[lbo-talk] "Go Where the Money Is: Reduce Workforce Costs" (Re: Mr. Churchill)

Sat Feb 5 09:20:06 PST 2005

John Lacny wrote:

>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

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