News

By David Horowitz
FrontPageMagazine.com | September 14, 2004

A study conducted in 2002 by the American Enterprise Magazine at the request of the Center for the Study of Popular Culture showed that of 394 faculty members whose party registrations could be identified at four University of California campuses (Berkeley, UCLA, San Diego and Santa Barbara), 371 were registered Democrats or Greens, as compared to only 23 Republicans or Libertarians. This was true not only for sociology, a traditionally leftwing field, but political science where 94% of party registrations were also on the left.

Such extreme lack of intellectual diversity suggests a problem in the hiring process throughout the U.C. system. There is no possibility that in a nation as evenly divided between liberals and conservatives such a distribution would be statistically possible if there were no bias in the hiring process itself.

Do instructors use the classroom for political indoctrination? There is ample testimony that they do, including a recent book by a recent UCLA graduate (Ben Shapiro, Brainwashed: How Universities Indoctrinate America’s Youth, WND 2004). The evidence is available to anyone who takes time to look, from UC’s own websites. Here is a course description that appeared in this year’s UCLA online catalogue. The course in question is the “Fiat Lux Seminar: Honors Collegium 98.” The seminar incorporates “History 19,” and “Public Policy 1284.”

The Fiat Lux Seminar is subtitled “Re-Reading Democracy in America: Politics Before and After 9/11.” It is taught by Professor Vinay Lal, a member of the UCLA History Department. According to the catalogue, there are “two requirements” for students to complete the course — a paper on one of the two class texts and an in-class presentation. Here is how the presentation is described in the UCLA catalogue:

“Requirements: … Each student will also do a succinct class presentation of no more than ten minutes accompanied by a handout (1 pg.). In this presentation, the student will draw upon some aspect of American political, cultural, or social life which has a bearing on the subject matter of the course. For example, a presentation might focus on what the election to California’s governorship of a movie star who has been charged by a dozen women with sexual molestation, drives perhaps the most environmentally unfriendly vehicle in the world, and appeared not to have a single idea about governance says about American “democracy.” Other presentations can focus on corporate ownership of the media, the rise of Fox News, the MTA and grocery chain strikes in Los Angeles, the trade union movements, the presence of African-Americans and Latinos in the US army, the film “Bowling in (sic) Columbine”, the assault on civil liberties, the indefinite detention of hundreds of Muslims without any accountability to notions of justice, or thousands of such phenomena.”

The mere fact that a description like this could appear in a college catalogue – let alone the catalogue of one of America’s premier universities – is evidence of the extensive corruption of the university curriculum by radical ideologues who have debased the academic classroom and turned it into a platform for political agendas. In passing it should be noted that, as governor, Schwarzenegger has the highest approval ratings of any governor in the history of the state. This course description is political argument, which could not be more remote from any pedagogical enterprise or scholarly inquiry. It will not surprise anyone that the text assigned for the Fiat Lux Seminar is Vietnam and Other American Fantasies by H. Bruce Franklin, a notorious radical who in the past has edited (and provided a favorable introduction for) a collection of writings by Joseph Stalin. In the Seventies, Franklin was head of a violent radical group called “Veneremos,” whose activities led to his being fired by Stanford University, an act of academic wisdom, which could not be repeated today.

Professor Lal explains the importance of Franklin’s text in this way: “Though many commentators have unthinkingly rehearsed the cliche that after 9/11 all is changed, our other principal text comes from one of the most respected scholars of American history [Franklin is in fact a Professor of English Literature}, whose relatively recent inquiry into the meaning of the Vietnam war in American life suggests that nothing has changed, insofar as the US remains on course in exercising its ruthless dominance over the rest of the world.” [Emphasis added.]

There is not the slightest indication that this course will present students with alternative viewpoints to this jihadist perspective, or that it will open minds to the complex realities of American democracy. This is a course designed to draw one ideological conclusion, and to indoctrinate students in an extreme leftwing point of view.

Given the pervasive leftwing bias in UC’s academic hiring process, which has gone on for more than thirty years, this travesty of an academic seminar is neither surprising nor unique. The present UC administration is not only willing to tolerate such abuses, it has recently capitulated to the faculty ideologues and eliminated the remaining safeguards of academic integrity from its policy guidelines, and formally accepted the politicization of its teaching programs.

Until this moment, political indoctrination by faculty has been traditionally (and formally) regarded by the American Association of University Professors and all academic administrations as a violation of the educational mission of the university. Until this year, in fact, indoctrination was explicitly recognized by the UC administration as academically unacceptable. Thus rule APM 0-10 of UC Berkeley’s Academic Personnel Manual, written by UC President Robert Gordon Sproul in 1934 stated quite clearly:

“The function of the university is to seek and to transmit knowledge and to train students in the processes whereby truth is to be made known. To convert, or to make converts, is alien and hostile to this dispassionate duty. Where it becomes necessary in performing this function of a university, to consider political, social, or sectarian movements, they are dissected and examined, not taught, and the conclusion left, with no tipping of the scales, to the logic of the facts….Essentially the freedom of a university is the freedom of competent persons in the classroom. In order to protect this freedom, the University assumed the right to prevent exploitation of its prestige by unqualified persons or by those who would use it as a platform for propaganda.”

Unfortunately, these noble words have been honored more in the breach than in the observance for a long time in the UC system. But the mere fact of their existence was annoying to faculty ideologues at Berkeley. Consequently, at the behest of former UC president Richard Atkinson, they were summarily removed this year by a tiny minority of the UC community in a 43-3 vote of the faculty Senate, which took place on July 30. 2003. The academic freedom clause was replaced by another, which essentially said that professors can teach anything they want in the classroom. This is a momentous and ominous event in the life of American universities, and therefore the academic context in which it occurred needs to be understood.

Two incidents precipitated the change in UC policy on academic freedom. The first was the complaint of a student at UC Berkeley that her Middle Eastern studies lecturer had told students that the notorious Czarist forgery, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, was true. The Protocols describes a Jewish plot to control the world and was a document used by the Nazis to justify the extermination of Jews. The student’s complaint was dismissed by university authorities. An official of the UC Academic Senate defended the professor’s preposterous and bigoted statement as coming under the protection of “academic freedom,” and explained the view that was eventually codified in the Academic Personnel Manual as APM 0-15:

“I too had assumed these “Protocols” are a fraud but I am hardly an expert on the subject. [B]ut quite frankly there are many theories in social science I think are pure nonsense that have currency; I guess that is part of the messiness of academic freedom…and we each have our favorite ‘excesses.'” (emphasis added)

It hardly needs to be emphasized that traditionally academic freedom had nothing to do with the propagation of proven forgeries like the Protocols of the Elders of Zion as though they were true.

The second incident involved a required freshman English writing class conducted by instructor Snehal Shingavi. Shingavi is the head of the International Socialist Organization, a group that describes itself as “Leninist” and calls for violent revolution. He is also head of Students for Justice in Palestine. Shingavi organized an anti-American demonstration on September 11, 2001 after the World Trade Center attacks and has been arrested for leading illegal and violent demonstrations on campus. Shingavi’s course was called “The Politics and Poetics of Palestinian Resistance,” and was listed in the catalogue along with the warning “Conservative thinkers are encouraged to seek other sections.” This sentence led to public ridicule and outrage. It was removed from the catalogue by university officials, but the course itself was allowed to continue.

When UC President Atkinson introduced the idea of altering the existing academic freedom code he specially mentioned the Shingavi course as an instance of why the existing code (which explicitly disapproved of such courses) was no longer useful in addressing contemporary questions. It was “outdated.” Atkinson’s statement was the university’s formal capitulation to the political forces that have taken over the university. The new guidelines leave the university’s standards in this matter to the Academic Senate, and limit the criterion for what is acceptable in the classroom to academic “competence.” This competence, however, is certified by the credentialing system before the professor enters a classroom. In other words the revision of the guidelines for academic freedom in the UC system is a direct and explicit surrender of the academic curriculum to the political ideologues on the UC faculties. It is an announcement that UC administrators now sanction the political abuse of California’s system of higher education by radical activists who have seized its faculties and who are bent on its exploiting its curriculum for the most extreme agendas of the radical left.
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David Horowitz is the author of numerous books including an autobiography, Radical Son, which has been described as “the first great autobiography of his generation,” and which chronicles his odyssey from radical activism to the current positions he holds. Among his other books are The Politics of Bad Faith and The Art of Political War. The Art of Political War was described by White House political strategist Karl Rove as “the perfect guide to winning on the political battlefield.” Horowitz’s latest book, Uncivil Wars, was published in January this year, and chronicles his crusade against intolerance and racial McCarthyism on college campuses last spring. Click here to read more about David

By Sara Dogan–FrontPageMagazine.com–03/28/05

Since its inception, the Academic Bill of Rights has endured frequent criticism from members of the academy, who claim that its tenets will infringe on professors’ right to free expression in the classroom. These opponents most often cite the Bill’s statement that faculty have an obligation to make students aware of the “spectrum of significant scholarly views” on the subjects they teach and the prohibition on using the classroom “for purposes of political, ideological, religious, or anti-religious indoctrination.”

We have repeatedly pointed out that the precepts of our Bill are taken directly from official pronouncements on academic freedom made by the American Association of University Professors. As the principal opponent of the Academic Bill of Rights, the AAUP has refused to acknowledge this debt and implausibly maintains that measure we are supporting to reinforce the academic freedom code is itself “a grave threat to academic freedom.”

The fact that it is the AAUP that has stood these issues on their head is confirmed by the Statement on Standards of Professional Conduct of the American Historical Association, which explicitly confirms the key tenets of our Academic Bill of Rights.

The newly revised Statement, which was formally adopted by Council on January 6, 2005, acknowledges both the right of academics to hold personal beliefs on their topics of study and the importance of presenting and considering multiple historical perspectives, noting that “practicing history with integrity does not mean being neutral or having no point of view” but also: “Multiple, conflicting perspectives are among the truths of history. No single objective or universal account could ever put an end to this endless creative dialogue within and between the past and the present.”

Similarly, the Academic Bill of Rights holds that “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.”

In describing how to handle these scholarly differences, the AHA again and again reinforces the importance of civility and respect, noting in one passage that “[Historians] believe in vigorous debate, but they also believe in civility” and in another paragraph, “they should respect and welcome divergent points of view even as they argue and subject those views to critical scrutiny.”

The AHA also offers explicit guidance on teaching, and it is here that the resemblance to the Academic Bill of Rights is most apparent.

The Statement notes, “Integrity and teaching means presenting competing interpretations with fairness and intellectual honesty….The political social and religious beliefs of history teachers necessarily inform their work, but the right of the teacher to hold and express such convictions can never justify falsification, misrepresentation, or concealment, or the persistent intrusion of material unrelated to the subject of the course” (emphasis added).

The italicized phrase is critical, because it is identical to a phrase in the Academic Bill of Rights which has been singled out by the AAUP and other opponents as an unwarranted “restriction” on professors’ free speech. Far from being unwarranted it is a phrase lifted from the AAUP’s own academic freedom guidelines.

The AHA statement continues: “Furthermore, teachers should be mindful that students and other audience members have the right to disagree with a given interpretation or point of view. Students should be made aware of multiple causes and varying interpretations. Within the bounds of the historical topic being studied, the free expression of legitimate differences of opinion should always be a goal. Teachers should judge students’ work on merit alone” (emphasis added).

To emphasize the importance of introducing diverse perspectives, the next paragraph reiterates the point: “Course offerings, textbooks, and public history presentations should address the diversity of human experience, recognizing that historical accuracy requires attention both to individual and cultural similarities and differences and to the larger global and historical context within which societies have evolved.”

These statements duplicate the core points of the Academic Bill of Rights, including the prohibition on using the classroom for purposes of indoctrination or propaganda (“the persistent intrusion of material unrelated to the subject of the course”) and the importance of presenting a spectrum of scholarly views (“students should be made aware of multiple causes and varying interpretations”). Yet when these points are made by supporters of the Academic Bill of Rights, the AAUP calls them a “grave threat to academic freedom.”

An additional point of agreement between the AHA’s Statement and the Academic Bill of Rights is apparent in the Statement’s discussion of employment practices which holds that “Employment decisions always involve judgments. But, except in those cases in which federal law allows a specific preference, institutions should base hiring decisions as well as all decisions relating to reappointment, promotion, tenure, apprenticeship, graduate student assistantships, awards, and fellowships solely on professional qualifications without regard to sex, race, color, national origin, sexual orientation, religion, political affiliation, veteran status, age, certain physical handicaps, or marital status.”

It is notable that this non-discrimination clause refers directly to “political affiliation” as a protected category, since many universities currently do not have official policies prohibiting discrimination in hiring or tenure practices based on political or ideological beliefs. It is also interesting that professors who claim to be appalled at legislation to enforce the Academic Bill of Rights are perfectly willing (as this passage shows) to accept government intrusion in the hiring process if the issue is skin color or gender or sexual orientation.

In sum, the American Historical Association’s guidelines on professional conduct specifically endorse the key tenets of the Academic Bill of Rights, including the prohibition on persistently introducing irrelevant controversial topics in the classroom and the responsibility of faculty to expose students to a spectrum of scholarly views. Scholars and members of the AHA should welcome the Academic Bill of Rights as an attempt to see that its own statement of policy is actually put into practice.
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Sara Dogan is National Campus Director of Students for Academic Freedom.

By Sara Dogan–SAF–10/15/05

Temple University:

The Temple University Faculty Handbook states in section I on Academic Freedom that:

All members of the faculty, whether tenured or not, are entitled to academic freedom as set forth in the 1940 Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure*, formulated by the Association of American Colleges and the American Association of University Professors, as follows:

“(a) Teachers are entitled to full freedom in research and in the publication of the results, subject to the adequate performance of their other academic duties; but research for pecuniary return should be based upon an understanding with the authorities of the institution.

(b) Teachers are entitled to freedom in the classroom in discussing their subject, but they should be careful not to introduce into their teaching controversial matter which has no relation to their subject. Limitations of academic freedom because of religious or other aims of the institution should be clearly stated in writing at the time of the appointment. (emphasis added)

(c) College and university teachers are citizens, members of a learned profession, and officers of an educational institution. When they speak or write as citizens, they should be free from institutional censorship or discipline, but their special position in the community imposes special obligations. As scholars and educational officers, they should remember that the public may judge their profession and their institution by their utterances. Hence they should at all times be accurate, should exercise appropriate restraint, should show respect for the opinions of others, and should make every effort to indicate that they are not speaking for the institution.”

Reference: http://www.temple.edu/vpfaculty/TU_Faculty_Handbook.pdf (page 3)

Analysis: The policies of Temple University accord with the AAUP guidelines in stating that professors should avoid persistently introducing into their teaching controversial material which is irrelevant to the subject of the course. However, the University policies on academic freedom do not explicitly call for professors to present a diverse range of significant scholarly viewpoints on the subjects they teach.

It is notable that Pennsylvania House Resolution 177 is much less stringent in its restriction on professors’ professional conduct in the classroom than this existing Temple University faculty policy, holding only that the select committee will examine whether “students have an academic environment, quality life on campus and reasonable access to course materials that create an environment conducive to learning, the development of critical thinking and the exploration and expression of independent thought and that the students are evaluated based on their subject knowledge; and that students are graded based on academic merit, without regard for ideological views, and that academic freedom and the right to explore and express independent thought is available to and practiced freely by faculty and students.”

We would recommend that the faculty policy forbidding the persistent introduction of irrelevant controversial material in the classroom be formulated as a student right and would further recommend that the student grievance policy be amended to explicitly state that students have the right to file a grievance when their professors persistently introduce controversial material in the classroom that is irrelevant to the subject of the course or otherwise violate students’ academic freedom. Additionally, we suggest that the university make explicit the need for faculty to present a spectrum of “significant scholarly viewpoints” on the subjects they teach, which accords with the guidelines recently endorsed by the American Council on Education and 27 additional higher education organizations calling for “intellectual pluralism and the free exchange of ideas” on university campuses.

University of Pittsburgh:

After extensive searching through the University of Pittsburgh website, faculty handbook, and university policies, a specific policy solely dedicated to the issue of academic freedom was not able to be located. However, several different policies and pronouncements of the University touch on this topic:

The University of Pittsburgh Faculty Handbook policy on Academic Integrity states that:

It is the direct responsibility of faculty to encourage free inquiry and expression and to provide an academic environment in their classrooms and in their contact with students that reflects a high standard of integrity and is conducive to learning.

Pursuant to the University’s code of faculty obligations relating to academic integrity, faculty are expected to conduct themselves in a professional manner, as summarized below:…..

5. To describe to students, within the period in which a student may add or drop a course, orally, in writing, or by reference to printed course descriptions, the general content and objectives of a course; and announce the methods and standards of evaluation, including the importance to be assigned various factors in academic evaluations and, in advance of any evaluation, the permissible materials or references allowed during evaluation.

6. To base all academic evaluations upon good-faith professional judgment.

7. Not to consider, in academic evaluation, such factors as race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, age, national origin, political or cultural affiliation, lifestyle, activities, or behavior outside the classroom unrelated to academic achievement.

9. Not to exploit their professional relationship with students for private advantage; and to refrain from soliciting the assistance of students for private purposes in a manner that infringes upon such students’ freedom of choice.

12. To respect the dignity of students individually and collectively in the classroom and other academic contexts. (emphasis added)

Reference: http://www.pitt.edu/~provost/handbook.html (under III: Academic Policies)

Additionally, a Statement on Academic Freedom from the Ad Hoc Committee on Academic Freedom released June 34, 2003 states in part that:

The collective commitment of the academic community to the principles of academic freedom played an important role in shaping the major American universities of the twentieth century, including our own. This commitment is most famously embodied in the “Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom” of the American Association of University Professors, first put forward in 1940 and subsequently amended and referred to or incorporated into a variety of documents…. More locally, commitment to academic freedom is embedded in the University of Pittsburgh Bylaws and safeguarded by the rights and obligations of faculty to participate in governance at the University, especially in the determination of the curriculum, the development of policies, and the selection of the faculty and of the academic leadership of the University……

After its review of the particular context and priorities of the University of Pittsburgh at this time, the Committee affirms that, at its most fundamental, the academic freedom of all members of the University centers on the right of individual scholars to use their professional expertise to select and pursue lines of enquiry, to come to conclusions and to formulate scholarly opinions on the questions that they study, and to translate their knowledge and understanding into effective instruction appropriately grounded in principles and practices of disciplines and professions. It is the responsibility of the University to support individuals in the exercise of these rights within the bounds of available resources, the conflicting demands put on those resources, and the constraints of shared governance….

Our ability to assert the rights and privileges of academic freedom depends on our willingness to accept concomitant responsibilities at each of the levels at which academic freedom is exercised. These include the responsibility to meet the highest scholarly standards in work that is carried out under the protection of academic freedom, the responsibility to respect the academic rights of others, and the responsibility to participate constructively in collective processes through which these rights are exercised. Most especially, it implies the responsibility to treat all members of the community of scholars that constitutes the university, including students as scholars under instruction, with the dignity that respects all honestly held opinions and all cogently articulated arguments (emphasis added).

Reference: http://www.pitt.edu/~provost/afstatement.html

Analysis: It should be noted that the attempts to research the academic freedom policies of the University of Pittsburgh through the university website were extremely frustrating. A search of the site using the keywords “academic freedom” revealed over 200 web pages relating to the subject, but did not lead to a clear policy statement on academic freedom. Further attempts to locate university policies in the Faculty Handbook and Faculty Policies and Procedures sections of the website were similarly unsuccessful.

The academic freedom policies of the University of Pittsburgh do not appear to address the need for professors to avoid introducing into their teaching controversial material which is irrelevant to the subject of the course. The lack of a clear single policy addressing academic freedom makes it difficult to determine exactly what student rights are protected at the University, but it seems clear that these policies do hold that professors may not evaluate students on the basis of their political or religious beliefs, or any behavior external to the course in which the student is enrolled. The ad hoc statement of the committee on academic freedom is somewhat more explicit in stating that all members of the university community should be treated “with the dignity that respects all honestly held opinions and all cogently articulated arguments,” though it is unclear whether this statement is binding. These policies do not appear to address the need for faculty to present a diverse range of significant scholarly viewpoints on the subjects they teach.

We would recommend that the University of Pittsburgh adopt a clear policy statement for both students and faculty on the meaning and importance of academic freedom, including both a faculty and student policy addressing the need for professors to avoid the introduction of irrelevant controversial material in the classroom. The university should also amend its student grievance policy to explicitly state that students have the right to file a grievance when their professors persistently introduce controversial material in the classroom that is irrelevant to the subject of the course or otherwise violate students’ academic freedom. Additionally, we suggest that the university make explicit the need for faculty to present a spectrum of “significant scholarly viewpoints” on the subjects they teach.

Note: The policies quoted in this document are excerpts of the originals that were cut for reasons of length and to draw attention to the passages which relate to the Academic Bill of Rights and House Resolution 177. To view the complete policies, please visit the websites given in the reference links.