University of Northern Colorado

U. Northern Colorado Exam Timeline

May 24, 2020 by admin Leave a Comment

May 5-May 9, 2003:

Exam week at the University of Northern Colorado

UNC Assistant Professor of Criminal Justice Robert Dunkley gives his students a take home exam which includes a question about criminal activity in the Iraq War (the exact wording of the question is in dispute).

Summer 2003:

An unnamed student informant challenges the failing grade she received on the exam. She maintains throughout these proceedings and afterward that the question asked her to “explain why George Bush is a war criminal.” She claims that when she instead wrote an essay explaining why former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein was a war criminal, she received an “F” on the exam.

Summer 2003:

Professor Dunkley later claims to have destroyed all copies of the exam around this date (which is in violation of University of Northern Colorado policy).

Late summer/early fall 2003:

In response to our student informant’s appeal, Dunkley produces a version of the exam question that he claims to have received from a few students who had kept it in their files after the exam. Our student informant continues to maintain that she remembers the question differently and that Dunkley modified the question after the fact to make it look less politically biased to the appeals committee.

After appealing her grade through UNC’s grievance procedure, the student informant receives a B in Dunkley’s class. She later writes to Ryan Call of the appeal that “I did fail the final exam, at least that is what I was told, however based on Dunkley’s and the schools comments you never really know what is truthful. It has always been my understanding and my story that I got an F on the exam but a B in the class. I dont think Dunkley disputed that but he is such a maniupulative person you never really know.”

November 2003:

Erin Bergstom, a volunteer activist for Students for Academic Freedom, makes contact with our student informant. Bergstrom describes the informant in a March 2005 statement as “a warm and personable young woman. She is articulate, and seems intelligent and sincere.”

In Bergstrom’s words, the young woman “described her criminology professor, and how he asked her and her classmates to describe why President Bush is a war criminal on an exam. She did not believe that her test question was fair or reasonable. She was not willing to dishonor her President-someone she greatly admired. Instead, she wrote why she considered Saddam Hussein to be a war criminal. The professor gave her a zero on her test. She was an “A” student, so she formally appealed, but was not able to change her grade.”

Bergstrom reports the incident to Ryan Call, a coordinator for Students for Academic Freedom and law student at the University of Denver who relays it to David Horowitz. Horowitz retells the incident in speeches and interviews to demonstrate the severity of indoctrination in higher education.

September 9, 2004:
University of Northern Colorado President Kay Norton confirms existence of student informant’s complaint, though she claims that the young woman’s portrayal of the question differs from what she presented as the actual question.

Norton states:”…and actually last year, a young woman did raise a question about what she thought was an inappropriate examination question, I referred her to our procedures, she followed them, and I’m pleased to report to you that the original version of what would have been an inappropriate examination question proved not to be what was actually on the examination, and so the process worked.”

March 3, 2005

An article by Mano Singham in the Cleveland Plain Dealer questions whether Horowitz made up the UNC story since Singham couldn’t immediately locate the student or professor through a cursory search.

March 7, 2005

The George Soros-funded site www.mediamatters.org picks up the attacks on Horowitz, leading to an outpouring of further attacks.

March 14, 2005

Ryan Call, SAF’s Central Regional Coordinator, issues a statement saying that he has spoken with the informant who is now a senior at UNC and wishes to remain anonymous, but confirms the initial story which she relayed to Erin Bergstrom. Call offers to speak to any members of the media who have doubts.

March 15, 2005

SAF Volunteer Erin Bergstrom issues a statement confirming that she initially interviewed the informant and relayed her story to Students for Academic Freedom.

March 18 2005:

Ryan Call of Students for Academic Freedom said he requested a copy of the exam from UNC but was told it was confidential. The exam was provided to members of the media. Call, a third-year law student at the University of Denver, said UNC refused to give him a copy of the exam, citing privacy laws. He said the student was also unable to get a copy of the exam and has never seen her test. UNC spokeswoman Gloria Reynolds claimed to have no record of Call’s request.

March 22, 2005:

In an interview with the Greeley Tribune, Dunkley admits to destroying the student informant’s original answer sheet along with all other copies of the exam. The Greeley Tribune reports that Dunkley then “got copies of the questions from three former students to present for the student’s appeal.”

March 28, 2005:

After repeated requests, an administrator from UNC finally provides SAF staffer Ryan Call with a copy of what the university claims is the original criminology exam (Dunkley previously claimed that all copies of the exam were destroyed but claims to have received copies from students who held on to them. The student informant continues to allege that Dunkley recreated the exam to make him appear less culpable).

The exam presented as the original by UNC requires students to answer questions 1 and 2 and gives them a choice whether to answer either question 3 or question 4.

Questions 3 and 4 read as follows and both are clearly an exercise in indoctrination. While Question 4 does not state exactly that students must argue that “George Bush is a war criminal” it does ask that students “Make the argument that the military action of the US attacking Iraq was criminal?” which is nearly the same question as remembered by our student informant.

3. The taboo (deviance) society places on homosexual relationships and gay lifestyles today is beginning to subside. Attempts are being made to allow gay marriages, which appears right around the corner. Make an argument that would support gay marriages and gay families and explain how this additional type of family could help prevent crime (use one of the above theories form question #1 in your discussion and Shaw and McKay’s analysis of social ecology). 4. The American government campaign to attack Iraq was in part based on the assumptions that the Iraqi government had “Weapons of Mass Destruction.” This was never proven prior to the US police action/war and even President Bush, after the capture of Baghdad, stated “we may never find such weapons.” Cohen’s research on deviance discusses this process of how the media and various moral entrepreneurs and government enforcers can conspire to create panic. How does Cohen define this process? Explain it in-depth. Where does the social meaning of deviance come from? Argue that the attack on Iraq was deviance based on negotiable statuses. Make the argument that the military action of the US attacking Iraq was criminal?

Additionally, research done by staffers at Students for Academic Freedom calls into question whether President Bush in fact made the admission that “we may never find such weapons [of mass destruction]” which appears in Question 4 until after UNC’s finals period which spanned May 5-9, 2005.

Using both Google and Lexis-Nexis, as well as searching through every press briefing and presidential statement from the period on the whitehouse.gov site, an SAF staffer researching the issue in 2005 could identify no quotes or remarks by the President stating “we may never find such weapons” between April 9, 2003 and May 5, 2003, before the last day the exam could have been written.

This subsequently-released version of the test question doesn’t seem to match the historical timeline regarding the Bush administration’s statements and positions on WMD in Iraq. It was not until very late in May, 2003 at the earliest that U.S. news reports begin to hint at any change in the Bush administration’s position on finding weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Such reasoning cannot be definitive, but bolsters the student informant’s case that the exam question was indeed recreated and reads differently than the original.

April 21, 2005:

David Horowitz publishes the final statement from Students for Academic Freedom on the UNC case.

The Case of the Colorado Exam

May 24, 2020 by admin Leave a Comment

04/21/05

My campaign for academic freedom has roused up a storm of unprincipled opposition from the academic left. Although the campaign is based on the academic freedom tradition of the American Association of University Professors extending back to 1915 it has been compared by its opponents – including the current leadership of the AAUP and the American Federation of Teachers — to the “red scare” and the ” McCarthy witch-hunt ” and even Mao Zedong’s purge of Communist Party officials during the ” Cultural Revolution .”

The hysterical nature of these accusations should be sufficient in themselves to demonstrate the bad faith of the opposition. The “red scare” was, in fact, a police roundup of terrorist suspects after American anarchists sent 100 mail bombs to targets earmarked for assassination, including the attorney general of the United States . The McCarthy “witch-hunt” targeted members of a conspiratorial Communist Party which is now known through the opening of the Soviet archives to have been conducting extensive espionage against the United States. Mao’s cultural revolution resulted in the disappearances and deaths of Communist Party officials and intellectuals who failed to follow his political diktats.

Likening the campaign for academic freedom to such historical events is to employ precisely the political tactics its opponents claim to deplore. The academic freedom campaign is in fact an effort to end blacklists and the imposition of intellectual orthodoxies and does not target any party or political persuasion. The Academic Bill of Rights is not about Republicans and Democrats or liberals and conservatives. It is about restoring the integrity of the academic process, and about determining what is and is not appropriate to an academic classroom.

The campaign for an Academic Bill of Rights is not even about legislative measures to address these problems. Legislation became a last resort only when faculty organizations like the AAUP refused to discuss protecting students against these abuses and set itself against university reform. The AAUP took this position despite the fact that these provisions were drawn from the AAUP’s own academic freedom guidelines.

On the other hand, when university administrators have shown a readiness to step forward to discuss the provisions of the Academic Bill of Rights in good faith, as happened in Colorado , legislators withdrew the Bill in favor of a ” Memorandum of Understanding ” under which all provisions are implemented by the university without legislative intervention. This was a victory of the academic freedom campaign, but it has been cynically reported as a “defeat” by its opponents.

Another dishonest tactic of the opposition has been to seize the slightest ambiguity in the information we have been gathering in order to discredit the idea that there is any problem at all. The most prominent example of this strategy involved a final exam question in a criminology course given at the University of Northern Colorado . We had drawn attention to this case to show that a fundamental principle of academic freedom – the distinction between education and indoctrination – had been ignored. Among the vigilantes who pounced on our story to discredit it were writers for The Cleveland Plain Dealer, Media Matters.com the Associated Press and the Greeley Tribune , a local Colorado paper whose readership includes the University of Northern Colorado community.

This incident called into question a final exam in a criminology course taken by a University of Northern Colorado sophomore . It was one of hundreds of stories we had gathered and one of dozens that I regularly referred to in my speeches and articles. The merited attention because it was dramatic and easily understood. The student reported to us in late 2003 that she had been required to answer a “question” on her final exam that instructed students to “Explain why George Bush is a war criminal.” The test was administered approximately three weeks after the fall of Baghdad in early May 2003. In responding to the instruction, the student explained instead why she thought Saddam Hussein was a war criminal and was given an “F.”

When we initially reported this story, and throughout the academic year 2003-2004, we did not disclose the name of the student, since she was too frightened to come forward and asked us to protect her anonymity. (We did not know the name of the professor, and would not have reported it at the time in any case. Our purpose was not to indict individuals but to show the existence of a problem.) After receiving her failing grade on the exam, the student had submitted her case to a university appeals process, and – according to her testimony — her grade was subsequently raised. The university will not make any statement about the result of the process, except to say that the student’s final grade was a “B.”

For almost a year, the Colorado exam case was one of a number of examples I used in speeches and articles to deplore the tendency of faculty ideologues use their classroom authority to indoctrinate students, betraying their academic responsibilities in the process. Then two incidents occurred to draw attention to this case. The first was the surfacing of Ward Churchill who put a face on the faculty members I was alluding to, as it happened at a Colorado University . Churchill was an academic so extreme in his viewpoints, and so unscholarly in his temperament that no one would have been surprised if he had actually imposed on his own classes an exam like the one in question. The second development was the sponsoring of an Academic Freedom Bill by a member of the Senate in Ohio .

With few exceptions the Ohio press was hostile to the Academic Bill of Rights, treating it as a threat to professorial speech, even though it was a perfectly liberal document drawn from the very canons of academic freedom devised by the American Association of University Professors. In every state, editorial writers and reporters mostly followed the talking points of AAUP spokesmen opposing the bill. In its headline describing the Bill, for example, the Cleveland Plain Dealer , typically misrepresented the academic freedom legislation as introducing new restrictions into professorial speech, even though its purpose was quite the opposite — to introduce intellectual diversity into the curriculum and to encourage open and respectful dialogue in the classroom.

In addition to its slanted headline and story, the Plain Dealer also published an op-ed piece by a leftwing professor. Mano Singham , who suggested that I had made the whole Colorado incident up — the student, the exam and the professor. To be fair I had made this line of attack possible by mistakenly referring to the case as one that had come up at legislative hearings held in Colorado in December 2003. It had actually been referred to in a second round of legislative hearings in September 2004, when Kay Norton, the President of the University of Northern Colorado mentioned it.

In his Plain Dealer column, Professor Singham claimed to have contacted the provost of the University and the political science department (even though it was a criminology exam in the Sociology Department). “They had never heard of this story,” he wrote in his column, “and were all surprised to hear that they were supposedly harboring this fiend. To jump to his conclusion, Singham simply ignored the testimony by president Norton and failed to contact the appropriate department.

A leftwing smear site, called MediaMatters, jumped on the case and alleged that inventing the facts was a pattern of mine and of the campaign for academic freedom. A leftwing education site, InsideHigherEd.com, then reported these malicious speculations under the headline, “The Poster Child Who Can’t Be Found,” which was two misleading insinuations in one. First, the student had never been a “poster child” for our campaign, but was only one of the many cases we had posted on our website at www.studentsforacademicfreedom.org. Second, the only reason the student couldn’t be found was that no one had really looked for her (or asked us to find her). To be fair, InsideHigherEd.com did report my objections to the thrust of its story, and my offer to locate the student and retract the story should it prove wrong. But this did not deter MediaMatters hundreds of leftwing blogsites hostile to the academic freedom campaign from spreading the “story” of our invented incident across the Internet. Nor did it prompt InsideHigherEd to correct its own story when further information proved it fundamentally wrong.
Meanwhile reports of our allegedly invented incident spread like wildfire across the web on leftwing blogsites hostile to the academic freedom campaign itself.

With our story under siege, I had my staff contact the student who was on spring break and ask her for the name of the professor, which turned out to be Robert Dunkley, as well as additional information about the criminology class in question. I published the new information, and demanded an apology. In doing so I misjudged the bad faith of the opposition, which ignored the evidence that validated our story and selectively used other information we provided – in particular the name of the professor — to escalate the attacks.

Scott Jaschik, editor of InsideHigherEd.com called both the university and Professor Dunkley, and wrote a story without checking his claims with us. The result was the most damaging report yet.

Titled, ” Tattered Poster Child ” (thus repeating the false claim that this was a singular case) the Jaschik story reported first that Dunkely, was not a “wild-eyed liberal” (implying that we had said he was) but a Republican. In fact our academic freedom campaign was never about leftwing abuses as opposed to right wing abuses. It was about academic abuses without regard for viewpoint. I had never identified Dunkley as a liberal and I have in fact defended liberal students against conservative professors who have targeted them for indoctrination. For the record we have scoured the election roles and Republican Party contribution records and can find no evidence that Dunkley is telling the truth even in this trivial matter. But even if Dunkely were a Republican I would still have defended this student against him.

Jaschik’s article further reported that the famous exam question was not “required,” as the student had claimed, and that the student got a “B” grade not an “F” as we reported. Finally, he reported that according to Dunkley and the university spokeswoman, the text of question itself was different from what we had said it was.

These were serious charges. The only bright lining for us was that the new exam question that Dunkely provided to Jaschik was very close to the one we had reported and thus was also a clear case of indoctrination. This prompted me to make a serious tactical mistake.

Instead of waiting to refer these matters to the student for her response – she was still on spring break and not easy to reach – I decided to immediately post an article article conceding that we had possibly erred on some minor points. I say “possibly” because Dunkley had destroyed all copies of the exam and the students’ answers, even though this was a violation of university regulations. I felt confident in offering this “correction” because even if the university’s and Dunkley’s claims were true, the bottom line was that the essay question still required one right answer on a controversial matter of opinion, which was a form of indoctrination. I assumed that the students’ claims would be given a fair shake, particularly because of Dunkley’s destructive act. I couldn’t have been more wrong.

The student had reported to us that she had originally received an “F” on the exam for writing about Saddam Hussein. Dunkley claimed he gave her a bad grade (he will not say what the grade was) because she handed in a two-page answer when three were required. Since Dunkley had destroyed her exam, this claim seemed suspicious on its face, though no independent press source mentioned this fact.

Although Dunkley and the university referred to her final “B” grade as a refutation of the student’s claim to have received an “F,” neither of them would say (and neither were asked by the press) whether they were claiming she also got a “B” on the original exam and not an “F.” If she did, why would she have gone through an appeal? In fact, the student told us that the “B” grade was her final grade in the course, while the exam grade was indeed an “F”. She had been able to raise her grade through the appeals process when the university had allowed her to receive credit for her class work even though she had been failed on the exam itself. That’s how she ended up with the “B.”

A short time later, I received this confirming email from the student: “I did fail the final exam, at least that is what I was told, however based on Dunkley’s and the school’s comments you never really know what is truthful. It has always been my understanding and my story that I got an “F” on the exam but a B in the class. I don’t think Dunkley disputed that but he is such a manipulative person you never really know.” Not a single press source that had reported the claims of Dunkely and the university spokeman so much as commented on the student’s defense of her claim.

In my “correction” article, I had included the exam question that the university spokesman provided to Jaschik, and which our student claimed Dunkely had doctored after the exam, and specifically for the appeals process. The exam question he supplied was this:

“The American government campaign to attack Iraq was in part based on the assumptions that the Iraqi government has ‘Weapons of Mass Destruction.’ This was never proven prior to the U.S. police action/war and even President Bush, after the capture of Baghdad , stated: ‘we may never find such weapons.’ Cohen’s research on deviance discussed this process of how the media and various moral entrepreneurs and government enforcers can conspire to create a panic. How does Cohen define this process? Explain it in depth. Where does the social meaning of deviance come from? Argue that the attack on Iraq was deviance based on negotiable statuses. Make the argument that the military action of the U.S. attacking Iraq was criminal?”

In reading this it occurred to me that there were several transparent peculiarities about the text. It referred to the deviant criminal behavior of states (rather than individuals,) which is a complex subject appropriate to an advanced course in international law, not an introductory survey course in criminology, particularly one administered by the sociology department for sophomores. Dunkley’s course is described like this in the 2002-2003 UNC Course Catalog : “SOC 346 – Criminology. Survey criminal behavior generally, including theories of causation, types of crime, extent of crime, law enforcement, criminal justice, punishment and treatment.” The criminal behavior of states does not appear to be part of the course. States are not commonly the subjects of criminology courses because states normally commit and normally sanction acts that would be criminal if committed by individuals. This suggested to me that to defend question in the appeals process, Dunkley had substituted the United States as the criminal actor in place of the original subject, which was George Bush.

I did not bring this up in my response to this round of attacks, but confined myself to the very last sentence of the exam question, which was a declarative statement ending inexplicably with a question mark. Notwithstanding the inappropriate punctuation, the sentence enjoined students to give only one answer to a highly controversial question. It was in fact, exactly the same instruction that we had originally reported and objected to — except that the war criminal was the United States instead of George W. Bush. On the other hand, as the chief executive of the United States , George Bush would have been equally guilty.

Since our original point had been validated – the exam was an indoctrination, I decided to post these thoughts and concede that perhaps we had erred in stating our case about the grade and even the form of the question more authoritatively than we should have (I will explain our position on the issue of whether the question was “required” in a moment). I did this to show our good faith. Better to concede the uncertainties and possible error about minor points – I thought – in order to return the focus to the main issue, which was the inappropriateness of the question itself.

I wrote: “So while we apologize for not having fully checked and corrected this story, we conclude that our complaint about the exam was justified. What happened in Professor Dunkley’s class at the University of Northern Colorado is not education, it is indoctrination. And that violates the academic freedom of the students who were subjected to it.” I thought that would be the end of it. This was a huge mistake.

MediaMatters was the first to attack . I had accused Media Matters of slander for spreading the false story that I had invented the student, the exam and professor. Media Matters not only never retracted that falsehood, but now embellished its accusations: “Under fire right-wing campus watchdog admits Colorado exam story is phony after accusing Media Matters of slander.” Literally hundreds of leftwing blogsites picked up the “phony” story angle and circulated it on the Internet: “Over the past week we’ve watched as David Horowitz’s reputation for accuracy and integrity have taken a beating…at the hands of David Horowitz,” commented leftwing blogster Roger Ailes (not the FoxNewsChannel Ailes).

Meanwhile, the Greeley Tribune , interviewed Dunkley and swallowed his claims whole: ” Professor Calmly Refutes Test Tales ,” was its headline. Picking up an equally uncritical AP story (based on the one-sided Tribune interview), the Denver Post , followed suit. Five days later, the Greeley Tribune followed its sweetheart Dunkley interview with an editorial attack on my integrity and credibility, which began: “Intentional ignorance is as bad as lying. If David Horowitz didn’t know that before the essay question controversy at the University of Northern Colorado , he should now.” The entire editorial was based on no evidence or independent reporting, but solely on the questionable claims of a professor who had destroyed his exam and whose student had succeeded in getting redress at a special hearing over her unfair grade.

In its interview with Dunkley, the Tribune described the alleged exam he had come up with after the fact in these disingenuous words: “UNC released a copy of the test from his class last week. The instructions tell students that the question which reportedly offended the student is optional. The question is 119 words, not the one sentence reported.”

Of course UNC did no such thing, because it did not have a copy of the original exam; it had Dunkley’s “recollection” of his exam. The document he submitted with reconstructed essay questions has a roman numeral I section but no roman numeral II, an additional unexplained problem. The document contains the four exam essay questions, of which two were required and two the student had to choose between.

At the end of this article, I am appending the four essay questions supplied by Dunkley after the fact so the reader can judge what the merits of this case. The reader will see that the first optional question is just as controversial as the Iraq question and also requires a single answer.

The first optional question begins like this: ” The taboo (deviance) society places on homosexual relationships and gay lifestyles today is beginning to subside. Attempts are being made to allow gay marriages, which appears right around the corner. Make an argument that would support gay marriages and gay families and explain how this additional type of family could help prevent crime…” It is not too difficult to imagine why a conservative student might regard the two “optional” questions as a requirement to write an essay expressing views with which she could not agree.

Like the Iraq war “question” the instruction to defend gay marriage requires a politically correct answer to a controversial issue. It is another unprofessional attempt by Dunkley to force his students to defend his own political agendas.

Indeed all of the exam questions devised by Dunkely, which include explications of “power theory,” “marxism” and “feminism,” are more appropriate to a training course in leftwing theory, than to an academic course in a public university. None of these questions reflect a professorial interest in opening students’ minds to a diversity of ways in which one might look at crime and the family.

The final examination for Sociology 346, was a take home exam given to students on May 5 and due on May 9, 2003 , according to the information supplied by Dunkley and the University of Northern Colorado , through its spokesperson Gloria Reynolds. As my colleague Ryan Call observed upon receiving a copy of the document the dating of the exam puts the whole matter of who is lying in this dispute between the student and Professor Dunkley in a new light.

Recall how the text of the disputed exam question begins: “The American government campaign to attack Iraq was in part based on the assumptions that the Iraqi government has ‘Weapons of Mass Destruction.’ This was never proven prior to the U.S. police action/war and even President Bush, after the capture of Baghdad , stated: ‘we may never find such weapons.’…”

Baghdad fell on April 13, 2003 , and the exam question was handed out roughly three weeks later. As of this date, May 5, 2003 , neither President Bush nor anyone in the White House was saying “we may never find such weapons.” Here is what President Bush actually said to reporters on May 31, 2003 , three weeks after the exam:

“You remember when Colin Powell stood up in front of the world, and he said Iraq has got laboratories, mobile labs to build biological weapons…. They’re illegal. They’re against the United Nations resolutions, and we’ve so far discovered two [the labs were later judged to not contain any such weapons, that they most likely were used for weather balloons]. And we’ll find more weapons as time goes on, But for those who say we haven’t found the banned manufacturing devices or banned weapons, they’re wrong. We found them.”

This statement by Bush, conclusively reiterating his belief that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and made more than three weeks after the exam was handed to students, lends credence to the student’s claim that the exam question supplied by Dunkley to the university and the media was not the original exam question. The student does not have any recollection of the Bush quote appearing in the original exam, or the final sentence as supplied by Dunkley after the fact.

When I brought this evidence to InsideHigherEd.com. It’s editor refused to concede that it showed anything at all about Dunkley’s claims (though he did offer to link any story I wrote about the case). When I brought it to The Greeley Tribune , its editors came up with an AP story by White House correspondent Ron Fournier that appeared on April 24, 2003 . This would have been two weeks before the Dunkley exam was handed to students. The story was headlined “Bush Says Weapons of Mass Destruction May Have Been Destroyed.” Although the Bush quote in Dunkley’s exam (“we may never find such weapons”) did not appear in the AP article, this created enough ambiguity so that someone intent on defending Dunkley could plausibly claim that the professor had misread the Fournier piece and made up the Bush quote on the basis of its headline.

To do so, however, Dunkley would have had to ignore the actual text of the Fournier article which quoted Bush unambiguously asserting that weapons of mass destruction did exist in Iraq and would be found: “‘ [Saddam Hussein] tried to fool the United Nations and did for 12 years by hiding these weapons. And so it’s going to take time to find them,’ the President said at the Lima Army Tank Plant. ‘But we know he had them. And whether he destroyed them, moved them or hid them, we’re going to find out the truth.'”

Dunkley and others have made one further claim, which is to suggest that the professor was playing “devil’s advocate” in compelling students to make the case for gay marriage or explain why the United States and its President were conducting a criminal operation in Iraq . This seems a very large stretch when all four essay questions on this final exam required students to explain and apply leftwing theories or justify leftwing prejudices on controversial political issues. It is more plausible that both the professor and his course were committed to these points of view. This is a conclusion reinforced by the way the actual views of Bush were distorted by Dunkley to imply their opposite.

Although the destruction of the evidence by Dunkley and the refusal of the university administration to provide a candid accounting of the appeals process make a conclusive verdict impossible, it seems beyond question that Dunkley’s exam was an indefensible attempt to force students in Sociology 346 to demonstrate a knowledge of leftwing theory (and no other theories) and to argue the radical point of view on two extremely controversial issues in order to get a good grade.

This is indoctrination not education, a distinction that has been recognized for nearly hundred years by the academic profession. As the Dunkley case shows the distinction was not observed in this Colorado exam and – more troubling — neither the university system nor the nation’s press seems to care.

APPENDIX:

I. The following questions are essay. Answer as completely as possible. Be thorough and concise, but make a solid argument and logical case for your answer. Make sure you answer all questions sought. All Students must answer questions 1& 2. Select one question from 3 & 4 to answer. The minimum number of pages per question is three (3) typed, double spaced, and stapled to the test questions.

1) Compare and contrast Power Control Theory and Integrated-Structural Marxism. How do they analyze the family in terms of social class? How does this class discussion relate to crime? Which family members are essentially excluded in their analysis? What are the weak points of both theories and what are their strengths? Which theory do you support?

2) The Feminist movement of the 1980s offered a significant “new way” in looking at law and its affect on women. The idea of equality is an issue still unresolved. Explain what the equality doctrine is. How should women define and respond to sexual differences? Can the claim of special treatment for women be considered problematic? Why? How can this be neutralized? What do feminists mean by “Doing Law?”

3) The taboo (deviance) society places on homosexual relationships and gay lifestyles today is beginning to subside. Attempts are being made to allow gay marriages, which appears right around the corner. Make an argument that would support gay marriages and gay families and explain how this additional type of family could help prevent crime (use one of the above theories form question #1 in your discussion and Shaw and McKay’s analysis of social ecology).

4) The American government campaign to attack Iraq was in part based on the assumptions that the Iraqi government had “Weapons of Mass Destruction.” This was never proven prior to the US police action/war and even President Bush, after the capture of Baghdad , stated “we may never find such weapons.” Cohen’s research on deviance discusses this process of how the media and various moral entrepreneurs and government enforcers can conspire to create panic. How does Cohen define this process? Explain it in-depth. Where does the social meaning of deviance come from? Argue that the attack on Iraq was deviance based on negotiable statuses. Make the argument that the military action of the US attacking Iraq was criminal?

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
Click here to see the copy of the exam provided to us by UNC

UNC-Criminology-Exam Download

UNC Officials, Prof Feed Controversy

May 24, 2020 by admin Leave a Comment

By David Horowitz–Greeley Tribune–03/29/05

More than a year ago, a student at the University of Northern Colorado was given a final exam in which she was required to explain either why George Bush was a war criminal or why the United States’ “invasion” of Iraq was a criminal act. The student, who is too frightened of reprisals from her professors and the university administration to come forward herself, claims she answered the question by explaining why Saddam Hussein was a war criminal and received an “F”. She made a formal appeal to university authorities and her grade was raised to a “B.” For a year I used her case as one of many to illustrate why Colorado students need a “bill of rights.” Neither of these questions is appropriate to an educational institution because they force the student answering them to have one politically correct answer.

A controversy has arisen around this exam, and because I have spoken up for the student, my integrity has been impugned by the professor, Robert Dunkley, who designed the question, and by a university spokesman. The only reason there is a controversy, however, is that the university administration has engaged in a cover-up and withheld information from the public and that Professor Dunkley destroyed all copies of the exam itself, and thus the evidence that would resolve these issues. Destruction of the exam, by the way, is against both university policy and the law.

This hasn’t prevented Professor Dunkley from telling the press that the student’s answer to the question was inadequate because she only wrote two pages when she was required to write three. But how would he know, since by his own testimony he destroyed all copies of the exam? Dunkley has also told the Tribune that three of his students have confirmed to him that the version of the question he provided during the appeal, and which the university has provided to the press, was the original question and not a doctored version as the student maintains. Obviously this issue has become highly politicized, and it is not surprising that he could find three students to support his version, which is substantively the same as the one the student remembers. But there is no evidence to decide who is telling the truth. And why would the student, who got a “B” in the course, make up the claim that she answered it by writing that the war criminal was Saddam Hussein?

Professor Dunkley was interviewed by a reporter from the Tribune a few days ago and was quoted saying that I could have learned the truth about the exam by asking him directly. In fact, I couldn’t ask him, because until last week I didn’t know his name. For an entire year while I publicized this case, he refused to identify himself or come forward to make the claims he is now making. The student herself was too frightened to give me his name and only did so when the very existence of the exam and the professor (and even the student) was challenged by an op-ed writer in the Cleveland Plain Dealer and promptly became a cause celebre on the Internet. It is more than a cause celebre; it is an attack on the student and myself and the academic freedom campaign. Without the evidence of the exam, and therefore without the evidence, both the Denver Post and the Tribune have sided with the university and the professor and impugned the veracity of the student’s story and mine.

The university has said the student didn’t fail but got a “B” but deceptively doesn’t say whether that grade refers to the course or to the disputed exam. The student maintains that she was failed on the final exam but that her final grade was raised to a “B” on appeal. I believe the student. Why would she appeal a grade that was a “B”? But more importantly, why would I believe the university or Professor Dunkley, who have withheld and destroyed the evidence that would end this controversy for people who are not ready to take their word at face value?

David Horowitz is a nationally known conservative author and speaker. He is the author of numerous books and the Academic Bill of Rights.

Debate Over Academic Freedom

May 24, 2020 by admin Leave a Comment

Editor’s note: In the following exchange, David Horowitz responds to academics’ criticisms of our reporting of a case of political abuse at the University of Northern Colorado. For more on this case, please see our UNC case file page here .

More “Urban Legend” …
CLIOPATRIA: A Group Blog, 03/15/05

Yesterday, David Horowitz demanded retractions of reports around the blogosphere that he’d been promoting an “urban legend” when he told the story of a student who complained of being required to write an essay about President Bush as a “war criminal.” Glenn Reynolds at Instapundit and Randy Barnett at The Volokh Conspiracy were sufficiently convinced by Horowitz’s reports that they retracted. Sensing that there was more to the story than he was telling, I refused to retract anything.

Technically, the story isn’t an “urban legend” because some of the details can be nailed down. They are pretty embarrassing to Horowitz’s version of things:

1) The oppressive leftist professor turns out to be a Republican;
2) The University has a copy of the original examination and the question wasn’t about President Bush as a “war criminal”;
3) The student wasn’t obliged to answer the question that got twisted into that version by Horowitz;
4) The student’s answer to the question didn’t fulfill the test’s instructions about the length of the essay;
5) The student did not receive an F, etc. Scott Jaschik’s “Tattered Poster Child” at Inside Higher Ed has more. As Rick Perlstein says in comments over there: “Why should David Horowitz verify a claim before he begins using it to sabotage institutions? In fact, he should just throw a professor in the river, and if she floats, well, then, she must be a witch.”
Posted by Ralph E. Luker on Tuesday, March 15, 2005 at 11:20 AM

More Urban Legend (#56866)
by david horowitz on March 20, 2005 at 8:43 AM
1. As I have already pointed out I never claimed the Professor was not a Republican and it is immaterial to me whether he was or wasn’t. This campaign is about what is appropriate to an educational setting. It is not about Republicans and Democrats. This is simple misrepresentation of what I am about.
2. Actually neither the professor nor the university has produced the original exam or exam question. It has merely claimed that what it has produced is the original exam question. The student disputes this.
3. I actually don’t know (and neither does Ralph Luker) whether the question was required. The professor claims it wasn’t required, but he has no evidence to back up his claim since in violation of university rules he destroyed (or claims to have destroyed) the exams.
4. Ditto. The professor now claims the student only wrote two pages instead of the required three. How does he know this and how can we trust his claim if the exam no longer exists?
5. The student still claims she originally got an “F”. Even in its claim the university doesn’t specificy whether it is referring to the test or the course when it says she got a “B”. Why would a student go through the appeals process if she got a “B”? We did try to verify the facts, but were stonewalled by the university. But why should Rick Pearlstein verify his facts before he uses his claims to try to sabotage me. Just throw me in the river.

Re: More Urban Legend (#56870)
by Timothy James Burke on March 20, 2005 at 9:34 AM
David:

Look, let’s take the “facts” as you put them in these five points. Where are you left? With a he said/she said story at best. A professor says one thing, a student another. What’s interesting is that you essentially assume on all five of these points that the student is likely to be right, not the professor–including that the exam question produced by the professor is not the “real one”, because the student says so.

It would be at least minimally responsible for you to show some even-handedness in your evidentiary skepticism. Students have just as much reason (from my perspective, more reason) to misrepresent what went on in grading or exams.

This is one of the (many) things that gravely concerns me about your campaigns. You’ve constructed a polemical case that regards any accusation by a conservative student of “political bias” as presumptively true, where the burden of proof on someone accused of what you’ve defined as misconduct (another problem, for another conversation) to demonstrate that he or she did not do what they’re alleged to have done. That’s one of the problem with speech codes on campuses constructed by advocates of identity politics, that they presume guilt until the demonstration of innocence, that they remove accusations from normal considerations of due process. You’re doing much the same thing here.

If you really want to act in good faith, I’d do some due diligence before you add any particular complaint to your list of accusations against the academy. Right now you appear to be indiscriminate: if a student group forwards you the complaint, you add it to the list. When people take a closer look at many of those complaints, they don’t appear to be what you say they are. They either decompose into he said/she said complaints, or even worse, into no valid complaint at all, as in the case of the student who alleged that their failing grade on an essay was due to the essay’s political content, when in fact by general consensus of those who’ve looked at the essay, including conservative professors, it’s just a bad essay.

Re: More Urban Legend (#56873)
by david horowitz on March 20, 2005 at 10:20 AM
Thanks for the civility of your comment. Of course we don’t take all student complaints at face value. This student has been consistent over time, which is one reason we went with her story. Also, we don’t just take conservative complaints. We have defended liberal students against the same type of abuse by conservative professors. I know I am a hot button conservative and probably the wrong messenger for this cause but it has fallen to me to do it in the absence of someone else taking it on. The fact that I spent so many years on the other side of the fence oddly enough helps me to be sympathetic to the other guy’s viewpoint and to understand the dangers of saying things like “we want to take the university back” as though a university with 90% conservatives on the faculty would be a good thing (it wouldn’t).

I also probably need to point out again that this case of the student exam is one among many, hundreds. It was singled out by an op-ed writer and David Brock not me. I have visited approximately 300 campuses in the last ten years and usually interview 10-30 students at each visit (mainly conservatives because these are the students who invite me, but not exclusively conservatives). So I am operating off a knowledge base that is considerably larger than almost anyone in this matter, including professors who have the experience mainly of their own classrooms.

BTW where a professor has claimed that his words were not what the student thought they were, and shown good faith, we have accepted that. We also offer all professors the opportunity to respond.

I don’t have the apparatus to conduct a major campaign and to vet and check every complaint. In this case we did make the complaint and were stonewalled. The stonewalling tells you something or at least it tells me something.

I regret that this has become a “political” campaign where no one is making tenative statements and really no one can (in political battles if you do that you get eaten alive, which is what happened to me in this instance when I conceded two minor points because the main point held). I take no responsibility for the fact that this has become so political. I attempted to make this a non-partisan campaign by approaching leftist professors to join me before I ever got started. All of them refused. I attempted to accomplish my ends behind the scenes with university trustees and administrators before I ever went to a legislature. I ran into a stonewall, beginning with the absurd denial that there was any problem at all.

So I’ve done what I can.

You ask me to vet everything in detail before I post it or report it. I don’t have the resources to set up what is essentially a grievance machinery to determine whether each and every complaint it valid. On the other hand, I didn’t name this professor (and usually don’t)in reporting the complaint. He could have come forward and denied it but he didn’t for a year. Wonder why?

So let me ask you, why aren’t you asking universities to adopt a policy that professors will not require one correct answer to controversial questions and will set up a grievance machinery for handling such complaints? Or a policy to respect the views of all students and not hector them in the classroom on one side of political issues that have no relevance to their subject matter? That’s pretty much the heart of my campaign. I can’t even get a discussion going with university officials to address this issue. Join me and maybe we can accomplish it together.

Re: More Urban Legend (#56877)
by Timothy James Burke on March 20, 2005 at 12:12 PM
David:

Pardon me one brief snarky interruption of civility: the closing sentence makes me think of Darth Vader talking to Luke Skywalker in the conclusion to The Empire Strikes Back.

Anyway, onto the main show.

First, it’s a matter of taking seriously the constraints of responsible knowledge that you claim to want to preserve from politicization. The kind of history I write as a scholar is largely not quantitative or within the norms of the hard social sciences: I’m more of a humanist, an interpreter. But I have a good sense of and a lot of respect for what is required in evidentiary terms to make systematic claims, to document patterns and regularities. And you simply don’t have that: you use instruments that are essentially based on self-reporting to make claims about systematic truths.

You can’t say, “Look, I don’t have the tools to do this kind of work properly” and then say, “But I’m going to do it anyway”. If you want to do individual advocacy for afflicted students (and try to be neutral about the political affiliations involved), then you ought to just fold your tent and give your money to FIRE or even the ACLU: that’s what they do. They do responsible, careful investigatory work on cases reported to them, and they maintain a meticulous standard about what does and does not constitute a claim. If you want to make systematic claims about what is happening in the academy, then you have to create the kind of datasets that allow you to do that, with the same professional rectitude that any half-way decent social scientist would have. You’re not doing that either. That’s terribly irresponsible. You want to say things that you’re not entitled to say based on the evidence you have.

Now you can talk impressionistically about what you think you see out there based on your own experiences and the experiences of your staff, much as an ethnographer (or humanist of any kind) might. But the key thing is that requires a kind of modesty–not a personal humility, but a modesty about what is or is not true. A tolerance for ambiguity, for the limits of your interpretation, an awareness of its impressionistic and experiential character. I see that nowhere in your rhetoric or your organization’s activities.

This is one huge problem that I see almost no hope of your addressing. The other is that your whole project has a hopelessly unreflective and instrumentally mutable sense of what “politics” in a classroom might be, a wild lack of proportionality in your opposition to “politics” in the classroom, and a solution to that ill-defined problem that is without a doubt vastly worse than the disease. Let’s suppose you and I agree that there’s a kind of crude political advocacy in the classroom that’s unhelpful in most cases, a kind of unprofessional conduct for a professor. There’s a nice essay by a Colorado geographer published this week in a Colorado newspaper on this point. When professionals do their jobs poorly, often the local “markets” (in this case, students choosing classes) are sufficient remedy. Or gentle but persistent supervision and mentoring by people who have a clearer sense of their professional obligations. Or better quality control at the time of hiring. All of which are subtle improvements of practice undertaken by people because of their belief in a professional ethos, not clumsy top-down regimes of heavy-handed regulation and control.

What makes the best classes and teaching work in the best (and even not-so-good) universities is precisely the autonomy of their teachers. Most of your proposed “reforms” are like trying to deal with a few weeds in a lawn by napalming the whole thing. If you want to critique the professionalism of some academics, I think that’s fine, much as I think it’s fair to critique the medical profession for its persistent inability to teach many doctors how to relate to their patients in more human and empathetic ways. But you can’t dictate good bedside manners with some heavy-handed administrative regime, and you can’t ensure that a few academics won’t behave unprofessionally by straightjacketing whole institutions with nanny-state or quasi-Orwellian mechanisms of surveillance. Either you just don’t grasp how poor your proposals are at dealing with the issues that you express concern about, or the persistent accusation that this is all a front for a hidden agenda is true: there really aren’t any alternatives.

Re: More Urban Legend (#56886)
by david horowitz on March 20, 2005 at 2:31 PM
Well I sort of guessed I was opening myself up for normal academic viciousness when I extended my hand. How foolish of me to forget that the scholarly among us regard me as the dark side of the force! How nuanced of you.

May I remind you that I am not prosecuting any professors and therefore your remarks about FIRE and about advocacy for afflicted students is tendentious in the extreme. The evidence I have gathered is to establish that there is a general problem that needs to be remedied by a general policy. In my view the problem is obvious and it takes all the patience I can muster to deal with people who deny that it even exists. Most of the cases I bring up, including this one, are about establishing this existence, not about making appeals in behalf of individual students who feel aggrieved by individual professors. So save your pieties for a case where I have unjustly impugned the reputation of an actual professor.

And where you have been these decades? I’m not aware that anyone has made case that liberal universities actually discriminated in their undergraduate admissions programs. Yet without any such data, the entire academic world with a few isolated exceptions has welcomed massive government intervention into university policies (hiring and admissions) and established probably well over a billion dollars in programs to rectify the unestablished problem of academic racism. How about cutting my efforts to promote intellectual diversity half the slack you’ve cut the efforts of others to create skin and gender and sexual orientation diversities?

Your comment about modesty in regard to what is and is not true shows you didn’t read my previous post very carefully or chose not to take it seriously (after all it comes from Darth Vader). I did admit to some minor errors — nothing compared what my critics have made by the way — and look at what Ralph Luker and others did with that. I got no credit for the modesty; I have dozens of (undeserved) new lumps instead. And has Luker so much as conceded that his original post implying that I had invented the student, the exam and the professor, might have been the least teeny weeny bit wrong? Of course not. Because he knows not many of his scrupulous academic colleagues here — certainly not you — are prepared to hold him to account.

Before I take on your diatribe about my hopelessly unreflective and unsophisticated approach to politics in the classroom, may I ask if you have read the AAUP’s own prouncements on this subject? Because I lifted my entire agenda in this matter word for word from the AAUP’s own statements on Academic Tenure and Academic Freedom. Word for word. I myself, actually, have a more sophisticated notion of what should be permissible in the classroom. You can read it here (http://www.studentsforacademicfreedom.org/essays/pamphlet.html)
if you really care to.

It may come as news to you, but I have proposed no “clumsy, top-down regimes of heavy-handed regulation and control.” You can read my testimony to the Ohio Senate which is posted at www.studentsforacdemicfreedom.org as “Why An Academic Bill of Rights Is Necessary” (right-hand frame). I point out that my recommendations for correcting this problem of politicking in the classroom is already incorporated WORD FOR WORD in the Faculty Handbook as a faculty responsibility. In my view this faculty responsibility is unobserved by many faculty members and unenforced by the university administrations, and that’s why legislation is necessary.

As a matter of fact the legislation does not include a bureaucracy to enforce it. We are hoping that the university will sit up and take note and do that itself. What we are proposing is that keeping the classroom free of political advocacy be not only a professorial responsibility (as it now officially is) but a student right, so that when professors ignore their responsibility, students have a means of reminding them. How onerous is this, that you should insult me on the basis of your own ignorance, to oppose it?

Re: More Urban Legend (#56890)
by Timothy James Burke on March 20, 2005 at 2:52 PM
David:

Look, just watch the scene in question in “Empire Strikes Back”: it occurs to me largely because I’m a sci-fi geek who can recite the dialogue of the film verbatim, not because you were acting like Darth Vader. Your final sentence about joining you just happens to almost echo what Vader says. Short version: lighten up!

You are not talking about a general problem in general terms in your Bill of Rights, David. You very specifically talk about specific cases and attempt to criticize specific institutions. But as I’ve said, you’re also making that general claim without the kinds of data you need to back it up: almost all your evidence, even the evidence which is absolutely verifiable in the form you give it, is self-reported.

Pointing to affirmative action is, for one, a really bad argumentative technique known to parents all around the world as “But Mommmmm, my little brother did it too!” Or “Officer, all the OTHER guys were speeding too.” To which an officer can say, “Yeah, but you’re the one I caught today.” The standards I’m talking about are perfectly applicable to other cases, but we’re talking about your project right now. Have i applied them myself? Sure, yes, I think I’m pretty consistent. I’m quite skeptical about some of the logic of diversity practices in contemporary universities. The idea that none of those practices were based on systematic research though is either horribly ill-informed or actively tendentious. You could start with Derek Bok’s The Shape of the River, which even if you want to criticize its findings, was based on the kind of data that your project and its claims bears no resemblance to as yet. But Bok’s book came on top of a huge foundation of empirical work, which again you might choose to critique–many have–but which in its data-richness, is simply not comparably to the self-reported, anecdotal data set that you wield with such authority and intensity.

On your later points, let me simply observe this. If the Bill of Rights merely duplicates, in your mind, what is already in the AAUP or in faculty handbooks, what’s the need for it? There’s an interesting comparison to the Equal Rights Amendment. Those who said it was necessary observed that even if statutory law said exactly the same thing, the force of a constitutional guarantee of rights was vastly greater, that the form and placement of a code is more important than its content. That’s also exactly what the critics said: that a constitutional amendment which duplicated statutory protections would have a great many pernicious effects, some of them predictable consequences of a particular feminist agenda, some of them unpredictable even to the ERA’s advocates. Same here. Even when you merely repeat what a faculty handbook says, when you repeat it as a declaration of *rights*, and ask in some cases for that declaration to have statutory force as opposed to being a professional code of conduct, you utterly transform its substantive functioning.

You seem to understand that well enough about speech codes in other contexts–that to take customary understandings about what should and should not be said within a community and make them statutory prohibitions with punitive remedies or to restate them as rights is to smash free speech. Doesn’t matter if the content of the customary statement and the statutory prohibtion are the same: the two come with completely different authorities. That you seem to not grasp this is again something that faces me with a choice: either you’re not understanding the implications of your own proposals or your deliberately effacing the implications of those proposals. This is kind of a fundamental point about the difference between law and everyday practice.

Re: More Urban Legend (#56893)
by david horowitz on March 20, 2005 at 3:07 PM
The little Stars Wars scene is about the temptation of Skywalker to joint the dark side of the force, no? However, I will take your comment and the tone your reply as a gesture of goodwill.

Yes, I give specific cases, but the point of them is general. It’s to build up a general case that something needs to be done about university policy, not about particular professors. There’s a big difference. This campaign is about process, not about personalities.

I’m glad to hear your skepticism about diversity regulations. However, the point is they’ve been adopted and they are much more heavy-handed than anything I am proposing. We withdrew our legislation in Colorado when the universities offered to put the principles in place. In Ohio I proposed in my testimony that the universities step forward to provide a grievance process that would implement their own existing policy. What could be less heavy handed than that?

I didn’t say what I’m proposing already exists. I said the principle behind what I’m already proposing is already embraced by the university. I’m suggesting that faculty responsibilities be supplemented by the recognition of student rights, in this case to be taught not indoctrinated. The AAUP guidelines on this are 1) vague; 2) are not put in terms of student rights (naturally since AAUP is a faculty guild) and 3) are not accompanied by grievance procedures. If the AAUP had not pre-emptively declared war on my proposal (I approached them early and they rebuffed me) I’m sure the details could be hammered out by reasonable people. If you have a complaint, it’s really with the opposition not with me. I’m — surprise, surprise — quite a reasonable fellow.

On speech codes, I did lead the battle against them (in contrast to the AAUP which did nothing or supported them). I am well aware of the dangers of legislative over-reach, which is why I am always going to leave open the option to universities to put the protections in place themselves. My model Academic Bill of Rights has been vetted by two distinguished libertarian academics: Eugene Volokh and Alan Kors. I took out everything in my original model bill that they objected to until it passed their muster. What more would you like me to do?

Re: More Urban Legend (#56898)
by Timothy James Burke on March 20, 2005 at 3:51 PM
I would like you to constrain your general claims to what your evidence supports.

I would like you to be vastly more scrupulous about specific cases, to as a matter of principle avoid “naming names” or trying to turn people into targets. That’s what FIRE or the ACLU do, with the appropriate professional constraints and responsibilities. If you don’t want to be accused of scapegoating, stay clear of anything that even has a whiff of that. That’s what professionalism is all about: if you’re really half as interested in professional rectitude as you say, you should know that.

I would like you to abandon any proposition that the Bill of Rights as you’ve drafted it should be adopted as either a statutory instrument or a quasi-statutory one within universities. If you want to change it to “a list of some suggestions or guidelines about professional decorum in classrooms”, there’s nothing objectionable about that, as long as you understand that it’s possible to legitimately disagree in scope or emphasis with those guidelines or even, at the judgement of some professionals, observe some other guideline altogether.

I would like you to view the question of the political content of classroom instruction as a subject to debate rather than deliver fixed conclusions about–to make your own conclusions on the subject provisional and complex if you expect others to show you the same courtesy.

As part of that, I’d like you and your colleagues to be more thoughtful about the nature of the public interest in this question. It’s clear what the public interest is in medical malpractice, for example: none of us wants to have the wrong knee operated on, or to have brain surgery instead of a tonsillectomy. The harm there is very clear. It’s not clear what the magnitude of the harm is in this case. This is partially because your data is so poor that you can say very little with confidence about just how many students have encountered what you define as a problem, and how often they do so, but also because it’s not clear what is being lost in the process, in any systematic way. I say this because on the surface, in terms of most of the kinds of metrics we could offer, the American university system is the most successful, vigorous, robust system of its kind in world history, and remains the envy of other nations today. Anybody arguing that it ought to be something significantly different than what it is has a certain evidentiary hill to climb; they have to show us what could be as opposed to what is, and what’s being lost in the process. If, for example, your ultiimate view is ultimately one more boojum hunt for “brainwashing”, something that I think is the greatest flaw in both the cultural left and among cultural conservatives, a belief that everyone would agree with them were it not for the intervention of some outside force that distorts the natural evolution of reason or sentiment, it’s a terribly dubious enterprise. If you’ve got something more specific in mind, some quite tangible potential that is going to waste, and some vision of the positive virtues of that potential, spell it out. Anybody who wants major public remedies is obligated to describe, with great specificity, what the nature of the major public harm is. Given the unquestionable success of the American university system in so many ways, it’s hard to see what the urgency is. And I say this as someone who is in many respect critical of academic institutions: my criticisms, which are diverse, have to coexist with a basic requirement that what is not broken need not be fixed, that the enormous success of the American university system not be compromised in those areas where it is incontrovertibly successful. Your proposals seem to me to have extremely high potential to break what works about the system, to introduce a rules-drivien, statute-driven consciousness that already has crippled American public education at the K-12 level. You seem to want to do to universities what Diane Ravitch has conclusively shown state governments and statutory requirements have already done to K-12 education. Given the potential harm, what exactly is the public interest you regard as so overwhelmingly pressing?

Colorado (#56914)
by Jonathan Rees on March 20, 2005 at 7:27 PM
” We withdrew the legislation in Colorado…”

Thanks for that. Your meddling in Colorado state politics was just one extra example of the Republican state legislature’s fiddling while the state’s fiscal house burned down. Now the Democrats control both houses and the Taxpayer Bill of Rights is well on its way to being fixed on a bipartisan basis, and we may be able to implement some improvements on my campus again.

Come back to Colorado any time.

Re: More Urban Legend (#56889)
by Ralph E. Luker on March 20, 2005 at 2:45 PM
David, My colleagues, Tim Burke and Jon Dresner, have more patience with you than I do, but for the record I made note of the fact that the report out of the University of Northern Colorado was not an “urban legend”. To your credit, you’ve acknowledged that your characterization of the story was misleading in many details. Evenso, you continue to trumpet one side of a he said/she said. The public has a right to know that. As Tim points out, you continue to tell the story of a student in California who received a failing grade on a paper because it said things the professor simply disagreed with. We’ve read the paper. It isn’t one that should receive credit on a college level. Quit telling that story. Essentially, you’re lying. The public has a right to know that. Beyond that, although I don’t have much respect for you, quite frankly, this isn’t _about you_ — except that you insist on arraying the world as if it were yours to command. What credentials do you have for advising _anybody_ about education policy?

Re: More Urban Legend (#56894)
by david horowitz on March 20, 2005 at 3:13 PM
I will maintain the Colorado student’s story until the university produces the facts, which they haven’t done. Where is the original exam? What evidence do they have for the claims they are making?

And when are you going to retract the five misstaements you made about me in your previous post?

As for the Kuwaiti student. I have published an unedited article by him on FrontPage explaining his case. He is as articulate a 17 year old as I have encountered, and a fluent writer. The question he was given on the exam was illegimate and should get a reprimand for the professor. It was basically: Explain why the constitution was a ruse put over by the ruling class to hoodwink and control the masses. Bad questions lead to bad answers. Why blame the victim? In any case, the fact that the professor sent this kid to a psychiatrist (remember Sakharov?) and threatened to send him to the Dean in charge of his visa if he didn’t go speaks volumes about what went on this classroom.

Re: More Urban Legend (#56895)
by Ralph E. Luker on March 20, 2005 at 3:30 PM
1) You will continue to report one side of a he said/she said, based on an anonymous source, as the truth — when it is heresay that no responsible person would report.
2) I made _no_ misstatements about _you_. You keep thinking this is about _you_. If you would give yourself a salary cut — from the reported $179,000 — to some reasonable level appropriate to your skills, you could hire some staff to check out your blarny before you go trumpeting it.
3) Where’s a victim? The essay didn’t deserve to receive college credit. Every student who ever received a failing grade from any one of us could come to you with that complaint and we have _no_ assurance from you that you’d check the facts before you’d make it a part of your propaganda campaign.
4) The fact is that we sometimes do encounter students who need some psychological counseling. If you criminalize us for conscientious recommendations to students, our students in need will ultimately be the ones who lose in the process.

Re: More Urban Legend (#56897)
by david horowitz on March 20, 2005 at 3:50 PM
1. I am the only one in this debate NOT claiming to be in possession of the Truth. I have merely said that I believe the student rather than the Professor and the University bureaucrat and I have explained why. How you manage to stay on such a high horse when you have conceded nothing in this particular matter is beyond me.
2. When a man is challenged beyond his capacity to respond as you evidently are he resorts to insults. I get paid through a market process my friend. I have 35,000 people who voluntarily fund my operation because they think what I do is worth the price.
3. You just keep asserting your opinion (no argument necessary) as though it’s some kind of gold standard. Who taught you to do this?
4. The student is a Kuwaiti who speaks perfect and I mean perfect English though he’s only been in America 5 months. He loves this country and its constitution because it saved his? You think he needs psychological counseling for that? To repeat (since you evidently don’t read my posts carefully before you attack them) the psychologist wasn’t recommended under implicit threat of deportation. Shame on you for this post.

Re: More Urban Legend (#56899)
by Ralph E. Luker on March 20, 2005 at 4:07 PM
1) I reported that the story you tell is not an “urban legend” in the usual sense of that term. You would know about high horses, wouldn’t you?
2) Give yourself a salary cut. Hire some staff to check out your stories.
3) My “opinion” about the student’s essay is shared by a number of readers of it — including several others of us at Cliopatria and several conservative academics — who all concluded that the essay was not worthy of academic credit. We’ve all _earned_ the right and responsibility to make such judgments. You simply insist that you have it — without going through rigorous credentialing processes.
4) _Nobody_ objects to the Kuwaiti student’s loving the United States. It is only David Horowitz who takes the scoundrel’s last refuge.

Re: More Urban Legend (#56918)
by david horowitz on March 20, 2005 at 7:48 PM
Since you refuse to engage in an intellectual discussion merely repeating your insultsand positions I thought I would let this post go But then I got to thinking about the phrase “We’ve all earned the right and responsibility to make such judgments. You simply insist that you have it — without going through rigorous credentialing processes.” This is isn’t an argument Ralph; it’s snotty posturing of the kind that makes academics an easy target of many celebrated satires and for the famous observation that the politics in academia are so nasty because the stakes are so low.

I believe we’re discussing the ability to judge a freshman essay. I was grading undergraduate papers in 1960 when you were still probably struggling through K-12 (no shame in that but just to put things in perspective). Since then I’ve edited the largest magazine of the left, authored articles for the Encyclopedia Britannica, written articles for the Washington Post and similar venues, published many many books, well-thought of by distinguished scholars of a conservative persuasion and in short been “credentialed” by people who have been through your credentialling process many times over.

My next book will be out in a month. It’s literary/philosophical work, and thus a fair reflection of what I know about writing (i.e., my credential for judging the seventeen year old Kuwaiti whom you have qualms about denigrating. Stanley Fish, former head of the Duke English Department, former Dean of the University of Illinois (Chicago) and easily the most distinguished Milton scholar in the country agreed to read my book in galleys and provide a comment if he thought it worthy. Stanley Fish and I do not agree on most things political as you know. So whatever conclusion he came to was not influenced by his desire to promote my political views. Far from it. Here then is what he wrote (the book by the way is called “The End of Time”:

“Most memoirs only mime honesty. This one performs it. Beautifully written, unflinching in its contemplation of the abyss, and yet finally hopeful in its acceptance of human finitude. And as a bonus, it gives us a wonderful love story.” — Stanley Fish

I think I’ve earned the right to my judgment on the young man’s paper, and I think this exchange is over.

Colorado: The Student Speaks

May 24, 2020 by admin Leave a Comment

By David Horowitz–FrontPageMagazine.com–03/18/05

In the saga of the Colorado student who claims that she was failed on a criminology exam for not following the professor’s instructions to explain why George Bush is a war criminal (but wrote that Saddam Hussein was instead) there is no hard evidence because the professor claims to have destroyed all copies of the actual exam, while also claiming that the student’s bad grade (he won’t reveal what it is and probably can’t because there is a federal law against such public disclosure) was given because she handed in only two pages instead of the required three. Our question to him is, how can he know this if he destroyed the exams?

At legislative hearings on the Academic Bill of Rights, the President of the University of Northern Colorado, Kay Norton said the following according to the audio transcript: “…and actually last year, a young woman did raise a question about what she thought was an inappropriate examination question, I referred her to our procedures, she followed them, and I’m pleased to report to you that the original version of what would have been an inappropriate examination question proved not to be what was actually on the examination, and so the process worked.”

Please note how deceptive this testimony is. President Norton did not have access to the examination question since all the exam papers were destroyed. What she had access to in making this statement was a question supplied by the professor after the student had filed a formal complaint about her grade. She is simply taking the professor at his word. She also does not indicate whether the grade on the exam was altered through the appeals process or not.

After a series of one-sided newspaper reports in the Colorado press in which only the UNC administration and the professor were interviewed, the student emailed us the following comments reiterating her claim (and ours based on her claim) that the original exam question was different from the question that the professor supplied after that fact. As we have pointed out the chief difference between the question supplied after the fact and reported by the university spokesperson was that students were required to explain why the United States was a war criminal rather than George Bush (see Addenda 1 below):

“I did fail the final exam, at least that is what I was told, however based on Dunkley’s and the schools comments you never really know what is truthful. It has always been my understanding and my story that I got an “F” on the exam but a B in the class. I don’t think Dunkley disputed that but he is such a manipulative person you never really know.

“I still feel at peace with my decision, I think Erin [our original student interviewer] is upset with me as she keeps calling and emailing me to share [more of my] perspective, but I need some time away from this. It has put unnecessary stress on me and put a damper on my Spring Break. I hope you understand my decision and in talking to you it doesn’t seem like you are upset with me, but I need to do what is best for me in this situation.

Thanks

(student’s name redacted)”

These are the accompanying comments of my staffer, Ryan Call, who is based in Denver:

“The student confirmed, as she told us originally, that she received an “F” for the final exam, but that her grade for the course overall ended up being a “B.” The student gave me the impression that her grade for the course had been moved up to a “B” as a result of the appeals process. The explanation the student gave was that since Professor Dunkley was never able to produce a copy of the student’s actual essay/response for either her or for the committee or administrators who looked into the appeal-the student claims that Dunkley told her that he had thrown away all the exams after he had graded them — and the student has neither seen nor ever been given a copy of her actual exam response at ANY stage during the appeals process, that the professor agreed to disregard or drop the “F” on the final exam, and instead use some sort of combination from the student’s mid-term exams and other class projects. Thus the “B” as the final grade in the course.

“Frankly, this seems to lend credence to the student’s story. Why in the world would a student go through a lengthy and onerous appeals process to protest a “B” final grade, raise the issue with the university president directly, and come to us with her story unless there was some substance to her concerns, and she really felt like the exam question was politically biased and unfair? And why in the world would a professor who maintains he was completely justified in giving a student an “F” on the final exam, later change the student’s final grade in the course all the way up to a “B” unless the failing grade on the final was not really justifiable? Getting an “F” on the final exam, but a “B” in the course overall doesn’t pass the smell test–grade inflation alone doesn’t explain it.

“The student continues to maintain that the exam question that Dunkley submitted to the review committee–the exam question that President Norton referenced in the audio, and the exam question that appeared in the InsideHigherEd.com article–was NOT the same as the question that appeared on the exam. The student continues to believe that Dunkley recreated the exam question at some point during the appeals process because the original exam had been thrown away.”

So we are left with the question of whom to believe, the student who went through an appeals process and came out with the “B” or the professor and the university who on the face of their own testimony and behavior have shown themselves to be secretive, manipulative and deceitful?

Recall that this was an exam in criminology, and not geopolitics. Even the question supplied by the professor required the student to come up with a pre-determined answer to a very controversial issue. This is indoctrination and a violation of the tenets of academic freedom. Our original story stands.

Addenda:

1) The exam question supplied after the fact by the administration (and after the originals were destroyed by the professor):

“The American government campaign to attack Iraq was in part based on the assumptions that the Iraqi government has ‘Weapons of Mass Destruction.’ This was never proven prior to the U.S. police action/war and even President Bush, after the capture of Baghdad, stated: ‘we may never find such weapons.’ Cohen’s research on deviance discussed this process of how the media and various moral entrepreneurs and government enforcers can conspire to create a panic. How does Cohen define this process? Explain it in depth. Where does the social meaning of deviance come from? Argue that the attack on Iraq was deviance based on negotiable statuses. Make the argument that the military action of the U.S. attacking Iraq was criminal.”

2) Profesor Robert Dunkley: In an AP report out of Denver that was carried in the Denver Post and other Colorado papers, the following sentences appear: “Criminal Justice Professor Robert Dunkley said it was frightening how far Horowitz has taken the incident without doing thorough research. ‘The bottom line is if you’re going to make claims you ought to do your best to get the facts, Dunkley told the Greeley Tribune.'” As the Greeley Tribune reported subsequently in a correction article, my staff did attempt to get the facts — in particular a copy of the exam and of the grade — but was denied access to both by Dunkley and the University Administration. How “far” on the other hand did I take this story? It was one anecdote one among several in some of my speeches and articles to give a flavor as to the abuses by professors like Dunkley (Dunkley has now supplied at version of his exam question so readers can decide for themselves). The little anecdote was taken far indeed by the opponents of academic freedom, elevating it to a status far beyond what it had up to then, which is how this whole “controversy” came about.

3) My reply to the latest attack from MediaMatters (from MoonbatCentral):

“The back and forth with the Soros’ attack site MediaMatters has become so tedious that not even I the target am interested anymore. The only substantive issue in this matter is whether the exam question was an attempt to compel students to give a one-sided answer to a controversial question. The answer is obvioiusly yes. What is glaringly missing from all the MediaMatters blather (including their most recent post) is any attempt to address this question. As for all the factual disputes they boil down to 1) creating a mountain out of the molehill of this particular case (our campaign is based on hundreds of cases); 2) the misrepresentation of what we originally claimed — e.g., we did not claim that the professor was a liberal; 3) the assumption that the university which has selectively released “facts” but never opened the records — the actual exam, the actual grade — to public scrutiny, is telling the truth.

I made a mistake when I conceded error, because as long as the university and professor do not provide the actual test and the grade, no one knows the facts and no one knows the grade. (No one knows whether the grade, e.g., was adjusted as a result of the student’s appeal.) Hence, what I should have said is that I am unable to check these facts and am repeating the student’s claims because I have no reason to doubt the veracity of those claims.

But we do know some things. 1) We know that MediaMatters falsely implied that I made the whole incident up. 2) We know that the university and the professor have supplied an exam question which basically confirms our claim that the exam was an exercise in indoctrination. This should close the case for all reasonable people.