Droopy: My Research on the Takeover of Academia

[Anonymous]

Hey Droopy,

The Kansas State Legislature meets in Topeka, two blocks away from the Kansas Department of Education which in 2005 famously adapted the Discovery Institute’s curriculum on intelligent design. The legislature is about 75% Republican. Topeka ain’t Berkley.

I explain this context because when studying the arguments of David Horowitz—your key resource to the alleged takeover of America’s higher education by extreme leftists who are avowed enemies of academic freedom—I found that he testified before the Appropriations Committee of the Kansas House of Representatives in March 2006. He testified to warn them of the "assault on academic freedom by tenured radicals in the Kansas public university system." He didn’t ask the legislature to make any substantive changes to deal with the crisis; all he asked them to do was to make a resolution.

He proudly posted his testimony here.

In order to support his point, he cherry-picks a few anecdotes of alleged misconduct by professors all across the country over the years. His best point seems to be this story about the University of California:

An emblem of the crisis that besets our universities is provided by an episode that occurred on July 30, 2003, when the Faculty Senate of the University of California elected by a vote of 43-3 to remove the famous Sproul Clause from Berkeley's Academic Personnel Manual. The Faculty Senate took the step because this academic freedom principle came into conflict with the teaching of a specific course at the University of California, Berkeley. The course was called, "The Politics and Poetics of Palestinian Resistance" and earned national embarrassment for the university when its radical instructor inserted into the school catalogue a warning that conservative students would be advised not to take it, presumably because of its ideological content. This course, mind you, was not even a course in history or political science or Middle Eastern Studies. It was a course in an English writing program required for all freshmen.

Instead of removing this blatantly political course from the university curriculum - a course that clearly violated its own academic freedom guidelines in multiple ways- the Faculty Senate removed the guideline. In its stead, it substituted a clause to the effect that whatever a teacher says in a classroom is appropriate and proper if the Faculty Senate says it is.

Continued...

[Anonymous]

I’ve done a little bit of research on exactly what he’s talking about regarding Berkeley. First, he implies that all Freshmen are required to take the course “The Politics and Poetics of Palestinian Resistance.” That isn’t true—the students are required to choose a Freshman writing course, and this particular course if one of about 20 they can choose from to meet this requirement.

Second, let’s think about this for a moment. 43 of the 46 members of the Faculty Senate of the University of California agreed to a change in the academic personnel manual. This change was thought out quite deeply by some extraordinarily smart individuals. Implying with a wave of the hand that their choice of removing the allegedly-famous “Sproul Clause” is evidence of a crisis is absurd.

The new manual reaffirms the University’s commitment to academic freedom. In a footnote, they explain the change this way:

The original language of APM - 010, which was drafted in 1934, associated academic freedom with scholarship that gave “play to intellect rather than to passion.” It conceived scholarship as “dispassionate” and as concerned only with “the logic of the facts.” The revised version of APM - 010 holds that academic freedom depends upon the quality of scholarship, which is to be assessed by the content of scholarship, not by the motivations that led to its production. The revision of APM - 010 therefore does not distinguish between “interested” and “disinterested” scholarship; it differentiates instead between competent and incompetent scholarship. Although competent scholarship requires an open mind, this does not mean that faculty are unprofessional if they reach definite conclusions. It means rather that faculty must always stand ready to revise their conclusions in the light of new evidence or further discussion. Although competent scholarship requires the exercise of reason, this does not mean that faculty are unprofessional if they are committed to a definite point of view. It means rather that faculty must form their point of view by applying professional standards of inquiry rather than by succumbing to external and illegitimate incentives such as monetary gain or political coercion. Competent scholarship can and frequently does communicate salient viewpoints about important and controversial questions.

http://www.ucop.edu/academic-personnel/ ... pm-010.pdf

Their judgment seems reasonable to me.

Continued...

[Anonymous]

Third, the original incident that triggered this controversy was a single misguided sentence in a course description that warned conservatives not to take a class. There is no evidence that there was any actual curtailment of academic freedom in the classroom. Nevertheless, when the single offensive sentence in the course description was brought to the attention of the English department, the sentence was immediately removed and the English Department issued a statement including the following:

Students in any course have the right to express themselves openly and to have their work evaluated free of discrimination or harassment. In this case, the English Department chair will explicitly advise students enrolled in the class of this right. If students believe that these rights are compromised, they are to contact the department chair immediately. The English Department is committed to guaranteeing students that their evaluations are based solely on their academic performance, not their political viewpoint.
http://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/rele ... class.html

I agree with Horowitz about one thing—this incident really is emblematic of the crisis—like this particular incident, the entire alleged "crisis" is a non-issue and was manufactured by an extreme rightest who makes his living by manufacturing issues to peddle to the ignorant, bitter, right wing.

Continued...

[_Analytics]

Of course my above analysis is just me, so let’s go back to Kansas.

When testifying to the Republican-dominated Kansas State Legislature about this alleged crisis, he gave his dishonest talking points about the above non-event in California, and a few other similar episodes around the country. He goes on to allege that the academic freedom policies of the Kansas Board of Regents are being violated at the major universities in Kansas.

He offers two things as evidence. First, they have women’s studies programs. Second, he takes serious issue with Kansas State’s Social Work program in general and the course Social Work 510: Social Welfare in particular. He makes the bold assertion, “This course violates every tenet of Kansas State University's existing academic freedom policies.” That is a serious allegation and if true, heads should roll. If it were true, shouldn't there be enough right-minded people in Kansas to make it happen?

His allegation is based upon literally nothing other than his cynical inferences about the nature of the course, drawn from descriptions in the course catalog.

Needless to say I’m superlatively unimpressed with his arguments. But how did the ultra-conservative Kansas Legislature react? From the local paper Topeka Capital Journal:

If conservative David Horowitz is correct, the women's studies departments at the two largest public universities in Kansas are engines of political indoctrination that produce an endless supply of leftists.

Horowitz, president of the Center for the Study of Popular Culture in Los Angeles, told a House committee on Wednesday that suppression of academic freedom by these faculty at The University of Kansas and Kansas State University was shaping a generation of radical Democrats.

"To Republican legislators, I would point out that programs such as these are essentially taxpayer funded recruiting programs not only for the left, generally, but for the Democratic Party in particular -- especially its most liberal wing," he said. "Is that an appropriate way for the education taxes of Kansas citizens to be spent?"

He asked the House Appropriations Committee to pass a resolution reminding professors of a duty to pay more than lip service to the idea of academic freedom. The panel took no action.

http://cjonline.com/stories/031606/kan_academic.shtml

If Horowitz is so far out in right field that he can’t even convince the legislature of freakin’ Kansas to pass a simple resolution, he is far out in right field indeed.

[_Analytics]

Thinking about how liberal professors treat conservatives brings to mind the following anecdote.

About 20 years, I took a course in labor economics from Peter Phillips at the University of Utah. Key themes of the course included things like sex discrimination in the workplace and equal pay for equal work. I wrote a term paper entitled “Marry It”. The main point of the paper was that while it may be true that men have marginally better opportunities to make money in the workplace, women have a much better opportunity to marry a wealthy spouse, and consequently enjoy the benefits of wealth without having to do the actual work.

In red ink, Dr. Phillips commented extensively on the paper and took issue with almost everything I wrote. He ended his comments by saying that my ideas were well written and an entertaining read, but that he disagreed with all of it. Not only did he give the paper an A, he complimented me on it in front of the whole class, described the paper to them, and lamenting that he didn’t have time to read it out loud to everybody.

That experience is anecdotal of course, but is representative of the attitudes I encountered in college, and representative of just about every college professor I've met. You were expected to demonstrate that you understood the concepts they taught--if you took a course in Marxism you were expected to articulate Marx's ideas--but indpendent thinking and diversity of opinion were highly valued, if for no other reason than it made the classes more interesting.

[_Tarski]

That experience is anecdotal of course, but is representative of the attitudes I encountered in college, and representative of just about every college professor I've met. You were expected to demonstrate that you understood the concepts they taught--if you took a course in Marxism you were expected to articulate Marx's ideas--but indpendent thinking and diversity of opinion were highly valued, if for no other reason than it made the classes more interesting.

This sounds like most professors I know. They want you to be articulate, skilful, artful, compelling, informed and scrupulously logical when called for (as in hard sciences) but they are uninterested brute indoctrination. No one is asked to bear a testimony or pledge allegiance or take anything forever on faith. As for truth, they want you to learn to think and search (and to feel as well) and be led to see for yourself the truth in so far as it is possible for human beings to do so.

[_Droopy]

Unfortunately, a substantial body of empirical research capsizes your anecdotes (reaching all the way back to 1990 within the mainstream media, outside the academy, but dominated by very much the same kinds of people, with Lichter and Rothman's The Media Elite).

There are conservative professors in academia, they are just nearly invisible with respect to the overwhelming dominance of leftist professors. There are also a large number of liberal professors who do not use their classrooms for indoctrination and for the vetting of future political activists in his/her pet causes, and that is, at all events, the majority of liberal professors.

However, there are still many thousands (Horowitz places these at about 10% of the American professorate) who do use their classrooms in this manner, and it is these, in concert with overwhelmingly left-wing administrative staff and university management, who have come to exercise power and coercive control of the American academe to a degree well in excess of their presence on campus and who have created the stifling, repressive, conformist atmosphere for conservatives, libertarians, Christians etc. across the academic landscape.

I'll come back to this later.

[_Analytics]

Unfortunately, a substantial body of empirical research capsizes your anecdotes...

The anecdotes weren’t intended to prove anything.

Please keep in mind the main purpose of this thread. I made a good-faith effort to understand Horowitz’s position, and have come to the independent conclusion that he is a bona fide nut. So before throwing out statistics peddled by Horowitz (e.g. 10% of American professors use their platforms to indoctrinate their students with Leftism), please address the following questions:

1. Do you agree with Horowitz and me that the incident regarding the UC Berkeley class “The Politics and Poetics of Palestinian Resistance” is in fact emblematic of the "crisis"?
2. In response to being informed about the statement regarding Conservatives being advised not to take that class, the English department did the following: 1- it removed that sentence from the book, 2- it reinforced to the students their position that students do in fact have the right to express themselves openly, 3- it guaranteed that their grades based only upon their academic performance and not their political viewpoint, 4- the Chair of the department exhorted the students to go directly to him if there were any problems, and 5- the department closely monitored the class. Do you think this reaction was sufficient?
   
3. Do you have any evidence that there was an actual problem in that class regarding somebody’s academic freedom being compromised, or does the entire episode begin and end with a single sentence in a class description that was clearly intended to be rhetorical anyway?
4. Do you believe that scholarship should be based upon its own merits, or upon the intentions and passions of the person who produced it?
5. Do you believe that if a scholar competently applies professional standards of inquiry to a problem and consequently reaches a definite conclusion, he is being unprofessional?
6. Based upon your answers to the above two questions and your own analysis of the specific changes to the Academic Personnel Manual, do you believe the 43 of 46 members of UC's faculty senate who voted for the change were wrong and materially compromised academic freedom and UC?
7. Why do you think the very conservative state legislature in Topeka declined to take Horowitz’s recommended action? Why didn't they prevent Kansas tax dollars from being used to indoctrinate the students at KU and KSU with the views of Democrats and extreme leftists?
8. Given the fact that not even the die-hard Republicans in the Kansas state legislature take Horowitz seriously, why should I?

[_Analytics]

I'll come back to this later.

Top.

[_Analytics]

I'll come back to this later.

Top.

Since Droopy has found the time to engage in conversation, I thought I'd remind him of this conversation we haven't ended.