An interesting story from Inside Higher Ed: three historians are calling for academics to get together and fight David Horowitz’s assault on education. In case you’re not following this, Horowitz is leading a movement to make professors in public institutions present all sides of an issue equally. It might seem like a nice idea. Unfortunately, as most of us can imagine, this is an untenable rule.
To state an obvious example, biology professors will have to present creationism as a reasonable possibility. And in any other field, you will find divisions of thought which inspire strong adherence by opposing factions. Sure, professors should acknowledge the other point of view. And having students consider both sides of an argument can boost their critical thinking and analytical skills.
But forcing professors to present ideas they find flat-out wrong is not good.
As the article states, arguing for “academic freedom” as Horowitz and co. claim to do, seems like a good idea:
Like campus speech codes, Horowitz’s Academic Bill of Rights appears well intentioned. Insisting that academic communities must be more responsive to outside criticism, it adopts a form of the American Association of University Professors’ 1915 “General Report of the Committee on Academic Freedom and Tenure.” It holds that political and religious beliefs should not influence the hiring and tenuring of faculty or the evaluation of students, that curricular and extra-curricular activities should expose students to the variety of perspectives about academic matters and public issues, and that institutions must not tolerate obstructions to free debate nor, themselves, become vehicles of partisan advocacy.
Who could oppose such commitments? They are already features of academe’s assumed values. Yet, the American Association of University Professors and the American Civil Liberties Union criticize Horowitz’s “Academic Bill of Rights” as an effort to “proscribe and prescribe activities in classrooms and on college campuses.”
One has only to look at the legislative progress of Horowitz’s political campaign to understand why. His bill has been introduced in Congress by Rep. Jack Kingston, but it’s had greater promotion in the state legislatures of California, Colorado,
Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Maine, Massachusetts, Ohio, Tennessee, and Washington.
Instead of being the even-handed vehicle it claims to be, everywhere it is a function of right-wing attacks on academic communities. In Florida, for example, Rep. Dennis Baxley says that the bill he introduced will give students legal standing to sue professors who do not teach “intelligent design” as an acceptable alternate to the theory of evolution. His critics respond that it could give students who are Holocaust deniers or who oppose
birth control and modern medicine legal standing to sue their professors. Beyond the governing authority of Florida’s public colleges and universities and in the name of free thought and free speech, it would encode in state law restrictions against those values.
The Founders, who recalled their own exercise of free speech and free thought, when they challenged British governing authority, wrote guarantees protecting them from constricting government action. In academic communities, we need an alliance across ideological divides to support free speech by abolishing “speech codes” and to fight the “Academic Bill of Rights” in state legislatures and the Congress because it is a Trojan Horse that intends the opposite of what it claims on its face.
These bills open up the way for lots and lots of new people to abuse the judicial system. Think academic malpractice suits. For every kid who now goes to the department chair to complain that their professor unfairly gave them a C, there could be a kid filing suit in court, crying “bias!”
Sometimes bias is a good thing. Or as some wise person once said,
“Don’t be so open-minded that your brain falls out.”
I do try to be balanced when I teach. And I regularly say, “I personally see things this way, but others don’t agree, and see it that way. And maybe you do too.” But then I’ve never had a student deny the Holocaust happened.
And long ago, teaching in a conservative religious college, I was forced to read essays, often horribly written, very graphic essays, denouncing abortion and celebrating the death penalty. Some of them were well-written and argued and got good grades. Many of them (just like many of those taking the opposite viewpoint, I should add) were badly written or used absurd evidence, and did not do well. One choice example argued that same-sex marriages were a bad idea because animals do not behave in a sexual manner with animals of the same sex. I wish I could have sent the author to see the penguins in the Central Park Zoo, or frankly, any number of male dogs I’d met. (By the way, I never chose those delightful topics. I was teaching for a year under a department head who came up with these ideas. Later the regime changed and I was allowed to set more reasonable topics for writing assignments. But I digress.)
The bottom line is that professors should engage with debates, and encourage students to do so. Students should be taught to analyze their position and support it with logical arguments backed up by evidence. Students should be encouraged to disagree vocally and in writing with the professor’s views, where applicable. But some positions aren’t able to be supported by strong evidence. And some viewpoints are more valid than others. And people go to college to learn to think critically.
I have learned the most from professors I disagreed with.
9 comments ↓
This just seems like yet another ploy by the Religious Right to force their beliefs onto everyone else.
I’m wondering whether it bears any relationship to the vicious campaign launched against Ward Churchill for making perfectly reasonable remarks about 9/11 (this in turn echoed the anti-political correctness outbreak that swept through US Academia in the 80s – early 90s which itself showed affinities with the McCarthy Witch hunts of the 1950s).
See the following links.
http://www.coloradoaim.org/wardpetition.htm
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/005/496cjzrn.asp
Attempt 3 to send this comment. This attack reflects the ‘anti-political-correctness’ wave of reaction that spread through US Universities in the mid 80s- early 90s. The prehistory probably goes back to the McCarthyist witch-hunts of the 1950s. The most recent reaction is the vicious campaign conducted against Ward Churchill for his comments on 9/11 (see links – there was a petition around for his reinstatement but it has mysteriously dropped out of Google).
From my perspective the fundamentalist attack is in some respects more open, and easier to deal with than the earlier, more insidious campaigns. Which probably prepared the ground …
Perhaps easier – I’m acting on the assumption that the Platonic ‘reasonable citizen’ of the State is not yet a minority, given the continuing survival within the US of such fine minds as Noam Chomsky, Gore Vidal … et al … including of course Ward Churchill.
http://www.zmag.org/bios/homepage.cfm?authorID=62
http://www.kersplebedeb.com/mystuff/s11/churchill.html
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/005/496cjzrn.asp
Brian–absolutely. You will notice there is no requirement for private colleges to provide balanced viewpoints. Oral Roberts U and Brigham Young are safe.
Warwick–I have to say I do not know much about Ward Churchill’s work. I will try to look at your links tomorrow, because I do want to find out more. However, as much as I am critical of US policy and global economic industry symbolized by the WTC, I was among those offended by Churchill’s oft-cited characterization of all WTC victims as “Little Eichmanns”. It’s hard not to be. I mean, the Mexican busboys who perished in the Windows on the World Restaurant and my friend’s sister who was a low-paid bookkeeper in the WTC (and who survived both WTC disasters, thank God), just to name a few examples, are not Little Eichmanns. Right?
On the other hand, the way to deal with statements you don’t agree with is not to silence them, but to engage with them.
I also am wary of encouraging the view that David Horowitz’s program is aimed at stopping folks like Churchill when truly, the ramifications stretch far and wide and encompass the broad range of hard-working, non-famous scholars, whose teaching will be hindered. While Churchill does have the right to free speech, I think that too many people think Churchill is the type of professor the Academic Freedom legislation will hinder. And the popular view (right or wrong) is that that’s fine. But he’s just the tip of the iceburg, and strategically, I want folks–whatever they think of WC (unfortunate initials, eh?)–to realize this legislation will flatten us all. If my future kids have to hear an argument for Creationism from their athiest biology prof… well, maybe I just better move to Australia.
hey … we’re obviously getting different readings of Churchill!
I didn’t know about his alleged “little Eichman’s” quote, but was going more by his response to the numerous commentators who quoted him out of context, and meeting the many misrepresentations of what he said sentence by sentence. Can’t find the exact link just now, but it shouldn’t be hard to find. I was also impressed with a speech he gave at his university that can be found in the sound files of the A-Infos site. (I used it on one of my radio shows 
Peace.
Hi Warwick,
Yeah, it’s hard to know what’s true here. The WiKiPedia article on WC seems to be a site of controversy:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ward_Churchill
It’s also interesting that the AIM rejects him:
http://www.aimovement.org/moipr/churchill05.html
But I am not an expert on this (obviously) and a quick search on google did not net the actual article in which he used the Little Eichmanns comment, which I would like to read. I’ve read plenty of articles where he’s explaining what he meant by it. But I’d like to see the original.
Kate
Yes … it used to be out there when I was looking into it a couple of months ago but it has dropped way back in the google ranking system somehow (or maybe I was using Yahoo then). I think the point he was trying to make with the ‘little Eichman’ remark was a valid (if tactless) reference to the defense Eichman used in the Nurenburg War Crimes Tribunal. It’s akin to the more polite expression of ‘cognitive dissonance’ (eg: public pacifists with private shares in armaments manufacturering companies). George Bernard Shaw engaged that issue in his play Major Barbara (I think … ?).
. I think the best that can be said that there had been some kind of sin of omission on the part of the Academic community at the time. Perhaps this is why I was inclined to hold Ward Churchill in some esteem.
Tactless, and possibly tactically unsound, but I think his intention was to try and jolt the US out of a reaction to the tragedy which has, as we have seen actually resulted. That is, a reaction based on averting the gaze further from self examination while lashing out mindlessly at the external factors.
Anyway – this thread is drifting away from the central question of academic freedoms. I brought up WC as another example, but he is obviously a more complex example than I had originally thought.
I am actually interested in debating where the influence of the Chicago School of economics fits into this debate. To my mind it demonstrates the dangers of a kind of academic orthodoxy, which may have been the decisive factor turning the world to the free market ideology as Business School graduates and MBAs were quietly being churned out all over the world to fill the management positions. Yet, I can find no argument that ‘something should have been done’ about it. (Apart from my own Stalinistic proclivities
I have had the same problem when reading essays. The other year, the essay was on a “life lesson” that the student had learned. She wrote about sex with animals. I actually got in trouble for telling her to rewrite it (without coming out and saying that she has had to have sex with animals in order to write it!).
Matt, as far as creative life lesson essays, it sure beats, “How I learned to be nice to old people,” or “Blowing up hamsters in a microwave is wrong.”
Ahh kids!
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