[Senate Hearing 108-380]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
S. Hrg. 108-380
IS INTELLECTUAL DIVERSITY AN ENDANGERED SPECIES ON AMERICA'S COLLEGE
CAMPUSES?
=======================================================================
HEARING
BEFORE THE
COMMITTEE ON HEALTH, EDUCATION,
LABOR, AND PENSIONS
UNITED STATES SENATE
ONE HUNDRED EIGHTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
ON
EXAMINING INTELLECTUAL DIVERSITY ON AMERICA'S COLLEGE CAMPUSES,
FOCUSING ON THE PROBLEM OF FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION, POLITICIZED
INSTRUCTION, AND CORE CURRICULA
__________
OCTOBER 29, 2003
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and
Pensions
90-304 U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE
WASHINGTON : 2003
____________________________________________________________________________
For Sale by the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing Office
Internet: bookstore.gpo.gov Phone: toll free (866) 512-1800; (202) 512�091800
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COMMITTEE ON HEALTH, EDUCATION, LABOR, AND PENSIONS
JUDD GREGG, New Hampshire, Chairman
BILL FRIST, Tennessee EDWARD M. KENNEDY, Massachusetts
MICHAEL B. ENZI, Wyoming CHRISTOPHER J. DODD, Connecticut
LAMAR ALEXANDER, Tennessee TOM HARKIN, Iowa
CHRISTOPHER S. BOND, Missouri BARBARA A. MIKULSKI, Maryland
MIKE DeWINE, Ohio JAMES M. JEFFORDS (I), Vermont
PAT ROBERTS, Kansas JEFF BINGAMAN, New Mexico
JEFF SESSIONS, Alabama PATTY MURRAY, Washington
JOHN ENSIGN, Nevada JACK REED, Rhode Island
LINDSEY O. GRAHAM, South Carolina JOHN EDWARDS, North Carolina
JOHN W. WARNER, Virginia HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON, New York
Sharon R. Soderstrom, Staff Director
J. Michael Myers, Minority Staff Director and Chief Counsel
(ii)
C O N T E N T S
__________
STATEMENTS
WEDNESDAY, 29, 2003
Page
Gregg, Hon. Judd, a U.S. Senator from the State of New Hampshire. 1
Neal, Anne, President, American Council of Trustees and Alumni,
Washington, DC; Robert David Johnson, professor, Brooklyn
College and The Graduate Center of the City University of New
York, Brooklyn, NY; Greg Lukianoff, Director of Legal and
Public Advocacy, Foundation For Individual Rights in Education,
Philadelphia, PA; and Anthony Dick, student, University of
Virginia, Charlottesville, VA.................................. 9
ADDITIONAL MATERIAL
Statements, articles, publications, letters, etc.:
Anne Neal.................................................... 33
Robert David Johnson......................................... 36
Greg Lukianoff............................................... 39
Anthony Dick................................................. 43
Stanley Rothman.............................................. 46
American Jewish Congress..................................... 52
(iii)
IS INTELLECTUAL DIVERSITY AN ENDANGERED SPECIES ON AMERICA'S COLLEGE
CAMPUSES?
----------
WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 29, 2003
U.S. Senate,
Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions,
Washington, DC.
The committee met, pursuant to notice, at 1:55 p.m., in
room SD-430, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Senator Gregg,
(chairman of the committee), presiding.
Present: Senators Gregg, Alexander, and Sessions.
Opening Statement of Senator Gregg
The Chairman. We will get started. There are other members
who are going to be coming and we are a little early, but I
have a fairly lengthy opening statement and I don't want to tie
up our witnesses. I will make this statement and get the thing
rolling, and as other members come, we will proceed.
I consider this to be a very important hearing from my
standpoint, my focus. This whole issue of intellectual
diversity is something I am very concerned about and the
deterioration, in my opinion, of the quality of education in
this country is tied to the failure of our higher education
community to recognize that they are basically becoming single-
dimensional and that they need more diversity in the area of
intellectual activity.
The word diversity is quite popular today, and nowhere is
that more true than on our Nation's college campuses. There is
no doubt that our Nation's colleges and universities have in
recent years devoted vast resources toward the goal of
establishing ethnic and gender diversity on their campuses, and
they are certainly to be credited for doing that.
This hearing, however, will focus on a different and yet
equally important kind of diversity and that is intellectual
diversity. This is the kind of diversity that comes from having
the full marketplace of ideas represented on a campus rather
than just a narrow slice, the kind of diversity characterized
by the free exchange of ideas and the honest debate on the
issues of the day rather than by restrictions on free speech
and one-sided curriculum.
I believe that, with rare exception, the intellectual
diversity of academia has diminished significantly over the
last 30 years. My view is not unique and it is not new. Others
have been pointing to what I see as a lack of intellectual
diversity in academia for years and we will hear some of those
voices today. However, new evidence is beginning to show just
how pervasive and damaging this lack of intellectual diversity
really is.
The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, FIRE,
has just launched a website that catalogs hundreds of speech
codes at colleges and universities across our Nation. The
Independent Women's Forum has just released a report
documenting the decline of fundamental liberal arts courses at
the top ten liberal arts schools in our country. They found
these courses are being replaced by trendy courses focused on
race and culture and gender.
A soon-to-be-published survey of the American College
Faculty shows that the academy leans to the political left by a
wide margin in contrast to 30 years ago. Ultimately, this is a
quality issue. While college tuitions go up and up, it is fair
to ask just what are our students and our parents getting for
their money? Hopefully, this hearing will shed light on just
how this lack of intellectual diversity is hurting the quality
of education received by college students. That is what this
hearing is about.
Now, let me say a brief word concerning what this hearing
is not about. It is not about restricting anyone's academic
freedom or having the Federal Government dictate college
curriculum; just the opposite. One can see evidence of the lack
of intellectual diversity in higher education if one looks at
the course offerings in certain fields. Whereas at one time
traditional approaches to history and literature, for example,
were featured prominently in the curriculum, along with new
approaches like social history, today, those traditional
approaches are being squeezed out in favor of a uniform
curriculum based more on the interest group politics than on
academic merit.
A study by the National Association of Scholars shows that
only one of the top 50 colleges in the country required
undergraduate students to take an introductory history course
in 1993. That is down 60 percent from 1964.
A recently released report by the Independent Women's
Forum, looked at the top ten liberal arts colleges as ranked by
U.S. News and World Report and found that, for example, a
freshman at Amherst is not offered an overview course in
American or European history, that Carleton College's history
department offers only one broad overview course.
What is replacing such traditional and educationally sound
courses? The answer is a proliferation of classes focused on
race, class, gender, with little intellectual substance. At
Antioch College in Ohio, for example, students can take classes
in the ``Ethnopsychiatry,'' ``Queer British Fiction,'' and
``Ecology and Feminism.'' The University of Texas offers an
English course which teaches students that there is nothing
grammatically wrong with the sentence, quote, ``Nobody didn't
leave.'' Vanderbilt University offers courses entitled
``Pornography and Prostitution in History.'' Swarthmore offers
courses in ``Illicit Desires in Literature and Fictions in
Identity.''
These are just a few examples, but increasingly, they
represent the norm. It would not be so bad if these examples
were simply courses in a structure of many courses that were
being offered that was a balanced structure. The problem is, it
is not a balanced structure as traditional courses are being
eliminated, such as the overview courses in American and
European history. It has gotten so bad that some professors
have actually started new professional associations in fields
like history and literature as an alternative to the new
uniformity that they see in these fields.
Campus speech codes that seek to punish students for
exercising their First Amendment rights are also rampant on
colleges today. These codes typically define forbidden speech
in overly broad terms that cannot help but have a chilling
effect on open, rigorous, and thoughtful dialogue. Some recent
examples include any, quote, ``jokes and stories experienced by
others as harassing.'' That is a Bowdin College speech code.
Any speech that causes a loss of, quote, ``self-esteem.'' That
is a Colby College speech code. Any, quote, ``verbal behavior
that produces feelings of impotence, anger, or
disenfranchisement.'' That is a Brown University speech code.
Any, quote, ``inappropriately directed laughter,'' a University
of Connecticut speech code.
The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education has
cataloged hundreds of these speech codes and has fought several
of them in court. FIRE, which is the acronym for the
Foundation, estimates that approximately two-thirds of our U.S.
colleges have speech codes of some kind.
In addition to speech codes in the past few years, we have
seen the rise of another strange new development on campuses,
the free speech zone. These zones are created by college
administrators to limit students' protests and demonstrations
only to certain areas on campus. The implication, of course, is
that free speech can and will be restricted in places outside
those zones.
With policies like these in place, one must seriously
question whether freedom of expression really exists for
today's college student. They stifle the voices of public
criticism, commentary, and satire and teach students to engage
in self-censorship so as to avoid causing even the slightest
offense.
Another serious barrier to intellectual diversity on campus
is the political and ideological bias of the faculty and the
outright indoctrination practices by too many professors and
administrations. A soon-to-be-published survey of 1,500 faculty
members at 140 American colleges and universities conducted by
the Angus Reid polling firm and directed by Professor Stanley
Rothman of Smith College found that 72 percent of the faculty
members described themselves as politically liberal, while only
15 percent described themselves as politically conservative.
In the humanities and social sciences, where social and
political issues are more likely to arise and where bias most
impacts classroom teaching, this bias is even more pronounced.
Eighty-one percent of professors in the humanities and 75
percent of professors in the social sciences identify their
views as strongly or moderately liberal, while only nine
percent hold conservative views.
Rothman points to evidence that over the last 30 years, we
have witnessed a startling shift toward the left in academia.
According to the Carnegie Commission on Higher Education survey
conducted in 1969, 45 percent of faculty classified themselves
as politically liberal that year. That compares to 72 percent
today.
It seems clear from this data that the American professor
is unrepresentative of the full range of views in America
today. Not only is the faculty biased, but this bias impacts
what goes on in the classroom, as well. There appears to be an
increasing number of instances in which alternative viewpoints
are either silenced or ignored in the classroom, often with
hostility or disdain. It has gotten so bad that a new,
nonpartisan website sprang up a year ago to catalog these sorts
of incidents and has so far registered scores of examples.
A couple of examples are these. At the University of
Maryland at College Park, a course on ``Art of Ancient
America'' was derailed by the professor's frequent tirades on
U.S. foreign policy and the oppression of Middle East people,
in which he pretended to strap a bomb to himself as a terrorist
would. Examples like this that disparage the State of Israel
are unfortunate and all too common.
A Notre Dame professor's stated goal in his introduction to
American government class was to, quote, ``win students over to
the cause of liberalism.'' A student reported the professor
spent so much time discussing his political bent that few of
the required readings were actually covered.
Another example of this type of bias concerns students at
Citrus College in California. As part of a speech class at that
institution, one professor offered her students extra credit if
they wrote letters to President Bush protesting the war in
Iraq. Those who wrote the letters praising the Iraq campaign or
who refused to actually mail their letters were refused credit
for the assignment.
What is more, universities are not even trying to hide what
they are doing. The University of California in Berkeley
recently repealed its longstanding policy against politicizing
the classroom, calling it, quote, ``outdated.''
It is not just that classrooms in some colleges have
instituted mandatory freshman orientation programs and
diversity training workshops, run by administrative entities
with names like the Prejudice Reduction Committee. These
efforts at thought reform often involve paid consultants whose
job it is to reeducate students and faculty to accept the view
of multiculturalism based on the victim mentality and group
rather than individual rights. In recent years, the classified
section of the Chronicle of Higher Education has included
hundreds of advertisements for these consultants, demonstrating
just how pervasive such an effort has become.
Students on many of America's college campuses are being
exposed to only a narrow range of viewpoints through the
politicized course offerings and the ideologically homogeneous
faculty that fosters an atmosphere where dissenting views are
either quashed or ridiculed and significant restrictions are
placed on free speech.
Simply put, this lack of intellectual diversity in higher
education shortchanges students by depriving them of the
exposure to a robust debate on the issues of the day. There is
nothing wrong with having a dominant liberal view on our
campuses. It is to be expected. It is the nature of higher
education. But allowing that dominant view should not eliminate
the opportunity for dialogue of other views on the campus.
How can students be liberally educated if they are only
receiving part of the story? What do we teach students about
freedom when they see that some views are discouraged or even
forbidden? What does free speech stand for if it is not allowed
on a campus? What are we teaching them about our American
traditions if traditional subjects like political and
constitutional history are shoved aside to make room for trendy
courses of the cultural elite? How can students lacking in
exposure to the full marketplace of ideas be expected to thrive
after college in a world where opinions and perspectives differ
greatly?
[The prepared statement of Senator Gregg follows:]
Prepared Statement of Senator Gregg
The word ``diversity'' is quite popular today, and nowhere
is that more true than on our nation's college campuses. There
is no doubt that our nation's colleges and universities have,
in recent years, devoted vast resources toward the goal of
establishing ethnic and gender diversity on their campuses. And
certainly, we all applaud the fact that the doors of higher
education today are now open to all, regardless of gender or
race.
This hearing, however, will focus on a different, and yet
equally important, kind of diversity--intellectual diversity.
This is the kind of diversity that comes from having the full
marketplace of ideas represented on campus, rather than just a
narrow slice; the kind of diversity characterized by the free
exchange of ideas and honest debate on the issues of the day,
rather than by restrictions on free speech and a one-sided
curriculum.
I believe that, with rare exceptions, the intellectual
diversity of the academy has diminished significantly over the
last 30 years. My view is not unique, and it is not new. Others
have been pointing to what they see as a lack of intellectual
diversity in the academy for years, and we will hear some of
those voices today. However, new evidence is beginning to show
just how pervasive, and damaging, this lack of intellectual
diversity really is. For example, the Foundation for Individual
Rights in Education (FIRE) has just launched a website that
catalogues hundreds of speech codes at colleges and
universities across the nation. The Independent Women's Forum
has just released a report documenting the decline of
fundamental liberal arts courses at the top 10 liberal arts
colleges. They found these courses are being replaced by trendy
courses focused on race and gender. Also, a soon-to-be-
published survey of American college faculty shows that the
academy leans to the political left by a wide margin, in
contrast to 30 years ago.
Ultimately, this is a quality issue. While college tuitions
go up and up, it's fair to ask just what students and parents
are getting for their money. Hopefully, this hearing will shed
light on just how this lack of intellectual diversity is
hurting the quality of education received by college students.
That is what this hearing is about. Now let me say a brief word
concerning what this hearing is not about. It is not about
restricting anyone's academic freedom or having the federal
government dictate college curricula.
One can see evidence of the lack of intellectual diversity
in higher education if one looks at the courses offered in
certain fields. Whereas at one time traditional approaches to
history and literature, for example, were featured prominently
in the curriculum, along with new approaches like social
history, today those traditional approaches are being squeezed
out in favor of a uniform curriculum based more on interest-
group politics than academic merit.
A study by the National Association of Scholars showed that
only one of the top 50 universities in the country required
undergraduates to take an introductory history class in 1993,
down from 60% in 1964. And a recently released report by the
Independent Women's Forum looked at the top 10 liberal arts
schools as ranked by U.S. News and World Report, and found, for
example, that a freshman at Amherst isn't offered an overview
course in American or European history, and Carleton College's
history department offers only one broad overview course.
What is replacing such traditional and educationally sound
courses? The answer is a proliferation of classes focused on
race, class, and gender, with little intellectual substance. At
Antioch College in Ohio, students can take classes in
Ethnopsychiatry, Queer British Fiction, and Ecology and
Feminism. The University of Texas offers an English course
which teaches students that there is nothing grammatically
wrong with the sentence: ``Nobody didn't leave.'' Vanderbilt
University offers a course entitled Pornography and
Prostitution in History. Swarthmore offers courses in Illicit
Desires in Literature, and Fictions in Identity. These are just
examples, but increasingly they represent the norm. It has
gotten so bad that some professors have actually started new
professional associations in fields like history and
literature, as alternatives to this new uniformity they see in
those fields.
Campus speech codes that seek to punish students for
exercising their First Amendment rights are also rampant on
college campuses today. These codes typically define forbidden
speech in overly broad terms that cannot help but have a
chilling effect on open, rigorous debate. Some recent examples
include: any jokes and stories ``experienced by others as
harassing'' (Bowdin College); any speech that causes a loss of
``self-esteem'' (Colby College); and any ``verbal behavior''
that produces ``feelings of impotence, anger, or
disenfranchisement'' (Brown University). The Foundation for
Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) has catalogued hundreds
of these speech codes, and has fought several of them in the
courts. FIRE estimates that approximately two-thirds of U.S.
colleges have speech codes of some kind.
In addition to speech codes, in the past few years we have
seen the rise of another strange new development on campus--the
``free speech zone.'' These zones are created by college
administrators to limit student protests and demonstrations
only to certain areas on campus. The implication, of course, is
that free speech can, and will, be restricted in places outside
the zone.
With policies like these in place, one must seriously
question whether freedom of expression really exists for
today's college student. They stifle the voices of public
criticism, commentary, and satire, and teach students to engage
in self-censorship so as to avoid causing even the slightest
offense.
Another serious barrier to intellectual diversity on campus
is the political and ideological bias of the faculty, and the
outright indoctrination practiced by too many professors and
administrators. A soon-to-be published survey of more than 1500
faculty members at 140 American colleges and universities,
conducted by the Angus-Reid polling firm and directed by
professor Stanley Rothman of Smith College, found that 72% of
faculty members describe themselves as politically liberal,
while only 15% describe themselves as politically conservative.
In the humanities and social sciences, where social and
political issues are most likely to arise and where bias most
impacts classroom teaching, this bias is even more pronounced.
81% of professors in the humanities and 75% of professors in
the social sciences identify their views as strongly or
moderately liberal, while only 9% hold strongly or moderately
conservative views. Furthermore, Rothman points to evidence
that the last 30 years have witnessed a startling shift toward
the left in academia. According to the Carnegie Commission on
Higher Education survey conducted in 1969, 45% of faculty
classified themselves as politically liberal that year. That
compares to 72% today.
It seems clear from this data that the American
professorate is unrepresentative of the full range of views in
America today. Not only is the faculty biased, but this bias
impacts what goes on in the classroom as well. There appear to
be an increasing number of incidents in which alternative
viewpoints are either silenced or ignored in the classroom--
often with hostility or disdain. It has gotten so bad that a
new, nonpartisan website sprang up a year ago to catalogue
these sorts of incidents, and has so far registered scores of
examples.
For example, a University of Maryland, College Park course
on the Art of Ancient America was derailed by the professor's
frequent tirades on U.S. foreign policy and the oppression of
Middle Eastern people, in which he pretended to strap a bomb to
himself as a terrorist would. Examples like this that disparage
the state of Israel are unfortunately, all too common. Also
cited is a Notre Dame professor, whose stated goal in his
``Introduction to American Government'' class was to ``win
students over to the cause of liberalism.'' A student reported
that the professor spent so much time discussing his political
bent that few of the required readings were actually covered.
Another example of this outrageous bias concerns students
at Citrus College in California. As part of a speech class at
that institution, one professor offered her students extra
credit if they wrote letters to President Bush protesting the
war in Iraq. Those who wrote letters praising the Iraq campaign
or who refused to actually mail their letters were refused
credit for the assignment.
What's more, universities are not even trying to hide what
they are doing. The University of California, Berkeley recently
repealed its long-standing policy against politicizing the
classroom, calling it ``outdated.''
And it's not just in the classroom. Some colleges have
instituted mandatory freshman orientation programs and
``diversity training workshops.'' Run by administrative
entities with names like the ``Prejudice Reduction Committee,''
these efforts at thought reform often involve paid consultants
whose job it is to ``re-educate'' students and faculty to
accept a view of multiculturalism based on a victim mentality
and group, rather than individual, rights. In recent years, the
classified section of the Chronicle of Higher Education has
included hundreds of advertisements for these consultants,
demonstrating just how pervasive such efforts have become.
Students on many of America's college campuses are being
exposed to only a narrow range of viewpoints through
politicized course offerings, an ideologically homogenous
faculty that fosters an atmosphere where dissenting views are
either quashed or ridiculed, and significant restrictions on
free speech. Simply put, this lack of intellectual diversity in
higher education shortchanges students by depriving them of
exposure to a robust debate on the issues of the day. How can
students be liberally educated if they are only receiving part
of the story? What do we teach students about freedom when they
see that some views are discouraged or even forbidden? What are
we teaching them about our American traditions if traditional
subjects like political and constitutional history are shoved
aside to make room for trendy courses designed to appeal to
grievance-based politics? How can students lacking in exposure
to the full marketplace of ideas be expected to thrive after
college in a world where opinions and perspectives differ
greatly?
I look forward to hearing our witnesses testify about these
issues.
The Chairman. This hearing is about these problems and
about this concern, and therefore, I greatly appreciate the
fact that our witnesses are willing to take the time to come
here and testify.
We have a very talented and knowledgeable panel today. I
will introduce everybody and then we will begin.
I will start with Anne Neal, who is President of the
American Council of Trustees and Alumni, a nonprofit
organization dedicated to academic freedom and excellence in
higher education. Ms. Neal has served as General Counsel for
the National Endowment of the Humanities, as well as a First
Amendment and communications lawyer with two different law
firms.
We also have Robert David Johnson, a professor of history
at Brooklyn College and Graduate Center of the City University
of New York. Dr. Johnson, I understand, is now completing a
book on Congress and the Cold War.
We have with us Greg Lukianoff, who is Director of Legal
and Public Advocacy for the Foundation for Individual Rights in
Education, a nonprofit foundation devoted to free speech,
individual liberty, and academic freedom in higher education.
He attended Stanford University, where he focused on the First
Amendment and constitutional law and practiced law in Northern
California.
And we have a student with us today, Anthony Dick, a third-
year student at the University of Virginia. Anthony is majoring
in philosophy, and cognitive sciences, with a concentration in
neuroscience, and is a columnist and former opinion editor for
UVA's daily student newspaper. He recently founded the
Individual Rights Coalition, a student group dedicated to
preserving free speech and free thought on the campus. It is
great to have you here today, Anthony. Do you like to be called
Anthony or Tony?
Mr. Dick. Anthony is fine.
The Chairman. All right. Thank you. We will go this way and
we will start with you, Ms. Neal.
STATEMENTS OF ANNE NEAL, PRESIDENT, AMERICAN COUNCIL OF
TRUSTEES AND ALUMNI, WASHINGTON, DC.; ROBERT DAVID JOHNSON,
PROFESSOR, BROOKLYN COLLEGE AND THE GRADUATE CENTER OF THE CITY
UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK, BROOKLYN, NEW YORK; GREG LUKIANOFF,
DIRECTOR OF LEGAL AND PUBLIC ADVOCACY, FOUNDATION FOR
INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS IN EDUCATION, PHILADELPHIA, PENNSYLVANIA; AND
ANTHONY DICK, STUDENT, UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA, CHARLOTTESVILLE,
VIRGINIA
Ms. Neal. Thank you very much. A pundit has described our
colleges and universities as islands of oppression in a sea of
freedom. While the comment is humorous, the observation is
quite serious. Threats to intellectual diversity in our
colleges and universities should be of profound concern to all
of us interested in the education of the next generation.
As early as 1991, Yale President Benno Schmidt warned that
the most serious threats to free expression existed on college
campuses. ``The assumption seems to be,'' he said, ``that the
purpose of education is to induce correct opinion rather than
to search for wisdom and to liberate the mind.'' Retiring
Harvard President Derek Bok also warned, ``What universities
can and must resist are deliberate overt attempts to impose
orthodoxy and suppress dissent. In recent years, the threat of
orthodoxy has come primarily from within rather than outside
the university.''
My organization, the American Council of Trustees and
Alumni, was founded in 1995 and is a bipartisan network of
trustees and alumni across the country dedicated to academic
freedom and excellence. Since our founding, we have had
occasion to evaluate colleges and universities in terms of
academic freedom and academic offerings and what we have
discovered confirms these presidents' worst fears. Rather than
fostering intellectual diversity, the robust exchange of ideas
that the center has talked about, the very essence of a college
education, our colleges and universities are increasingly
bastions of political correctness, hostile to the free exchange
of ideas.
Before I go any further, I want to make one principle
perfectly clear. There is no more important value to the life
of the mind than academic freedom. This is the value that
Thomas Jefferson vividly outlined for the University of
Virginia. ``We are not afraid,'' said Jefferson, ``to follow
truth wherever it may lead, nor to tolerate any error so long
as reason is left free to combat it.'' And that means
permitting academics of all political stripes to engage in that
exercise.
But what is at issue here today is the students' right to
academic freedom, the students' right to learn and hear both
sides of controversial issues of the day. While there is much
thoughtful teaching, there are also many examples of teaching
and learning being put into the service of politics and
ideology.
Threats to free exchange of ideas come in many forms, but
as you have heard earlier, typically manifest themselves in the
following ways: Disinviting of politically incorrect speakers;
sanctions against speakers who fail to follow the politically
correct line; instruction that is politicized; virtual
elimination of broad survey courses in favor of trendy and
often politicized classes; intimidation of students who seek to
speak their mind; political discrimination in college hiring
and retention; speech codes and campus newspaper theft and
destruction.
In my written testimony, there are numerous examples of
these problems, but because we are limited for time, today I
will highlight only a few. Let us look first at politicized
courses.
At the University of California, a course description for
``The Politics and Poetics of Palestinian Resistance'' stated
that, and I quote, ``Conservative thinkers are encouraged to
seek other sections.'' The university called the description a
failure of oversight and announced that it would monitor the
class to ensure that it did not discourage varying viewpoints.
The professor, a leader of the Students for Justice in
Palestine, was not reprimanded and the class is now full.
At the University of South Carolina, a professor provided
students with a set of discussion guidelines that asked them
to, and I quote, ``acknowledge that racism, classism, sexism,
heterosexism, and other institutionalized forms of oppression
exist,'' and called upon them to ``agree to combat actively the
myths and stereotypes about our own groups and other groups so
that we can break down the walls that prohibit group
cooperation and group gain.'' I should note students are not
asked to evaluate this thesis but to absorb it.
As outlined in my full testimony, there are studies which
have found that a substantial majority of faculty define
themselves as politically liberal or left of center. Now, this
alone would not be troubling if students were exposed to
varying points of view. But, as the previous examples indicate,
that is not the case.
Indeed, the very concept of balance appears to be out of
favor in contemporary academe. This, as we heard from Senator
Gregg, is starkly underscored when the University of California
Faculty Senate adopted a new regulation on academic freedom.
This new provision removed the long-term prohibition against
using the classroom, quote, ``as a platform for propaganda'' on
the grounds that in this new age, academic freedom does not
distinguish between interested and disinterested scholarship.
At a time when postmodernism reigns on our campuses, the
concept of the disinterested search for the truth has too often
been supplanted by a conception that views issues in terms of
race, class, and gender are the focus.
Even this approach would not be fatal if students were
given the knowledge and background that empowers them to think
for themselves. But survey after survey by ACTA and others
shows that students are no longer even being exposed to broad
areas of knowledge. Rather than being introduced to
foundational subjects, such as history, natural science,
literature, government, and economics, students are permitted
to pick and choose from a smorgasbord of classes that are often
trendy and tendentious.
In two studies conducted by the American Council of
Trustees and Alumni, ``Losing America's Memory and Restoring
America's Legacy,'' we discovered that not one of the top 50
colleges requires a course in American history of all its
graduates, and only five required any history at all. Instead,
students are picking from course offerings ranging from, and I
quote, ``From Hand to Mouth: Writing, Eating, and the
Construction of Gender'' at Dartmouth, ``Global Sexualities''
at Duke, to ``Witchcraft, Sorcery, and Magic'' at Williams.
Given substantial evidence that college students' freedom
to learn is in jeopardy, this committee is to be commended for
raising public awareness of this issue. Sunlight, as Justice
Brandeis once observed, is a great disinfectant. The next
question, of course, is what the remedy ought to be.
ACTA respectfully submits that the solutions are not
legislative mandates but, in fact, fall within the purview of
college and university faculty, administrators, and boards of
trustees. Statutory edicts on curricular matters are bound to
raise academic freedom problems of their own. The remedy, as
Madison wrote in The Federalist, would be worse than the
disease.
Therefore, ACTA recommends that the onus should rest upon
boards who have a fiduciary obligation to protect academic
freedom of both faculty and students from internal as well as
external threats.
In my full testimony, ACTA offers eight recommendations.
Let me focus on just a few.
Trustees should adopt a statement that all faculty are
expected to present points of view other than their own in a
balanced way and respect and nurture students' ability to make
up their own minds on contentious issues. Trustees should adopt
a policy underscoring that the focus of courses is intellectual
development and acquisition of knowledge, not the manipulation
of attitudes or engaging in political activism. Trustees should
insist that their institutions offer broad-based survey courses
designed to expose students to the best that has been done and
said. Trustees should insist that university speaker programs
present a range of views, and trustees should make clear that
they will not tolerate ideological or political discrimination
in the hiring, firing, or promoting of faculty.
In sum, the challenges are great, but they are not
insuperable. This committee has done a great service by
bringing this important issue into public view. Thank you.
The Chairman. Thank you, Ms. Neal.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Neal may be found in
additional material.]
The Chairman. Dr. Johnson?
Mr. Johnson. Thank you. As a historian of the Senate, I
have written two books on the Senate and foreign policy and I
am just finishing a book on Congress and the Cold War, as the
Senator mentioned. It is a great honor for me to testify here
today.
I survived an attempt by Brooklyn College to deny me
tenure, not on the basis of my scholarship, which the college
praised, or my teaching, which the college also praised, but on
my academic and intellectual values and beliefs, and as such,
this was an attack on the principle of intellectual diversity
on campus. Brooklyn's decision, which was based on the grounds
of collegiality, which was not in the bylaws of the City
University of New York or in the faculty contract, was
ultimately overturned by CUNY Chancellor Matthew Goldstein and
by the CUNY Board of Trustees.
As it turned out, the basis of the college's case was a
series of secret letters that were revealed to me by CUNY after
the case was settled that came to be labeled the ``Shadow
File.'' The ``Shadow File'' letters made three principal
charges on my alleged uncollegiality. These were written by
senior members of the history department at Brooklyn.
My first allegedly uncollegial act was having objected
along with other, but tenured, colleagues to the college's
decision to sponsor as an educational event a teach-in after
the September 11 attacks that contained no speakers who were
favorable to either U.S. or Israeli policy in the Middle East.
My argument was not that anti-war speakers should not be heard
on campus, but only that if the college was going to bill the
event an educational one--the provost actually invited
professors to dismiss their classes to attend the teach-in--
that all views be represented.
Second, I was condemned for joining other, again tenured,
colleagues in recommending that the history department, during
the search for a new hire in European history, base its hire on
the values of academic merit as revealed in candidates'
personnel and application files rather than concerns of gender
or personality, and this came only after the department was
briefed by the college affirmative action officer that giving
undue preference on the basis of gender would be violative of
Federal law.
And third, I was condemned in these secret letters because
of a hostility to the fields that I teach. I teach political,
diplomatic, and constitutional history at Brooklyn, fields that
are perceived as conservative. Even though I am not a
conservative, I was attacked as such out of the fear that these
fields only represented the views of dead white men.
Indeed, one of the ``Shadow File'' letters argued for my
dismissal on the grounds that I taught about, quote, ``figures
in power,'' which the ``Shadow File'' author dubbed an old-
fashioned approach to the field that appealed only to young
white males whose narrow-minded intellectual interests
explained why they chose to study American political,
diplomatic, or constitutional history.
That such a letter could be written and that the author of
such a letter would expect this argument to be persuasive
within the college community as a whole testifies to the
pervasive nature of the bias against fields perceived as
conservative, like political, diplomatic, and constitutional
history within the academy.
Indeed, as Aaron O'Connor, a professor of philosophy at the
University of Pennsylvania and author of the influential
academic web log ``Critical Mass'' recently wrote, ``Since
scholarship centered on questions of identity, oppression, and
power relations is in turn a sign of a particular political
commitment, faculty diversity will only be pursued insofar as
it ensures and perpetuates ideological uniformity.''
My case attracted a good deal of media attention partly
because of a perception in both the academy and the media that
it illustrated broader patterns within the academy that
disturbed many people on both the left and the right who
respect the principle of intellectual diversity within college
campuses.
If you look through the websites of 30 large State public
universities for their departments of history, you will find an
interesting thing in terms of the specialists in U.S. history.
In these 30 history departments, 22 of the 30 have less than a
quarter of their Americanist faculty, faculty who teach U.S.
history, who deal in any way with topics dealing with
political, diplomatic, or constitutional history, topped off by
the University of Michigan and the University of Washington
which have only one professor on their faculty in history
dealing with these important topics. Instead, the departments
focus on social history, trendy issues, as the Senator
mentioned in his opening statement.
As bad as this situation is, the situation is often worse
at smaller schools, again public, that often fly below the
radar screen because of insufficient attention devoted by
alumni and trustees. This is particularly true at smaller State
public institutions that fall under the influence of national
organizations like the American Association of Colleges and
Universities and the American Association of Higher Education
that promote radical revisions of college curricula away from
the acquisition of knowledge and toward the study of diversity
and multiculturalism.
For instance, at Washington State's Evergreen College,
there are two courses, and only two, for students who wish to
take offerings in 20th century U.S. political, diplomatic, or
constitutional history. One is a course in the history of
American injustice. The second is a course in the history of
the United States since 1950 which is entitled, ``Inherently
Unequal,'' and asserts as a premise, not as a subject for
debate, that racist opposition and a resurgence of
conservativism in all three branches of the Federal Government
have barricaded the road to desegregation.
It is important to note that I am advocating, and I think
most in the academy are not advocating that the government
should impose a curricula on college. All that we want is some
sense of balance, that if courses are offered that reflect one
clear ideological point of view, their commitment to
intellectual diversity be established by administrators, by
trustees, and by the Federal Government as a whole.
And so what can be done to solve these problems? Well, it
is not as if these issues have been ignored entirely by the
academy. As the Senator mentioned in his opening statement,
some people within the historical profession, for instance,
have founded an organization called the Historical Society,
which is designed to promote the study of history free from
ideological polarization and based instead on research and the
acquisition of knowledge.
However, since this is largely a problem created by a lack
of intellectual diversity among the faculty, it is very
unlikely that this issue is going to be solved by faculty
action alone, and so administrators and trustees have a very
important role in this case, as well. For instance, at CUNY,
the Chancellor, Matthew Goldstein, has made the raising of
standards and the promotion of intellectual diversity his
hallmark goal and has intervened at local campuses when
necessary to promote that goal. The CUNY trustees have done
likewise. And so the Goldstein-CUNY trustees in this sense are
a model for other administrators to follow in the promotion of
intellectual diversity.
And finally, the Federal Government does, I think, have a
role in this issue. First of all, through hearings such as
this, it brings the matter to the attention of the public and
it seems to me that it is impossible for any college or
university to publicly defend the offering of politicized
curricula or hiring and promotion policies for faculty that
base the judgment on political viewpoints or perceived
conservativeness rather than academic merit. And in addition,
targeted funding is also important.
I commend the Senator, Senator Gregg, for his sponsorship
of the Higher Education for Freedom Act, which is designed to
promote the study of democracy, of civic institutions, of
liberal economics within our Nation's institutions of higher
learning.
Four decades ago, William Fulbright, a longtime member of
the Senate Foreign Relations Committed, said that the Senate's
primary obligation to American political life was helping
enable a national consensus through educating the public. I
commend the committee for holding this hearing in an attempt to
educate the public and I thank you for listening to me.
The Chairman. Thank you very much, Doctor, and thank you
for the background. It is extremely enlightening. We very much
appreciate it.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Johnson may be found in
additional material.]
The Chairman. Mr. Lukianoff?
Mr. Lukianoff. Mr. Chairman, members of the committee, my
name is Greg Lukianoff. I am the Legal Director of the
Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, commonly known
as FIRE.
Prior to working at FIRE, I was unaware of how common
serious violations of students' basic free speech rights are on
campus. Since working at FIRE, however, I have witnessed
hundreds of cases in which private and public universities have
demonstrated a distressing regard for free speech.
For example, despite the protections of the First Amendment
at public colleges and powerful statements of commitment to
free speech and academic freedom at most private liberal arts
colleges, most campuses still promulgate speech codes. You may
wonder what we mean by speech codes. FIRE defines a speech
codes as any campus regulation that punishes, forbids, heavily
regulates, or restricts a substantial amount of expression that
would be protected in the larger society.
The current generation of speech codes come in many shapes
and sizes, including, but not limited to, e-mail policies,
diversity statements, and harassment policies that extend to
speech that may merely insult or demean, in their own words.
While they may not call themselves speech codes anymore, a
speech code by any other name still suppresses speech.
To combat these codes, FIRE has established
speechcodes.org, which was updated just this last summer, a
website that catalogs speech restrictions at colleges across
the country. FIRE has rated each of the nonsectarian
universities using a lighting scheme. Green lights indicate we
found no policy that seriously imperils speech. Yellow lights
indicate that a university has some policies that could ban or
excessively regulate speech. And red lights are awarded to
universities that have policies that ban a substantial amount
of what would be clearly protected speech in the larger
society. Of the 176 universities that we have rated so far,
only 20 have green light policies. Eighty earned yellows.
Seventy-six, fully 43 percent of the schools we have done so
far, earned red lights.
Some of these red light policies are bizarre. For instance,
Hampshire College in Massachusetts bans psychological
intimidation and harassment of any person or pet. Others are
almost quaint, like Kansas State University, which bans the use
of profane or vulgar language if it is used in a disruptive
manner. It has been long settled in constitutional law that
free speech is not limited to the pleasant or the pious.
Some codes are remarkably broad and vague, like that of
Bard College in New York, which bans deliberately causing
embarrassment, discomfort, or injury to others or to the
community as a whole.
Another kind of speech code is a so-called speech zone
policy, which limits protests, debates, and even pamphleteering
to tiny corners of campus. FIRE has identified or fought these
policies at over two dozen public universities. One example is
that until FIRE intervened, Texas Tech University, a school
with 28,000 students, provided only one 20-foot-wide gazebo to
be used as a sole free speech area.
While it has been FIRE's experience that students and
professors with orthodox religious views, conservative
advocates, and bold satirists are more likely than other to be
censored under the current campus climate, we all have an
interest in free speech of our Nation's students. Not only are
all students affected by these over-broad policies, and
students of every political stripe are punished if they cross
certain often arbitrary lines, but everyone suffers when any
side of an important debate is stifled, silenced, or otherwise
quashed.
And make no mistake about it. The war on free speech is
often not ideological at all. Campus censorship is quite often
a simple naked exercise of power. Take, for example, Shaw
University, where a professor was fired for, quote-unquote,
``faithlessness and disloyalty'' for circulating a document
that was simply critical of the university president. Colleges
and universities too often view criticisms of their policies as
tantamount to sedition.
If there is one constant in the history of free speech, it
is that the censors of one generation often become the censored
of the next. This vicious cycle of censorship teaches citizens
to take advantage of any opportunity that they have to silence
those on the other side. Students educated in this environment
can hardly be blamed if they come to view speech as little more
than a tool that one must do their best to deny their enemies,
rather than as a sacred value.
FIRE hopes we can put an end to this vicious cycle of
censorship with this generation. With the help of a coalition
of individuals and organizations from across the political
spectrum, we can teach the current generation that a free
society's cure to bad speech is more speech.
FIRE believes that the best way for Congress to ensure
intellectual diversity on campus is to work to remove the often
unlawful restrictions on speech that currently exist. When
students and faculty do not have to fear punishment for
expressing their deeply-held beliefs, no matter how outrageous
or unpopular, greater intellectual diversity will result.
The Chairman. Thank you very much.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Lukianoff may be found in
additional material.]
The Chairman. Mr. Dick?
Mr. Dick. Mr. Chairman, thank you for the opportunity to
speak here today. As you said in your introduction, I am a
third-year student at the University of Virginia.
When I came to college 3 years ago, I expected to find an
institution dedicated to free inquiry and the open competition
of ideas. Now, for this expectation to be realized, however, it
seems that two things must hold constant. First, the students
must feel secure in their ability to speak and express any idea
or viewpoint without fear of punishment, and second, the
university must refrain from using any of its institutional
power to privilege ideas, certain favored ideas, over others.
Now, in my time at UVA, I have seen that both of these
principles have been compromised as certain individuals and
groups have sought to take control of the university for a more
politicized function. These individuals and groups seek to use
universities and to politicize them and not treat liberal
education as an end in itself, but as a means to a political
goal, and this goal manifests itself variously in the
eradication of social inequalities, the alleviation of
oppression, or the rectifying of injustices.
So from these goals that they have in mind, they argue that
the equal competition of ideas and the free speech that should
be afforded to students in fact only perpetuates the past
injustices that our society has allowed. So they argue that
these things can be curtailed or privileged, depending on the
views, with a progressive aim in mind.
So these advocates have succeeded to some degree at UVA,
and as they have succeeded, liberal education has declined, and
I am going to tell you a little bit about the policies that
they have advanced. The policies are of two types, first, those
that limit free expression, and second, those that unfairly
privilege certain views over others.
Earlier this semester, as you also mentioned, myself and
some other concerned students at the university founded the
Individual Rights Coalition, which is a nonpartisan
organization dedicated to the defense of liberal arts education
and to the defense of the marketplace of ideas. One of the
really heartening things that we have seen is the truly
nonpartisan nature that we have been able to achieve. We have
people on the left and the right who have stood up for free
speech values. I, myself, am a liberal, but we have college
Republican members and university Democrat members in the
organization. Although all of us have a different vision of how
we think society should be, none of us is willing to sacrifice
the liberal arts environment to try to achieve our political
goals.
So I am going to tell you a little bit about the different
policies that we are trying to combat. In UVA's Discriminatory
Harassment Policy printed in our Undergraduate Record this
year, the policy warns students against unreasonably
interfering with a person's work or academic performance
through speech, an then it went on to list examples. These
examples included directing racial or ethnic slurs at someone,
ridiculing a person's religious beliefs, and my personal
favorite, telling persons they are too old to understand a new
technology. [Laughter.]
At best, these examples imply a threat of punishment for
constitutionally protected expression at a public university,
at Thomas Jefferson's university, no less. But even worse, they
lend definition to how the administration defines unreasonable
interference.
Now, if these examples can be construed to unreasonably
interfere with someone's educational pursuits, then a whole
category of speech becomes threatened by analogy. Would
religious satires count as ridiculing someone's religious
beliefs? If Mark Twain were at the University of Virginia
today, could he write all the things that he had? Do racial or
ethnic slurs include passionate arguments that offend someone
on the basis of race, when you get into arguments on racial
preferences or affirmative action in higher education?
The simple fact that these questions can be asked
illustrates a real problem because students don't know when
they are going to be punished and oftentimes choose to silence
themselves rather than risk being punished by the
administration. So you get a situation the students are
silencing themselves, and it is often the students who have
views that are widely disfavored or views that are in the
minority on the campus and you have people who see, when they
see that their views disagree with the administration, they
hesitate to express those views in a passionate way. And at
Thomas Jefferson's university, of all places, this bespeaks a
really sad State of affairs.
There are other examples of codes. Our Sexual Harassment
Policy warns against jokes of a sexual nature or comments about
physical attributes and things like this. So there is a
definite amount of free speech that we feel is unduly infringed
upon.
Now, as a columnist with the student newspaper, I have
wondered how these policies have been applied in the past, so I
have written university officials on a number of occasions,
trying to get them to divulge the past case records, but I have
been systematically denied under the supposed concern of
confidentiality. The university has said that they can't
release these records because they are protected under the
Federal Educational Rights and Privacy Act. So together with
the vague nature of these codes and the lack of knowledge of
how they have been applied in the past, there really is a great
chilling effect on free discourse at the university.
But the most evidence of the politicization of UVA is not
in speech codes but rather in the recent efforts of some groups
on campus to impose mandatory diversity training programs. Now,
some of you may have heard of these things on other campuses,
but it is basically that what has been proposed at UVA is a
program centering on issues of race, ethnicity, gender, and
other controversial social issues and this trying to be made
mandatory. This is something that has been under discussion at
the university and the mandatory part of it would be that
students would be blocked from registering for classes until
they completed this program, making it mandatory in the
strictest sense of the word.
When this program was proposed, one administrator described
the purpose of the program as providing entering students with
the opportunity to gain insights into the way their cultural,
ethnic, or racial expectations and experiences influence their
interaction with other students, faculty, and staff from
different backgrounds, as if this were something that could be
truly taught. And another faculty member described it as
getting students to confront their own prejudices and areas of
misunderstanding.
So this program is really motivated by the idea that
students are coming to universities with prejudices and
misunderstandings about issues of race and identity and
different social issues and that students need to be cleansed
of these different opinions and ideas that are unprogressive
and unsatisfactory. So by using the administration's power to
block students from classes or in other areas of students' life
to sort of make students go through these training programs
that include a certain partisan message.
So we have had some success, the Individual Rights
Coalition, at combating this, but the administration maintains
that such programs are still under serious consideration. A lot
of the concern that we have had comes from what we have seen
implemented at other universities, diversity training programs
at other universities.
One quick example is something, a film called ``Blue
Eyed,'' which is a movie that is distributed to a bunch of
different campuses. In it, a diversity trainer named Jane
Elliott teaches a lesson about the nature of oppression and the
plight of racial minorities on college campuses and the way she
does this is she takes a group of blue-eyed individuals and she
ridicules them and insults them and yells at them for a few
hours on videotape, and supposedly, this is supposed to make it
analogous to the situation that racial and ethnic minorities
have in society every day.
So she yells at them. She pushes one individual to the
brink of tears, at which she tells him, ``You have no power,
absolutely no power, quit trying,'' and then says, ``What I
just did to this individual today is what Newt Gingrich is
doing to you every day and you are submitting to that
oppression. I am doing this only for 1 day to little white
children. Society does this to children of color every day.''
And then as a prescription for the problem, she says, ``It is
not enough for white people to stop abusing people of color.
All U.S. people need a personal vision for ending racism and
other oppressive ideologies within themselves.''
The point of this film is clear, that America is an
unbearably racist society, that it is threatened by
overwhelming forces of oppression, and that these can only be
overcome by sweeping institutional changes. Instead of treating
this as a viable topic for debate, this is something that is
being trained. This type of claim is being trained in the
students at universities across the country. So that is
something that we want to see not treated as an objective truth
that students should be trained on, but something that should
be open to debate.
So we think that this sort of thing is allowed because of
the intellectual uniformity of our administration. Most of our
administrators are overwhelmingly on the left of the political
spectrum, but we don't see that as a problem necessarily as
much as the fact that they are all of the same political view.
So they are susceptible to use their power toward a partisan
end because they see certain programs, like diversity training,
not as viewpoint discriminatory, but more as just a way to
bring about a positive change. So we think that things could
benefit from maybe a little bit of diversity of viewpoints
there.
In summary, we really think that the two main areas that
trouble UVA's intellectual climate are, first, the policies
that restrict free speech, and second, policies that unfairly
privilege certain views over others with a sort of progressive
aim in mind. If liberal arts education is to be preserved,
freedom of speech and freedom of thought must be firmly
secured. Students and faculty must feel confident in their
ability to enjoy the full protection of their free speech
rights. The administration must also refrain from instituting
mandatory training that seeks to direct or control student
thought on controversial issues. And most importantly, for
higher education to maintain its integrity, it must be treated
and viewed not as a means to a political end, but as an end in
itself, as a highest end, where people can come to critically
enhance their minds and to learn about the free discussion of
ideas. Thank you.
The Chairman. Thank you, Mr. Dick. I think that was an
extraordinarily good summary of the issue, especially your
closing comments as to what the purpose of a university should
be and how it should be structured.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Dick may be found in
additional material.]
The Chairman. I might direct my first questions to you,
therefore. Do you run into colleagues, other folks attending
the university, who are taking courses which clearly have a
teacher who may have a strong political viewpoint, that find
that if they express their viewpoint in the classroom, it may
affect their grade or the way they are treated and, therefore,
adjust their performance in the classroom to try to conform?
Mr. Dick. I certainly have, and this is something that--due
to the nature of what I am studying, most of my classes haven't
been very heavily political. I am taking classes in
neuroscience and some nonpolitical philosophy. But I do know
people who have taken classes in areas dealing with race and
gender and things like that where they have had professors who
are not only active in the university community, but are very
vocal on the national scene so that their views are very well
known.
Students often in those sorts of classes, when they have a
professor who is very passionate about the issue, they will try
to bring up objections to these things and they don't feel that
they are being afforded a necessary degree of impartiality by
the professor, that the class is seen as sort of getting
students to accept a certain viewpoint rather than as a forum
where students can discuss all different viewpoints and the
professor will evaluate all those fairly based on just the
strength of the argument, not on the content of that argument.
So I definitely have run into that and that is something
that always really breaks your heart, especially when you are
at a great university and you see all these opportunities for
fair discussions to happen and you see professors who you are
supposed to trust really subverting it.
The Chairman. Is there a forum at UVA where you can raise
that issue? In other words, if you think that basically the
course is indoctrination that doesn't allow alternative views
and you want to express an alternative view, is there some
recourse?
Mr. Dick. That is what we are trying to provide with the
Individual Rights Coalition. We have not been aware of anything
that existed before. I mean, you could always go to the
administration, I guess, but the feeling among most people I
know is that the administration generally wouldn't take that
kind of thing seriously. So that is what we are trying to do.
We think that just getting people's awareness raised about
these types of things will help. Just by writing about it in
the newspaper and things like that, we hope to be able to
provide a better area for people to think about those sorts of
things.
The Chairman. You mentioned that with this diversity
program that is being proposed, your concern is that it is
going to be basically a reeducation-indoctrination program as
versus an open free-for-all discussion of how people are
treated in our society.
Mr. Dick. Correct.
The Chairman. Is that consistent with the Jeffersonian
principle of education?
Mr. Dick. I would have to say not, which is one of the
things that we are trying to use as a leverage in our
discussion of this issue at the university and we hope that it
is going to be successful.
The Chairman. I think Ms. Neal quoted Jefferson as saying
something to the effect of it is all right for people to be
wrong as long as people with reason are allowed to rebut them.
Mr. Dick. Yes.
The Chairman. I take it you don't think people of reason
are necessarily given a chance to rebut on occasion.
Mr. Dick. That is correct.
The Chairman. Ms. Neal, I was interested in your proposal.
I personally don't see that there is a significant Federal role
that we can set forward. I am trying to use the sunshine effort
here. But I was interested in your proposal that outlined a
series of things that trustees could do. Do you have this in a
format that was presented to trustees across the country and
have you had any response from various groups of trustees on
this statement of how a campus that is open to fair dialogue
from all viewpoints should be functioning?
Ms. Neal. A new organization called the Institute for
Effective Governance has just been launched which focuses on
providing services to trustees. This most definitely would be
one of those, because clearly defending the academic freedom of
the institution is one of the most critical jobs for a trustee.
This is a fiduciary obligation of that trustee. And the
Institute for Effective Governance certainly provides guidance,
written and otherwise, to trustees on how to do that.
I think listening to Mr. Dick here talking about what are
the best ways to find out whether there are various opinions
being offered in classes or whether or not students are feeling
that their opinions are suppressed really again falls back on
trustees, and primarily to set up processes that allow
administrators to monitor, if you will, or at least to review
intellectual diversity in classes, to ascertain whether
students are exposed to diverse points of view, whether or not
speaker series are open to diverse points of view.
I think this is something that trustees individually don't
want to get involved in. What they want to do is establish
procedures and make it clear to their administrators that these
are important goals of academic freedom and intellectual
diversity and that they expect to have their administrators
uphold those goals and report back to them to establish the
facts.
The Chairman. Is there a systemized way that you are
planning to distribute this, or is it just going to be----
Ms. Neal. Well, I am glad you have asked me. Most
definitely, we will produce a document momentarily that will
outline this.
The Chairman. I think it comes to Dr. Johnson's point. Dr.
Johnson, in most universities, especially large universities,
but I suspect it is true in smaller universities and colleges,
isn't the dominant driver of what the philosophy and culture of
the university is going to be, the faculty? And how does a
board of trustees ever confront the fact that the faculty is so
overwhelmingly influential and the fact that they usually, in
many instances, are so politically correct?
Mr. Johnson. Well, I think there are two issues here. We
use terms like ``left'' and ``right'' quite frequently in the
political realm and in the academic realm, but they really do
mean very different things in the academic realm.
The idea that the left within the academy is reflected at
Brooklyn College would consider every member on this committee
a conservative, because after all, you all are figures in
power. It gives you a sense of what some of the ideas are.
The principles of academic freedom----
The Chairman. I will explain that to Senator Kennedy when I
see him.
Mr. Johnson. Yes. [Laughter.]
Or you may explain to Senator Clinton. One of the strange
things about my case is I supported Senator Clinton in 2000 and
that was viewed as further evidence of my conservative nature.
[Laughter.]
That is not a viewpoint that would be common, I suspect, on
the floor of the U.S. Senate.
There is no way that any policy can violate academic
freedom or faculty self-governance and go anywhere
realistically. But also, we have to deal with the realistic
fact that too many faculties, again at smaller and, I think,
nonelite universities in particular, hold ideas that are
fundamentally disrespectful of intellectual diversity and we
have to find ways to get around that.
A lot of these institutions are funded by taxpayer dollars
and taxpayers shouldn't be paying to have students receive one-
sided political viewpoints. And so as Anne Neal mentioned,
trustees do have a fiduciary responsibility. I think the media
has a responsibility to expose these issues. And I think there
is a limited role for both State and Federal Governments in the
degree to which they either fund or highlight these issues.
Universities in the end can't sustain for long periods of
time negative publicity. Administrators may not understand
much, but they do understand that. And since these policies
can't really be defended publicly, the extent to which they can
be exposed is one way to encourage administrators to uphold the
principle that I think all of us share.
The Chairman. Mr. Lukianoff, I agree with that, and I am
not sure what our Federal role should be. I am very hesitant to
involve the Federal Government legislatively in any level in
this debate, other than to have you folks come testify, and we
intend to do a lot more of this, quite honestly, just to raise
the visibility of the problem, which I think is acute.
Mr. Johnson. One issue at least you could raise is that a
Federal policy should be to do no harm. For instance, the AACU,
that organization that I mentioned, is sponsoring a federally-
funded program funded by the Department of Education called
``The Arts of Democracy.'' It is at 12 colleges and
universities--Brooklyn College is among them--and it has as its
stated goals that students who complete the program will
understand the basic principles of American democracy and be
able to make intelligent choices about contemporary issues in
American foreign relations.
And yet the course cluster at Brooklyn College contains not
even one course in history, political science, philosophy, or
economics that deal with political, diplomatic, or
constitutional topics at all. Instead, these students will get
courses like ``The Literature of Cultural Diversity'' or ``The
Global Cinema.'' These are perfectly appropriate topics, but
they aren't appropriate topics to teach students what democracy
is or to teach students to make informed choices about
international relations. It does seem to me that the Federal
Government shouldn't be funding such programs on the grounds
that they are teaching students what democracy is.
The Chairman. I certainly agree with that, and it leads to
a question I have for Mr. Lukianoff. Your organization is
concerned about free speech. But how do you create a concept of
free speech on a campus where there is no educational function
that teaches what constitutional law is, which teaches what the
concepts of the Constitution are, which bring to light what the
essence of free speech is, what its Western value, structure
is, why it developed as really the gravamen of our rights as a
nation?
It gets to Dr. Johnson's point, which is if you don't have
broad overview courses which get into the basic philosophy of
how you got to the Western value of free speech, how do you
convince people that free speech has any relevance on a campus?
I mean, isn't that one of your basic problems?
Mr. Lukianoff. Well, I think to some extent that that does.
Although it would be great to have greater diversity in courses
that are offered, I think it underestimates the power of the
idea of free speech. Michael Kent Curtis is a historian of
First Amendment law and explains that the First Amendment and
free speech was largely protected in the 19th century, not
through formal acts but just for the populist idea of speech.
It is a very powerful ideal that students do know even when
they come to college. Even despite attempts to stifle it, FIRE
has been largely effective just based on the fact that we are
able to point out these injustices, to point out the violations
of basic principles that Americans understand and thereby call
universities to task, both public and private.
That being said, I do understand one thing that
universities really could do is do a better job of teaching
students about living in freedom. I mean, one of the examples
that I find terrifying is the phenomena of newspaper thefts.
Over the last decade, over five--there are at least five dozen
circumstances that are well-documented in which students have
basically stolen the entire press run of student publications
when they have published articles that some student group
didn't like. Now, that is horrifying enough, and in at least
half-a-dozen of those situations, the papers were burned.
And what are universities doing to teach people not to do
this, to respect the right of dissent and the right of free
speech? Well, Berkeley recently passed a rule banning the theft
of free student newspapers, but this was only after the Mayor
of Berkeley, Tom Bates, was caught trying to throw out over
1,000 copies of a student newspaper that endorsed his opponent.
At Hampton University in Virginia, an entire press run of a
student paper was stopped because they refused to put a letter
by the president of the university on the front page.
I mean, certainly at the very least we can ask them to
teach by example. In some cases, this just requires us to hold
university administrators to their First Amendment obligations.
Now ultimately, at some level, people have to start
learning--and this is cyclical--to appreciate the value of free
speech as an internalized value, as James Madison hoped we
eventually would. From an overview of First Amendment and free
speech history, this ebbs and flows throughout history.
But I have noticed that I do--and I am often accused of
being overly optimistic--with the successes that FIRE has had,
with the changes that I have seen on campus, I think that it is
ready to happen. I think there are people on both sides of the
aisles, whether Republican or Democrat or anything else, who
want to see a return of ideals of individual rights and ideals
of free speech. But as I said, I may be overly optimistic.
The Chairman. I hope you aren't. I absolutely hope you
aren't.
Senator Alexander?
Senator Alexander. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for scheduling
this hearing, and thanks to each of you for your comments.
Universities are historically somewhat subversive, I mean,
whether in this country or any country. In fact, the reason
Japan was slow to create universities in its modern age was
because of that. The leaders of Japan were afraid that the
universities, being subversive, would overthrow the established
order and challenge norms and values and cultures. So we expect
that, and it is undeniably true that, with only some
exceptions, the attitudes of the faculty and the thoughts of
the faculty and cultural attitudes set the tone of the campus
and most of those head in a uniform direction and it is often
politically to the left. And we generally accept that.
I think throughout our history we have thought, well, the
children come out of a more conservative approach, by and
large, and then when they go to college, they are exposed to
different views and that makes them better people because their
views are challenged.
Before I came here, I was on the faculty of the Kennedy
School of Government at Harvard for a year and a half, which
was a wonderful experience, and the students there, even though
that school made a very good effort, I think, to try to attract
Republican students and more Republican faculty members and
have more diversity, still many of the students said the people
who get the best education here are the Republican students or
the conservative students because their views are regularly
challenged in the classroom, and those who get the least
education are the more liberal students because their views are
the same as their teachers and they are very rarely challenged.
So all of those are just things that have gone on for a
long time. But what is disturbing to me, and I agree with
Senator Gregg, it is hard to see exactly what the Federal
Government remedy would be, is that we have created in our
country these wonderful colleges and universities with enormous
freedom, yet on those campuses, too often, all the discussion
and thought goes one way. You are not honored and celebrated
for having a different point of view. That is not really true
in physics or in the sciences so often. You are often
celebrated for having a divergent view and proving something
different and testing something else. But certainly in many
areas on campus, that is true.
It is true we have established enormous amounts of freedom.
I mean, the Federal Government, in a way it resists doing for K
through 12, pours lots of money into colleges and universities
and gives it to the students and lets the money follow the
students to the schools. I mean, that is a voucher. School
choice is what we have in colleges and universities. Half the
students have a Federal grant or loan to help pay for college
and so they can go anywhere. They can go anywhere that is
accredited and they can take these bizarre courses and we just
let that go.
And then we have accepted that tenure is a right of the
faculty members, and that has gone to excess, but we accept
that. So faculty are free to say what they want. Trustees are
often there for a while. Students can go wherever they want.
There is an enormous amount of freedom, yet in this country
that celebrates liberty and freedom above all, we allow the
discourse to just go one way.
As an example of that, take the colleges of education, one
of the most frustrating examples in American higher education.
Even at very good colleges of education, all the thought is one
way. You don't find 32-year-old young faculty members on their
way to being dean doing great dissertations on how to expand
the voucher program, or how to find new ways to reward teachers
for teaching well, or how to encourage teaching of English as a
second language. All those are not the accepted way to go.
While I was at Harvard last year, the speaker at the
College of Education was the sponsor of the ballot in
California that won overwhelmingly to basically reject
bilingual education and put instead teaching English as a
second language, and that person barely received a respectful
hearing when he tried to make a speech there. It was
embarrassing. It was embarrassing to think that at a great
campus, different thinking would have been frowned upon.
So I have been listening and trying to think of how do we
change with. I don't want to start here with laws, but the way
we used to change it, the student newspapers used to have a lot
to do with that. I mean, if you read Willie Morris's book on
the Daily Texan and what that used to do in the 1960s, they
changed the campus of the University of Texas. Of course, they
were liberals running against conservative trustees, but they
did change it on our campus in 1962. We were segregated at
Vanderbilt University. The student newspaper fought that. Even
though the student body voted to keep it segregated, we raised
enough hell about it that the trustees had to change the policy
and integrate the campus.
So I wonder why the student newspapers aren't doing more. I
wonder why there aren't faculty organizations that aren't doing
more. I wonder why there is not a list in our country today--
U.S. News publishes a list of the best buys, the best liberal
arts colleges. Why not an equally well publicized list of the
colleges that provide the most freedom of speech?
One thing we might do, Mr. Chairman, at this hearing is
invite the accrediting agencies to come for a round. When I was
Education Secretary, I noticed that the accrediting agencies
were enforcing their politically correct ideas on the colleges
themselves, which I thought was none of their business. So I
invited them in and said, I will disaccredit you if you start
disaccrediting colleges because of the viewpoints of the
faculty members or the ideas there. We might see whether that
is one proper role we could have. I am interested to see what
we might do.
One other thought I would like to make, I would like to
direct a question to Dr. Johnson. At the heart of all this in
our country, I think, has been over the last 34 years a failure
on the campus to recognize and honor the study of what one
might call American exceptionalism. There is a professor named
Seymour Martin Lipset, with whom you may well be familiar, who
has written about that, and most average Americans would think
about that as the study of America as a unique country, not
always better, but different, and what are the qualities that
cause us to be different and what are the ideas that hold us
together.
That really is the conventional view of America, one I
believe in and one which still I hope would be taught but is
often not being taught. But my sense is that our politics and
our universities and our dominant thought in our country of
intellectuals is to reject that idea and to say America is just
a lucky country, a big place where the people are from
everywhere, who should be happy there are here and richer than
most people and should not bother each other very much and
celebrate where they came from and not worry too much about
where they are.
Now, at least that ought to be a legitimate debate, and my
sense of things is that in American history, U.S. history--you
wouldn't be supposed to call it American history anymore, but
in U.S. history, that argument between--the emphasis on
diversity at the expense of unity is at the root of a lot of
this problem on American campuses. But it seems to me that is
also a wonderful invitation to various faculty members, student
organizations, foundations, Congressmen, speakers, rabble-
rousers from all directions to go out and complain about that
and change that and become trustees of colleges and
universities and make lists of places that do a good job of
this and places that do the worst job of this.
I wonder, Dr. Johnson, what you run into as a professor of
U.S. history in this discussion of American exceptionalism or
lack of it and whether you feel like that is at the root of the
political correctness, or to what extent it might be.
Mr. Johnson. Well, I think that certainly since the 1960s,
the academy with regards to professors of U.S. history has
changed and there has been a great deal more attention to
issues of race, class, and gender, people who were
underrepresented, it was perceived, in the earlier studies of
American history. And initially when this started, the idea was
that it would create a more balanced view of the American past,
which is a perfectly reasonable goal. I think what we have seen
over the last ten or 15 years is a movement to interpret this
as the only version of the American past.
I do think on this issue there is something of a tiered
system which I find particularly troubling in American higher
education. Senator Gregg mentioned that often students come
from conservative backgrounds, small ``c'' conservative
backgrounds, and they go to more liberal faculty and expand
their knowledge, and I think that that is largely true at more
elite institutions. These students come in often with good
educations, and if they are being propagandized to by faculty,
they can recognize that and they can challenge that.
At middle-level and less-elite institutions, a place like
Brooklyn College, frequently our students don't come in with
terribly impressive educations and this is their one chance to
get a good education. And so if they are getting totally
slanted views, they have no chance of remedying that.
I think that within the academy, at an institution like
Harvard or even at the University of Virginia, there is enough
peer pressure and particularly enough emphasis on research
which creates new knowledge and makes dogmatism at least
difficult to sustain, that it makes it hard to have a
politicized curricula, whereas at mid-level schools, the
emphasis on research sometimes is not quite so high and this
is, I think, a proper area for administrators and trustees,
that they can emphasize things like the promotion of research
or the promotion of free speech that will not correct biases in
and of themselves but will make it more likely to promote an
intellectually diverse campus.
Senator Alexander. Ms. Neal?
Ms. Neal. I would like to pick up on your accrediting
question because I think it is a very good one, on whether or
not accrediting might not be an area for intervention. In fact,
on the House side, there is a bill that has been introduced
which would decouple the accrediting system from the provision
of student loan moneys, in large part because of its belief
that the accrediting system has not been effective, that, in
fact, as you say, more often than not, it has imposed
politically correct mandates on institutions, or if it has not
done that, it has been watching while these various politically
correct intrusions are occurring and has said nothing as we
have seen this grow and grow and grow at different
institutions.
So I think, to my knowledge, there is not a Senate version
of that bill, but there might very well be some important look
at it as a way of getting at some of these issues.
You also raised some questions about the need to be exposed
to broad areas of learning. This is an area in which the
American Council feels very, very strongly. We have put out a
book called Becoming an Educated Person: Towards a Core
Curriculum, because it is our belief that for students to be
able to make up their own mind, to speak to their professors
and to be engaged as intelligent citizens, that they need broad
exposure to general areas of knowledge. And as you have heard
from any number of us here today, that is not the case. If
students obtain a coherent education, it is often out of luck
rather than out of the requirements that institutions offer.
In our booklet, we highlight various institutions,
including Brooklyn, which has had a marvelous core curriculum
in the past and that has definitely exposed students to general
areas of knowledge. We think this is very important and we hope
that more and more institutions will do that.
You raised the question of teacher ed, I think also a
critically important area worthy of focus. Again, the American
Council has a project called Trustees for Better Teachers,
because again, we feel trustees should be concerned about the
quality of teachers being produced, the need for those teachers
to have strong understanding of substantive courses and
disciplines and not simply focusing on pedagogy, which in many
instances has been shown to be virtually social engineering
rather than instruction. So we agree with you that that is a
problem and it is something that trustees can be actively
involved.
We think another solution here again is an organization
like the Institute for Effective Governance, which is there
working with trustees, providing them independent sources of
information so that they are not entirely reliant on
administrators, to be able to address these very, very
important issues of freedom and quality on college and
university campuses.
Senator Alexander. Mr. Chairman, I guess my time is
probably about up, but I mentioned my time at Harvard for a
year and a half. I didn't want to be too critical there because
I found at the same time, as Dr. Johnson said, one would have
to be pretty dull not to find some diversity there. I mean,
there is Harvey Mansfield teaching constitutional law and
Samuel Huntingtom, a great political scientist, and Paul
Peterson doing work on school choice. So there is plenty of
diversity there if one would go look for it, and the dean of
the school where I was, I am sure, in a not very popular
decision, supported President Bush's decision on Iraq.
When it is a good institution and the leaders of the
institution make a special effort to see that many views are
represented, that solves most of the problem, it seems to me,
and that is what we really ought to be encouraging ways to do
more of.
The Chairman. Thank you, Senator.
Senator Sessions?
Senator Sessions. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. It is a
fascinating subject. I have felt that in the recent years that
there has been a failure in the academy, a moral and political
failure to lead effectively, to understand the challenges that
America faces, and we can all disagree. Maybe I am in error,
but I would say that the American people have got pretty good
judgment about these matters and there is a tremendous gap,
between faculty on most of our college campuses and the
mainstream American values.
I saw the numbers--I think I have them here. I don't know
if you have talked about them, Mr. Chairman. In the IPSO-Reed
Survey, 72 percent of the faculty members at 140 American
colleges described themselves as politically left. Only 15
percent claimed to be politically right. An even smaller
percent, 14 percent, claimed to be in the middle. The bias was
found to be worst among the humanities and social science
faculty, which often discuss political and social issues in
their classes. That is where these matters are discussed. This
bias can be found in the classroom.
If liberal arts colleges represented a variety of ideas and
provided a student with well-rounded education, it would serve
them well in their life. As a graduate of a liberal arts
college myself, Huntington College, I am an absolute believer
in the liberal arts. I think it is just wonderful and I cherish
that. I am on the Board of Trustees of my college. I was the
chairman of the alumni association. I try to support that
institution.
But I have seen and talked with students on a regular basis
that causes me to believe it is not so free, is not so liberal
in the classical sense of what liberalism is. It is more of an
environment in which our freedom is not respected and different
views are not respected.
I remember as Attorney General, and Ms. Neal, I would like
to ask you a little bit about this, we had a situation
involving whether or not the United States military--and you
are a lawyer, I understand--whether the United States military,
a JAG officer could come on the campus of the University of
Alabama School of Law, one of the top 50 law schools in
America. Based on this accrediting agency's decision that
President Clinton's policy of ``don't ask, don't tell,'' they
declared it discriminatory. Therefore, they would not allow the
United States military, who protects our liberties and
freedoms, to even come on the campus to interview students
about perhaps making the military a career, which you want the
best students and the best universities with the most open
minds as lawyers in the military. So we ended up passing a
statute in the Alabama legislature that specifically said they
could come on campus.
I recently have received information on the accrediting
agency for universities. Auburn University is one of the best
academic institutions and is just doing exceedingly well. They
are not happy, the accrediting agency, with Auburn's Board of
Trustees. They think they micromanage the business and they are
also concerned about the firing of the football coach and they
are talking about not accrediting Auburn University because
they have disagreements about this.
First of all, is there a concern that some of these
entities have political biases and that it intimidates
universities and liberal arts colleges, and in order to get
good evaluations and be accredited, they sometimes feel
pressured to be politically correct on the issues that they
might not otherwise?
Ms. Neal. I certainly feel that the accrediting--we have
looked at it at the American Council and have found that the
organizations look very much at inputs rather than what the
institution is actually producing, rather than looking at
outputs. But there is no question that there have been past
cases where various, if you will, PC criteria were brought to
the accrediting process. And, of course, this can be costly and
can take significant amounts of time on the part of the
institution.
We think that, clearly, the fact that we are finding
institutions that have no core, where academic freedom is being
diminished, where prices are going up, all the while that the
accrediting associations have supposedly been responsible for
overseeing the quality, that it does raise serious questions
about the usefulness of the accrediting system as it now
exists.
As I indicated, there is a bill that would decouple, but I
think there is also a great opportunity to give the States the
accrediting responsibility, as well, so that you have
competition within the accreditation system. Right now, you
have a set of regional accreditors and there is virtually no
competition, and so as you say, institutions are intimidated or
at least have very little choice when the accreditation system
has to go into play. If States were allowed to provide an
alternative source of accreditation, you would at least bring
some competition to that system. You presumably could get a
greater focus on outputs, what our institutions are actually
producing, as opposed to simply looking at inputs.
Senator Sessions. Well, I certainly think so. I know my
little alma mater of Huntington College, they are very
intimidated by this group. They want to get a successful
rating.
Well, who are they? How do they get selected? What kind of
government money do they get? Where do they come from? How do
they have this power?
The Chairman. Would the Senator yield on that? We are going
to be holding a hearing where we will answer the questions of
the Senator. We are looking forward to that. Senator Alexander
suggested it, and obviously your interest suggests it. I think
it is worth holding a hearing on, so we will be pursuing those
questions.
Senator Sessions. I won't pursue that a lot longer, then,
but I appreciate your comments because it is something I have
now seen in at least three different instances that have
concerned me significantly. As an American that believes in
democracy, I like to know who people are, where they come from,
and by what authority do they get to raise these questions and
make these demands.
Mr. Dick, I have talked to a lot of young people that
worked for me and in other instances about what goes on on the
campuses and I get the impression that students are just sort
of hunkering down in a lot of these classrooms and letting it
go over the top of their heads. I notice a recent survey by
Harvard University Institute of Politics found that the number
of students who declared themselves as Democrats has decreased
from 34 percent to 29 percent from 2000 to 2003. The number of
Independents has increased from 33 to 41 during the same
period. This is during a time in which the ratio of Democrat to
Republican professors in the top-ranked colleges was ten-to-
one, 1,397 Democratic professors to 134 Republican professors.
Well, I think a Republican can teach a class fairly and I
think a Democrat can teach a class fairly, but I have a sense
that college students are, rather than engaging their
professors, either intimidated or just sitting down, turning in
their paper, and not really engaging in the ideas. Is that
fair?
Mr. Dick. Well, it is interesting that you brought up the
fact that more students seem to be becoming conservative at a
time when both the administration and the faculty are becoming
more liberal and I think that part of that has to do with the
fact that there is a natural instinct toward rebellion. I mean,
one of the best ways you can make a college student more
conservative, I think, is to get a bunch of liberals in power
doing a bunch of ridiculous things. Just out of natural
resentment, they are going to say, just for spite, we are going
to rebel against this.
But yes, certainly there is the sense that if you have a
professor who is some radical who just rants about things and
doesn't respect anybody's views, then students are going to
say, okay, I am just going to get done what I need to to get my
grade and I am going to kind of treat this as an obstacle that
I have to jump over rather than as something that I can engage
in.
So it seems that there is a certain responsibility and the
opportunity is there for professors who could treat things,
treat subjects as genuine areas of inquiry, and a lot of times,
I think that the temptation is just too great when the
professor has a subject and they feel strongly about it and
they almost want to use their power just to convince students
rather than encouraging a dialogue. So, yes, I think that is a
very interesting point that you make.
Senator Sessions. I salute you for the leadership you and
your colleagues and friends there at the University of Virginia
are taking to restore the great democratic ideal of Thomas
Jefferson, who swore opposition to any domination of the mind
of man, as I recall.
Mr. Chairman, I share your dubiousness about how much
legislation we ought to pass. If accrediting agencies are
authorized and funded by us, maybe we need to look at that, and
I am glad you are.
I don't take the matter lightly. I feel that a student
ought to be able to go to a State university and have some sort
of balance of opinion at that university, and I think trustees,
taxpayers, and politicians have a right to be concerned if
there is an excessive, obsessive almost, movement in one
political direction as opposed to fairness and objectivity. It
goes against our heritage, and we have all these examples of
just ludicrous actions by faculty that strike at the heart of
freedom and seem to be just amazing.
I will ask one more question if you will allow me, Mr.
Chairman. I thought of the great debate we had a number of
years ago about the right to burn the flag. We have now
declared that the right to burn the flag is a constitutional
right. But at Central Michigan University, a student was
criticized for displaying the American flag on his door. I
mean, what is happening here? What is behind this mentality?
Because they thought it would offend some students on the
campus.
Mr. Lukianoff. Oh, he wasn't just criticized, Senator. He
was actually made to take it down. That, in addition to anti-
Osama bin Laden posters, and this is right in the wake of
September 11. The RA and the other administrators thought that
students from other nations would find that offensive.
Senator Sessions. Well, things offend me. Nobody worries
about me being offended. [Laughter.]
Would anyone like to speculate on the mentality here? I
know you could talk for hours. We don't have that time.
Mr. Lukianoff. Sure.
Senator Sessions. But just briefly, what is it that causes
people who ostensibly are great believers in free speech to
somehow drift into curtailing what we have classically
understood to be free speech?
Mr. Lukianoff. Well, for one thing, a lot of these
administrators take incredibly paternalistic and patronizing
approaches to their students, believe that they essentially--at
Florida State University, for example, as part of its
disciplinary process, it says flat out part of our goal is to
reeducate students about their attitudes, beliefs, etc.
In that environment, peace and quiet has been placed as
being more important than cantor and debate. If you want to
keep everything quiet, then yes, let us have uniformity of
belief. We will punish people who dissent and, therefore, we
can avoid the nasty and painful process of actually thinking
hard about things.
And even though I just played it optimistic, I am going to
play quite cynical right now. I actually--from what I have seen
and just the incredible knee-jerk sort of reaction that a lot
of these universities have to any opinion that offends them, to
silence it, I believe that we are raising a generation of
students, if they have certain political beliefs, who don't
even know how to defend them anymore because they have never
had to.
I see that there is an incredible double standard in the
application of speech codes and of all these rules. To say that
views that are crushed are conservative is also, as Professor
Johnson pointed out, not really conveying the whole idea. I
mean, the idea that an American flag an anti-Osama bin Laden
poster would be offensive--I am a Democrat, I consider myself a
liberal, but obviously, the idea that that is not perfectly
within the idea of protected speech means that there is
something seriously gone wrong with the respect for free speech
on college campuses.
Mr. Dick. I also would like to comment real quickly on
that. You were asking for the underlying motivation for
somebody who would want to take down an American flag in a
residence hall. I think that often that something like that
being censored is really harmful to intellectual diversity, but
it is often done in the name of diversity, and diversity of a
type of ethnic, racial, or national diversity, and that you see
administrators and people who are in the Office of Housing and
Life and they see themselves as having the responsibility to
make their campus more welcoming to attract racial and ethnic
minorities and they see the American flag as something that
would be sort of, you know, a really patriotic symbol that
would make someone from another country or another culture
uncomfortable.
So they say that in order to create a welcoming
environment, that they have to take this thing down. I don't
know how they construe the American flag to be some sort of
offensive or unwelcoming symbol, but it seems that that is the
view. And so a lot of this censorship that is done to harm
intellectual diversity is done in the name of diversity, just
diversity of a different kind.
The Chairman. That is a brilliant answer, by the way, and
very accurate.
I would just note for the record that so far, three of the
four members of this panel have identified themselves as
liberals. [Laughter.]
Nobody can say we stacked this panel. [Laughter.]
In any event, we do intend to continue to pursue this issue
with sunshine. We will be holding hearings on textbooks,
specifically textbooks in high schools dealing with American
history, and we will be holding a hearing on accreditation, and
we will be holding other hearings on this issue of how we open
our campuses up so that different views can be heard without
people being subjected to some sort of penalty, either direct
or indirect.
We thank you very much. This has been an extraordinarily
good panel. Thank you for your time.
The subcommittee is adjourned.
[Additional material follows.]
ADDITIONAL MATERIAL
Prepared Statement of Anne Neal
Mr. Chairman and members of the Committee: One pundit on higher
education has described our colleges and universities as islands of
oppression in a sea of freedom. While the comment is humorous, the
observation is quite serious. The lack of intellectual diversity on our
college and university campuses is increasingly troublesome and of
profound concern to all of us interested in the education of our next
generation of leaders.
As early as 1991, Yale President Benno Schmidt warned that, ``The
most serious problems of freedom of expression in our society today
exist on campuses. The assumption seems to be that the purpose of
education is to induce correct opinion rather than to search for wisdom
and liberate the mind.'' In his last report to the Board of Overseers,
retiring Harvard president Derek Bok similarly warned: ``What
universities can and must resist are deliberate, overt attempts to
impose orthodoxy and suppress dissent. . . . In recent years, the
threat of orthodoxy has come primarily from within rather than outside
the university.''
My organization, the American Council of Trustees and Alumni, was
founded in 1995 and is a bipartisan network of college and university
trustees and alumni across the country dedicated to academic freedom
and excellence. Since our founding, we have had occasion to evaluate
colleges and universities in terms of academic freedom and academic
offerings. And what we have discovered confirms these eminent
university presidents' worst fears.
Rather than fostering intellectual diversity--the robust exchange
of ideas traditionally viewed as the very essence of a college
education--our colleges and universities are increasingly bastions of
political correctness, hostile to the free exchange of ideas.
Before I go any further, I want to make one principle perfectly
clear. There is no more important value to the life of the mind than
academic freedom. This is the value that Thomas Jefferson so vividly
articulated in reference to the University of Virginia: ``We are not
afraid,'' said Jefferson, ``to follow truth wherever it may lead, nor
to tolerate any error so long as reason is left free to combat it.''
And that means permitting academics of all political stripes--with
partisan or ideological commitments counting neither for nor against
them--to engage in that exercise.
But what is at issue here today is the other side of the equation,
the student's right to academic freedom, the student's right to learn
and hear both sides of controversial issues of the day. While there is
much thoughtful teaching and superb scholarship across the country,
there are also many examples--as I will outline in the next few
minutes--of teaching and learning being put into the service of
politics and ideology. As a consequence, our colleges and universities
are failing at their responsibility to educate the next generation of
leaders by rigorous and balanced exposure to significant-- theories and
thoughtful viewpoints.
Threats to the robust exchange of ideas on our college and
university campuses come in many forms, but typically manifest
themselves in the following ways:
1. Disinviting of politically incorrect speakers;
2. Mounting of one-sided panels, teach-ins and conferences;
3. Sanctions against speakers who fail to follow the politically
correct line;
4. Instruction that is politicized;
5. Virtual elimination of broad-based survey courses in favor of
trendy, and often politicized, courses;
6. Reprisal against or intimidation of students who seek to speak
their mind;
7. Political discrimination in college hiring and retention; and
8. Speech codes and campus newspaper theft and destruction.
Here are some examples.
DISINVITED SPEAKERS
Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger was disinvited by the
University of Texas-Austin president because of threats by a fringe
student group. The heckler's veto reigns.
University of California trustee and recognized public figure Ward
Connerly was disinvited by Columbia on the grounds that the university
could not provide adequate security. Again, the protesting few limited
the rights of the majority.
ONE-SIDED PANELS OR TEACH-INS
Yale sponsored a teach-in examining the events of September 11 but
was publicly criticized by Professor of Classics Donald Kagan for its
utter failure to include a single spokesman in favor of military
action.
Brooklyn College sponsored a post 9/11 panel without any
representatives of the U.S. or Israeli government's point of view.
Professor Robert David Johnson condemned the panel as one sided, and--
as you will learn--paid dearly for doing so.
At Columbia University, college professors convened a six-hour
anti-war ``teach-in.'' One student, quoted in the campus newspaper,
described the teach-in as nothing more than a ``fervid presentation of
an exclusive viewpoint . . . where professors could express their
viewpoints unopposed.''
SANCTIONS AGAINST THE POLITICALLY INCORRECT
In these cases, professors or students are singled out for
punishment because of the content of their views. In the wake of
September 11, a number of professors were sanctioned for being pro-war,
while very few cases arose of professors being taken to task for anti-
war views.
Duke University shut down a faculty member's website after he
included an article advocating a vigorous military response to
terrorism. The website was later reinstated, but the professor must now
include a disclaimer that his views do not reflect the views of the
university. Duke has never before required such a disclaimer.
A University of Massachusetts administrator revoked a permit for a
pro-war rally, while allowing an anti-war rally to proceed.
A Florida Gulf Coast dean instructed employees to remove ``Proud to
be an American'' stickers until negative public reaction prompted her
to revoke the decision.
POLITICIZED INSTRUCTION
At the University of California, a course description for ``The
Politics and Poetics of Palestinian Resistance'' stated that
``conservative thinkers are encouraged to seek other sections.'' The
University called the description a failure of oversight and announced
it would monitor the class to ensure it did not exclude or discourage
points of view. The professor, a leader of the Students for Justice in
Palestine, was not reprimanded.
At the flagship campus of the University of Massachusetts (along
with at least 30 institutions across the country, including Princeton
and the University of California) students enroll in ``whiteness
studies.'' At Massachusetts, the enrollees are required to participate
in a ``privilege walk.'' According to the Washington Post, the field is
``based on a left-leaning interpretation of history by scholars who say
the concept of race was created by a rich white European and American
elite, and has been used to deny property, power and status to nonwhite
groups for two centuries.'' Note: students are not asked to evaluate
this thesis but to absorb it.
At the University of South Carolina a professor provided students
with a set of discussion guidelines that asked them to ``acknowledge
that racism, classism, sexism, heterosexism, and other
institutionalized forms of oppression exist'' and called upon them to
``agree to combat actively the myths and stereotypes about our own
groups and other groups so that we can break down the walls that
prohibit group cooperation and group gain.''
At Arizona State University, a course on Navajo history restricted
enrollment to American Indian students.
Several Spanish courses at Florida International University are
closed to non-Hispanic students.
ONE-SIDED FACULTY
An Academic Study Survey conducted by Stanley Rothman, Emeritus
Professor of Political Science at Smith College, the results of which
are being released today, finds that half of American professors
identify with the Democrats, a third call themselves independent, while
a tenth of the respondents identify with the Republicans. A much higher
percentage of faculty members surveyed-72%-describe their own ideology
as ``left,'' while 15% self-describe their ideology as ``right.''
Eighty one percent of professors in the humanities and 75% in the
social sciences identify their views as strongly or moderately left,
while only 9% of respondents in these two fields hold strongly or
moderately conservative views. Even in the science, math, business, and
medicine sectors, faculty who identify themselves as Republican are in
the minority.
This would not be so bad if professors consistently offered
different points of view. However, the concept of balance appears to be
out of favor with contemporary academicians. This was starkly
underscored this fall when the Faculty Senate at the University of
California adopted a new regulation on academic freedom. This new
provision removed the long-term prohibition against using the classroom
``as a platform for propaganda'' on the grounds that in this new age
``academic freedom does not distinguish between `interested' and
`disinterested' scholarship.'' At a time when postmodernism reigns on
our college and university campuses, the concept of the disinterested
search for the truth has been supplanted by a conception of the world
that views every issue in terms of race, class and gender.
DISAPPEARING CORE CURRICULA
Even this ideological imbalance would not be fatal if students were
given the knowledge and background that empowers them to think for
themselves. But survey after survey by ACTA and others also show that
students are no longer even being exposed to broad areas of knowledge.
Rather than being introduced to foundational subjects such as
history, natural science, literature, government, and economics,
students are permitted to pick and choose from a smorgasbord of
academic offerings that are often trendy and tendentious. In two
studies conducted by ACTA, Losing America's Memory and Restoring
America's Legacy, we discovered that not one of the top 50 require a
course in American history of their graduates. Only five institutions
required any history at all. Instead, students are picking from course
offerings ranging from ``From Hand to Mouth: Writing, Eating and the
Construction of Gender'' at Dartmouth and ``Global Sexualities'' at
Duke to ``Witchcraft, Sorcery and Magic'' at Williams College.
In this atmosphere, faced often with only one viewpoint and having
very little or no information on which to make up their own minds, our
next generation is truly being disserved.
Now, many will argue that these are isolated anecdotes, that
political correctness and the lack of intellectual diversity are not
really a problem, that courses are handled fairly and that teachers are
well aware of the need to let students speak their mind.
But the fact is there are too many alarms from too many quarters to
ignore what is happening. Whether it is ACTA or FIRE, Nadine Strossen
of the ACLU, or the late Supreme Court Justice William Brennan (who
once said, regarding college speech codes, ``They ought to just abolish
all of them''), evidence of widespread limitations on intellectual
diversity on our college campuses is now overwhelming.
Only last weekend, two recent college graduates bewailed the state
of affairs in the Wall Street Journal. And I quote: ``One would not
dare question certain `truths' in the classroom for fear of being
ostracized, vilified--or receiving a `grade adjustment.' An
independent-minded renegade chooses instead to bite his tongue rather
than face the inevitable wrath of his peers and, worse, his instructor,
who ought to be facilitating an honest, open dialogue.''
Given this substantial evidence, this committee is to be commended
for raising awareness of this most critical academic freedom issue.
``Sunlight,'' as Justice Louis Brandeis once observed, ``is a great
disinfectant.'' By contrast, to ignore a problem or to be less than
candid about it discourages a remedy.
The next question, of course, is what is that remedy ought to be.
The American Council of Trustees and Alumni respectfully submits
that the solutions for this problem are not legislative mandates--but
instead fall within the purview of college and university faculty,
administrators, and boards of trustees. Statutory edicts on curricular
matters are bound to raise academic freedom problems of their own. The
remedy, as Madison wrote in The Federalist, would be ``worse than the
disease.'' Therefore, ACTA recommends the following.
Boards have a fiduciary obligation to protect the academic quality
and academic freedom of their institutions. They should protect
academic freedom--of both faculty and students--from internal as well
as external threats. Faculty and administrators likewise have this
obligation but, at many universities, they have clearly defaulted on
this responsibility.
Trustees should adopt a statement or resolution that all faculty
are expected to present points of view other than their own in a
balanced way and respect and nurture students' ability to make up their
own minds on contentious issues.
Trustees should adopt a policy underscoring that the focus of
courses is intellectual development and the acquisition of knowledge
and skills, not the manipulation of attitudes or engaging in political
activism.
Trustees should insist that their institutions offer broad-based
survey courses designed to expose students to the best that has been
done and said.
Trustees should insist that speaker programs sponsored by the
university present a range of points of view.
Trustees should make clear that they will not tolerate ideological
or political discrimination in the hiring, firing, or promoting of
faculty. Trustees should monitor tenure decisions--both granting and
denying--on a regular basis.
Trustees should direct administrators and faculty to engage in an
``intellectual diversity inventory'' to see whether students are
exposed to diverse points of view in classroom readings, speakers
series, etc., and whether partisan or ideological bias is influencing
hiring and retention.
Congress should hold periodic hearings to raise public awareness of
this problem, and should encourage faculty, administrators, and boards
of trustees voluntarily to conduct intellectual diversity reviews and
to make the results public so that students, parents and taxpayers can
see what the facts are.
Congress should target federal grants to promote the study and
teaching of American history, politics and the law. ACTA commends
Senator Gregg for sponsoring S.1515, the Higher Education for Freedom
Act, which focuses on this need. Thank you.
Prepared Statement of Robert David Johnson
Mr. Chairman, and Members of the Committee: My name is Robert David
Johnson. I am a professor of history at Brooklyn College and The
Graduate Center of the City University of New York, where I teach
courses in U.S. political, diplomatic, and constitutional history.
As a historian of the Senate, I am particularly honored to appear
before the Committee. I have written books on the interwar Senate and
on former Alaska senator Ernest Gruening, both published by Harvard
University Press. I am now completing a study of Congress and the Cold
War, which Cambridge University Press will publish.
I survived an attempt by Brooklyn College of the City University of
New York to deny me tenure on the basis of my ideas and academic
values, an attempt amounting to an attack on the principle of
intellectual diversity on campus, and as such, perhaps, of interest to
this body. Though conceding that my accomplishments as a scholar and a
teacher were first-rate, the college based its case on a handful of
senior colleagues' secret letters, which came to be labeled the
``Shadow File.'' CUNY chancellor Matthew Goldstein ultimately
overturned Brooklyn's decision.
The ``Shadow File'' letters, which attacked not only me but also
several other untenured professors, condemned me for three violations
of prevailing campus orthodoxy. First, I was deemed uncollegial for
having objected, along with other, but tenured, professors that a
college post-9/11 forum was unbalanced because none of its speakers
supported either U.S. or Israeli foreign policy. The provost had termed
the forum an educational event and allowed professors to dismiss their
classes to attend it; I argued only that the college should not label a
one-sided event educational.
Second, I drew criticism for the standards that I employed in a
search for a new professor in European history, when I joined several
colleagues in urging the department to base its choice on the
candidates' demonstrated records as researchers and teachers. My
critics instead advocated granting a disproportionate role to
subjective comments on the candidates' personalities and to gender
considerations, despite the college affirmative action officer's having
cautioned that the department's existing gender diversity would make
such an approach violative of federal law.
Third, the significance of my scholarship and teaching was
downgraded because of the kind of history that I teach. Scholars
perceived as politically conservative, or even those who taught fields
perceived as conservative--such as political, diplomatic, or
constitutional history--were to face a huge disadvantage in personnel
decisions at Brooklyn College.
In some ways, my case represented an anomaly in the academic world.
Those who want to fire someone because of his beliefs or academic
specialty rarely put their opinions in writing, as did the ``Shadow
File'' professors. Because of my credentials, I attracted support from
dozens of national political and diplomatic historians of varying
ideological persuasions. I benefited from all but perfect legal
representation. Finally, CUNY, rather than Brooklyn, possessed the
final say on my tenure. I can only wonder what happens to job
applicants or untenured faculty from my fields who are rejected for
reasons similar to those offered by Brooklyn, but who lack the
advantages that I possessed.
These events attracted unusually widespread media attention because
they illustrated troubling patterns within the academy as a whole, such
as how considerations relating to departmental or campus politics can
arbitrarily override merit in the tenure process; or how some
professors impose ideological litmus tests as preconditions for hiring
and promotion.
Within the historical community, some also saw Brooklyn's action as
part of a broader assault on the fields of political and diplomatic
history. Jonathan Zasloff, a professor at UCLA Law School who also
holds a Ph.D. in diplomatic history from Harvard, noted that the
controversy highlighted ``the decline of the history of American
foreign policy as a subject of academic study-not because it isn't
still critically important, but rather because it is simplistically
dismissed as studying dead white men. The `new social history' that
focuses on studying the working class, unemployed people, minorities,
women and gays is critically important as well--but the academy, in its
quest for novelty, has really thrown the baby out with the bathwater.''
Ironically, this dismissal has come at a time when the study of
diplomatic history has never been more intellectually diverse, ranging
from the multitude of recent studies that have considered factors like
race and gender in the history of American foreign relations to the
exemplary Cold War International History Project, a truly multicultural
intellectual enterprise if ever there was one.
The contents of the ``Shadow File'' confirmed Zasloff's
observations. One of the file's contributors, a specialist in women's
history, denigrated my teaching and scholarship on the grounds that I
taught courses dealing with ``political history, focused on figures in
power.'' Such an ``old-fashioned approach to our field,'' this
professor mused, attracted only ``a certain type of student, almost
always a young white male,'' whose interest in such ``narrow'' topics
implied limited intellectual abilities. The former department chairman,
who has since been reassigned, termed this document the ``reasoned
consideration'' of a senior colleague.
Since the early 1960s, the academy has witnessed an explosion of
interest in race, class, and gender in U.S. history. These developments
have produced more nuanced views of American history as a whole. They
have, however, come with a cost. Marc Trachtenberg, a history professor
at the University of Pennsylvania, has lamented how many adherents of
this ``new social history'' have seemed ``interested in pushing fields
like diplomatic history--and to a certain extent even political history
as a whole, not to mention a whole series of other fields--to the
margins of the profession.'' As a result, vast areas of U.S. history
addressing our core values--democracy, foreign policy, the law--have
been deemed unworthy of instruction.
That my colleague was willing to commit to paper her comment that a
professor teaching about ``figures in power'' constituted grounds for
condemnation testifies to just how certain she and others have become
of support for these views among the professorate. In the academy as
reflected by Brooklyn College, someone like me, whose first two books
studied left-wing congressional dissenters and who wore a Hillary
Clinton button during the 2000 Senate campaign, was deemed holding
views too ``conservative'' to be tolerated. We now have a culture to
which many academics conform without giving much thought to the
absurdity of some of the culture's central tenets. Indeed, of the
current Members of Congress, perhaps only Maxine Waters would not fall
under the definition of ``conservative'' as offered by academics who
see the study of ``figures in power'' as somehow catering to sexism or
racism.
These patterns certainly are not confined to Brooklyn College.
Again to quote Trachtenberg, advocates of the new social history
``talked a lot about `diversity,' but in practice they certainly did
not embrace a live-and-let-live philosophy.'' An outside observer might
have expected that departments would add faculty positions in social
history fields as a complement to pre-existing positions in political,
diplomatic, or constitutional history. Instead, these newer topics too
frequently have taken the place of more ``traditional'' approaches, as
a representative sample of history departments--from 30 large state
universities around the country--suggests. If anything, such a sample
would seem likely to reveal a disproportionately high percentage of
political and diplomatic historians, both because of the size of these
departments and because these schools get much of their funding from
the government, and thus would seem less likely to avoid entirely
topics that most in the country consider crucial for students to learn.
Instead, a majority of full-time U.S. history professors in only three
of the sampled departments (Ohio State, Virginia, and Alabama) have
research interests that deal with politics, foreign policy, the law, or
the military in any way. At 20 of these schools, less than a quarter of
the Americanists address such topics in any aspect of their scholarly
work. The University of Michigan has 25 full-time department members
teaching U.S. history: only one publishes on political history, as
opposed to 11 professors examining race in America and seven
specialists in U.S. women's history. Of the 11 Americanists in the
University of Washington's history department, only one studies
politics, the law, or foreign policy--and he specializes in American
socialism and communism.
The situation can be even more depressing at lower-profile public
institutions, since some administrations tolerate students receiving
U.S. political history only through a distorted lens. This is
particularly true at schools promoting the agenda of the American
Association of Colleges and Universities (AAC&U). Though a national
organization to which dozens of colleges belong, the AAC&U's curricular
program is dominated by a handful of members committed to using banal
rhetoric of diversity and inclusion to defend curricula that present
one-sided viewpoints on controversial political issues.
Washington's Evergreen College, for example, features two courses
on 20th century U.S. political history: ``Dissent, Injustice, and the
Making of America,'' and ``Inherently Unequal.'' The latter course,
which addresses U.S. history since 1950, holds as an indisputable
premise that in the 1990s, ``racist opposition to African American
progress and the resurgence of conservatism in all branches of
government barricaded the road to desegregation.'' California State
University-Monterey Bay, another AAC&U-oriented school, likewise
presents students with only two, clearly biased, courses examining the
history of American government institutions. Those wanting more U.S.
political history are invited to take such classes as ``History
According to the Movies,'' ``California at the Crossroads,'' and
``Multicultural History in the New Media Classroom.''
The historical profession needs balance, not intolerance. No one
denies that students should have the opportunity to sample such
offerings from the new social history as ``History According to the
Movies.'' But courses in American political, diplomatic, and legal
history are at least as important. Groups such as The Historical
Society, which has brought together historians of all viewpoints to
champion a return to a discipline based on reasoned appeals to evidence
rather than promotion of an ideological agenda, have resisted the
exclusion of whole fields from college history departments. In
addition, the Miller Center for Public Affairs, housed at the
University of Virginia, has launched an ambitious project to promote
and fund innovative new scholarship in the history of American
political development. Still, historians seem unlikely to create an
intellectually diverse profession on their own. As recently noted by
University of Pennsylvania professor Erin O'Connor, publisher of the
weblog Critical Mass, since ``scholarship--centered on questions of
identity, oppression, and power relations--is in turn a sign of a
particular political commitment,'' faculty diversity will ``only be
pursued insofar as it ensures and perpetuates ideological uniformity.''
With faculty unwilling or unable to create an intellectually
diverse campus, administrators and trustees must step forward, as my
case suggested. Chancellor Goldstein used my case to affirm his
previously stated commitment to improving standards and promoting
intellectual diversity. Several trustees likewise used the matter to
articulate the basic principles under which CUNY personnel policy would
operate. In the contemporary climate, responsible administrators and
trustees should require careful accountings of hiring, tenure, and
promotion decisions coming from academic departments. These same
administrators and trustees should be ready and willing to act when
such decisions prove to have been made to satisfy personal ideological
wish lists rather than educational and scholarly needs.
Simply paying lip service to the principle of teaching students
about American democracy will not suffice. An unfortunate example of
this trend comes in a federally funded grant, distributed to 12
colleges through the AAC&U, with an apparently non-controversial name
(``The Arts of Democracy'') and mission (promoting ``a deeper
understanding of, debate about, and practice of democracy'').
Brooklyn's ``Arts of Democracy'' program promises to produce students
who will understand the heritage of American civic ideals; be able to
resolve moral dilemmas posed by U.S. foreign policy; and comprehend the
fundamental premises of U.S. democracy.
Despite these promising claims, the program contains not even one
political science, history, economics, or philosophy course exploring
American government or international relations. Instead, ``Arts of
Democracy'' students learn that democracy entails support for a
multicultural political agenda and what the college terms a ``community
of diversity,'' by taking courses such as ``Literature and Cultural
Diversity,'' ``Introduction to Global Cinema,'' and ``Peoples of the
United States.''
By underwriting ``The Arts of Democracy,'' the federal government
itself is not only undermining the teaching of political and diplomatic
history, but providing for a program that views the entire modern
liberal democratic project, from its inception in 17th century England
and the 18th century European Enlightenment to the present, as a
sustained effort to suppress and marginalize one group or another in
the interests of maintaining power, privilege, and profits. Even taking
the stated goals of the ``Arts of Democracy'' at face value, one
wonders how American students, as citizens of a country that for nearly
a century has possessed unprecedented global power, could be expected
to resolve the ethical dilemmas associated with that power if the
students lack a well-rounded understanding of its past uses as well as
abuses.
In the end, restoring intellectual diversity on campus requires
support from the outside--from alumni, trustees, and government. As a
historian of the U.S. Congress, I know as well as anyone how the
lessons of the McCarthy era suggest the dangers of Washington
excessively involving itself in college instruction. But Congress
possesses an array of powers through which it could encourage
intellectual freedom on today's campuses, without the risk of heavy-
handed intervention.
Hearings such as this one can help frame the issue for public
discussion and force colleges to adopt transparent standards in
personnel and curricular matters. Doing so would indirectly stimulate
intellectual diversity. No institution can publicly admit that its
promotion and tenure process is weighted against professors who teach
about American politics or foreign policy, or that it wants to
indoctrinate students through politically one-sided course offerings.
In addition, specifically targeted federal grants to promote the
study and teaching of American politics, foreign policy, and the law
are very much needed. In this regard, I especially commend Senator
Gregg for his sponsorship of S. 1515, the Higher Education for Freedom
Act, which would create a targeted grant program aimed at reviving
postsecondary teaching and research about our political institutions
and the philosophical and cultural background out of which they
emerged. This legislation will complement the Teaching American History
Grant Program authored by Senator Byrd, which focused on the
elementary, middle, and high school levels of American education. The
emphasis on grants for new program creation is especially well-
conceived, since the development of new programs is probably the best
way of ensuring that there will be faculty lines in existence, and
graduate training available, for future historians and other scholars
who wish to make careers studying subjects related to political and
constitutional institutions.
Four decades ago, William Fulbright theorized that the Senate's
``primary obligation'' to political life came in contributing ``to the
establishment of a national consensus'' through educating the public.
This function remains vitally important for the Senate. I commend the
Committee's efforts to educate the public on the need for campus
intellectual diversity, and I thank you for your consideration.
Prepared Statement of Greg Lukianoff
Mr. Chairman and members of the Committee: My name is Greg
Lukianoff, and I am the director of legal and public advocacy for the
Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, commonly known as FIRE.
For four years now, FIRE has been fighting for free speech and academic
freedom on college and university campuses across the nation, following
through on the analysis and recommendations contained in a book written
by FIRE's co-founders, Alan Charles Kors and Harvey A. Silverglate--The
Shadow University: The Betrayal of Liberty on America's Campuses. Prior
to working for FIRE, I was unaware of how common serious violations of
students' basic free speech rights are on today's campuses. Since
working at FIRE, however, I have witnessed hundreds of cases in which
private and public universities have demonstrated a distressing
disregard for free speech. FIRE has come to the defense of anti-war
protestors, pro-war demonstrators, satirists, political activists from
across the political spectrum, student newspapers, and students and
faculty who often have done little more than criticize an
administration or its policies, or who have tried constructively and
peaceably to address pressing social or political concerns.
While violations of basic expressive rights are always troubling,
it is especially disturbing when they take place at our colleges and
universities--institutions that depend on an open exchange of ideas in
order to fulfill their most basic mission. Colleges and universities
should be the institutions where individuals enjoy the greatest
possible free speech rights. Sadly, students and faculty too often have
to fight for the right to express opinions that citizens outside of
academia would simply take for granted as enjoying full legal
protection.
Despite the protections of the First Amendment at public
universities and the powerful statements of commitment to free speech
and academic freedom at most private liberal arts colleges and
universities, many campuses still promulgate speech codes. You may
wonder what we mean by ``speech codes.'' FIRE defines a speech code as
any campus regulation that punishes, forbids, heavily regulates, or
restricts a substantial amount of expression that would be protected in
the larger society. Our definition is straightforward and applies to
all university policies whether they call themselves ``speech codes''
or not. In contrast to the way that such codes were put into effect
during their heyday in the late 80s and early 90s, colleges today are
loath to label their policies ``speech codes'' even when they restrict
or forbid clearly protected speech. This may be a result of a series of
court cases in which university speech codes were struck down as
unconstitutional, or perhaps it is a reaction to public relations
disasters that were generated by early attempts to regulate student
speech.
But make no mistake, as Harvey Silverglate and I explain in our
attached article, speech codes are alive and well on college campuses.
The current generation of speech codes come in many shapes and
sizes, including but not limited to e-mail policies that ban
``derogatory comments,'' highly restrictive ``free speech zone''
policies, ``diversity statements'' with provisions that outlaw
``intolerant expression,'' and so-called ``harassment policies'' that
extend to speech that may ``insult'' or ``demean.'' While they may not
call themselves ``speech codes'' anymore, a speech code by any other
name still suppresses speech.
FIRE has been combating speech codes as a part of its general
operations for the last four years. We have come to the defense of
thousands of individuals who have been the victims of rules and
regulations that should have no place on our campuses. Drawing from
that experience, we decided to undertake a colossal program that seeks
to catalog the restrictive speech policies on every college and
university campus across the country. The preliminary results of this
massive research undertaking can be found on a public website,
speechcodes.org. The website--which, according to our research, is
current through this past summer--now features nearly 200 hundred
public and private colleges and universities. FIRE has rated each of
the non-sectarian universities using a ``lighting scheme'': green
lights indicate that we found no policy that seriously imperils speech;
yellow lights indicate that a university has some policies that could
ban or excessively regulate protected speech; and red lights are
awarded to universities that have policies that ban a substantial
amount of what would be clearly protected speech in the larger society.
Of 176 rated universities only 20 have earned green lights, while 80
earned yellows. A distressing 76--forty-three percent of the
institutions rated--earned red lights.
Some of these red light polices are truly bizarre. For instance,
Hampshire College in Massachusetts bans ``psychological intimidation,
and harassment of any person or pet.'' Others are almost quaint, like
Kansas State University, which bans the use of ``profane or vulgar
language'' when it is used in a ``disruptive manner.'' It has long been
settled in constitutional law that free speech is not limited only to
the pleasant or the pious.
Some codes are remarkably broad and vague, like that of Bard
College in New York, which states, ``It is impermissible to engage in
conduct that deliberately causes embarrassment, discomfort, or injury
to other individuals or to the community as a whole.'' By banning
speech that ``discomforts,'' Bard takes a position that has been
adopted by many colleges and universities: valuing and promoting peace
and quiet at the expense of robust debate and intellectual engagement.
To be sure, politeness is a commendable value, but it simply does not
compare in importance to unfettered debate and discussion in a
pluralistic democracy. Furthermore, it is not the place of college
administrators to force students to speak in any particular fashion.
Civility should, perhaps, be inculcated when a student is young, by his
or her elementary school teachers and by parents. In college, it should
be learned by example. Furthermore, conditioning speech on civility
virtually denies the existence of justified moral outrage.
Other codes define the ``protected class'' of the speech code so
broadly as to ban even the most basic forms of free speech. The
University of California-Santa Cruz, for example, warns against speech
that shows ``disrespect'' or ``maligns'' on the basis of, among other
categories, ``creed,'' ``physical ability,'' ``political views,''
``religion,'' and ``socio-economic status or other differences.'' One
can only imagine what dreary places colleges would be if students
weren't even allowed to express passionate political criticisms.
Still others dangerously trivialize society's most serious crimes
in an effort to get at ``offensive speech.'' Ohio University's
``Statement on Sexual Assault,'' for example, declares that ``Sexual
assault occurs along a continuum of intrusion and violation ranging
from unwanted sexual comments to forced sexual intercourse.'' One
should be very concerned about any university that cannot make a
principled distinction between loutish comments and rape.
Most colleges, however, rely on this strategy: they redefine
existing serious offenses to include protected expression. Hood College
in Maryland, for example, defines ``harassment'' as ``any intentionally
disrespectful behavior toward others.'' While ``disrespectful
behavior'' may be rude, it certainly does not rise to the level of the
crime of harassment. No one denies that a college can and should ban
true harassment, but hiding a speech code inside of a ``racial-
harassment code,'' for example, does not thereby magically shield a
college or university from the obligations of free speech and academic
freedom.
A particularly pernicious brand of speech code goes beyond
punishing what one says and extends to what one feels, thinks, or
believes. Transylvania University in Kentucky bans ``oral, and written
actions that are intellectually . . . inappropriate'' if they touch
upon a broad list of protected classes. Florida State University's
``General Statement of Philosophy on Student Conduct and Discipline''
states, ``Since behavior which is not in keeping with standards
acceptable to the University community is often symptomatic of
attitudes, misconceptions, and emotional crises, the treatment of these
attitudes, misconceptions, and emotional crises through re-education
and rehabilitative activities is an essential element of the
disciplinary process.'' All citizens should be very concerned when
state universities, which often offer only a bare minimum of due
process, take upon themselves the ``re-education'' of adult students
and empower themselves to compel correct ``attitudes.'' That is not
worthy of a free nation.
Another kind of speech code is the so-called ``speech zone''
policy, which limits protests, debates, and even pamphleteering to tiny
corners of campus. FIRE has identified or fought these polices at over
two dozen public universities. Until this past summer, Western Illinois
University provided students with only one ``Free Speech Area.'' This
area was only available during business hours and had to be reserved
five days in advance. Even within the ``Free Speech Area,'' additional
speech restrictions applied. Until FIRE intervened, Texas Tech
University--a school with 28,000 students--provided only one 20-foot-
wide gazebo to be used as a ``Free Speech Area.'' Protests,
demonstrations, pamphleteering, speeches, and even the distribution of
newspapers had to receive prior, official approval if they were to
occur outside of the ``free speech'' gazebo and requests had to ``be
submitted at least six university working days before the intended
use.''
Texas Tech has since expanded the number of speech zones on campus,
but FIRE continues to fight, along with a broad coalition that includes
the Alliance Defense Fund in the courts and a new student group called
Students for Free Speech on the ground. We are determined to make Texas
Tech grant its students the full freedoms that students at an
institution of higher learning deserve--not just the bare legal
minimum.
Lest anyone think that these speech codes might not be such a
threat if they are applied judiciously and fairly, they need only
consult our website at www.thefire.org. In the past year alone we have
seen dozens of examples of blatant violations of the free speech rights
of students and faculty members. At Harvard Business School, an editor
was threatened with discipline for publishing a mildly critical
political cartoon. We continue to work on behalf of a professor who was
fired for ``faithlessness and disloyalty'' for daring to criticize the
policies of the president of Shaw University in North Carolina. At
California Polytechnic State University we came to the assistance of a
student who had been subjected to a seven-hour hearing and found guilty
of disruption for posting an ``offensive'' flier advertising an
upcoming speech by a black conservative. The flier only contained
information about the speech, the name of the speaker's book, and a
photo of the speaker. FIRE is currently helping a fifty-five-year-old
grandmother who is a student at SUNY Suffolk and has been found guilty
of ``harassment'' and ``intimidation'' for using a single profanity in
an e-mail accidentally sent to a professor. At Roger Williams
University in Rhode Island, just within the past few weeks,
administrators froze an entire year's worth of printing funds for a
student newspaper, The Hawk's Right Eye, when it published number of
controversial articles. At this very moment, FIRE is involved in half a
dozen other cases involving serious infringements upon the free speech
rights of students and faculty, and these cases keep on coming.
Free speech is not, nor should it ever be, a partisan issue. Part
of the brilliance of our form of government is that it binds the rights
of each individual to the rights of all citizens. As a society, we only
enjoy the rights that the least of us receive. Therefore, all of our
rights depend on the protection of even the most controversial or
``politically incorrect'' of us--and, rest assured, the definition of
``political correctness'' changes dramatically over time. However,
since colleges and universities recognize that if they were really to
ban all speech that offends anyone all colleges and universities would
be reduced to silence, they often apply their speech restrictions with
an unconcealed double standard.
While it has been FIRE's experience that students and professors
with orthodox religious views, conservative advocates, and bold
satirists are more likely than others to be censored under the current
campus climate, we all have a common interest in the free speech of our
nation's students. While it may be the more conservative students who
today feel the brunt of speech codes on campuses, it was only a
generation or two ago when the shoe was on the other foot and liberal
students bore that burden. The problem is censorship, pure and simple.
The group that bears the brunt of censorship at any given moment in
history is of academic interest, but the existence of censorship that
can silence you one year and your opponent the next is the ongoing
problem. Not only are all students affected by these overbroad
policies--and students of every political stripe are punished if they
cross certain, often arbitrary, lines--but everyone suffers when any
side of an important debate is stifled, silenced, or otherwise quashed.
And make no mistake about it, the war for free speech is often not
ideological at all. Campus censorship is quite often a simple, naked
exercise of power. For example, at Hampton University in Virginia, the
entire press run of last week's Hampton Script was confiscated by
administrators who were angry about the paper's refusal to run a letter
from the university's acting president on the front page. College and
university administrators too often view criticisms of their policies
as tantamount to sedition. Furthermore, many administrators censor
viewpoints not to achieve an ideological purpose or ideological
homogeneity, but rather to avoid having offended students conduct noisy
demonstrations that embarrass the administration. But this kind of
``trouble''--loud, vociferous, and often unruly dissent--is
indispensable to higher education; it is not an embarrassment or an
inconvenience that needs to be stamped out. American freedom may
occasionally be more troublesome than the order that exists in a police
state, but it is our most precious birthright.
As noted earlier, if there is one constant in the history of free
speech, it is that the censored of one generation often become the
censors of the next. This vicious cycle of censorship teaches citizens
to take advantage of any opportunity that they have to silence those on
the other side. Students educated in this environment can hardly be
blamed if they come to view speech as little more than a tool that they
must do their best to deny their enemies, rather than as a sacred
value. That is a terrible threat to American liberty.
FIRE hopes that we can put an end to this vicious cycle of
censorship with this generation. With the help of a coalition of
individuals and organizations from across the political spectrum, we
can teach the current generation that a free society's cure to ``bad''
speech is more speech.
It is important to mention, however, that there are grave dangers
that you must avoid in congressional involvement to return free speech
to campus or through any other attempt to legislate an expansion of
intellectual diversity. Well-intentioned legislation designed to
protect the interests of different groups of students is all too often
used as an excuse for censorship. For example, the sexual harassment
regulations issued by the Office for Civil Rights of the Department of
Education (OCR) have been abused and misinterpreted so commonly to
justify regulations that punished merely ``offensive'' speech that the
OCR decided it needed issue a letter of clarification this past summer.
This letter of clarification stated what one might think would be a
self-evident point: no federal regulation may be used as a
justification for denying students or faculty the free speech rights
that are protected under the First Amendment. The OCR incident is only
the most recent example of how regulations that were passed with the
best of intentions can be turned into weapons of censorship.
History shows that efforts to control either speech or the content
of speech almost always result in abuse, leading to the suppression of
unpopular ideas or opinions. Any bill that would ban ``indoctrination''
on campus, for example, or that would promise ``unbiased teaching,''
could too easily result in a nightmare of abuse and suppression as
different sides fight to label the other sides' arguments as
``indoctrination'' and their own as simply ``truth.'' The best way for
Congress to ensure intellectual diversity on campus is simply to work
to remove the often unlawful restrictions on speech that currently
exist. When students and faculty do not have to fear punishment for
expressing their deeply held beliefs--no matter how outrageous or
unpopular--greater intellectual diversity will result.
Yet any such legislation should be crafted with great care so as to
avoid undue governmental control of or influence over institutions of
higher learning, particularly at private institutions. Legislation
should remind public universities that they have not only a moral, but
also a legal duty to protect rather than infringe upon free speech, and
that speech restrictions that would be unconstitutional in the outside
world are likewise unconstitutional on public university campuses,
regardless of whether or not administrators believe that such
restrictions would advance other values. Legislation affecting private
colleges should avoid imposing the same obligations that are imposed on
public campuses, since true diversity requires that private
institutions be allowed to deviate and vary from the norm. What would
be most helpful would be legislation that simply required private
institutions to fulfill whatever promises they make in their catalogues
and literature. Thus, if a private college promises intellectual
diversity and academic freedom, it should be required to deliver it.
FIRE is in favor of true disclosure and of private institutions living
up to their promises and assurances, rather than of governmental
efforts to dictate the values to which such institutions should be
dedicated. If ABC College says that it is a liberal arts institution
devoted to academic freedom, then it should deliver this or else be
held accountable for breaking its contractual assurances to its
students. Fraudulent inducement is not a part of academic freedom.
While any remedial action should be considered carefully and
thoroughly, the cost of leaving things as they are is too high. One
chilling example of how poorly free speech is understood and how little
it is respected in higher education today is the phenomenon of
newspaper thefts. For over a decade in at least five dozen documented
instances, students have stolen and destroyed tens of thousands of
copies of student-run newspapers on colleges and universities across
the country in an effort to silence viewpoints with which they
disagree. In some cases these newspapers were thrown out, and--in at
least a half dozen cases--they were burned. I hope I do not need to
remind you of the fate of societies of the previous century when they
began burning books. In fact, this form of mob censorship has become so
commonplace that this month the Berkeley City Council passed an
ordinance making newspaper theft illegal. This was in part a response
to an incident involving Berkeley's current mayor, Tom Bates, who stole
1,000 copies of a student newspaper after it endorsed his opponent in
the mayoral race. With those in power teaching the current generation
these kinds of lessons about free speech, how can we expect them to
defend their own basic rights when they are threatened? It would truly
be a terrible thing to have a whole generation of students so
unfamiliar with their basic liberties that they would not even know if
they lost them.
[``Speech Codes: Alive and Well at Colleges . . . By Harvey A.
Silverglate and Greg Lukianoff may be found in the issue dated August
1, 2003 of The Chronicle of Higher Education.]
Prepared Statement of Anthony Dick
Mr. Chairman and Members of the Committee: Thank you for the
opportunity to be here today to discuss with you the important issue of
intellectual diversity in higher education.
When I came to college three years ago, I expected to find an
environment firmly devoted to free inquiry and the open competition of
ideas. In order for such an atmosphere to be sustained, however, two
core principles of liberal education must hold strong: First,
universities must respect the freedom of every individual to express
any idea or opinion without fear of punishment. Second, universities
must allow all ideas to compete on an equal footing, without using
institutional power to privilege certain viewpoints above others. At
UVA, both of these principles have eroded as the University has strayed
from strict liberal arts education and moved toward a more politicized
function.
Judging from my experience over the last three years, many in the
UVA community view a university education not as an end in itself, but
merely as a means to achieving some higher political goal. This
``higher goal'' manifests itself in various causes such as the
rectifying of historical injustices, the eradication of social
inequalities, or the alleviation of racial or socioeconomic oppression.
It is a common view among many that the equal competition of ideas and
the equal right to free expression together serve only to perpetuate
various prejudices and injustices that linger from our less-than-
perfect past. From this premise, they argue that certain viewpoints
should be either curtailed or privileged in a deliberate manner, with a
progressive aim in mind.
These advocates of politicized education have succeeded to some
degree in influencing the state of affairs at UVA. As they have
succeeded, liberal arts education has suffered. On the one hand, they
have propagated policies that stifle the expression of certain
viewpoints. On the other hand, they have worked to establish mandates
and requirements privileging certain favored opinions above all others.
With the selective application of administrative power both to restrict
some ideas and favor others, the marketplace of ideas has lost balance.
In many controversial fields of discussion at UVA, the competition of
opposing views has become slanted in one particular direction, and the
situation threatens to become much worse.
Earlier this semester, a group of concerned students and I founded
the Individual Rights Coalition (IRC) at UVA. We also launched a
website, www.freeuva.com. Our motivation stems from our belief in the
enduring value of liberal arts education. Following in the tradition of
Thomas Jefferson, the father of UVA, we believe that our university
should treat education as an apolitical end in itself, and that social
progress is best assured when the realm of ideas is kept as free as
possible from interference at the hands of authority. Further, we hold
that the best way to ward off such authoritarian interference is to
foster an equal respect for the individual rights of all people in all
circumstances. We are a truly non-partisan group, with members on all
sides of the traditional left-right political divide. I was raised in a
liberal family, I am a registered Democrat in the state of Virginia,
and I maintain liberal views on many political issues. Although each of
us in the IRC has a different vision of the ideal society, none of us
is willing to sacrifice liberal arts education in an effort to see our
vision realized.
In UVA's ``Discriminatory Harassment Policy'' printed in this
year's Undergraduate Record, students are warned against engaging in
any type of expression that ``unreasonably interferes with [a] person's
work or academic performance or participation in University activities,
or creates a working or learning environment that a reasonable person
would find threatening or intimidating.'' The policy then proceeds to
list examples of expressions for which students should be ``reported
for review.'' These examples include: ``Directing racial or ethnic
slurs at someone,'' ``Telling persons they are too old to understand
new technology,'' and ``ridiculing a person's religious beliefs.''
At best, these examples imply a threat of punishment for engaging
in constitutionally protected expression. But even worse, they seem to
lend definition to the Administration's conception of ``unreasonable
interference.'' If these examples could be construed to unreasonably
interfere with another person's educational pursuits, then a wide range
of other offensive speech becomes threatened. As a result, some
students I know at UVA are unsure about exactly what they can write or
say without having to fear punishment. Would a religious satire in the
tradition of Mark Twain count as ``ridiculing a person's religious
beliefs?'' Do ``racial or ethnic slurs'' include passionate arguments
that offend anyone of another race? The simple fact that these
questions need to be asked illustrates the chilling effect of a speech
code that is both vague and potentially overbroad.
Similar problems arise from UVA's Sexual Harassment Policy, which
warns against sex-related expressions that create an ``offensive
working or learning environment.'' In its discussion of sexual
harassment, UVA's Office of Equal Opportunity Programs lists some
``examples of problematic behavior.'' These include ``jokes of a sexual
nature,'' ``suggestive comments about physical attributes or sexual
experience,'' ``sexually suggestive emails,'' and ``sexual comments
that bear no legitimate relationship to the subject matter of a
course.''
As a columnist with UVA's student newspaper, I often have wondered
how the University's Discriminatory Harassment Policy and Sexual
Harassment Policy have been applied in the past. Last year, I wrote to
University officials on three separate occasions to try to obtain
records of past cases that have been prosecuted under the Policies. At
first, I received a reply that the documents I sought were considered
``education records'' under the Family Educational Rights and Privacy
Act. Therefore, ``even if they were found, [they] would ultimately have
to be withheld from disclosure because of federal law.'' Eventually,
the University Judiciary Committee (UJC) offered to search their
records and release the number of cases prosecuted under the Policies,
as long as I would pay ten dollars per hour for their research. Because
this would have amounted to hundreds of dollars that I did not have,
and because this paltry information would have told me nothing about
the type of speech to which the Policies were applied, I did not accept
the offer.
UVA's vague Sexual and Discriminatory Harassment Policies, along
with the University's unwillingness to release details about how these
policies have been applied, create an environment where the protection
of free expression is uncertain. According to the Policies, and
especially in light of the provided examples, it seems that some speech
can be punished simply for being ``offensive.'' The result of this
uncertainty is largely intangible, as some UVA students simply choose
to silence themselves rather than risk punishment for their potentially
``offensive'' views. Not surprisingly, the types of views that are
silenced in this way are usually those that are widely and vocally
disfavored by both the majority of the UVA community and by the UVA
Administration. At Thomas Jefferson's University, of all places, this
unnatural conformity of opinion bespeaks a sad state of affairs.
The politicization of UVA is most evident in the University's
recent efforts to establish a mandatory ``diversity training program.''
This program centers on topics such as race, ethnicity, gender,
identity, and other controversial social issues. One UVA administrator
has described its purpose to me as ``instilling community values'' in
students. The impetus for this ``training'' draws strength from the
idea that incoming UVA students are burdened with certain prejudices
and misunderstandings regarding social issues, and that they must be
``trained'' to abandon these prejudices. This function of the
University falls far outside of its traditional role of providing a
liberal arts education, and extends into the realm of bringing about
directed social change.
At the beginning of the summer in 2003, the Charlottesville Daily
Progress and The Cavalier Daily (the UVA student newspaper) reported
that the UVA Administration had mandated an online ``diversity
training'' program to be imposed upon undergraduates at the University.
In a June 12 news story, one administrator described the mandatory
program: ``The purpose of the online diversity training system is to
provide entering students with the opportunity to gain insights into
the way their own cultural, ethnic or racial expectations and
experiences influence their interaction with other students, faculty
and staff from different backgrounds with whom they come into contact
as members of the University community.''
In the same news story, a member of the faculty steering committee
for the mandatory program stated that the training was created to get
students ``to confront their own prejudices and areas of
misunderstanding'' with regard to diversity-related topics. From my
personal conversations with administrators and media reports, the
planned method of enforcing this requirement is to block students from
registering for classes until they complete the training--making it
mandatory in the strictest sense of the word. Thus, with the backing of
administrative power to force people to attend them, whatever views are
included in this particular mandatory training program will necessarily
be privileged over competing views.
Since the co-founding of the IRC at UVA, administrators fortunately
have distanced themselves somewhat from the idea of mandatory diversity
training. This is due largely to the strong student support that the
IRC has garnered, as well as the IRC's articulation of the
inadvisability of using administrative power to privilege certain
controversial views over others. Issues pertaining to diversity are far
too fluid and complex for the Administration to act as if there is an
objective truth about them that students can be ``trained'' to
understand. However, top administrators still maintain that such
training is under serious consideration at UVA, and plans for the
implementation of this program are still under way. Most importantly,
the spirit of support for such a program remains strong among many in
the UVA community who want to abandon the University's strict focus on
liberal arts education in favor of a more extensive political function.
Much of the IRC's opposition to mandatory diversity training at UVA
comes from our knowledge of how similar diversity training programs
have been implemented at other colleges and universities. In an
invasive exercise at Swarthmore College in 1998, students were lined up
in their dormitories according to their skin color, from lightest to
darkest, and asked to speak about their feelings regarding their place
in line. In Skin Deep, a nationally distributed diversity training
film, students are summarily informed, ``intolerance has once again
become a way of life'' on America's campuses. The movie's ``study
guide'' goes on to assert dogmatically the necessary and proper role of
racial preferences in higher education, the undeniable problem of white
privilege, and the need for students to fight against the
``internalized oppression'' that lurks within each of them.
In another widely used training film titled Blue Eyed, a diversity
trainer by the name of Jane Elliott spends a day abusing and ridiculing
a group of blue-eyed men and women in order to teach viewers a lesson
about the nature of oppression and the plight of racial minorities in
American society. She forces them to sit on the floor, yells at them
incessantly, and reminds them, ``You have no power, absolutely no power
. . . quit trying.'' After viciously pushing one sullen blue-eyed
individual to the brink of tears, Elliott announces, ``what I just did
to him today Newt Gingrich is doing to you every day . . . and you are
submitting to that, submitting to oppression.'' To get her message
across more clearly, she proclaims, ``I'm only doing this for one day
to little white children. Society does this to children of color every
day.'' As a prescription for this supposed problem, the written guide
accompanying the movie baldly states, ``It is not enough for white
people to stop abusing people of color. All U.S. people need a personal
vision for ending racism and other oppressive ideologies within
themselves.'' The point of the film is clear: America is an unbearably
racist society, dominated by sinister forces of oppression that can
only be overcome by sweeping institutional changes. Instead of being
treated as viable topics for free debate, claims like these are now the
regular subject of ``training'' sessions at universities across the
country.
At UVA, administrators themselves typically do not take the
initiative to conceive and implement illiberal policies and programs.
Rather, they often implement such programs under significant pressure
from vocal student groups who champion so-called progressive causes.
UVA administrators by and large constitute an extremely risk-averse and
reactive body. They are careful to avoid criticism at almost any
expense, as they have their own careers to look after. Thus, on any
given issue, they have proven themselves with great reliability to take
whichever side seems least likely to generate negative publicity for
them. When high-profile incidents occur relating to racial or ethnic
insensitivity, administrators are harshly accused of inaction and
failure to provide a welcoming community for minority students. In
order to deflect such criticism, they readily accede to radical demands
from student groups offering drastic solutions to the University's
alleged problems. As a result, administrators can be trusted to defend
individual rights and academic integrity only to the extent that they
perceive such defense will grant them favor in the eyes of the
University community and of society at large.
Further, from my experience, the overwhelming majority of
administrators at UVA could be described as either left or far left on
the political spectrum. Regardless of the reason for this, it
translates simply into a greater danger of administrative power being
used for partisan ends. This is not due to some innate ambition for
power inherent in their political views--the same problem would arise
under a solidly conservative administration. The problem is simply that
when administrators all think in roughly the same way about certain
political issues, they seem less likely to recognize certain programs
as wrongly viewpoint--discriminatory, and more likely to view such
efforts simply as instruments of social justice and positive change.
Thus, two relevant features describe administrators at UVA: First,
they are highly susceptible to pressure from groups who pose a
legitimate threat of career-damaging criticism. And second, they are
somewhat pre-disposed to sympathize with requests for administrative
action on behalf of a particular political ideology.
At UVA, ``diversity'' is the focus of an amazing amount of
attention. All too often, though, it is discussed only in terms of the
superficial characteristics of students and faculty. Differences in
race, ethnicity, and gender are praised and sought after with great
fervor, but significantly less attention is given to the intellectual
diversity of the University community. This problem is exacerbated by
the efforts of some who seek to shape the University into a vehicle for
social change as opposed to an impartial guardian of the liberal arts.
To these people, vibrant intellectual diversity is not so much a boon
to the development of the mind as it is an obstacle to the achievement
of political ends.
If liberal arts education is to be preserved at UVA, freedom of
speech and freedom of thought must be firmly secured. Students and
faculty must feel confident in their ability to enjoy the full
protection of their free speech rights as accorded by the First
Amendment of the Constitution. The University Administration must also
refrain from implementing any form of mandatory ``training'' that seeks
to direct or control students' thinking on controversial social issues.
For higher education to maintain its integrity, it must be treated not
as a means to any political end, but as an invaluable end in and of
itself.
Prepared Statement of Stanley Rothman
I would like to thank the Chairman, Senator Gregg, the Ranking
Minority Member Senator Kennedy, and the other members of the Senate
Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions for the opportunity
to submit this statement.
For purposes of identification, Stanley Rothman is Mary Huggins
Gamble Professor of Government Emeritus at Smith College, and the
Director of the Center for the Study of Social and Political Change. He
received his Ph.D. in Government from Harvard University. He is the
author, co-author or editor of 18 books including European Society and
Politics (1970), Roots of Radicalism (1982) and The Media Elite (1986).
His more recent books include American Elites (1996), Hollywood's
America: Social and Political Themes in Motion Pictures (1996) and
Environmental Cancer: A Political Disease? (1999). The Least Dangerous
Branch? Social and Political Consequences of Judicial Activism was
published published in the fall of 2002.
Professor Rothman is also the author, or co-author, of over 140
articles in professional and popular journals. Most of his work in
recent years has dealt with various leadership groups in the United
States and their role in social change. He has emphasized the role of
individuals and groups who help define cultural values.
THE 1999 ACADEMIC STUDY SURVEY
The 1999 Academic Study Survey provides data on ideological
attitudes of American and Canadian faculty, students and
Administrators. This American faculty random sample consists of 1520
faculty members drawn from 140 universities and colleges in the US. The
sample is stratified by institution type according to the Carnegie
classifications of Doctoral, Comprehensive, and Liberal Arts schools.
The survey was conducted for professors Seymour Martin Lipset, Neil
Nevitte and Stanley Rothman in 1999 by Angus Reid (now Ipsos-Reid), a
survey research firm. Response rate among faculty was 72 %. Professor
Rothman is the director of the study
IDEOLOGY OF US FACULTY
The 1999 Academic survey shows that ideological orientation of the
US faculty is significantly tilted to the left. Half (50 %) of American
professors identify with the Democrats, a third (33 %) call themselves
independent, while a tenth (11 %) of the faculty respondents identify
with the Republicans. Similarly, a much higher percentage of faculty
members describe their own ideology as ``left'' than ``right'' (72 and
15 %). The rest (14 %) regard themselves as holding middle of the road
views. (Table 1).
IDEOLOGICAL SELF-IDENTIFICATION OF FACULTY BY ACADEMIC FIELDS AND
DEPARTMENTS
The 1999 Academic Study Survey shows large differences in
ideological orientation of the faculty by academic fields and
disciplines. Faculty members in the humanities and the social sciences
are the most supportive of left of center ideology and the Democratic
Party. Eighty one percent of professors in the humanities and 75 % in
the social sciences identify their views as strongly or moderately
left, while only 9 % of respondents in these two fields hold strongly
or moderately conservative views. Sixty two percent of professors in
the humanities and 55 % in the social sciences identify with the
Democratic Party compared to 6 and 7 % who identify with Republicans.
Although the science and math faculties, and professors of business,
and medicine are more likely to identify with the right than their
counterparts in the humanities and the social sciences, supporters of
right-wing ideological views and the Republican party in these fields
are also in the minority. (Table 2).
Similar differences exist among academic disciplines. For example,
88 % of professors of English, 84 % of faculty in theater, drama and
dance departments, 83 % of professors in fine arts, 81 % of political
scientists, 80 % of philosophers, and 77 % of sociologists and
historians express strongly or moderately left leanings. In contrast,
only 2 % of political scientists, 3 % of professors of English, 5 % of
philosophers, 8 % of professors in fine arts, 9 % of sociologists, 10 %
of historians, and 17 % of faculty in theater, drama and dance
departments embrace right of center views. The remainder of the
respondents identify themselves as middle-of-the-road. (Table 3).
Left self-identification is less prevalent among faculty in
business schools (49 %), engineering (51 %), economics (54 %),
chemistry (64 %), physics (66 %) and mathematics (69 %). Comparatively
higher proportions of faculty, but still the minority, in these
disciplines express moderately right or strongly conservative views.
This applies to faculty in business schools and economics departments
(39 %), chemistry (29 %), engineering (19 %), and to lesser extent, to
faculty in mathematics (17 %), and physics (11 %). (Table 3).
Similar pattern characterizes support for political parties. For
example, three- fifths i.e., 59 % of sociologists, prefer the
Democratic Party compared to 0 % who prefer the Republican Party.
Analogous patterns of party preferences characterize political
scientists (58 and 8 %), historians (70 and 4 %), philosophers (62 and
11 %), psychologists (63 and 7 %), linguists (64 and 2 %), and faculty
in the departments of English (69 and 2 %), education (55 and 7 %),
music and musicology (56 and 6 %), theater, drama, and dance (63 and 2
%), fine arts (55 and 4 %), and mass communications (52 and 3 %). This
contrasts with support for Democratic and Republican parties by the
faculty in business (26 and 26 %), agriculture (31 and 24 %), nursing
(32 and 26 %), chemistry (41 and 25 %), engineering (34 and 13 %), and
computer science (43 and 21 %). (Table 4).
COMPARISON OF FACULTY WITH OTHER LEADERSHIP GROUPS
A comparison of ideological attitudes of faculty in the 1999
Academic Study Survey with the ideological orientation of other elite
groups in the 1995 Elite Survey shows that academics are more liberal
than most other elites, many of which are more liberal than the general
public. \1\ The two surveys asked the same questions on a number of
political and social issues. Because responses to questions on each of
these issues were closely related, political and social ideology
indexes were created by means of factor analysis from a combined sample
of the faculty and administrators in the Academic Study Survey and
elite groups in the Elite Survey. Index scores were standardized at the
mean of 100 and standard deviation of 10. A higher score signifies more
liberal attitudes.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ The 1995 Elite Survey was based on random samples of the
following elite groups in the United States: bureaucrats, business
leaders, federal judges, lawyers, media, religious leaders, and TV/
Movie makers. The sample size was over 1900. For details, see Rothman,
Stanley and Amy Black. ``Elites Revisited: American Social and
Political Leadership in the 1990s.'' International Journal of Public
Opinion Research 11 (2), 1999, pp. 169-195.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
The political ideology index is derived from questions dealing with
the government role in ensuring that everyone has a job, reducing the
income gap between rich and poor, and attitudes towards competition,
and views of the relative importance of freedom and equality. \2\ The
social ideology index is created from questions on a woman's right to
decide whether or not to have an abortion, attitudes toward a couple
living together without intending to get married, and whether
homosexuality is as acceptable a lifestyle as heterosexuality.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\2\ The political ideology index for the Elite Study does not
include question on competition.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
On the political ideology index, the faculty (101.89) is more
liberal than the business elite (90.72), judges (95.68), lawyers
(96.50), and bureaucrats (96.53), but professors, taken as a whole, are
more conservative than media elites (103.10). Political ideology of
faculty, as measured by this index, is close to ideological preferences
expressed by religious elite (101.92), and TV and movie elites
(100.35). On the social ideology index, faculty (101.67) is more
liberal than religious elites (87.59), judges (95.68), business elites
(98.00), lawyers (100.42), and bureaucrats (100.74) but more
conservative than media elite (105.39) and TV and movie elites
(106.11). (Table 5). Once again the views of academics in the
humanities and the social sciences are considerably further to the
left. On the political ideology index they are further to the left than
any other group in either study (1.03.56; 104.45). On the social
ideology index (104.57; 104.34) they are only outpaced by the media and
Hollywood elites), but are far to the left of any other group in either
sample.
CHANGES IN IDEOLOGICAL ORIENTATION
A comparison of the 1999 Academic Study Survey with previous
surveys of American faculty indicates a significant shift to the left,
but one should note that differences in question wording may have
affected survey results. The 1969 Carnegie Commission on Higher
Education Survey revealed that 45 % of faculty classified their
political views as left or liberal, 27 % as middle of the road, and 28
% as moderately or strongly conservative. \3\ The 1975 Carnegie
Commission Survey and the 1984 Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement
of Teaching Survey showed only minor ideological changes. The left and
liberal faculty members constituted 41 % in 1975 and 40 % in 1984.
Twenty-eight and 27 % of the respondents occupied middle of the road
positions, 31 and 34 % of the faculty identified their views as
moderately and strongly conservative. \4\ As noted, 72 % of the faculty
respondents in the US in 1999 placed themselves on the left of the 10
point ideological scale, compared with 14 % in the middle and 15 % on
the right.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\3\ Ladd, Everett Carl and Seymour Martin Lipset. The Divided
Academy: Professors and Politics. Mc Graw-Hill Book Company, 1975, p.
369.
\4\ Hamilton, Richard F. and Lowell L. Hargens. ``The politics of
the professors: self-identifications, 1969-1984.'' Social Forces 71(3),
1993, p. 608.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
The data on political party identification show a similar shift to
the left. Half, 50 % of faculty in the 1999 Academic Study Survey,
compared to 37 % in the 1972 Ladd/Lipset Survey, described themselves
as Democrats. The proportion of Republicans was 11 % in 1999 and 13 %
in 1972, while the proportion of independents declined from 49 % to 33
%. \5\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\5\ Ladd and Lipset, pp. 223-224. We find that self professed
Democrats are more liberal than self professed independents on on both
the political (104.82 vs 99.90) and social (105.30 vs 100.54) ideology
scales.
Statement of the American Jewish Congress
The American Jewish Congress (AJCongress) is a membership
organization of American Jews with members throughout the United
States. It is committed to protecting fundamental constitutional
freedoms and American democratic institutions, particularly the civil
and religious rights of Jews and of all Americans. It is also committed
to advancing the security of the State of Israel and to supporting its
search for peaceful relations with its neighbors in the region.
In the implementation of this mandate, AJCongress has always been
particularly concerned with issues involving the education of America's
youth. It has taken strong positions with respect to issues of equality
in schools, separation of church and state, and in recent years, the
problem of anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism on college campuses. Through
our interest in the latter subject we have been made aware of the
problems of bias and distortion in certain K-12 teacher outreach
programs emanating from Mid-East area and language studies centers
funded by Title VI of the Higher Education Act.
Our own investigation revealed that anti-American and anti-Israel
bias permeated materials distributed at Title VI funded teacher
workshops conducted by Mid-East centers at the University of California
at Santa Barbara; Connecticut Central State University; and Georgetown
University. And we have become aware of the criticism of Title VI
programs by such knowledgeable critics as Stanley Kurtz, Martin Kramer
and Daniel Pipes.
To further our investigation of these outreach programs, AJCongress
sought, through a Freedom of Information Act request, copies of the
reports sent by the Title VI funded Mid-East centers to the Department
of Education concerning their activities. Our examination of many
hundreds of pages of these reports showed that the Department of
Education was given detailed information about the place, time,
subject, title and number of attendees at outreach activities. However,
no information was requested or given as to the content of these
programs. Thus, the Department of Education has no way of assessing
whether the K-12 teacher workshops it is funding give a fair,
historically accurate and balanced view of the subjects presented and
thus fulfill the statutory purposes of providing not only language
instruction, but ``full understanding of areas, regions and countries
in which such language is commonly used.''
When AJCongress realized not only that the funded programs lacked
accuracy and balance but that the criteria employed by the DOE did not
even include these qualities as a basis for selection, we filed the
attached Petition. The Petition asks the Department of Education (DOE)
to amend the criteria they employ in awarding funds to Title VI
grantees. It gives examples of the bias and distorted anti-American and
anti-Israel materials distributed in some of these Title VI funded
programs. It also requests that DOE require that in considering grant
proposals its reviewing readers ``determine the extent to which the
teaching faculty and staff [of the grantee] represent the full range of
scholarly and political views on the subjects taught,'' and the
``extent to which the content of the courses and materials are
objectively presented without bias and reflect the full range of
political and scholarly views on the subject taught.''
This suggested change in the selection criteria is clearly in
accord with DOE's responsibility to only fund grantees that will
fulfill the purposes of the authorizing statute. The Higher Education
Act of 1965 reflected Congress' belief that ``systematic efforts [were
needed] to enhance the capacity of institutions of higher education in
the United States to not only produc[e] graduates with international
and foreign language expertise'' but to ``disseminate information about
world regions, foreign languages and international affairs throughout
education . . . government, business, civic and nonprofit sectors.''
Based on this finding and these purposes, the Secretary is
authorized to make grants to national language and area studies centers
which shall be national resources for ``teaching of any modern foreign
language'' and for ``instruction in fields needed to provide full
understanding of areas, regions or countries in which such language is
commonly used.'' Clearly, if the information disseminated in teacher
workshops is inaccurate, biased, distorted and does not reflect all
political and scholarly views, the workshops are not fulfilling their
statutory purpose of providing ``full understanding'' and DOE is
without power to, and should not fund, such programs.
Nevertheless, officials of the Department of Education have told
AJCongress informally that they believe the Department is without power
to influence the content of any of the Title VI funded programs.
Despite having received from us additional evidence of anti-American
and anti-Israel propaganda in a more recent Title VI program, the
Department has yet to send AJCongress a formal reply to our petition
requesting amendments to the Title VI selection requirements.
This state of affairs makes clear, and the House of Representatives
in enacting H.R. 3077 appears to agree, that Title VI of the Higher
Education Act requires significant amendment.
Title VI grantees must be put on notice of what their
responsibilities are under the statute. Clearly, DOE is now remiss in
its duty to properly implement and administer the statute when it fails
to require accurate and balanced material and presentations at the
teacher workshops, and if fails to monitor the presentations and
materials developed for the workshops to assure that the grantees are
fulfilling the statutory purpose. Surely, the role of the Department of
Education with respect to Title VI K-12 outreach programs is not merely
to count how many teachers attend and how many speeches are made to the
community, and then just send money.
Neither academic freedom nor respect for local control of education
compels DOE to be a passive conduit of federal monies funding anti-
American and anti-Israel propaganda. Whereas at one time K-12 education
was the sole province of state and local governments, that day is long
past. The Bush Administration prides itself on enacting the ``No Child
Left Behind Act,'' whose myriad regulations concerning teacher quality,
accountability, test scores improvement and extra help for needy
students must be observed as a condition for obtaining federal funds.
That same Administration cannot in good conscience continue to claim it
may not monitor the use of federal funds to achieve balance and
accuracy in K-12 teacher workshops dealing with international affairs.
We urge the Committee to pass legislation to amend Title VI to
assure, as the House enacted bill does, that courses and instructions
for K-12 classrooms be ``representative of a full range of views on the
subject matter.'' We also urge that there be a general requirement that
the Secretary of Education, in making and evaluating grants t language
and areas centers, must consider whether they are presenting ``diverse
perspectives'' and are reflecting the ``full range views on the subject
matter.''
Finally we urge the Committee to provide oversight and
accountability for the Title VI programs through the creation of an
advisory board.
Thank you for the opportunity to offer these views.
______
American Jewish Congress,
New York, NY 10028,
March 10, 2003.
Hon. Rodney Paige,
Secretary of Education,
U.S. Department of Education,
Washington, DC 20202-0100.
Citizens Petition
RELIEF REQUESTED
The American Jewish Congress (``Petitioner'') petitions the
Secretary of Education (``Secretary'') under 5 U.S.C. Sec. 553(e) and
20 U.S.C. Sec. 1232(d), the General Education Provisions Act, to amend
the selection criteria required to be employed by the Secretary in
evaluating an application for a grant to fund comprehensive National
Resource Centers authorized under Section 602 of the Higher Education
Act as amended, 20 U.S.C. Sec. 1122.
Thirty-four C.F.R. Sec. 656.21(b) authorizes the Secretary in
evaluating such an application to make certain determinations as to the
qualifications of teaching faculty and staff for Center activities and
training programs. Petitioner seeks to amend this regulation to require
that the Secretary in making this determination also ``determine the
extent to which the teaching faculty and staff represents the full
range of scholarly and political views on the subjects taught.''
Petitioner also seeks an amendment to 34 C.F.R. Sec. 656.21(f)1, which
already grants points based on the quality of the Centers' non-
instructional program and extent of the Centers' course offerings in a
variety of disciplines, to require that the Secretary also consider
``the extent to which the content of the courses and materials are
objectively presented without bias and reflect the full range of
political and scholarly views on the subjects taught.''
STATEMENT OF INTEREST
The American Jewish Congress is a membership organization of
American Jews committed to the protection of American constitutional
rights and liberties and to the well-being of the State of Israel.
REASONS FOR REQUESTING AMENDMENTS
Petitioner seeks these amendments to the Secretary's criteria for
making grants to National Language and Area Centers Program because of
persistent reports and persuasive documentary evidence which we believe
to be true that at least some centers, particularly centers devoted to
the study of the language and culture of the Middle East, have
conducted outreach programs for teachers of primary and secondary
schools that have been biased, and lacked balance and academic rigor.
See Stanley Kurtz, Anti Americanism in the Classroom, Hudson Institute
OnLine, page 1, May 16, 2002, concerning the Center for Middle East
Studies at the University of California; Maryellen Fillo, Mideast
Course Gets Mixed Reviews, Hartford Courier, page 12, August 3, 2002,
concerning Central Connecticut State University Middle East Summer
Institute; Leonard Felson, State Auditors to Review Process That Led to
Funding of Controversial Program on Mideast, The Jewish Ledger,
November 24, 2002, concerning Central Connecticut State University;
Martin Kramer, Ivory Towers on Sand, passim, concerning Middle East
Centers generally.
While Petitioner recognizes that with respect to controversial
aspects of the curriculum there may not be any one accepted view, with
respect to such subjects, it is particularly important that the
diversity of perspectives be presented and that all academically
supportable sides of a disputed subject be set forth as fairly and
dispassionately as possible. Our own examination of the materials
distributed in the various Outreach Programs for Middle School and
Secondary School teachers funded under Title VI indicate that this
appears not to be happening in many workshops. In other instances, some
elements of the curriculum materials distributed do not meet the test
of academic or intellectual rigor since they are not supported by
credible facts.
University of California at Santa Barbara
In the materials distributed in connection with a teachers workshop
entitled ``The September 11 Crisis: A Critical Reader,'' held by the
Middle East Studies Center, University of California, Santa Barbara on
October 13, 2001, there are at least five articles (Attachment A) that
in the guise of supposedly explaining the ``cause'' of the 9/11
disaster contain ``explanations'' that are inaccurate, and contain
significant amounts of anti-Israel and anti-United States bias. The
piece by Aruhndati Roy, The Algebra of Infinite Justice, is typical.
She writes:
For strategic, military and economic reasons, it is vital for the
US government to persuade its public that their commitment to freedom
and democracy and the American Way of Life is under attack. In the
current atmosphere of grief, outrage and anger, it's an easy notion to
peddle. However, if that were true, it's reasonable to wonder why the
symbols of America's economic and military dominance-the World Trade
Centre and the Pentagon-were chosen as the targets of the attacks. Why
not the Statute of Liberty? Could it be that the stygian anger that led
to the attacks has its taproot not in American freedom and democracy,
but in the US government's record of commitment and support to exactly
the opposite things-to military and economic terrorism, insurgency,
military dictatorship, religious bigotry and unimaginable genocide
(outside America)? It must be hard for ordinary Americans, so recently
bereaved, to look up at the world with their eyes full of tears and
encounter what might appear to them to be indifference. It isn't
indifference. It's just augury. An absence of surprise. The tired
wisdom of knowing that what goes around eventually comes around.
American people ought to know that it is not them but their
government's policies that are so hated.
The September 11 attacks were a monstrous calling card from a world
gone horribly wrong. The message may have been written by Bin Laden
(who knows?) and delivered by his couriers, but it could well have been
signed by the ghosts of the victims of America' old wars. The millions
killed in Korea, Vietnam, and Cambodia, the 17,500 killed when Israel-
backed by the US-invaded Lebanon in 1982, the 200,000 Iraqis killed in
Operation Desert Storm, the thousands of Palestinians who have died
fighting Israel's occupation of the West Bank. And the millions who
died, in Yugoslavia, Somalia, Haiti, Chile, Nicaragua, El Salvador, the
Dominican Republic, Panama, at the hands of all the terrorists,
dictators and genocidists whom the American government supported,
trained, bankrolled and supplied with arms. And this is far from being
a comprehensive list. \1\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ Arundhati Roy, The Algebra of Infinite Justice, Guardian,
Saturday September 29, 2001, included in The September 11 Crisis: A
Critical Reader, prepared for ``the September 11 Crisis and Teaching
Our Children: A Workshop for K-12 Teachers,'' hereinafter ``Reader.''
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
The materials distributed at the Santa Barbara October workshop
contain no articles giving the more conventional, and, we believe,
clearly accurate, explanation for Bin Laden's attack on the World Trade
Center.
Even where effort is made to provide some balance, as in the case
of the alleged massacre at Deir Yassin during the 1948 Arab Israel War,
nine pages are devoted to a so-called ``eyewitness account'' which
supports the Palestine version, as compared to two pages devoted to the
Israeli version. \2\ (Attachment B)
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\2\ Dr. Meir Paul, Dr. Ami Isseroff, Deir Yassin, Mier Paul's
Eyewitness Account (attached), presented by Peace Middle East Dialog
Group in ``Reader'' and Mitchell G. Bard, Myths and Facts: A Guide to
the Arab Israeli Conflict, p. 172 (2001) (attached).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Resource materials and readings distributed by this same Middle
East Center in connection with a workshop on the Israel/Palestine
Conflict held June 18-21, 2002 are similarly biased, with no real
attempt to convey the diversity of views on this controversial subject.
For example, the materials treating the 1948 Arab-Israeli conflict,
particularly the reasons for the exodus of Arabs from their villages in
1948 adopt without reservation the controversial position of the
``revisionist'' Israeli historians (Attachment C). These historians
conclude, in contradiction to the accepted Israeli view that the Arab
villagers left voluntarily that (1) there was no blanket order for
Palestinians to evacuate their homes and villages; (2) there were
efforts by Arab leaders to stem the exodus; and (3) there was evidence
of direct, hostile Jewish Haganah/IDF operations against Arab
settlements, although it was not official Israeli policy to drive the
Arabs out, though it did fit in with their plans and made it easier to
settle more Jews on the land.
The essays of the two Israeli historians included in the
distributed materials adopt this new revisionist history approach and
set forth the traditional Israeli view that the Israelis did not try to
drive the Palestinians out only to attack it. The piece by the
Palestinian historian attacks even these revisionist pieces and
suggests that the evidence of the new historians that the Israelis
sometimes used force or ``nudged'' the Palestinians to leave was, in
fact, evidence of a pre-ordained de facto forcible transfer policy of
the Israelis in 1948. In short, evidence of only one version of a
sharply contested event is given.
Other materials distributed as part of this June 2002 course
(Attachment D) emphasize that Israel established a military
administration to govern the Palestinian residents of the occupied West
Bank and Gaza denying basic political rights and civil liberties and
criminalizing Palestinian nationalism and even punishing acts of non-
violence. \3\ This treatment makes no distinction between the time
before and after the first and second Intifadas when the Israelis
suffered increasing acts of terrorism coming from the territories and
responded more harshly as the terrorist acts increased.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\3\ Joel Beinin, Lisa Hajjar, Palestine, Israel and the Arab-
Israeli Conflict, pp. 8-9, produced on-line by the Middle East Research
and Information Project.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Other historians not represented in the workshop materials state
that
early in the Israeli occupation Israeli authorities did try to
minimize the impact on the population in the territories. Except for
requirements that school texts in the territories be purged of anti-
Israel and anti-Semitic language, the authorities tried not to
interfere with the inhabitants. They did provide economic assistance,
for example to Palestinians in the Gaza Strip who were moved from camps
to new homes. Arabs were given freedom of movement. They were allowed
to travel to and from Jordan. In 1972 elections were held in the West
Bank. Women and non-landowners, unable to participate under Jordanian
rule, were now permitted to vote. \4\ After the six day war the
traditional pro-Jordanian leadership continued to hold many civil
service positions and were paid by Jordan. Israel also attempted to
shift increasing responsibilities from the military to civilian
administrations and to Palestinians.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\4\ Mitchell G. Bard, Myths and Facts: A Guide to the Arab Israel
Conflict, pp. 89-90, Maryland (2001).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Efforts to give Palestinians greater responsibility for their
affairs were undermined by the Intifada. During the uprisings
Palestinian Arabs who worked to cooperate with Israel came under attack
and were silenced either through intimidation or murder.
Israeli law prohibits arbitrary arrest of citizens; defendants are
considered innocent until proven guilty and have the right to writs of
habeas corpus and other procedural safeguards. Some prisoners,
particularly Arabs suspected of terrorism, were interrogated using
severe methods that have been criticized as excessive by many Israelis
as well as others.
Israel's Supreme Court issued a landmark ruling in 1999 prohibiting
the use of a variety of abusive practices, including violent shaking,
painful shackling in contorted positions, sleep deprivation for
extended periods of time and prolonged exposure to extreme
temperatures. The death penalty has been applied just once, in the case
of Adolph Eichman, the man largely responsible for the ``Final
Solution.'' No Arab has ever been given the death penalty, even after
the most heinous acts of terrorism. Under law which Israel inherited
from the British, administrative detention is permitted under certain
circumstances, in security cases involving violent offenders the
detainee is entitled to counsel and may appeal to the Supreme Court.
\5\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\5\ Id. at 232-234.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
None of this is presented in the materials distributed at the Santa
Barbara teachers' workshops. On the contrary, they present an
unrelentingly bleak and exaggerated picture of the treatment of the
Palestinians by the Israelis which is far from the reality of that
complex and changing relationship marked by Israel's willingness to
engage in self-examination and self-criticism. The materials state:
Hundreds of Palestinian political activists have been deported to
Jordan or Lebanon, tens of thousands of acres of Palestinian land
confiscated and thousands of trees have been uprooted. Since 1967 over
300,000 Palestinians have been imprisoned without trial, and over half
a million have been tried in the Israeli military court system. Torture
of Palestinian prisoners has been a common practice since at least
1971, and dozens of people have died in detention from abuse or
neglect. \6\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\6\ Beinin, Hajjar, supra.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
This, we submit, is on a par with the now discredited and disproved
accounts of alleged Jewish massacres in the Palestinian city of Jenin.
There are other evidences of bias too numerous to mention in the rest
of the Beinin, Haggar materials presented in the workshops. Samples are
annexed to this Petition.
Central Connecticut State University
Materials recently received relating to a federally funded Middle
East Studies Summer Institute for Teachers evidences similar bias.
Attached are numerous published articles and letters in Connecticut
newspapers and journals attesting to the one-sided nature of the
presentation there (Attachment E).
Our information is that similar biased programs have been presented
at other centers. As we obtain more material we will forward it, but we
feel we have presented enough evidences of bias to warrant the
amendments to the regulations we seek.
CONCLUSION
Petitioners believe that in this era of globalization it is
essential to the security of the United States that American teachers
understand and convey to their students an accurate, complete and
unbiased understanding of the history, economics, politics and culture
of the various parts of the world far from American shores with which
Americans must interface. Petitioners contend that this goal is
explicitly spelled out under Purposes of the Act \7\ pursuant to which
these grants are authorized and that regulations that implement the Act
must be designed to help achieve these Purposes. The current
regulations fail to do so. As the United States seems poised to go to
war in this volatile part of the world, a citizenry informed about the
culture, politics and history of this area is particularly important.
One way to achieve such a citizenry is to require that the
comprehensive foreign language and area studies centers and programs
funded by the United States government for the purpose of outreach to
the community are staffed by teachers who are qualified and that the
materials they present are as objective, accurate and balanced as
possible.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\7\ 20 U.S.C. Sec. 1121.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Requiring the Secretary to employ selection criteria with these
goals in mind will prevent distorted, one-sided and biased
presentations and should go far to achieve fairness.
WHEREFORE, the American Jewish Congress respectfully petitions the
Secretary to add the suggested new selection criteria to those already
set forth in 34 C.F.R. Sec. 656.21(b)1 and 34 C.F.R. 656.21(f)1 to
assure that the faculties and course offerings at the Comprehensive
National Resource Centers funded by the government give their students
a fair, historically accurate and balanced view of the history,
politics, economics and culture of the areas studied.
Respectfully Submitted,
Neil Goldstein,
Executive Director.
[Whereupon, at 3:27 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]