The Academic Bill of Rights Debate: A Handbook

249 Pages·2007·1.66 MB·English

by  Stephen H. Aby

T A B
HE CADEMIC ILL OF
R D
IGHTS EBATE
A Handbook
Edited by Stephen H. Aby
LibraryofCongressCataloging-in-PublicationData
Theacademicbillofrightsdebate:ahandbook/editedbyStephen
H.Aby.
p.cm.
Includesbibliographicalreferencesandindex.
ISBN978–0–275–99244–6(alk.paper)
1.Academicfreedom—UnitedStates—Handbooks,manuals,etc.
2.Teaching,Freedomof—UnitedStates—Handbooks,manuals,etc.
I.Aby,StephenH.,1949–
LC72.2.A2862007
378.102130973—dc22 2007022764
BritishLibraryCataloguinginPublicationDataisavailable.
Copyright(cid:2)c 2007byStephenH.Aby
Allrightsreserved.Noportionofthisbookmaybe
reproduced,byanyprocessortechnique,withoutthe
expresswrittenconsentofthepublisher.
LibraryofCongressCatalogCardNumber:2007022764
ISBN-13:978–0–275–99244–6
Firstpublishedin2007
PraegerPublishers,88PostRoadWest,Westport,CT06881
AnimprintofGreenwoodPublishingGroup,Inc.
www.praeger.com
PrintedintheUnitedStatesofAmerica
Thepaperusedinthisbookcomplieswiththe
PermanentPaperStandardissuedbytheNational
InformationStandardsOrganization(Z39.48–1984).
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
C
ONTENTS
Acknowledgments ix
1 ACADEMICFREEDOMINPERILOUSTIMES 1
StephenH.Aby
2 ACADEMICFREEDOMANDTHEACADEMIC
BILLOFRIGHTS 17
TheMoreThingsChange?AcademicFreedomThenandNow 17
LawrencePoston
What’stoFear:TheAmericanRight,Anti-Intellectualism,
andtheABOR 31
KevinMattson
AcademicFreedom,FragileasEver 41
MichaelB´erub´e
3 THEAAUP–DAVIDHOROWITZEXCHANGE 53
AcademicBillofRights 53
AmericanAssociationofUniversityProfessors
TheProfessors’OrwellianCase 57
DavidHorowitz
4 THEGRAHAMLARKIN–DAVIDHOROWITZDEBATE 67
AnIntroductiontotheDebate 67
MarcusHarvey
What’sNottoLikeabouttheAcademicBillofRights 70
GrahamLarkin
vi Contents
AAUPDishonesty 77
DavidHorowitz
LarkinRespondstoHorowitz 79
GrahamLarkin
MyReplytoGrahamLarkinandtheAAUP 81
DavidHorowitz
Academicvs.HorowitzianTruthStandards 86
GrahamLarkin
RelativelyUnbalanced:ReplytoLarkinII 88
DavidHorowitz
5 AREFACULTYTOOLIBERAL?AREUNIVERSITIES
TOOCORPORATE? 91
FacultyLiberalismandUniversityCorporatism 91
RudyFenwickandJohnZipp
HigherEducationintheTimeoftheCorporateUniversity:
RepeatingtheCallforFacultyActivism 108
DavidD.Witt
6 STATELEGISLATIONANDREACTION 121
IsthePopeCatholic?TheStrangeCaseofthe
ABORDebateinOhio 121
RodgerGovea
InSearchofaProblem:TheStudentAcademicFreedom
HearingsinPennsylvania 134
MarkSmith
ACaseStudy:TheColoradoExperience 155
DanaR.Waller
APPENDICES 175
AcademicBillofRights 175
AAUP1940StatementofPrinciplesonAcademic
FreedomandTenure with1970InterpretiveComments 177
WhyanAcademicBillofRightsIsNecessary
toEnsureThatStudentsGetaQualityEducation 187
DavidHorowitz
Contents vii
TestimonybyProfessorJoanWallachScottbeforethe
PennsylvaniaGeneralAssembly’sHouseSelectCommittee
onStudentAcademicFreedom 192
OhioSenateBill24 199
AmericanCouncilonEducation:StatementonAcademic
RightsandResponsibilities 201
AnnotatedSelectedBibliography 203
Index 225
AbouttheEditor,Contributors,andReproducedAuthors 239

A
CKNOWLEDGMENTS
An edited collection such as this requires the assistance of numerous individ-
uals, over and above the contributions of the authors. I extend my thanks to
Elizabeth Potenza of Praeger Publishers, Suzanne Bergmiller of Greenwood
Publishing Group, and Susan Slesinger of Praeger and Greenwood Publish-
ing Group for their prompt and valuable assistance in bringing the project
along and preparing it for final production.
Greenwood Publishing Group graciously gave permission to reprint selec-
tive annotations included in the annotated bibliography from Academic
Freedom: A Guide to the Literature (Compiled by Stephen H. Aby and James C.
Kuhn IV; Copyright (cid:2)c 2000 Stephen H. Aby and James C. Kuhn IV). Wendi
Maloney and Gwendoyn Bradley (AAUP), Sara Dogan (Students for Aca-
demic Freedom), Elizabeth Ruiz (Center for the Study of Popular Culture),
Heather Hillard (Pennsylvania House of Representatives Archives), and Sara
Haywood (American Council on Education) were very helpful in obtaining
permissions to reprint various documents. I also thank Graham Larkin and
David Horowitz for granting me permission to publish most of their
exchange. Although space limitations prevented publishing all of it, the full
exchange, with various embedded links to other sources, can be found at the
Web site for the California Conference AAUP at http://www.aaup-ca.org.
State legislative documents and testimony were reproduced as part of the
public domain, although I thank Aleah McDonald of Ohio State Senator Joy
Padgett’s office for providing the David Horowitz testimony.
Renee Wilson provided invaluable assistance in formatting parts of the
manuscript. Finally, I thank Martha McNamara, Jim Kuhn, and Julie Schmid
for providing feedback on the introduction, whose remaining defects are my
responsibility alone.

CHAPTER 1
A F P T
CADEMIC REEDOM IN ERILOUS IMES
Stephen H. Aby
In 2003, David Horowitz, former student leftist and current activist for the
conservative right, launched Students for Academic Freedom, an organization
devoted to exposing alleged liberal bias in academia and promoting the aca-
demic freedom rights of students. Horowitz wrote and distributed an Aca-
demic Bill of Rights (ABOR), as well as a Student Bill of Rights, which he
hoped would be championed by students, university administrations, and poli-
ticians. The stated goals of the movement were to force colleges and univer-
sities to provide balance in the viewpoints expressed in classrooms; to
diversify the faculty, who Horowitz believed to be predominantly liberal; and
to grant conservative-thinking students the academic freedom he said they
were being denied.
In just three short years, the debate over the ABOR has become one of the
most controversial issues in America’s colleges and universities. By November
of 2006, it had alreadygenerated 74 articles in major newspapers, at least 143
articles in all newspapers nationwide, 54 television and radio broadcasts, 47
news wire articles, 20 articles in The Chronicle of Higher Education, 73 articles
in InsideHigherEd.com, dozens of articles in major magazines, and some
154,000 hits in the obligatory Google search.1 Few academic topics have cre-
ated such a furor in so short atime.One would havetogo back to the debates
over political correctness on campuses or the publication of The Bell Curve to
find a similar flurryofpopular debateover aseeminglyacademic subject.
Although the ABOR is a recent and controversial attack on traditional
notions of academic freedom rights and protections, it is not new. Indeed, pro-
ponents of the traditional values and institutions of academic freedom have
seen the ABOR as merely the latest in a long series of threats to the inde-
pendence and openness of the academy. At its core, the ABOR rests on a dis-
armingly simple contention that conservatives have been arguing for at least
the last two decades—that is, higher education has been overtaken by
‘‘tenured radicals’’ who skew the knowledge that is taught in an attempt to
indoctrinate students.