>The issue, quite plainly, is that this is a witch-hunt, where the
>right is taking out an easy target first, in preparation for
>clamping down on everyone. Case in point, the "academic bill of
>rights" in Ohio and other places. If they succeed with Churchill,
>they are eventually coming for you. Your more "humanist" pretensions
>will not save you when the Red Channels crew starts accusing you of
>"indoctrination," and when some thin-skinned, asshole right-wing
>student reports you to David Horowitz or Daniel Pipes for
>challenging racism or something like that. This is not the kind of
>facile "slippery slope" argument favored by ACLU fundamentalists,
>either. This is a realistic assessment of the political situation
Groups promoting David Horowitz' "Academic Bill of Rights [sic]" have a clear anti-working-class agenda.
Note that the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) <http://www.alec.org/viewpage.cfm?pgname=5.02> is working hand in hand with "Students for Academic Freedom [sic]":
<blockquote>Letter from the National Campus Director May 14, 2004 <http://studentsforacademicfreedom.org/letters/LettersApr-Jun2004/letter-ALEC051404.htm>
A Step Forward for Academic Freedom
Dear Students and Supporters,
I am thrilled to be able to announce a major step forward for the Academic Bill of Rights. At its Spring Task Force Summit in Austin, Texas the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), adopted both a model resolution and model statutory language based on the Academic Bill of Rights and agreed to work with Students for Academic Freedom to press for the adoption of this legislation in all fifty states.
ALEC is a bi-partisan body composed of over 2,400 state legislative officials from across the United States. Over 100 ALEC members hold senior leadership positions in their state legislatures, while hundreds more hold important committee leadership positions. The support of these legislators will be crucial to promoting the academic freedom campaign across the nation.
Containing language nearly identical to the Academic Bill of Rights, the model bill holds that students "have a right to expect a learning environment in which they will have access to a broad range of serious scholarly opinion pertaining to the subjects they study."
The bill also echoes the guidelines on academic freedom which were first written nearly a century ago by the AAUP, stating that "Students have a right to expect that their academic freedom and the quality of their education will not be infringed by instructors who persistently introduce controversial matter into the classroom or coursework that has no relation to their subject of study and that serves no legitimate pedagogical purpose."
If passed, this bill would require the governing board of each institution of higher education to "develop institutional guidelines and policies to protect academic freedom and the rights of students and faculty" and to "adopt a grievance procedure by which a student or faculty member may seek redress of grievance for an alleged violation of any of the rights specified" in the bill.
The full text of the model bill and model resolution can be found on our website.
We are grateful that ALEC's members have recognized the importance of this legislation and expect that with the organization's support the Academic Bill of Rights will be adopted by more than twenty states within the next year.
The past week brings exciting legislative news as well. Legislators in at least ten states are moving to introduce legislation based on the Academic Bill of Rights, including Missouri, Michigan, Oklahoma, Massachusetts, California, Utah, Washington and Ohio.
During a series of meetings in Washington last week, David Horowitz met with Senator Jeff Sessions (R-AL) who has agreed to sponsor a resolution based on the Academic Bill of Rights in the U.S. Senate in September. This legislation would accompany House Concurrent Resolution 318, introduced last fall by United States Congressman Jack Kingston (R-GA), which calls for colleges and universities to voluntarily end discrimination in hiring practices based on political or religious beliefs and to promote intellectual diversity on campus.
It's been an incredibly successful week for Students for Academic Freedom. Make sure to check our website frequently for the latest news on all these emerging developments. For more information about our organization or on how to start a campus chapter, please contact me at sara at studentsforacademicfreedom.org or at 202-969-2467.
Yours in Freedom, Sara Dogan National Campus Director Students for Academic Freedom</blockquote>
The title of one of ALEC's publications says it all: William D. Eggers, "Show Me The Money: Budget-Cutting Strategies for Cash-Strapped States" (<http://www.alec.org/meSWFiles/pdf/ShowMeTheMoney2.pdf>, July 2002). Eggers is "Senior Fellow, Manhattan Institute for Policy Research & Director, Deloitte Research." His recommendation: "Go Where the Money Is: Reduce Workforce Costs" (p. 4). Regarding higher education, this is what he has to say:
<blockquote>Eliminate phantom positions: When agencies and higher education institutions receive funding for a certain employment level, invariably a percentage of the positions are never filled. Eliminating these positions is a relatively painless way to extract workforce savings from agency budgets.Many of the positions eliminated in Florida fell into this category." (p. 4)</blockquote>
<blockquote>Tie funding for higher education institution to performance: To balance budgets, a number of states are reducing their support to higher education institutions. However, instead of just mindlessly cutting college and university budgets, state legislatures should use this opportunity to rethink their whole approach to higher education. Because much of their funding comes not from state legislatures but from tuition fees, research grants, and endowments, state colleges and universities should be given more freedom to set tuition rates and exempted from various state procurement and personnel regulations.39 Such freedom is necessary for them to thrive in the increasingly competitive marketplace of the least effective and efficient job training programs based on the measures might be consolidated into the high-performing programs or eliminated outright" (p. 10)</blockquote>
<blockquote>Higher education is one area often rife with duplication and overlap. In most states, too many colleges and universities are doing too much of the same thing. "There is no need to have 13 Ph.D. programs in history," an Ohio Senate staffer told _Governing_ magazine."Maybe we're better served to have two in the state, one in the north and one in the south . . . We want to start to specialize, especially in graduate education."44 (p. 12)</blockquote>
They are thinking, "Let's milk this Ward Churchill affair, begin a new round of attacks on tenure, establish state control over hiring, firing, promoting of faculty, and see if we can get away with eliminating ethnic studies, Black studies, women's studies, peace studies, anthropology, maybe even sociology, etc. and reduce the size of history and English while we are at it. Never liked them anyway! Too many Tenured Radicals! Their students are liable to support campus workers on strike! Besides they are 'rife with duplication and overlap.'" -- Yoshie
* Critical Montages: <http://montages.blogspot.com/> * Greens for Nader: <http://greensfornader.net/> * Bring Them Home Now! <http://www.bringthemhomenow.org/> * OSU-GESO: <http://www.osu-geso.org/> * Calendars of Events in Columbus: <http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/calendar.html>, <http://www.freepress.org/calendar.php>, & <http://www.cpanews.org/> * Student International Forum: <http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/> * Committee for Justice in Palestine: <http://www.osudivest.org/> * Al-Awda-Ohio: <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Al-Awda-Ohio> * Solidarity: <http://www.solidarity-us.org/>