middle East Studies Under Scrutiny in U.S.,” The Washington Post , Jan. 13, 2004, p. A1. Professors who specialize in Middle East studies say their academic freedom is being jeopardized by conservative think tanks and campus watchdog organizations. Oppel, Shelby , “Professors Worry Bill May Fetter World View,” The Oregonian , Dec. 27, 2003, p. A1. International-studies professors are concerned about a bill headed to the Senate, which would create an advisory board of political appointees to monitor international-studies programs financed by the government. Reinhard, Beth , “Professor Problem Nags at Castor,” The Miami Herald , July 6, 2004, p. B1. University of South Florida President Betty Castor's decision to run for the U.S. Senate has stirred up controversy over her decision not to file charges against Sami Al-Arian, a university professor accused of aiding Palestinian terrorists. Swanson, Stevenson , “Politics of Middle East Play Out in Class Fracas,” Chicago Tribune , Jan. 1, 2005, p. C1. Jewish students at Columbia University accused three professors in the Middle East and Asian Languages and Cultures Department of ridiculing their viewpoints and violating their rights as students to express opinions different from those of their professors. Political Ideologies on Campus Avril, Tom , “A 'Hockey Stick' Graph Starts Fight,” The Philadelphia Inquirer , July 30, 2005, p. A1. Michael E. Mann, of Pennsylvania State University's meteorology department, is embroiled in a debate over academic freedom because of his study that could show global warming is caused by human activity. Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas, chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, wrote Mann a letter accusing his study of being academically dishonest. Curtin, Dave , “Conservative Backers Tilt Faculty Issue Toward Colorado,” The Denver Post , Sept. 12, 2003, p. A1. Conservative students on Colorado's college campuses want state law or university policy to adopt the Academic Bill of Rights drafted by Students for Academic Freedom, a movement to bring more balanced viewpoints to higher education. Karp, David , “Lawmaker Aims to Squelch Political Bias in College Classes,” St. Petersburg [Florida] Times , April 6, 2005, p. B1. Florida state Rep. Dennis Baxley, R-Ocala, introduced a bill that would give students and professors a list of rights to use when they encounter political discrimination on campus. Kerkstra, Patrick , “Shaking the Core of Academic Speech,” The Philadelphia Inquirer , July 17, 2005, p. A1. Most professors and administrators at Pennsylvania's institutions of public higher education say legislative solutions to academic propriety are risky. Kumar, Anita , “Taking the Cause of the Academic Rights of the Right,” St. Petersburg [Florida] Times , May 29, 2005, p. A1. David Horowitz founded the Students for Academic Freedom to rally and organize conservative college students to fight professors and administrators on liberal campuses throughout the country. Saxe, David Warren , “Resolution to Reckon With,” The Philadelphia Inquirer , July 12, 2005, p. B2. Pennsylvania's House of Representatives passed a resolution establishing a committee to examine academic freedom in the state's institutions of higher education, with Republicans supporting the measure and Democrats adamantly opposed. War and Terrorism Elias, Paul , “Anti-terror Laws Erode Research, Scientists Say,” The Philadelphia Inquirer , Sept. 12, 2003, p. A5. Scientists in sensitive scientific fields say their research has become more difficult since anti-terror laws were imposed following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Elliott, Dan , “Professors Are Under Fire Since Sept. 11,” The Miami Herald , Feb. 14, 2005, p. A7. Attacks on academic freedom have increased in intensity since Sept. 11, but they are not nearly as harsh as anticommunist investigations during the McCarthy era. Go to top Contacts Accuracy in Academia
4455 Connecticut Ave., N.W., Ste. 330, Washington, DC 20008
(202) 364-3085
www.academia.org
A conservative nonprofit that tracks political bias in higher education. American Association of University Professors
1012 14th Street, N.W., Ste. 500, Washington, DC 20005
(202) 737-5900
www.aaup.org
The largest organization representing college faculty; promotes academic freedom and a strong faculty role in university decision-making. American Civil Liberties Union
1333 H St., N.W., 10th Floor, Washington, DC 20005
(202) 544-1681
www.aclu.org
Advocacy group that defends and tracks threats to civil liberties, including academic freedom. American Council of Trustees and Alumni
1726 M St., N.W., Ste. 802, Washington, DC 20036-4525
(202) 467-6787
www.goacta.org
Conservative nonprofit that promotes campus ideological diversity and a traditional liberal-arts core curriculum. American Council on Education
One Dupont Circle, N.W., Washington, DC 20036
(202) 939-9300
www.acenet.edu
A coordinating body that supports institutions of higher education and develops unified policy positions. Campus Watch
www.campus-watch.org
Conservative group that tracks, reviews and critiques university Middle East studies programs, mostly from a pro-Israel viewpoint. Center for the Study of Popular Culture
4401 Wilshire Dr., 4th Floor, Los Angeles, CA 90010
(323) 556-2550
http://cspc.org
Conservative group led by activist David Horowitz that tracks and advocates against liberal bias on campuses and elsewhere. Foundation for Individual Rights in Education
601 Walnut Street, Ste. 510, Philadelphia, PA 19106
(215) 717-3473
www.thefire.org
Nonprofit that publishes information about and litigates in favor of free speech, religious liberty and freedom of conscience on campus. NoIndoctrination.org
P.O. Box 2783, La Mesa, CA 91943-2783
www.noindoctrination.org
An organization of parents that collects and publicizes examples of campus politicization. RateMyProfessors.com
www.ratemyprofessors.com
Internet site that collects student ratings and reports on thousands of college instructors. Students for Academic Freedom
1411 K St., N.W., Ste. 1100, Washington, DC
(202) 393-0123
www.studentsforacademicfreedom.org
National coalition of conservative student organizations that tracks, publicizes and advocates for measures to end politicization and liberal ideological domination of campuses. Go to top
Footnotes
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Document APA Citation
Clemmitt, M. (2005, October 7). Academic freedom. CQ Researcher, 15, 833-856. http://library.cqpress.com/
Document ID: cqresrre2005100700
Document URL: http://library.cqpress.com/cqresearcher/cqresrre2005100700
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