Archives
Questions &Answers
Lionel S. Lewis is a professor emeritus of sociology who specializes in the sociology of higher education.
What exactly is academic freedom?
Since universities took
root in medieval Europe, academic freedom has meant the independent and
uninhibited exchange of ideas between and among teachers and students.
For more than four centuries, faculty have fought to retain the four
pillars of their academic freedom—the right to determine who may
teach, what is taught, how it should be taught and who may be admitted
to study. Because freedom to teach and freedom to learn are inseparable
facets of academic freedom, students also have rights and freedoms.
Within the classroom, they should be given freedom of expression and be
protected against improper academic evaluation and improper disclosure.
On campus, they need freedom of association and freedom of inquiry and
expression.
Who is David Horowitz and what is the Academic Bill of Rights?
David Horowitz, who believes "we have a political pollution of our
universities," is a leader in a national campaign to reduce what he and
many others believe is a dangerous liberal bias in higher education. To
that end, he founded and leads a group called Students for Academic
Freedom, premised on the idea that, to the detriment of students, free
inquiry and free speech are being curtailed on campus today. The group
is committed to implementing an Academic Bill of Rights nationally.
Students for Academic Freedom monitors campus slights, insults and
serious infractions. To keep tabs on faculty, it provides an online
categorized "complaint form." And it instructs students how to organize.
The Academic Bill of Rights mandates that eight principles be enacted to
protect academic freedom on campus. In fact, however, it violates the
tenets of academic freedom. To begin with, its first principle calls for
"fostering a plurality of perspectives..." on campus. This, in effect,
would impose ideological tests in the hiring and promotion of faculty.
It also would pave the way for quotas. The fourth principle, which
proposes that "curricula and reading lists...provid[e]...dissenting
sources and viewpoints," and instructors "make their students aware of
other viewpoints" so that there is "a diversity of approaches," also
would violate tenets of academic freedom. It could be interpreted as
mandating that instructors teach theories and material opposed to their
own and that, for example, the contentions of creationists or Holocaust
deniers be made part of some courses. The Academic Bill of Rights
concludes by mandating that "academic institutions and professional
societies should maintain a posture of organizational neutrality...on
disagreements that divide researchers on questions within, or outside,
their fields of inquiry." This appears to be a violation of the First
Amendment; it certainly is a violation of the tenet of peer review. In
the end, the Academic Bill of Rights would impose more external controls
on campuses, giving politicians and bureaucrats input on curricula and
other academic matters. In 2003, Students for Academic Freedom had its
first success when legislation was introduced in Colorado to address its
concerns. Two states introduced such legislation in 2004, and 15 states
did so in 2005. So far this year, it has been introduced in an
additional seven states. Bills already have failed or have been
withdrawn in a number of these states. At the federal level, a version
of the Academic Bill of Rights has been inserted in the Higher Education
Reauthorization Act. For emphasis at the beginning and end, House
Congressional Resolution 318 (October 2003) repeats its rationale: "to
secure the intellectual independence of faculty members and students and
to protect the principle of intellectual diversity," suggesting that
these are presently threatened on American campuses. Under House
Resolution 609 (College Access and Opportunity Act of 2005), students
would be assured that they were "presented diverse approaches and
dissenting sources and viewpoints within the instructional setting."
Has anything in particular fueled this movement?
Conservatives often refer to a 1999 survey of 1,643 faculty members
from 183 schools reporting that 72 percent of professors describe
themselves as left/liberal, while only 15 percent describe themselves as
right/conservative. Moreover, many find it unbelievable that less than a
third of college presidents voted for George W. Bush in the last
presidential election. They believe that the prevalence of liberal
professors and senior administrators means that a liberal ideology has
permeated American colleges and that there is a lack of political
diversity on campus. They also believe that the inevitable results are
widespread, ideologically based discrimination in the hiring and
promotion of faculty, the intimidation, ridicule, punishment and
brainwashing of students, and bias in the classroom, even in the
sciences. There are anecdotes and embellished secondhand tales that
circulate nationally about faculty members violating professional norms.
However, more often than not, they are misrepresentations or cannot be
substantiated. In one egregious instance, Horowitz repeated in speeches
and interviews and on his Web site the story of a biology professor at
Penn State who showed Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11" during class.
When asked by a legislator for evidence that the event actually
occurred, he retracted it.
What is the situation in New York State?
In New York, the
force behind the movement is SUNY Trustee Candace De Russy. De Russy;
Thomas Egan, chairman of the SUNY Board of Trustees; SUNY Provost Peter
Salins and Vice Provost Donald Steven and Horowitz met to discuss
"indoctrination on SUNY campuses" in December 2002. De Russy has
written: "In the course of this meeting Horowitz conceived of the
Academic Bill of Rights.... The bill extorts public universities to
foster a pluralism of views." In January 2005, at a board of trustees
meeting, she proposed that SUNY adopt the Academic Bill of Rights. Egan,
declaring that he was "fully supportive of assuring a robust climate of
academic freedom and intellectual diversity," added that he believed
proposals such as the Academic Bill of Rights "deserve serious
consideration."
If the purpose of the Academic Bill of Rights is to support
"intellectual diversity," why are so many faculty members opposed to the
Academic Bill of Rights?
Many believe that it is an effort to
impose political tests on faculty and, therefore, a threat to
professional autonomy and intellectual integrity. They believe that it
will regulate, in effect politicize, such faculty responsibilities as
the evaluation and grading of students, the design of syllabi and
decisions regarding hiring, granting tenure and promoting faculty.
Faculty organizations argue that it would not only subordinate the
professional judgments of the scholarly community to governmental
oversight, but also would open faculty to additional administrative
discipline or lawsuits.