David Horowitz: What’s Not Liberal about the Liberal Arts
HNN Editor:In an email to HNN Mr. Horowitz writes:
I think I show in this piece in a civil way that Berube is a completely unreliable reporter of the facts and that his defense of the university is vacuous since it is accomplished only by misrepresenting the critics' case. Berube has had a huge amount of attention on academic sites and in the NY Times precisely because the academic left -- many of whom post on your site -- regard his book as a serious rebuttal of the claims I have made. As you know, the AHA has passed a resolution condemning my Academic Bill of Rights. Beito, KC Johnson and Luker are part of the pack attacking my efforts. Yours is the only academic forum besides Jensen's conservative historians net that is even potentially open to me for a response to Berube. The issues in my piece are generically academic. And the climactic example in my article is definitely relevant to historians: A 17-year old Kuwaiti immigrant who fulfilled an assigment on the Constitution was summoned by the teacher who then lectured him on why America was not God's gift to the world and told him he needed psychiatric help for having such a view as an Arab. I am pretty sure this incident which Berube completely misrepresents was discussed on HNN too.
Opponents of efforts to end political discrimination and classroom indoctrination on college campuses follow a predictable game plan:
*Deny these problems exist;
*Question the veracity of anyone who claims they do; and, finally,
*Misrepresent the supporters of academic freedom as the very witch-hunters they are trying to thwart.
Michael Berube’s new book, What’s Liberal About The Liberal Arts: Classroom Politics and ‘Bias’ in Higher Education, is a case study in these techniques. Berube is a Professor of English Literature at Penn State and a member of the National Council of the American Association of University Professors, which has cast itself as the chief antagonist of the movement for academic reform.
Berube’s attack on the academic freedom movement is made up of two parts. The first consists of chapters that describe his classroom teaching practices and are designed to show how academic, fair, and ultimately innocuous these sessions are. In other words, it is only the ignorance of conservatives concerning what a university class is actually about, along with their visceral prejudice against liberals, that makes classroom indoctrination and political harassment academic issues at all. The second part of the book is an “analysis” of the activities of conservative reformers, like myself. In this section, Berube describes us as dishonest, censorious and driven by Machiavellian agendas. In his telling, the conservative critique of academia is not about unfair practices or politically corrupted intellectual standards, as we have claimed. Instead, ours is a sinister campaign to purge the universities of liberal ideas. Our motive in doing so is that “conservatives control all three branches of government and a good deal of the mass media,” and want to close down the last bastion of resistance to their rule (p. 21).
This blatant and obvious falsehood is typical of the attacks on the academic freedom campaign and serves as a kind of centerpiece of the efforts to discredit it. It is an obvious falsehood because, for example, none of the serious critics of the academic status quo – Stephen Balch, Mark Bauerlein, Anne Neal, Alan Kors, for example – has ever called for the firing of a single academic for their political views, no matter how far-Left they may be. Personally, I find the class sessions he describes in these chapters interesting, reasonable and unobjectionable – and not because they fail to reflect a left-wing bias, which they do. Despite the impression that Berube works so arduously to create, like the aforementioned critics of academic practices, I do not regard professorial bias as a problem in itself, though I would hardly deny that there are conservatives who do. These conservatives, however, are not the focus of Berube’s attack. Conservatives like me are.
In my book, The Professors, a text that Berube has criticized on more than one occasion, I have stated my view of professorial bias quite clearly: “[The Professors] is not intended as a text about left-wing bias in the university and does not propose that a leftwing perspective on academic faculties is a problem in itself. Every individual, whether conservative or liberal, has a perspective and therefore a bias. Professors have every right to interpret the subjects they teach according to their individual points of view. That is the essence of academic freedom.” (p. xxvi.)
In order to make me a focus of his attacks, therefore, Berube must disregard this and every other statement I have made to this effect, in order to present me as a leader of “the fringe right wing” and my campaign for an Academic Bill of Rights as “no more consequential than the extreme right’s past campaigns against the fluoridation of drinking water and the introduction of zip codes” (pp. 28-29). The basis for this caricature lies in comments made on behalf of Intelligent Design theory by two legislators who have sponsored versions of the Academic Bill of Rights. The implication drawn by Berube is that the Academic Bill of Rights would require the inclusion of Intelligent Design theory in biology courses. In fact, the Academic Bill of Rights legislation requires nothing. The bills Berube refers to are merely resolutions without enforcement powers, and they explicitly limit the diversity they would encourage to “the spectrum of significant scholarly opinion” – a spectrum that is left to be defined by the academic community. Under the Academic Bill of Rights, Intelligent Design theory would still be excluded from biology classes.
I have publicly stated – and more than once – that Intelligent Design is not a scientific theory and has no place in a biology curriculum. I have explained to both legislators, in the aftermath of their statements, that my Academic Bill of Rights will do nothing to further their agendas in regard to Intelligent Design, nor should it. Yet, without reference to the actual text of any resolution I have supported or any statement I have made, Berube asserts that my campaign would impose non-academic agendas, like Intelligent Design, on the academic curriculum.[1]
Berube also insinuates that I am promoting a witch-hunt of liberal professors and liberal ideas, which he illustrates by referring to a bulletin board on my academic freedom website,[2] which is called the “Student Abuse Center.” He describes this as a forum “to allow conservative students to report on the doings and teachings of liberal professors – or, more accurately, professors who offend conservatives’ political sensibilities in one way or another.” This description of what we have called the “Student Abuse Center” – like most of Berube’s descriptions of what I have said or done – is false, in more ways than one. (The idea that there is something wrong with “allowing” students to voice complaints is itself odd coming from a man who is busy warning others about the danger of suppressing ideas.)
The “Student Abuse Center” is not, as Berube claims, a site designed for conservative students to complain about liberal professors, but for students of any political persuasion to comment on faculty behavior they find abusive. This includes complaints from liberal students about abuses by conservative professors – and we have posted entire articles representing such complaints.[3] The “Student Abuse Center” features this disclaimer: “These are examples of student complaints. Students for Academic Freedom has not investigated these complaints and does not endorse them. It is providing this bulletin board to illustrate the kinds of complaints that students have.” (We also invite professors to respond to the complaints.)
Moreover, the “Student Abuse Center” is explicitly not for students to complain about professorial views that offend them. It instructs students as to what kind of complaints are appropriate. These are listed on the form provided for postings:
Required readings or texts covering only one side of issues.
Gratuitously singled out political or religious beliefs for ridicule.
Introduced controversial material that has no relation to the subject.
Forced students to express a certain point of view in assignments.
Mocked national political or religious figures.
Conducted political activities in class (e.g. recruiting for demonstrations).
Allowed students’ political or religious beliefs to influence grading.
Used university funds to hold one-sided partisan teach-ins or conferences.
Other (please explain):
It is obvious from these instructions that the fact that a professor’s views are liberal or radical is not a cause for complaint. In his book, Berube discusses particular complaints he has found on this site, but he never mentions these instructions or lets his readers know that they exist. If he did, he could not cite the “Student Abuse Center” as evidence of a witch-hunt.
In setting up the argument of his book, Berube describes his position as follows: “I believe that the liberal ideal consists in engaging my most stringent interlocutors, so long as we share a commitment to open-ended rational debate.” But rational debate is hardly possible with someone who deliberately misrepresents his opponents, and engages in gratuitous name-calling whose only purpose is to taint them sufficiently to remove them from the debate.
It is hard to take Berube seriously when he claims to regard “some forms of conservatism [as] absolutely essential to my conception of liberalism.” Berube explains that this is because he is committed to a form of inquiry – “whose outcomes cannot be known in advance” (p. 21). Consequently, he explains, that as a process liberal, “I do not have and cannot seek unanimity in political and cultural matters” (p. 22).
But anyone familiar with the Academic Bill of Rights – a document which Berube has derided and condemned – would instantly recognize in these very words the bill's philosophical basis, and also the philosophical basis of the campaign I have organized. Here is the relevant passage from the Academic Bill of Rights:
3. Curricula and reading lists in the humanities and social sciences should reflect the uncertainty and unsettled character of all human knowledge in these areas by providing students with dissenting sources and viewpoints where appropriate. While teachers are and should be free to pursue their own findings and perspectives in presenting their views, they should consider and make their students aware of other viewpoints. Academic disciplines should welcome a diversity of approaches to unsettled questions.
Is this not precisely the liberal ideal that Berube is touting? Of course it is, which is why when I submitted the text of the Academic Bill of Rights for Berube’s own approval – and did so before publishing it – he sent me the following email:
Hi David--
The Academic Bill of Rights looks fine to me in every respect but one: the taping of all tenure, search, and hiring committee deliberations…. [4]
The reference about taping is to a clause in the original version I sent him that would have required the recording of all tenure and hiring committee proceedings. I removed this clause from the final text precisely because Berube objected. Everything else was left exactly as he had approved it. I did this because I wanted a document that both liberals and conservatives could support. How liberal of me. How worthy of Berube’s dialogue between liberals like him and conservatives like me. But, of course, there is no mention of this fact in Michael Berube’s book, let alone any effort to conduct a serious intellectual argument.
Instead, Berube attacks me as belonging to a group of conservatives he calls “radicals” who are unworthy of serious argument. According to Berube, conservative radicals “attack” the university “not simply on the substance of liberalism but on procedural liberalism itself, on the idea that no one political faction should control every facet of a society.” In other words it is not liberal academics who seek to enforce an ideological monopoly in every facet of their institutions, but conservatives who want to control every institution. This is as a neat a case of projection as one might expect to encounter.
In addition to misrepresenting my clearly stated agendas, moreover, Berube’s statement reveals an attitude that is hardly that of a procedural liberal. By pairing Republican control of political institutions like the White House with liberal control of the university, Berube betrays an attitude that assumes the university should be a political institution, as well.
According to Berube, the Republicans who control the House of Representatives are conservatives of the radical kind – essentially totalitarians – because they have allegedly “rewritten the rules of the chamber so that Democrats cannot offer amendments, propose legislation, or challenge committee chairs” (p. 21). Berube seems unaware that this result did not require rewriting the rules, and that Democrats actually ran the House according to these rules when Republicans were the impotent minority for 35 years. If Berube misunderstands the actual politics of the democracy in which he lives (and therefore the nature of the Republican politics he despises), it is hardly surprising that he should misunderstand the legislation regarding the Academic Bill of Rights, as well.
Berube opens the chapter of his book titled “Conservative Complaints” with a frontal attack on this bill, which he portrays as a radical conservative bid to purge campuses of liberal thought. To justify this assessment he focuses on a piece legislation that briefly became Senate Bill 24 in the state of Ohio.
I have published thousands of words about the legislation in Ohio, including my own testimony before the Senate Education Committee in behalf of the bill. All of these statements are readily available on my website. Berube refers to none of them. Instead, he quotes – at length – an article that appeared in the Columbus Dispatch, which focused on one sentence in the Senate Bill: “Faculty and instructors shall not infringe the academic freedom and quality of education of their students by persistently introducing controversial matter into the classroom or coursework that has no relation to their subject of study and that serves no legitimate pedagogical purpose” (pp.26-7).
The reporter for the Columbus Dispatch asked Senator Larry Mumper, the bill’s sponsor, what the term “controversial” means. Senator Mumper replied, “Religion and politics, those are the main things.” Berube comments: “If Senate Bill 24 were to pass in Ohio, in other words, there would be at least one state senator who understood it as a license to challenge college courses that dealt ‘persistently’ with religion or politics. Bad news for political science, history, philosophy, sociology, and religion departments, but good news for people who would prefer universities devoted largely to sports and weather.” In other words, it was good news for yahoos like Senator Mumper and his rural Ohioan constituents.
But this is an inexcusable misreading of the sentence in question. The text clearly refers to controversial matter “that has no relation to their subject of study and that serves no legitimate pedagogical purpose.” In other words, college courses can indeed refer to controversial matters, but within the range of the subject matter, e.g., English professors should not give lectures on the war in Iraq.
Berube’s willful failure to understand the legislation is more egregious still. The sentence in Senate Bill 24, which Berube finds so problematic, is actually quoted from a famous clause in a famous “Statement on the Principles of Academic Freedom and Academic Tenure.” This statement was issued in 1940 and amended in 1970 by the American Association of University Professors, to whose National Council Berube has recently been elected. I have repeatedly and publicly pointed this out in statements readily accessible to Professor Berube.[5]
Berube’s misrepresentation of these matters actually gets worse. For what Berube neglects to report is the fate of the Ohio bill, which refutes his claims about the intentions of its authors. Before the bill came to a vote, Senator Mumper was approached by the Inter-University Council of Ohio, representing 17 of its largest and most prestigious public and private universities. They asked Senator Mumper if he would withdraw his bill if the IUC would embrace the recent recommendations of the American Council on Education regarding academic freedom. The ACE is a liberal umbrella group, representing 2,000 American colleges and universities. On June 23, 2005, responding to my Academic Bill of Rights, the ACE issued its own statement on academic freedom, which asserted, “Intellectual pluralism and academic freedom are central principles of American higher education.” It also frowned on political discrimination against students and professors, and called for the creation of a grievance machinery to handle student complaints. The American Association of University Professors was one of the signers of the Council Statement.
Senator Mumper, whom Berube portrays as a legislative Torquemada, readily embraced this compromise, which I also welcomed (publicly) as a victory for our academic freedom campaign. These developments shred Berube’s repeated claims that ours is a vigilante campaign against liberal academics, and that our goal is legislative control over university curricula. Although accounts of these events are readily available on the web, Berube ignores them. This is the abysmal level on which Berube proposes to conduct a “rational debate.”
Not content with misrepresenting the nature and purpose of the academic freedom campaign, Berube also attacks the credibility of those who claim there is a problem to begin with. He does this by defaming students who have complained about professorial abuses, along with those of us who have attempted to publicize these complaints. “Most people outside academe,” Berube writes, “are thoroughly unaware of how well-organized the anti-academic right is, and how successful the Horowitz machine has been in getting its version of campus controversies represented in national media – regardless of the actual realities of the events they describe” (p. 29). Berube analyzes three cases to illustrate his claim. I will deal with the two that refer to me directly.
“The first involved a student at an unnamed Colorado college who was allegedly compelled to write an essay on why George Bush is a war criminal, and who allegedly received an F when she turned in an essay on why Saddam Hussein is a war criminal instead. Horowitz wrote about this case in his online magazine Frontpagemag.com on December 5, 2003…[In Horowitz’s telling] it is a cautionary tale about academic liberal bias so virulent as to punish innocent students for failing to impugn their President during a time of war. The only problem with the story is that it is false; no such essay was required, the professor in question was a registered Republican, and the student did not receive an F.” Berube then quotes at length an article that appeared in InsideHigherEd.com making these (unsubstantiated) claims.
The problem is that all Berube’s “corrections” are themselves either false or repeat unsubstantiated assertions by the professor who gave the exam. The InsideHigherEd.com article appeared at the beginning of the controversy, before all the facts were known. Berube gives no indication to his readers that other information came to light that undermines or challenges the InsideHigherEd account. The college in question was the University of Northern Colorado, a fact that was known from the outset because both the incident and the formal appeal of the exam were referred to by the president of the college in a legislative hearing on the Academic Bill of Rights.
The question of whether the professor was a Republican is irrelevant. The issue is whether the so-called question was appropriate for a final exam in a criminology class. Contrary to Berube’s claim, the student probably did get an F on the final exam, as she has maintained throughout, but had her class grade raised to a B after filing a grievance over what she considered to be an unfair grade. The actual grade on the exam has been kept confidential by the university – only the final class grade has been released. However, if the student did not get an F on the final exam as she claimed – or some comparably low grade – why would she have gone through the ordeal of an appeal?
The student did claim that the question on the exam was to explain why George Bush was a war criminal, but no outsider – including Berube – knows what the question actually was, because the professor destroyed the exam papers prior to the student’s appeal, in clear violation of university rules. In order to respond to the student’s appeal, the professor then reconstructed the exam question. After the InsideHigherEd.com article containing the professor’s denial appeared, we asked university officials to make the (reconstructed) exam question public, which they did. The full text of the question has been posted many times on my websites and is printed verbatim in my book The Professors, with which Berube is familiar.[6] The crucial final sentence of the question in the final exam reconstructed by the professor reads: “Make the argument that the military action of the U.S. attacking Iraq was criminal.”
This is equivalent to requiring the student to make the case that George Bush is a war criminal since – as commander-in-chief – he would be legally responsible for American actions in Iraq. Moreover, even as reconstructed by the professor the exam question confirms the very charge I made in all my statements, which was not that it showed “liberal bias,” but that it was not really a question: it was an instruction to students – with the grade hanging over their heads – to take one side of a controversial issue. It was therefore inappropriate for a final exam and illustrated precisely what I meant by indoctrination. It would equally have been indoctrination if the answer required was to explain why the Iraq war was morally right. The point of view is not the issue; the failure to allow students to make up their own minds on matters that are and will remain controversial is the issue. Evidently, the grievance committee at the University of Northern Colorado agreed when they raised the student’s grade to a B. All of this information, which refutes the claims made in Berube’s book, was aired on Berube’s own website in a correspondence between Berube and Professor Art Eckstein of the University of Maryland. Berube simply ignored the evidence presented to him, and fails to mention it to his readers.
Berube’s next example of a false student claim is described by him as “still worse” than the case of the Colorado exam. This one involved a Kuwaiti immigrant named Ahmad al-Qluoshi. According to Berube, “[the student] claimed that he received a failing grade on a term paper about the U.S. Constitution because it was ‘pro-American.’” Al-Qluoshi appeared on several national media outlets, and “Horowitz flogged this case as well” (pp.30-31). According to Berube, the case died when the term paper was published on the web, because it showed that al-Qluoshi deserved his failing grade. The essay, Berube says, is “shoddy” and “terribly written” and “not a college-level essay” (p. 33). He quotes several paragraphs of the student’s paper in his book as evidence.
Since conservatives made the treatment of al-Qloushi an issue, the episode has great significance in Berube’s view, indicting their entire case that abuses exist: “For any teacher who has ever encountered an incompetent essay of any kind, the elevation of al-Qloushi to the status of conservative Hero is a profound testimony to the intellectual vacuity of the anti-academic right – and the intellectual bankruptcy of the right-wing media apparatus for which such tales of atrocity and oppression are now a stock in trade” (p.34). Once again, conservatives are presented as ignoramuses who don’t know what they’re talking about.
There is something distasteful but instructive in this intemperate attack by a professor on the writing ability of a 17-year-old immigrant from Kuwait, who had been in the United States all of three months when he was given the assignment in question by his junior college professor. Moreover, without comparing al-Qloushi’s paper to that of other students at Foothill Junior College, how can Berube be so certain that this was not in fact a college-level essay for the students attending this school? Would Berube exhibit the same callousness towards an immigrant student from Mexico who was attempting to explain her dissatisfaction with, say, American immigration policy? But what makes Berube’s comments unforgivable is that a failing grade was not actually al-Qloushi’s complaint.
In an article posted at FrontPageMag.com, al-Qloushi explained what his actual concerns were (there is, of course, no reference Al-Qloushi’s statement in Berube’s text): “Professor Woolcock didn’t grade my essay. Instead he told me to come to see him in his office the following morning. I was surprised the next morning when instead of giving me a grade, Professor Woolcock verbally attacked me and my essay. He told me, ‘Your views are irrational.’ He called me naïve for believing in the greatness of this country, and told me, ‘America is not God’s gift to the world.’ Then he upped the stakes and said, ‘You need regular psychotherapy.’ Apparently, if you are an Arab Muslim who loves America, you must be deranged. Professor Woolcock went as far as to threaten me by stating that he would visit the Dean of International Admissions (who has the power to take away student visas) to make sure I received regular psychological treatment.”[7]
In other words, al-Qloushi’s complaint was that Professor Woolcock took exception to his views, not his writing style; that the professor made it clear that he regarded disagreement with his own negative views of America as a form of mental disorder; and that he then made an implicit threat to an immigrant student about his resident status. These are pretty serious charges and hardly demonstrate the intellectual bankruptcy of those who gave al-Qloushi support.
But why should we believe al-Qloushi? Maybe he made all this up to serve his right-wing views. In fact, FrontPageMag.com had previously published another story about the incident by another Foothill College student – a liberal student named Michael Wiesner:
My name is Michael Wiesner and I am a former student at Foothill College in Los Altos Hills, California. I am writing this article in the wake of an incident in which a teacher at the college recommended psychological therapy to an Arab student who had praised the U.S. Constitution. On December 1st, a professor named Joseph Woolcock suggested a Kuwaiti Arab Muslim student named Ahmad al-Qloushi should seek therapy after the student submitted a paper arguing that the U.S. Constitution was a step forward for America and the world. The Foothill College Republicans reported Dr. Woolcock’s behavior to the media, and Dr. Woolcock issued a grievance in a further attempt to silence the student. The college is treating the matter as if it is an isolated incident. They are doing everything they can to distance themselves from the matter. But in truth, teacher intimidation goes to the very heart of the Foothill College bureaucracy. It has become commonplace for the school to silence students with ideas or opinions contrary to those of their professors.[8]
Wiesner went on:
Foothill College is not only a place where conservative students like Ahmad are low-tracked by liberal teachers. It is also a place where conservative professors feel free to bust down liberal students like me. The problem goes beyond politics. Foothill College is a place where teachers are free to target students they dislike, out of pique, race, religion, or sexual orientation, with inappropriate comments during class, intimidation, and grade manipulation. I am writing this article because it happened to me, and I have been intimidated into silence about my ordeal for three years. It is Ahmad al-Qloushi's courage in this matter that brings me to speak about my experience. Ahmad and I are speaking out as two students at the opposite ends of the political spectrum.
To this, Wiesner added:
I find most of David Horowitz's right-wing views to be offensive. I led an antiwar rally at Foothill College, and I voted against George W. Bush both times. That having been said, intellectual pluralism is not a political issue. We must treat intellectual pluralism as an issue of intellectual freedom. Both liberal students and conservative students ought to be free to express their ideas in the classroom.
Wiesner then went on to explain his abuse at the hands of a conservative professor, a cause in which our academic freedom campaign supported him. I have quoted his comments at length, because they refute the entire case Berube has made against my campaign for academic freedom. It is not about right-wing agendas, or defending only conservative students, or holding only liberal professors to account; it is not based on non-existent facts or unsubstantiated student claims; it is not an attempt to challenge the authority of professors over the curriculum. It is (as Michael Wiesner observed) about intellectual pluralism, about respect for students who dissent, and about protecting their right to draw their own conclusions on controversial matters.
I recognize that more honest critics of my campaign than Michael Berube may hold legitimate concerns about the legislation regarding an Academic Bill of Rights I have promoted. I have explained many times that my purpose in seeking these legislative resolutions – and they are only resolutions – was to wake up university administrators, so that they would begin to enforce the academic freedom provisions that are already on their books and promote respect for intellectual diversity in the same way they now promote respect for other kinds of diversity.
My purpose in seeking legislation has now been served. In three years, we have been able to put the issue of intellectual diversity on the national radar. On every campus in the country, intellectual diversity is now a matter for discussion and debate. A large part of the credit must go to our legislative resolutions – none of which has been actually enacted. It is these proposed actions by legislatures that have produced the lion’s share of the attention.
However, in the course of the campaign I have discovered another way to advance the cause of academic freedom that does not have the drawback of confusing people about our legislative intentions the way resolutions in behalf of an Academic Bill of Rights do. This is to hold legislative hearings on the academic freedom policies of universities and their implementation on the campuses of state universities.
This summer, as result of such legislative hearings in Pennsylvania, Temple University became the first university to adopt at student bill of rights – or, more accurately to incorporate student rights into existing regulations about academic freedom. Until now, almost all academic freedom regulations have applied exclusively to the responsibilities and rights of faculty, and faculty alone.
Penn State University, for example, has a particularly admirable academic freedom policy which reads in part: “It is not the function of a faculty member in a democracy to indoctrinate his/her students with ready-made conclusions on controversial subjects. The faculty member is expected to train students to think for themselves, and to provide them access to those materials which they need if they are to think intelligently. Hence, in giving instruction upon controversial matters the faculty member is expected to be of a fair and judicial mind, and to set forth justly, without suppression or innuendo, the divergent opinions of other investigators.” (Policy HR 64.)
But this policy is found in the Penn State Policy Manual, which applies only to Penn State employees. Consequently the 40,000 Penn State students are likely to be unaware of its existence and are not covered by its provisions: “This policy applies to members of the faculty who have official teaching or research responsibilities at the University.”[9] And: “Appeals: If a faculty member feels that his or her academic freedom rights have been violated, the procedure listed in the policy entitled ‘Faculty Rights and Responsibilities,’ HR 76 may be used.”
The adoption by the Temple trustees of its policy on “Faculty and Student Rights and Responsibilities” has shown how this state of affairs can be changed, and it is precisely along these lines that I intend to proceed in the future. I will focus on promoting academic freedom hearings and then actions by university boards on adopting policies similar to Temple’s.
In short, it is time for the academic freedom campaign to recognize its success and move on to new tactics. I invite my opponents to change their own tactics as well – to take this opportunity to step forward and look at the grievances of students like Michael Wiesner and Ahmad al-Qloushi, and join me in the effort to rectify these abuses.
ENDNOTES:
[1] Berube also draws on a hostile newspaper account of the Florida legislation to suggest that the Academic Bill of Rights would provide a basis for students to sue their professors. No such basis could be provided by a resolution without statutory teeth – and all the legislation regarding an Academic Bill of Rights thus far has been of this nature.
[2] www.studentsforacademicfreedom.org.
[3] E.g., Michael Wiesner, “Collegiate Intimidation, Frontpagemag.com, December 15, 2004. See below.
[4] Berube’s email was sent September 17, 2003.
[5] The phrase “and that serves no legitimate pedagogical purpose” was actually added to the AAUP statement to make it less open to objection.
[6] The Professors, 2006, pp. 130-131; a full account of this controversy (my version) can be found in David Horowitz, “The Case of the Colorado Exam,” Frontpagemag.com, April 21, 2005.
[7] Ahmad Al-Qloushi, “Dissident Arab Gets The Treatment,” Frontpagemag.com, January 6, 2005.
[8] Michael Wiesner, “Collegiate Intimidation,” Frontpagemag.com, December 15, 2004.
[9] Ibid.