Pennsylvania

By FrontPageMag.com–01/11/06

The following are testimonies given at Pennsylvania’s Academic Freedom Hearings (held on January 9 and 10), by Stephen Zelnick, a veteran professor at Temple, and Logan Fisher, a senior majoring in business law at Temple.

Testimony of Stephen Zelnick:

I have been a faculty member in the Department of English since 1969, thirty-six years, and tenured in that department since 1976, now approaching thirty years. In that time I have served as Director of University Writing Programs and Director of the Intellectual Heritage Program (a Great Books Program); I have assisted the previous President, Peter Liacouras, as a member of his staff, and more recently served as Vice Provost for Undergraduate Studies. I have been an active member of the faculty union (the TAUP), and am a member of the American Federation of Teachers. I have also served as President of the Faculty Senate. I am the co-founder of a flourishing association supporting core text education and have been an adviser on humanities programs internationally in Russia, Georgia, and the emerging nations of Central Asia. My devotion has been to education and the best service to the intellectual and personal growth of students through the tradition of the humanities.

I am also a graduate of Temple University, having earned a Bachelor’s degree in 1963, and am a long-time supporter of the best traditions of this University. I am happy to tell the story, and have told it internationally, of how my life was transformed by my education at this institution; how a young man whose father was an illiterate immigrant became an English Professor and one committed to the values of honest, fair, and challenging education I experienced here at Temple University. Over the years, I have been proud to be part of an institution that reproduces that mission and of a faculty that by and large works hard for our students.

In my student days, I was taught by professors, mostly male, and entirely white, but representing a broad range of social, political, and religious views in an intellectually tolerant atmosphere. Many of them were World War Two veterans and were what I would call inquisitive patriots, devoted to American political and cultural values, always alert to the distortion of those values, but also moderate idealists in their expectations of what this or any society could achieve in reality. They had positions to advocate but were wise enough to know the difference between education and indoctrination, between the free flow of ideas and teaching the truth as they themselves alone possessed it.

I am here to help you consider the usefulness of establishing some mechanism to supervise the balance of discussion in the university. I have seen enough over the past decade or so to tell me that there is good reason to consider some supervision, or at the very least to raise the question of the dangers of unbalanced views and the dangers of dictatorial classrooms. The damage to our students, as I will try to explain, can be severe, and the damage to educational institutions may be irreparable unless someone takes notice and works for change.

I don’t suppose I would be here testifying today were it not for the rallying event scheduled at the weekly meeting of the “Dissent in America” forum. The meeting was organized by the faculty union, with the support of the Faculty Senate with the purpose of rallying faculty support against House Resolution 177, a resolution calling upon a body of the legislature to be delegated to investigate the issues of students’ rights to open discussion and for protection against abusive assertions of ideology in the classroom..

The presentation at the “Dissent in America” forum was one-sided and an excellent example of the replacement of sober discussion with group adherence. One presenter connected these concerns for student rights and the appeal to the legislature with the purge of communist professors in the 1950’s and in particular the banishment of Professor Barrows Dunham, the distinguished chairman of the Philosophy Department at Temple University at that time. The attempt to connect that moment with this was inflammatory and ill-conceived. The notion that any hearings conducted by the legislature, and representing the interests and concerns of the citizens and tax-payers of Pennsylvania, amounted to a witch-hunt to condemn faculty members for their political affiliations wildly misstates the purposes and spirit of these hearings. That rabble rousing does, however, represent what too often passes for thinking.

The gathering also heard about the testimony of Dr. Stephen Balch in Harrisburg in November. I know Stephen Balch, as I also knew Barrows Dunham, and admire his careful thinking and tactful expression. Yet the characterization of him, of his motives, and of the content of his presentation was predictably inflammatory and not factual. A student attending the “Dissent in America” forum asked whether Balch was part of the same movement that asserted intelligent design against real science and was assured by the panel that it was all of one piece. But Professor Balch is a deep student of the history of science and devoted to enlightenment rationality and is as far as one could be from the “know-nothing” stance attributed to him. But untruths told to students is part of what brings us here, and it was brashly on display.

As is typical these days at this and many other universities, holding a meeting where only one side is represented and where a disfigured account is offered as truth is the order of the day. The historic AAUP statement that promises full consideration of all views in the search for truth, and which provides the foundation for House Resolution 177, has been replaced sadly with truths that are beyond question.

The Women’s Study Program subsequently raised the prospect of danger to their liberty and right to a political agenda by mis-characterizing Professor Balch’s presentation in Harrisburg and with a strange challenge against the writer of a letter to local newspaper. The Women’s Studies group asserted that Balch had misrepresented a speaker series they sponsored by asserting that the speakers had presented views in their talks which they had not. Clearly they had not read Balch’s presentation and instead assumed the right to guess at what he presented and offer that as factual. Also, in challenging the letter writer, the women’s study spokeswomen chastised her for not identifying whose husband she was while expressing her views; I trust this group would normally find such a demand abhorrent. But perhaps where group advocacy is involved, standards of truth and value are secondary to the end in view. This style of combat represents a powerful problem for an institution of learning and honest inquiry.

Stephen Balch cited several concerns about a left leaning agenda at Temple University. As noted earlier, one of those concerns is the Women’s Study Program. I have less of a concern here about direct abuse to students in such specialized programs since it is unlikely a student who enrolled in a women’s study course would expect anything other than feminist advocacy. A student who had traditional views of women’s role in marriage, for example, would be unlikely to enroll in the Women’s Study Program or to feel put upon by a feminist perspective if he or she did. There is no requirement for students to enroll in women’s study courses. At the same time, there seems to me a problem for students and for scholars who might adhere to a traditional view of woman’s role in society. I am not sure where such a view would be supported or be given a fair hearing. The greater concern, however, is for the agenda of the Women’s Studies Program to assume prominence in departments across the university. This feminist agenda has succeeded in directing patterns of hiring and in shaping curriculum. It is now common for courses to be cross-listed as Women’s Studies and English, or Women’s Studies and History, and so on. The feminist perspective is visible virtually everywhere in the humanities and the social sciences. I recall attending a scholarly colloquium in which a classicist presented research on Latin marriage ceremonies. It seemed taken for granted that these weddings were similar to animal sacrifices, and as I recall, the speaker apologized several times for the fact that she herself was married and pregnant.

I am concerned also by Temple’s requirement that all students enroll in a course on race. The course was imposed on the curriculum after a student disturbance in the early 1990’s that seems to have degraded into a police riot where several African-American students were clearly mistreated. That event became the occasion for a demand that all undergraduates be compelled to enroll in a course on race relations and racism in order to be sensitized to racism, surely a deep concerns for our society. At the time, one professor expressed worry that there needed to be some supervision of these courses so they did not become an occasion for hectoring abuse of students. The topics, all admitted, were sensitive and their presentation ought to be handled carefully or more harm than good could result. As I recall, this warning was dismissed as unnecessary, and Temple has since required all undergraduates to pass such a course in order to graduate.

Part of the dissenting professor’s worry was that since so many sections would be required to accommodate the entire student body, teaching would end up in the hands of graduate students who were likely to be angry and inexperienced in teaching and especially in teaching difficult material to a captive and possibly resentful audience. That prediction has come to pass, unfortunately, and sections are now taught by inexperienced instructors who have abused their assignment. In one case I know of, an instructor badgered a young female student who had asked a simple question and then forced her to leave the room; the student who told me this outrageous tale herself dropped the course in indignation.

Examples of such direct abuse, I suspect, are rare. More common is a less obvious abuse that requires more careful attention. One solution to offering so many sections of a Race Studies course has been what President Adamany has referred to as “double dipping.” In this approach to curricular requirements, more than one requirement can be satisfied by a single course; and so, many sections of freshman Composition offer race studies as the course content. No tenured faculty member teaches this course; instead, a great many sections are taught by graduate students, who are young, socially inexperienced, highly idealistic, and deeply opinionated. Because there are so many of inexperienced instructors and so few full-time faculty to supervise them, these instructors are on their own when it comes to offering a balanced approached to so complex a concern as racism. A student who may harbor doubts about affirmative action quotas is likely to have a difficult time in these classes. Students generally learn very quickly, of course, to give the teacher what s/he wants and to keep their own views to themselves.

It isn’t only the instructor who enforces a one-sided approach to this and other debates. The reader provided the instructor (Great Divides: Readings in Social Inequality in the United States, by Thomas M. Shapiro) is a forceful example of limiting views and foreclosing serious debate and discussion. The keynote is sounded by the opening article “The Diminishing American Dream,” an article that would, for example, surprise many of our Asian and East Asian students and their parents. The author’s introduction intones as follows: “The changes we are seeing in our society during the 1990s-stagnating living standards, increasing poverty, a precarious middle class, and a growing gap between rich and poor-are probably the result of the specific way that economic restructuring is taking place in the United States.” I find no counter view in this volume, one that might suggest that these restructurings are constant and that this one may open unusual new opportunities for our students. The gloomy account is familiar as a mainstay of left thinking, something that I suppose anticipates the revolutionary action of the working classes, presumably the students in our classrooms.

The textbook includes many authors well known on the left side of these discussions: Karl Marx is there; Herbert Gans; Harry Braverman; W.E.B. Dubois; William Julius Wilson; Ronald Takaki; Jonathan Kozol; and many others less well known and less articulate and persuasive. What I don’t find are the articulate and persuasive voices on the right, and especially on issues of race: there is no Shelby Steele, no Thomas Sowell, the cantankerous Walter Williams is absent, as is the challenging and courageous Ward Connerly. All these voices are absent and their views absent and unaccounted for.

Now, I would not care so much if this course was entitled “The Evils of Racism in Capitalist Amerika” and students who wanted to be rallied to a sectarian view were free to enroll and enjoy the good feeling of shared indignation and dreams of revolution. The course that concerns me, however, is required, and so several evils are compounded: (1) students miss an opportunity to explore a topic of concern in a real way; (2) students miss an opportunity to sharpen their thinking and writing abilities by participating in real debates; and, (3) students who hold contrary views or perhaps even harbor a modest question, learn to keep quiet, and also learn that their academic experience is a sham. [Would you like to say something here about a fourth evil? I mean the lost opportunity to expose students to genuinely good writing, presumably the paramount objective of a composition course, and something that I’m sure most Temple students dearly need. The essays in Great Divides, I gather, have been chosen more for their polemical than literary values – if they possess any of the latter at all].

This last evil is most pernicious. The university is a rare institution, in this or any society, where open inquiry ought not only be protected but also be promoted actively. When education becomes advocacy and indoctrination we and our students and society at large lose the precious opportunity to realize our freedom in the most meaningful way. An old left-leaning professor of mine once pointed out that the freedom most desired by workers in factories was the freedom to talk back to the boss; it’s a freedom now waning in our university classrooms, and my old-lefty professor would have resented.

These exclusions go on all the time. In Intellectual Heritage, our great books course, economics is represented by Karl Marx, an excellent writer to be sure and most interesting on the emergence of capitalism, but Adam Smith, the original architect of capitalism thought and certainly as fine a writer as Marx, is absent. Students are required to study Freud and Gandhi, or even the Egyptian Book of the Dead, but not, in its classic expression, the founding philosophy that shapes our lives. The old joke has it, such a thing could happen only in a university.

As director of two undergraduate programs, I have had many opportunities to sit in and watch instructors teach and also to review their assignments and their grading of student papers. I have sat in on more than a hundred different teachers’ classes and seen excellent, indifferent, and miserable teaching and done what I could to encourage the good and to repair the bad. In these visits, I rarely heard a kind word for the United States, for riches of our marketplace, for the vast economic and creative opportunities made available for energetic and creative people (that is, for our students); for family life, for marriage, for love, or for religion. I did hear a great deal about the importance of diversity and tolerance, about the evils of imperialism; about the need to be skeptical of all institutions and traditional values; and about the stupidity and mendacity of prominent politicians. There is much to applaud in this heterodoxy and rebelliousness. However, without the balance of the arguments for loyalty, tradition, and reverence, these appeals to radical thinking fail to serve education well. Worse yet, most students have long since stopped listening to what they have learned to expect to hear when instructors begin to range freely into their own grievances and ideological fixations when their business ought to be education.

Patriotism is complicated in that it can lead to dangerously emotional behavior. Nevertheless, I have found that my students in Intellectual Heritage and in my English Literature courses have been imbued with a decided ignorance of our nation’s history and accomplishments. Typically, my students can tell me about the failure of the U.S. Constitution to end slavery (what Professor Mary Berry has taught us to call America’s “Birth Defect”), but can tell me little else about that remarkable document and its clever fashioning. They know that George Washington had wooden teeth and that Jefferson fathered children with Sally Hemmings, but little else about these titanic figures. They have been taught about Harriet Tubman and Sojourner Truth, and worthy stories they are, but associate Abraham Lincoln only with President’s Day car sales. They know that we rightfully ought to give the land back to the Native Americans and apologize to Japanese Americans for their incarceration during World War II and to the Japan for the atom bombings. All this is worth discussing, but without the countering facts and stories there is little chance they can appreciate their native land or make reasonable judgments about how American history or any other competent historical account works.

Religion is another subject for classroom abuse. Most students are religious in some way and come from families that maintain meaningful religious affiliations. In college classes, they tell me, they are often regaled with harsh comments and witticisms about religious ideals and the Bible. I was myself a witty fellow at the expense of religion until a student took me quietly aside to suggest I be more respectful. I will always remember this young woman recently arrived from the Philippines for the gentleness of her complaint. It made me recognize better who my students are. I believe it has made me a better teacher. In my classroom visits and conversation after with instructors who are similarly witty debunkers, I have tried my best to extend this view.

I gained another insight into the problems of one-sidedness in reviewing the grading and commentary on student essays. I don’t doubt that the great majority of instructors grading student papers are dedicated to the principle of fairness. Still, it is very difficult for most of us to escape the blindness that comes from a habitual practice of uncontested conclusions. It is very difficult not to accept an incomplete argument on a proposition with which we agree, or to accept the merits of arguments on propositions we oppose. It is very difficult not to write “good point” next to a conclusion that has not been supported when that conclusion is our own; and it requires a rare intellectual alertness not to write “needs more examples” or “where’s your proof” next to arguments, even reasonably well supported ones, in support of conclusion we abhor.

As more and more instruction, especially in required courses of the core curriculum falls either to graduate students or to adjuncts hired one course at a time, and when fewer seasoned faculty are available to train and supervise them, we should expect problems of fairness, of intellectual rigor, and abuse of the privilege of teaching. All these problems are compounded by the one-sidedness of the faculty in their ideological commitments and a growing intolerance of competing views. The result is abuse of students, occasionally overt and reported, but most often hidden and normalized, and the degrading of the strong traditions of intellectual inquiry and free expression. The faculty, as witnessed by the uniform support shown by the faculty union and the Faculty Senate here at Temple University, sees no problem other than the legislative inquiry being conducting today in this proceeding. For them, the issue is Academic Freedom, which now means the freedom of faculty to do as they please and to be accountable to no one. In contrast, the AAUP statement speaks of obligations and responsibilities to free and open expression and to the diversity of viewpoints. That statement deserves our reverence and loyalty.

I agree with the faculty union and with the Faculty Senate and probably with most of you, that requesting the intervention of the State Legislature is more than uncomfortable. No one wants government telling instructors what to teach or how if we can avoid it. Nonetheless, in the present circumstances we need to find a way to re-institute a diversity of views, their free expression, and fair treatment in keeping with what educating our students requires. It is what citizens and tax-payers expect and deserve.

Thank you for letting an old professor speak his mind.

*

Testimony of Logan Fisher:

Thank you for allowing me this opportunity to speak, today. My name is Logan Fisher and I am a senior majoring in business law at Temple University. I want to start off by saying that my testimony today will not only contain my personal experiences, but that of many students who are afraid to testify, for fear of repercussions to their academic careers. As a Vice-Chairman of the Temple College Republicans and Vice-President of the Temple Chapter of Students for Academic Freedom, I experienced first hand the apprehension students had to testify today, as they expressed to me concerns of retaliation by professors and fear of being singled out in their classes in the future.

One issue that concerns me is the partisan role that my university, which is a taxpayer supported institution, seems to take in presidential elections. During the 2004 Presidential election year, Michael Moore spoke on campus. While I did not attend the speech myself, I was fully aware that his intention on our Campus was to support John Kerry. Mr. Moore’s website even confirms this. This was part of his “Slacker Tour” which was targeted for battleground states in the election, including Pennsylvania, Ohio, Wisconsin and similar states.

Some of my College Republicans who did attend the event also expressed to me how biased it was. My objection, however, was not that he was on campus, but that it was during an election campaign and that while he attacked President Bush and supported John Kerry, no one was invited to speak for the other side. In a setting which is supposed to promote debate and dialogue, Temple provided none.

In addition to Mr. Moore’s event, Temple University sponsored “Vote or Die”, a campaign which was created rap-star Sean “P. Diddy” Combs, and which was designed to get students out and vote. The tour visited numerous college campuses around the country claiming they wanted to encourage students just to vote. Tickets were handed out in this very Student Center, and were free to anyone with a Temple ID. During their performance at Temple I was treated to entertainer-led chants of “FUCK GEORGE BUSH, FUCK GEORGE BUSH, FUCK GEORGE BUSH.” Throughout their performance they lectured students about how important it was to “throw Bush out of the White House” and “…send him the f— back to Texas.”

It does not seem proper for a taxpayer-funded university to be institutionally partisan like this. I have since spoken to others who have informed me that the election laws require public institutions like universities to provide equal funds to speakers from both sides of the election debate. This was not done at Temple.

While I am a business major, and one would not expect many political comments to be made in business courses, I have had numerous professors make rude comments about Bush, one who told my class that we elected “the dumb ass to a second term”, one who harped on the slow federal response to Katrina for over 15 minutes but did not utter a single word about the slow or responses at the state or local level, which Democrats controlled.

I had a professor last semester ask if “Is it ever justified for the United States to break with the international community to protect our own interests?” When I answered, “Yes,” the professor told me “well… you’re going to have a rough semester in this class.” Is it appropriate for professors to threaten students like this just because they disagree with them on political issues?

Many of my professors have pictures of Bush on their office doors with derogatory comments attached. This is not very reassuring to me when I show up to talk to them about non-political class-related issues, since they know I am a Vice-Chairman of the College Republicans. I come to my professors seeking help and advice in my academic courses. It is not helpful when my professor feels that it is necessary to inform of his contempt for views of mine which have absolutely nothing to do with the academic subject I am consulting him about.

I recently asked members of my Students for Academic Freedom chapter to respond with any complaints they had about recent classes they had attended at Temple. I would like to read some of those comments:

[Read comments]

Some have suggested that this will “lock down the academic environment.” Quite the opposite. We are not saying “You can’t talk about this, or You cant talk about that.” We are saying “By all means, Talk about it! But talk about both sides.” The only time I feel it is inappropriate is when a professor goes completely out of their individual field of study.

I am saddened that some of you may think this is a waste of time and money. But, I urge you, as the representatives of the taxpayers of this state who provide the generous funds to the university, to educate their students-not to indoctrinate them in one political party’s views or another’s-to find a way to rectify this situation. Thank you for your time.

—

Testimony of Anne D. Neal, President

American Council of Trustees and Alumni

Before the Select Committee on Academic Freedom in Higher Education of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives

Public Hearing, January 10, 2006

Philadelphia, PA

I want to thank the chairman and members of the Select Committee for allowing me to speak to you today.

I am president of the American Council of Trustees and Alumni, a national education nonprofit. My organization was founded in 1995 and is a bipartisan network of college and university trustees and alumni across the country dedicated to academic freedom, academic excellence and accountability in higher education.

Since our founding, we have had occasion to evaluate colleges and universities in terms of academic freedom and academic offerings. And what we have discovered shows-beyond a shadow of a doubt-that the lack of intellectual diversity is the greatest problem facing higher education.

This committee’s willingness to explore the issue and to determine what action, if any, is exemplary and I hope that it will serve as a model for legislatures across the country.

Let me begin by saying that lack of intellectual diversity is not a new problem, nor is it a matter of a few isolated incidents or abuses, as some of the witnesses would have you believe. As early as 1991, Yale President Benno Schmidt warned that “The most serious problems of freedom of expression in our society today exist on campuses. The assumption seems to be that the purpose of education is to induce correct opinion rather than to search for wisdom and liberate the mind.” In his last report to the Board of Overseers, retiring Harvard President Derek Bok warned: “What universities can and must resist are deliberate, overt attempts to impose orthodoxy and suppress dissent… In recent years, the threat of orthodoxy has come primarily from within rather than outside the university.”

A decade and more have passed since these comments were made and I wish that I could say to you that the situation had improved. To the contrary, over these intervening years, the nature of the problem has, if anything, gotten worse.

Rather than fostering intellectual diversity-the robust exchange of ideas traditionally viewed as the very essence of a college education-our colleges and universities are increasingly bastions of political correctness, hostile to the free exchange of ideas.

In recent months, members of the academy have themselves conceded challenges. The Association of American Colleges and Universities has issued a statement on Academic Freedom and Educational Responsibility that states: “Some departments fail to ensure that their curricula include the full diversity of legitimate intellectual perspectives appropriate to their disciplines. And individual faculty members sometimes express their personal views to students in ways that intimidate them. … [T]here is room for improvement.” Columbia president Lee Bollinger, after outside pressure, in early 2005 admitted students had legitimate complaints about intimidation in the classroom and issued new and revised grievance guidelines. David Ward, President of the American Council on Education, has admitted to the press that some institutions have no grievance procedures in place and should have.

Meanwhile, surveys by Klein, Rothman, McGinnis and others documenting the politically monolithic character of the faculty have mounted, with no countervailing data of any kind. A study released in late December by Professor Dan Klein found that social science professors are overwhelmingly Democratic, that Democratic professors in those disciplines are more homogeneous in their thinking than Republicans; and that Republican scholars are more likely to work outside the academy than their Democratic counterparts. On the question of political affiliation, the survey showed an immense imbalance in the breakdown of Democrats to Republicans ranging from 21.1:1 among anthropologists; 9:1:1 among political and legal philosophers; 8.5:1 amongst historians; and 5.6 to 1 amongst political scientists. A 2005 study by Stanley Rothman, S. Robert Lichter and Neil Nevitte, Politics and Professional Advancement Among College Faculty, found that 72 percent of those teaching at American universities and colleges describe themselves as liberal and 15 percent conservative. According to the study, the most one-sided departments are English literature, philosophy, political science, and religious studies, where at least 80 percent of the faculty say they are liberal and no more than five percent call themselves conservative.

“The American College Teacher” a major study by the Higher Education Research Institute at the University of California at Los Angeles, that has never been challenged, features some questions on politics. The last survey, in 2001, found that 5.3 percent of faculty members were far left, 42.3 percent were liberal, 34.3 percent were middle of the road, 17.7 percent were conservative, and 0.3 percent were far right. Those figures are only marginally different from the previous survey, in 1998.

According to a paper published last fall in The Georgetown Law Journal, politically active professors at top law schools overwhelmingly tend to be Democrats. The study by Northwestern Professor John McGinnis and two co-authors, which covers the faculties of the top 21 law schools listed in the 2002 U.S. News & World Report graduate-school rankings, finds that just under a third of the professors at those institutions contributed at least $200 to a federal political campaign in the past 11 years. Of that politically active group, 81 percent contributed “wholly or predominantly” to Democratic campaigns, while just 15 percent did the same for Republicans.

This lack of diversity in political registration would, quite frankly, be irrelevant, were it not for the fact that some of the ideals that encourage intellectual openness command less allegiance in academe than they once did. Today, the notion of truth and objectivity is regarded by many professors as antiquated and an obstacle to social change. In this postmodern view, all ideas are political, the classroom is an appropriate place for advocacy, and students should be molded into “change agents” to promote a political agenda. The University of California recently abandoned the provision on academic freedom that cautioned against using the classroom as a “platform for propaganda.” The president of the university argued in a letter to the Academic senate that the regulation was outdated.

Faculty imbalance, coupled with the idea that the politically correct point of view has a right to dominate classroom and campus discussions, has had fearful consequences for university life. While threats to the robust exchange of ideas come in many forms, they have typically manifested themselves in the following ways:

• Disinviting of politically incorrect speakers;
• Mounting of one-sided panels, teach ins and conferences, sanctions against speakers who fail to follow the politically correct line;
• Instruction that is politicized;
• Virtual elimination of broad-based survey courses in favor of trendy, and often politicized courses;
• Reprisal against or intimidation of students who seek to speak their mind;
• Political discrimination in college hiring and retention;
• Speech codes and campus newspaper theft and destruction.

I know that previous witnesses have highlighted many of these threats and various incidents are set forth more fully in the report referenced in your packets.

Many of our campuses have become, as one observer put it, islands of oppression in a sea of freedom. There is no way this kind of one-sided coercive atmosphere can be conducive to a solid education. Students-the next generation of leaders-are not empowered to think for themselves by being given only one side of the story. The lack of intellectual diversity is depriving an entire generation of the kind of education they deserve and every legislator, every parent, every taxpayer in Pennsylvania should be outraged since our system of government-our democratic republic-relies upon an educated and thoughtful citizenry.

Now, for decades, higher education leaders have denied that there is an intellectual diversity problem-and you have heard from this contingent already. The head of the American Association of University Professors, Roger Bowen, called one study on the political affiliations of faculty wrong-headed, arguing that such affiliations are of little consequence in the classroom. Geoff Nunberg at the University of Pennsylvania claimed that “these studies assume an inescapable connection between having a point of view and having a bias … That’s a convenient assumption for people … particularly if they want to take it as a justification for trumping up the evidence for their own side.”

The American Council of Trustees and Alumni resolved to study the issue as objectively and systematically as possible. We went to those who really know what goes on in the classroom and are most affected by it-the students. We commissioned the Center for Survey Research and Analysis at the University of Connecticut to undertake a scientific survey of undergraduates in the top 50 colleges and universities as listed by U.S. News & World Report. These include Ivy League schools like the University of Pennsylvania, national research universities such as Carnegie Mellon and small liberal arts colleges like Swarthmore, Bryn Mawr and Haverford, as well as public institutions such as the University of California and Michigan.

We were interested in finding out whether in fact professors introduce politics in the classroom. It goes without saying that faculty members are hired for their expertise and are expected to instruct students on the subject of their expertise. If they are teaching biology, they should be talking about biology. If they are teaching Medieval English literature, we expect them to be lecturing on Chaucer, not Condoleezza Rice.

That indeed is a principle that has been adopted in the 1940 AAUP statement on academic freedom and that has been adopted by numerous institutions of higher education, at least on paper. The Temple University faculty Handbook, by way of example, provides that “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.”

Notwithstanding these principles, our survey found that a shocking 49 percent of the students at the top 50 colleges and universities say that their professors frequently injected political comments into their courses, even if they had nothing to do with the subject.

The survey next turned to the atmosphere in the college classroom. Did students, many of whom were exposed to these subjects for the first time, feel free to raise concerns and question assumptions? Did they feel free to make up their own minds without feeling pressured to agree with their professors?

Once again, the answer was deeply disturbing. 29 percent of the respondents felt that they had to agree with the professor’s political views to get a good grade.

The survey also explored whether students were being exposed to competing arguments on the central issues of the day. Were book lists balanced and comprehensive? Did students hear multiple perspectives, rather than just one side, of an argument?

Again, a disheartening response. 48 percent reported campus panels and lecture series on political issues that seemed “totally one-sided.” 46 percent said professors “used the classroom to present their personal political views.” And 42 percent faulted reading assignments for presenting only one side of a controversial issue.

Meanwhile, 83 percent of those surveyed said student evaluation forms of the faculty did not ask about a professor’s social, political or religious bias.

These findings are particularly noteworthy when we look at the characteristics of the respondents. First of all, the students voicing concerns are not a small minority. Nearly half of the students surveyed reported abuses. Second, although self-described conservative students complained in higher numbers, a majority of the respondents considered themselves liberals or radicals. Third, only 10 percent of the respondents were majoring in political science or government. The vast majority were studying subjects like biology, engineering, and psychology-fields far removed from politics.

Given the results of this scientific survey, one simply cannot claim any longer that faculty are not importing politics in the classroom in a way that affects students’ ability to learn. Based on social scientific evidence as well as discussions with professors, administrators, trustees, and higher education experts, it is clear that:

(1) Today’s college faculties are overwhelmingly one-sided in their political and ideological views, especially in the value-laden fields of the humanities and social sciences; and

(2) This lack of intellectual diversity is undermining the education of students as well as the free exchange of ideas central to the mission of the university; andIt is urgent that universities effectively address the challenge of intellectual diversity.

Fortunately, there is considerable consensus on the principles at stake. As early as 1915, at its founding, the American Association of University Professors issued a “Declaration of Principles” that stressed the importance of impartiality in the classroom and the right of the student to learn as well as the faculty to teach:

The teacher ought also to be especially on his guard against taking unfair advantage of the student’s immaturity by indoctrinating him with the teacher’s own opinions before the student has had an opportunity fairly to examine other opinions upon the matters in question, and before he has sufficient knowledge and ripeness of judgment to be entitled to form any definitive opinion of his own. It is not the least service which a college or university may render to those under its instruction, to habituate them to looking not only patiently but methodically on both sides, before adopting any conclusion upon controverted issues.

In 2005, responding to concerns that have been raised about intellectual diversity, the American Council on Education released a major statement, endorsed by 30 higher education organizations, on “Academic Rights and Responsibilities.” “Intellectual pluralism and academic freedom are central principles of American higher education,” the statement declares. Among the “central, overarching principles” that are “widely shared within the academic community” are the following:

Colleges and universities should welcome intellectual pluralism and the free exchange of ideas. Such a commitment will inevitably encourage debate over complex and difficult issues about which individuals will disagree. Such discussions should be held in an environment characterized by openness, tolerance and civility.

The statement underscores the need for an intellectually open campus in which neither students nor faculty suffer reprisal based on their political views:

Academic decisions including grades should be based solely on considerations that are intellectually relevant to the subject matter under consideration. Neither students nor faculty should be disadvantaged or evaluated on the basis of their political opinions.

During the past two years, ACTA has reviewed a wide range of materials and had extensive discussions with professors, administrators, and trustees around the country. In these discussions, a number of principles governing both the definition of the problem and the search for solutions surfaced repeatedly. Put in one way or another, almost everyone agreed with the following nine points:

First, students are better educated if they are exposed to multiple perspectives.

Second, no professor should use the classroom to proselytize.

Third, professors should give a fair presentation to alternative points of view.

Fourth, professors should never intimidate or treat unfairly students with a “dissenting” point of view.

Fifth, campus panels and speakers series should give students more than one side of the great issues of the day.

Sixth, intolerant students should not be allowed to trash campus publications or impose a “heckler’s veto” on invited speakers.

Seventh, political and ideological bias in hiring, promotion, and tenure is unacceptable.

Eighth, intellectual diversity among the faculty is desirable, but must be achieved only in ways that protect such values as academic freedom, shared governance, and academic standards.

Ninth, universities-faculty, administrators, and trustees-should take the initiative in meeting the challenge of intellectual diversity, in part to avoid “solutions” forced on them from the outside.

The fact that there is a high degree of consensus on principles argues well for success in meeting the challenge of intellectual diversity. Indeed, higher education has issued a statement underscoring that consensus. But has it done anything to implement it?

In the wake of the ACE statement, the American Council of Trustees and Alumni considered vigilance important and surveyed all 30 signatories, heads of major public universities in each state including Pennsylvania, as well as the presidents and chancellors of the top 25 national universities and the top 25 liberal arts colleges. ACTA asked them what they had done to implement their statement. The answer received? -next to nothing. The closest they come to action is more talk. The University of Oregon’s President, David Frohnmayer, reported a “work session” with his deans. The president of one of the signatories, the Association of American Colleges and Universities, reported that the association would be issuing a statement that will be “consistent” with the June statement and would discuss the issues further at its annual meeting.

Not one, not one, of the institutions covered by the pledge reported a single concrete step beyond meetings and statements. It was all words, and no deeds.

University administrators and faculty continue to insist that they, alone, are able to correct the situation in the classroom. But all reasonable people agree with ACTA that simply saying one believes in intellectual diversity and pointing to existing policy is not enough. We would not be here today if all existing practices and policies were sufficient or were being followed.

After Harvard president Larry Summers made the impolitic observation that researchers might explore whether biological factors affect the propensity of women to go into math and science, it took only a matter of weeks for Harvard to appoint diversity deans and to appropriate millions of dollars towards women and sciences.

Why, then, is it so hard for universities to take similar steps when it comes to intellectual diversity? Our colleges and universities are filled with offices and administrators whose entire job is to foster a diversity of backgrounds-on the grounds that a diversity of backgrounds will provide a diversity of viewpoints essential to a strong liberal education. If diversity of views is the educational holy grail, then what is the academy afraid of?

You and I have heard or read the testimony of a number of speakers already in the course of these hearings and, quite frankly, they are simply in denial that there is a problem. They have said, in effect, that they are not going to do anything. Bob O’Neill said yesterday continue to trust us. You have to make it clear that this is not acceptable. It would not be acceptable if they problem were racism; it would not be acceptable if the problem were gender discrimination. It is not acceptable when the problem is political harassment and viewpoint discrimination.

We agree with the academy that the responsibility for correcting the current situation should fall first and foremost to colleges and universities themselves and that governing boards have the ultimate obligation address those concerns. We agree that the law is a blunt instrument and state legislatures and the federal Congress are not well-positioned to prescribe specific remedies.

However, in the face of years and years and years of denial by many in the academy, legislators must not bury their heads in the sand, must not shrink from holding hearings to educate the public as you so boldly do today, and most importantly, must not shrink from making it crystal clear that universities ensure the free exchange of ideas and classrooms free of political abuse-if they wish for government to stay out of their business.

That is why I am calling on you today to act.

Faced with growing legislative pressure on this issue, the higher education establishment issued the ACE statement, figured it would pretend to have a quick conversion, endorse intellectual diversity, get those “yahoo” legislators off their backs and go back to business as usual. DO NOT LET THEM GET AWAY WITH THIS CHARADE.

It is now incumbent on you to keep the pressure on, step in-in a way that is sensitive to academic freedom and shared governance-and demand action.

As legislators, responsible for public funding and oversight of Pennsylvania’s institutions of higher learning, we submit it is up to you to ensure that those institutions are fostering an atmosphere in the classroom dedicated to valid educational ends.

And, to be sensitive to the concerns raised by the academy, we ask not that you impose curricular or other requirements but that, instead, you give a specific mandate to trustees-public officials who have not only the right, but legal obligation, to ensure that their institutions are dedicated to valid educational ends-to provide the legislature with a public annual report outlining steps taken to ensure a robust exchange of ideas and to implement the ACE statement.

A major obstacle to change has been a fear that any effort to encourage intellectual diversity would violate one or another academic norm-a concern raised by many of the speakers who have addressed this committee and elsewhere.

ACTA has been sensitive to this concern and has discussed it with professors, administrators, and trustees. Based on these discussions, we have pulled together a set of practical suggestions that provide a starting point for concrete steps universities can take to address the problem.

These various approaches are set out in our report, Intellectual Diversity: Time for Action, located at our website, and they include such specific steps as:

• Adoption by the board of trustees of the Statement on Academic Rights and Responsibilities issued by the American Council on Education and other higher education organizations on June 23, 2005;
• conduct of a self-study to assess the current state of intellectual diversity on campus;
• incorporation of intellectual diversity into institutional statements, grievance procedures, and activities on diversity;
• encouragement of balanced panels and speaker series;
• establishment of clear campus policies which ensure that hecklers or threats of violence do not prevent speakers from speaking;
• inclusion of intellectual diversity concerns in university guidelines on teaching;
• inclusion of intellectual diversity issues in student course evaluations;
• development of language in hiring, tenure and promotion guidelines to protect individuals against political viewpoint discrimination;
• establishment of clear campus policies to ensure student press freedom;
• establishment of clear campus policies to prohibit political bias in student-funded groups;
• elimination of any speech codes that restrict, or may have a chilling effect on, free speech rights; and
• creation of a university ombudsman on intellectual diversity.

Notably, Temple President David Adamany himself said yesterday that he saw areas where temple could improve: directing students to grievance policies; taking steps to make sure students know their rights; perhaps modifying grievance procedures.

A reporting requirement will underscore the legislature’s urgent interest in progress without the threat of any heavy-handed legislative intrusion. Indeed, by calling upon trustees to provide an accounting to the public they serve, the legislature will endorse the academy’s insistence on institutional solutions rather than legislative intervention.

Any board that fails to guarantee the free exchange of ideas and the student’s right to learn on its campus is not doing its job and deserves the criticism of taxpayers, students and parents who are paying for education, not indoctrination.

Intellectual diversity is not just something desirable in theory; it must be protected and promoted by actions-and not just words-if the academy is to provide a rich education for its students. In the face of years and years of inaction, I submit it is up to elected officials to make sure the academy puts up, or holds its peace.

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[1] General Report of the Committee on Academic Freedom and Academic Tenure (1915), 1 AAUP Bull 17 (1915), cited in Freedom and Tenure in the Academy, William W. Van Alstyne, Editor (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 1993), 402.

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KNOW YOUR RIGHTS

Between September 2005 and June 2006 Academic Freedom hearings were held by a committee of the Pennsylvania legislature – the first in the history of the Commonwealth. The hearings revealed that all existing academic freedom provisions at Pennsylvania’s public universities were written to protect professors, not students. As a result of the hearings, however, the trustees of Temple adopted a new policy called “Faculty and Student Rights and Responsibilities” that grants students at Temple academic freedom rights for the first time.

The Temple academic freedom policy states that “Freedom to teach and freedom to learn are inseparable facets of academic freedom.” It further declares: “Students should be encouraged to develop the capacity for critical judgment and to engage in a sustained and independent search for the truth.” In pursuit of these ends, “student performance should be evaluated solely on an academic basis and by reference to the professional standards that sustain the University’s pursuit and achievement of knowledge, not on opinions or conduct in matters unrelated to the academic subject.”

The Temple policy also states:

Faculty are entitled to freedom in the classroom in discussing their subjects, but they should be careful not to introduce into their teaching controversial (or other) matter which has no relation to their subject.

In other words no speeches on the Iraq War in English classes or Women’s Studies courses or in any class where the subject matter is not about Iraq or American foreign policy. No attempts to promote in class a political candidate during elections, or at any time in between. No wasting of students’ valuable time with personal agendas that have nothing to do with the academic subject they signed up for.

If you are a student at Temple, you pay good money for professional expertise, not off-the-cuff political advocacy. You can get opinions for free on talk radio or in the student union. You have a right to form your own conclusions on controversial matters, without worrying about how this might affect your grade; and you have a right to be presented by your professor with readings on more than one side of a controversial issue. It’s your education. See that you get one.

Under the new Temple academic freedom policy the Temple Board of Trustees will be informed of all grievances filed under its provisions. Information on how to file a grievance can be found at:

https://secretary.temple.edu/sites/secretary/files/policies/03.70.02.pdf

This ad has been placed by Students for Academic Freedom as a public service. For more information contact Sara Dogan at [email protected] or visit our website at www.studentsforacademicfreedom.org.