University of Northern Colorado

By David Horowitz–FrontPageMagazine.com–03/17/05

The Colorado press has weighed in on the Colorado exam caper and — as usual — substituted its anti-student, anti-academic freedom, editorial bias for what should have been straightforward reporting. According to the Denver Post and the Greeley Tribune, we retracted our story about an exam in Colorado that was an example of indoctrination since it required students to explain that America’s liberation of Iraq was a criminal action. Even the exam question supplied by the University adminsitration (which may not be the actual exam question) confirms what we said. And that’s what I said in my “correction” of our story.

But this is the way the AP reported the story in the Denver Post: “Conservative firedbrand David Horowitz has conceded that he misrepresented a University of Northern Colorado student’s complaint against her instructor.” No I didn’t. I conceded that the student may have misrepresented the facts, in particular the fact that she go an “F” and that the actual question was not required, even though the answer was required. I also pointed out these were minor and irrelevant errors, since her main claim and ours was that she was required in answering the question to explain why America had committed a criminal act in liberating Iraq and thus that the President was a war criminal.

The University adminsitration has been dishonest throughout this process and may be lying even in these claims. The student says that when she filed her appeal over the exam to the university administration, the professor in question whose name is Robert Dunkley, supplied a different question than the original one. Neither the professor nor the administration has supplied a copy of the original exam, which is suspicious on its face (don’t expect the AP to ask questions about this). This was a course in criminology and specifically the behavior of individuals not states, which makes the student’s claim that the original question was “Explain Why George Bush Is A War Criminal” more plausible than the question Dunkley has now supplied.

If you look at the question as supplied by Dunkley it is somewhat incoherent as though it had been tampered with. But even so, the question the administration has now supplied confirms the student’s claim and confirms that we were right: Dunkley and UNC administered an exam with a question that was pure political indoctrination more approriate to the University of Havana than to an American school.

Note that both papers contacted Dunkley but not us, just as the only other report on this story by InsideHigherEd.com interviewed an administration spokesman but did not call us to check our response to her claims before running their story.

To sum up this end of the tale: we admitted two minor points. We did not know whether the student got an “F” as she claimed and we did not know whether the question itself was required (as opposed to the answer). I made a mistake from ignorance here and said we had not “checked” these points. In fact, we could not check them because the University Administration would not release them to us. This hasn’t prevented Dunkley of accusing me of not researching the facts. How could I have researched the facts — aside from taking the student’s testimony at face value when 1) Dunkley has destroyed (or claims to have destroyed) the exam in question and the university has withheld the facts for more than a year and released only its version to the sources it chooses — hostile media as it happens.

Now, consider the way the same media treat the lies from MediaMatters about this story: They simply report the MediaMatters claims about us as though they were true. But Media Matters claimed (actually insinuated) that we invented the student, the professor and the exam question. MediaMatters has yet to retract these claims even though there is no one in the universe who can believe them anymore.

So we were punished for being honest, and MediaMatters is rewarded for lying. This will not defer us from our mission to restore decency and educational standards to schools in Colorado and elsewhere, but it doesn’t make the task any easier.

It is interesting how fiercely a press which thinks of itself as “liberal” (while adamantly denying that it is) will go to protect a corrupt system that abuses students — both liberal and conservative — by administering exams with questions that have only one correct answer to questions that are political and controversial. Let’s not forget that this was supposed be a course in criminology and not in anti-war politics. Shame on the University of Northern Colorado, shame on Professor Dunkley, shame on the AP and the Greeley Tribune. This is disgraceful stuff and shows why our colleges are in as bad a state as they are.

By David Horowitz–03/17/05

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.

By Erin Bergstrom–03/15/05

To Whom It Concerns:

My name is Erin Bergstrom. I am a 45-year-old businesswoman and free-lance writer. I am also a student at REGIS University. In the 2003-2004 term I was a volunteer activist for Students for Academic Freedom. I interviewed students on several different campuses regarding their first-hand experiences with academic bias and discrimination. In November, 2003, a young man told me about a woman at the University of Northern Colorado who had a distressing experience in one of her courses. He contacted her, and she agreed to talk to me. She and I talked over the phone on several occasions, and I also met her at the Greeley campus. I found her to be a warm and personable young woman. She is articulate, and seems intelligent and sincere.

I have my original notes from our first conversation. I interviewed her for more than an hour. She 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. There were certain things that stood out to me about her account.

The first thing that impressed me was her attitude. Her professor was not willing to allow her to express her scholarship in a manner that was consistent with her conscience. She talked about how hurt and distressed she was over the situation, yet she did not express vindictiveness or a desire to embarrass her university.

The young woman was persistent in her efforts to formally complain about the situation, which showed courage and integrity on her part. One reason was to try to change her grade. Another reason is her belief that she represented other students, who also did not deserve to be subject to this type of ideological aggression. So even though it was unpleasant, she pushed the issue up the ladder of academic authority. She said: “I just kept thinking if I took it higher someone would make it right. None of them did anything. The school just kind of pushed it under. They said that I just needed to move on . . . I love this university, but I am angry, and disappointed.”

This young woman allowed me to begin using part of her story in December, 2003, and it received nation-wide exposure. In March of 2004, she asked me to stop using it. I presented some of the positive benefits if she was to go completely public with her story, but she decided against this. She recognized the value of speaking out about this issue, but was afraid to be in the public spotlight. She was afraid that it might somehow hurt her chances of getting into law school. She said that she wanted to move on with her life, and just put it behind her.

In our conversations she expressed the type of ambivalence that I have often heard in other 18 to 22-year-old conservative students-or even students who are much older. They want to stand up for their rights, but they are easily intimidated. They are afraid of possible negative consequences, such as ridicule, contempt, lower grades, or missed academic opportunities. They are uncomfortable in the role of whistle-blower, or protestor. The students want to believe their authorities will respond in an honorable way, and will present a just solution. So even if professors and administrators are unreasonable or self-serving, students will still talk about wanting to please them, and act in a loyal manner.

I had not talked to this young woman again until March 3, 2005, when Ryan Call contacted me regarding the allegations of certain members of the press that this young woman’s story is not true. I could have told him her name, and contact information, but it would have been unethical and unkind for me to do this without her permission. As much as possible, she deserves to remain in control of a situation that has already caused her so much distress. I called her on March 3 to see if she would now be willing to come forward as the source, and reveal her name. I spoke to her again on March 10. She was willing to share additional information, but not her name.

The imbalance of power between young students and academic authorities is extreme. In this type of situation, it is helpful if the parties with the greatest amount of power act with the greatest amount of restraint and decency. It is my hope that the university’s authorities and the press will keep this in mind in regards to this young woman-or any other student who has the courage to speak out in any way about this type of matter.

Sincerely,

Erin Bergstrom
3633 Harding Drive
Loveland, Colorado 80538

By David Horowitz–Frontpagemag.com–03/15/05

You have to admire the left, or at least its ability to conduct political warfare. We have mounted a campaign for academic freedom based on hundreds of testimonies from liberal as well as conservative students in more than 30 states and at colleges from coast to coast, but leftists have pounced on a single student’s testimony about a single exam at the university of Colorado in an attempt to discredit all the evidence we have gathered and the case we have made. Not one leftist or liberal media outlet has attempted to find out for itself what is taking place on college campuses and how extremist ideologues like Ward Churchill are conducting themselves in the classroom. But a reporter for the Cleveland Plain Dealer and an army of Internet bloggers has taken the time to zero in one of the hundreds of cases we have identified with the obvious intention of bringing the entire campaign for academic freedom and just plain decency in the classroom to a halt.

Scott Jaschik of the webzine Inside Higher Ed, has published an article today – “Tattered Poster Child” — about this case, which seeks to debunk our claims, based on an interview with an official at the University of Northern Colorado. Until now the university has denied us all information about the incident, which is why we relied on the student herself.

The Jaschik story, which does not appear to be politically motivated, raises serious questions about our story that the student was required to answer a “question” on a final exam in a Criminology course, which we reported as “Explain Why George Bush is a war criminal.” Jaschik did not interview the student who is too fearful of recriminations to be interviewed by the press, nor did he inform us of the university’s counter-claims so that we could interview the student. I began writing this response to Jaschik’s story, which is already on the web, at 5:00 AM, so without the ability to interview the student myself, I am forced to make a response.

Actually, I am not forced to make a response but choose to do so to clarify matters as best I am able at this point, and to acknowledge where the information we reported appears to have been wrong. I do so as an earnest of our good faith in attempting to keep the record straight.

First, let me point out that contrary to what the Inside Higher Ed piece says this student’s complaint was not “the basis for many speeches by David Horowitz in his campaign against what he calls political bias in the classroom.” Nor is she the “Poster Child” for the campaign – a title that seriously distorts its agendas. While I have mentioned her case on several occasions, it was the basis of no speeches I have made. The basis of my speeches is my personal interviews with literally thousands of students on the more than 250 campuses I have visited in the last 15 years. I recently gave testimony to the Education Committee of the Ohio Senate in behalf of Senate Bill 24, which is based on the Academic Bill of Rights. It mentions this case. Readers can judge for themselves whether this case is the basis of my testimony, or whether it is merely one example among many.

Secondly, I have not conducted a “campaign against what [Horowitz] calls political bias in college classrooms.” In fact I have never used the term “political bias in college classrooms.” I assume that everyone has a bias. I am not concerned about bias in the classroom. I am concerned about professional behavior in the classroom. I am concerned when professors become political advocates in the classroom and turn their students into political adversaries. This is an activity that conflicts with the professional responsibility professors have to teach all their students, even those who disagree with them. Political advocacy in the classroom violates the tenets of academic freedom as laid down by the American Association of University Professors, as well as the academic freedom guidelines of most universities. That is my concern.

(The term “bias” has appeared in my writings and speeches only in reference to the university hiring process which has resulted in absurd majorities of leftwing professors on college faculties by ratios that range from 7-1 to 30 – 1. I think inquiry should be made into the hiring process itself, but I have not made this part of the academic freedom campaign because this cannot be accomplished without faculty approval, and legislation to compel faculty approval would severely damage the independence of the university. The academic freedom campaign is designed to preserve the intellectual independence of the university.)

Finally, this is not a campaign about leftwing professors’ abuse of students in the classroom. It is about professorial abuse of students in the classroom whether the abuser is a leftist or a conservative, a Democrat or a Republican. We have defended liberal students whose professors have attempted to indoctrinate them (vid: my testimony to the Ohio Senate). Scott Jaschik and others have missed this point, and used their misunderstanding either to attack us or in the case of Jaschik to inadvertently put us in a bad light. In his Inside Higher Ed article, debunking our story, Jaschik writes, “And the professor who has been held up as an example of out-of-control liberal academics? In an interview last night, he said that he’s a registered Republican.”

Now I grant that in the absence of information about the professor’s politics (and until Jaschik’s article I had no idea who the professor was) it is reasonable to conclude that he was an out-of-control liberal on the basis of the exam question we cited. But he was not held up by me as an out-of-control liberal in my speeches. Many Republicans also opposed the war in Iraq. This professor – whose name I now have learned is Dunkley — was held up by me as a professor trying to impose his conclusions about the war – or a conclusion about the war – on his students. As we shall see, even though our presentation of this case appears now to have had several faults, this charge – which is the only really important charge — will stick.

According to Jaschik, “Dunkley said he is angry at the way Horowitz and his supporters have made him an example of alleged liberal bias in academe.” We have made him no such thing. We have made him an example of how some professors advance partisan positions on controversial issues and make adherence to these positions a requirement for the student’s grade.

Professor Dunkley also claims that I “cooked this whole thing up.” I didn’t cook anything up. I was given this student’s story among many (readers may read this report which relates the facts as they were given to my staff and decide for themselves). chose to use this case as one among several because it seemed to succinctly sum up the problem as I saw it. The problem being that many professors seem to regard their classrooms as political soapboxes and require one “correct” answer to questions that are controversial.

Since the intent of many of the critics of our story is to put this view of what is going in our universities in question, allow me to point out that the president of Harvard has just been publicly humiliated by his faculty for expressing a politically incorrect opinion on a controversial subject. If the president of Harvard – a former member of the Clinton cabinet and a distinguished scholar in his own right — can be humiliated by out-of-control ideologues on his faculty, imagine what these same faculty members will do to students over whom they have authority and grading power. That – and not a particular exam at the University of Northern Colorado – is the basis for our academic freedom campaign.

What we have in Northern Colorado is a student who feels intimidated by her own university administration, and a university administration who, as reported by Scott Jaschik, says this about her story: 1) The exam question was not “Explain Why George Bush Is A War Criminal.” 2) She did not receive an “F” – as she claimed to us – for writing that Saddam Hussein was a war criminal. 3) There were two required questions on the test and two optional and the one the student chose was one of the optional questions.

What follows is the actual text of the exam question (which was not supplied to us or the student) as reported by the university official. While reading it, bear in mind that this was not a final exam question in an International Studies course. It was an exam question in a Criminology course. The description of this course in the university catalogue is as follows: “Survey criminal behavior generally, including theories of causation, types of crime, extent of crime, law enforcement, criminal justice, punishment and treatment.”

Now read the exam question and see 1) whether it belongs on the final exam of a course of this description, and 2) whether it requires students to argue that the United States and its commander-in-chief are guilty of criminal behavior:

“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.”

The way I parse this is, the Bush administration lied about the presence of Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq and manipulated the public into a state of panic in order to attack Iraq unjustifiably. Explain why the U.S. (and obviously its President) is guilty of criminal behavior.

In other words, the exam question is pretty much how the student remembered it without the text in front of her, and how we reported it. It doesn’t matter to me whether this professor is a Republican or a vegetarian. This is a loaded question that seeks to enforce a student conclusion about an extremely controversial issue, which by the way is pretty remote from the subject matter that one would expect in a criminology course.

Until I hear from the student I have no comment on the matter of the grade but it is conceivable to me that if this were an “A” student and she received a “D” or even a “C” on this exam, in her mind it might as well be an “F”. And, finally, it is quite plausible that since there were two required and two optional questions she might have been confused as to which were which, particularly since the answer to the question about the Iraq war was in fact a required answer: viz, that the United States was guilty of criminal behavior in its efforts to liberate that country.

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.

By Ryan Call–SAF Central Regional Coordinator–03/14/05

The student was a sophomore at the University of Northern Colorado in Greeley, enrolled in a three-credit Criminology course in the Sociology Department during the spring semester of 2003. The course was required for the “Criminal Justice Emphasis” for the Sociology B.A. degree. The course was taught by Assistant Professor Robert Dunkley, who is still with UNC as an Assistant Professor in the newly-formed Criminal Justice Department. The course is now offered through the Criminal Justice Department, as opposed to Sociology, which may explain why some members of the media failed to find it listed among the current course offerings in the Sociology Department at UNC.

Taken from the 2002-2003 UNC Course Catalog, the course description is as follows: “SOC 346 – Criminology. Prerequisite: SOC 100 or equivalent. Survey criminal behavior generally, including theories of causation, types of crime, extent of crime, law enforcement, criminal justice, punishment and treatment.”

The final exam format was a four-question essay exam. The student recalls that the fourth exam question was phrased: “Explain why President Bush is a war criminal.” The student instead answered the question by discussing why Saddam Hussein was a war criminal, and received a failing grade. The student, deeply upset by both the unfair and politically-loaded question, as well as her failing grade, contacted the department chair and filed a complaint to begin the official appeals process.

During the appeals process, the professor claimed the exam question read: “Explain why President Bush could be considered a war criminal.” During the appeals process, however, the professor was unable to produce copies of either the final exam or the student’s final exam essay, for which she had received a failing grade. The student reported that the reason given by the department chair and the dean was that it was Professor Dunkley’s first semester teaching at UNC, and he didn’t know he should have kept copies of the exam.

UNC President Kay Norton was both aware of and involved with the appeals process as it unfolded regarding this incident. In fact, when President Norton appeared along with the presidents from other top Colorado universities before a legislative hearing of the Joint Education Committee on September 9, 2004, not only did she acknowledge that she was aware of the situation, but she was able to describe to the members of the committee what steps the university had taken to deal with the student’s complaints.

For an example of the press coverage of the September 2004 legislative hearing, see Valerie Richardson, “Academic Bias Cited at Colorado Schools,” Washington Times, 10/9/2004, available at http://www.washingtontimes.com/national/20040909-110959-3265r.htm. For example, the Washington Times article included information about a number of other students who shared examples of bias in the classroom, including an alarming report from a CU-Boulder law student who reported that his property law instructor, Professor David Hill, told his class during the first few days of class that ‘”the R in Republican stands for racist,’ called Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas an ‘Uncle Tom,’ and when confronted about such remarks, said “there are plenty of other Nazis like you out there.'”

An audio file of the relevant portions of UNC President Norton’s testimony can be heard here. In addition, the student has agreed to allow us to post a copy of letters she received from the department chair during the appeal’s process. These letters, with only the student’s name excised, will be posted as soon as the student returns from spring break.

The student is now a senior at UNC, but given both the current uproar involving Ward Churchill at CU-Boulder, as well as the fact that the student has recently been accepted to a graduate program, she is still reticent to reveal her name and we have agreed to respect her wishes.

Ryan Call, a regional director for Students for Academic Freedom spoke with the student just a couple of days ago to confirm her story, and is willing to speak with any member of the media who would like additional details or clarification. Ryan Call, a third-year law student at the University of Denver, may be contacted at [email protected]. In addition, Erin Bergstrom, who originally interviewed the student in 2003, has agreed to be contacted to verify the student’s claims, and can be reached by contacting Ryan Call.