Everybody Knows That Smokin' Ain't Allowed In School

New at Reason: David Horowitz and Jesse Walker hash out the nitty, gritty, and not so pretty in the "Academic Bill of Rights."

Comments

[joe]

Wow. He really does argue like a Communist.

"Whose side are you on? They're out there, you know, and we need to band together. Your divisive objections are just making them stronger. And they're so very strong. And so very evil."

[fyodor]

I'm glad Jesse called Horowitz on the Creationism thing, though I think the problem is more basic. How far does a prof need to go to "make students...aware of other viewpoints"? Which other viewpoints are valid? And who decides this? No, the meaning is NOT clear!...Oy vey, looking over the rest of Horowitz's comments, I don't know where to begin. Maybe in the intro where he claims there is no academic freedom, based on his own harrowing (Horowing?) experience. The self-referential nature of his one example to demonstrate how bad things are unfortunately undercuts its credibility, but even if it's true that conservatives are routinely attacked in such a way on campuses, how does the ABOR remedy this? I suppose theoretically students would be made "aware of other viewpoints" by the reluctant Marxist profs so that the students wouldn't be so one-sided in their thinking. Seems like a stretch to me. A lot of their wacky ideas come at least as much from fellow students who live in an artificial world of insulated youth.

Yes, the remedy for bad speech is more speech, a good cliche if there ever were one.

[fyodor]

joe,

Good point, I was thinking of addressing that, but as I said, I didn't know where to begin! But re: "As our tiny band of supporters of academic freedom approaches the coming battle with the campus totalitarians," he makes an emotional plea based on his side being outnumbered (David vs. Goliath?) and then augments it with a classic good versus evil all or nothing framing of the issue. Right, the only people who oppose him are the "campus totalitarians"!

[Jeff Smith]

There are at least two important issues not
addressed in the discussion, or not given
enough attention:

1) At what level does the attention to other
views need to occur? Do they get mentioned
every day in each class? Once in each class?
By each department having classes based on
alternative views? By the university having
departments based on alternative views?
Do Marxist sociologists need to mention
market oriented views in their classes if
neoclassical economists are teaching classes
in the next building?

2) At what point does a view become fringe
enough that it deserves no mention? Does
Austrian economics warrant mention in a
neoclassical economics course? What about
Henry George? Class time is very limited.

This whole enterprise seems to treat students
like idiots. Some are, but most are not. In
general, they have pretty good bullshit
detectors.

Jeff

[sarah]

Anecdotal evidence =! proof, Dave.

PS. Daisy, daisy, give me your answer, do

[Russ D]

The important issue ignored is that this is NOT compulsory education. Don't like your instructors? Sign up for a class with another one. All the instructors suck? Go to another school.

My first reaction to reading Jesse's original piece was "An easy target, but an uncompelling issue."

If Horowitz really wants to do some academic good, he should try to get that Academic Bill Of Rights instituted (man I hate that word) into high schools. Cuz those students are the ones really being fucked since they've got basically no options. Does the bill of rights not matter when the skooling is compulsory, but only when the student is free to choose his school?

Of course, similar "bills of rights" have been tried in public school grades 1-12 and it's only making things worse with more bureaucracy.

[rod boyd]

Good points. I have tremendous empathy for Horowitz's plight--as a former grad student and History TA, I saw the effects of indoctrination in an inaccurate, lefty version of history. Moreover, strident as the guy is, he has a point--your average country club has more diversity of thought than your average humanitities department. All the more galling when you think of the amount of public revenue that flows to these places.

But still, though I think Jesse Walker is being ornery and contrarian for the sake of being ornery and contrarian (nothing wrong with it, BTW), I have to acknowledge the salience of his warning. It boils down to the fact that the imposition of rules and mandates, no matter the intentions attendant, have truly unforseen consequences. See: Welfare state, The,1965-1996.

[Warren]

Another goddamned layer fucking it up for the rest of us. This is the same type of thinking that puts 2000 words in tiny type on every bottle of aspirin. Or like that recent Onion interview with P.J. O'Rourke where he talks about how it cost him two grand because the sentence in his new tractor manual that told him to tighten the lug nuts was buried in reams of legal argle-bargle. The first day of class, every student would get a "alternative viewpoint" paper along with the syllabus and other handouts. Perhaps, precious class time might even need to be wasted reading it out loud to comply with this idiocy. Meritless requirements that impede the pursuit of happiness and extort money for goddamned lawyers.

BTW - I am of the opinion that the modifier(s) 'goddamned' or 'fucking' or both, must always preface the word 'lawyers' (i.e. The goddamned fucking lawyers control both the legislature and the courts).

[Sir Real]

Why, exactly, does Mr. Horowitz deserve to be taken this seriously? For that, matter, why is Reason (a journal I respect) doing anything to feed this man's insatiable appetite for attention?

I mean, at least J-Lo and Ben Affleck are sexually attractive.

With regards to that bit of whoring called Mr. Horowitz's "10 Reasons Reparations are a Bad Idea- and Racist to Boot" Ad, I think the college newspapers make their case most eloquently.

http://www.nd.edu/~observer/03292001/Viewpoint/0.html

http://www.thehoya.com/news/050101/news9.htm

Here's a pro-Horowitz article from the Cornell (Conservative) Review- (the conservative doesn't appear on their masthead for some reason- and if you have time, check out "Feminists Will Die Alone", too)

http://www.cornellreview.org/viewart.cgi?num=99

As a sidenote, the site Adbusters.org can't get most (90%) mainstream news outlets (including TV, print, and radio) to sell them ad space that they have the money and media for. College newspapers are a much smaller venue, and yet I've heard SO MUCH MORE about Horowitz's ad and college "censorship" for refusing to run his Ads, as opposed to theirs. This is in spite of the fact that ALL private media outlets are allowed to control their content as they wish.

And yet, for all the spineless, cringing, whining self-victimization Horowitz displays, Adbusters maintains some shred of dignity.

Good for them.

(Oh, about that Academic Bill of Right's- I never saw those principles violated EVER, and I went to Oberlin, home of the uber-liberal. Just because people don't agree with you doesn't make you oppressed.)

[thoreau]

Horowitz wrote a book on how he was criticized in the slavery reparations debate. He created this issue so he could write the book. His approach was:

1) Take an issue that only a tiny fringe is pursuing while the rest of America opposes it.
2) Pretend that there's a large movement working on this issue.
3) Write arguments against it. Make sure the arguments are innocuous enough not to offend most people (you do need to seem reasonable) but still inflammatory to the ears of a fringe.
4) Send those arguments to publications in places where the fringe will notice them.
5) Act dismayed when the fringe reacts just as you expected them to.
6) Go visit those places in person, and bring private security with you to emphasize how irrational your opponents are. Get big speaking fees for it.
7) Write a book and collect royalties.
8) If it doesn't make the best-seller list, try to create another phony issue and hope it works this time.

So now Horowitz aims to jump on the conservative persecution bandwagon. Given how popular this bandwagon is, he'll probably be able to portray college campuses as gulags. There's only one real similarity between universities and 1984, however: When I was at USC, UCLA was our enemy, and UCLA had always been our enemy! 😉

[Kevin Carson]

joe,

Good point--Jesse is "objectively anti-academic freedom"!

The problem with Horowitz's proposal is that, since there is a large subjective factor involved in whether any of those forms of discrimination has taken place, it requires second-guessing in an administrative forum every time an allegation is made. And the way things get politicized, I expect conservatives to abuse the system with the very quality of allegations that the PC nazis of the left have made in the past: hysterical claims that boil down to "well, I FEEL discriminated against, and if you deny the validity of my perception you must be an anti-conservative bigot TOO."

Jesse is right; the proper solution is not drumhead trial and sentencing by an administrative tribunal, but shining the light of bad publicity on offenders. College administrator types are, for the most part, spineless bureucratic time-servers whose worst nightmare is bad publicity; the way to deal with them is to open your rolodex, start dialing, and make them squirm.

[Ray]

Horowitz created the reparations debate? C'mon thoreau, you've left the reservation on that one.

Horowitz has always rubbed me the wrong way but I'm glad he's making such a stink. At least it can draw some attention to the fact that our schools are exactly as he describes.

I've heard a few posters over the span of last week (this isn't the first thread on this subject) say that our universities are not liberally biased although those posters lean exceedingly to the Left, so consider the source.

Truth is that our universities are so Left biased that there is virtually a monopoly condition in that one cannot always simply say "I'll just go to another school." Doesn't work if you're an adult trying to finish that degree and can't simply up and leave town.

So the bottom line is that Horowitz's plan does not call for compulsory equality in view points by the faculty but his kind of thing always leads to that kind of quota system/compulsory diversification garbage anyway so it's a good cause with a broken solution.

[Ray]

Oh, and the fact that joe and foyo, the two biggest Leftists among the Hit & Run regulars are taking pot shots at Horo for arguing like a communist is hilarious.

Also, it was weeks ago, but when the hue and cry were still ringing in everyones ears over the latest Coulter book, there were a number of people around here that held up Horowitz's critique of her book as a valid "told you so."

[Mona]

I yield to no one, including David Horowitz, in objecting to the Jacobin atmosphere that prevails on too many college campuses/classrooms. But, Jesse Walker is entirely right. This Academic Bill of Rights is truly a cure worse than the disease.

Prosecution in quasi-tribunals is not the proper response to left-wing orthodoxy in the academy. If anything, such tactics are of a piece with what Mr. Horowitz hates. As Kevin Carson notes, adverse publicity is the correct response to PC tyranny, and that is the path I took when it came to drive me nuts. As an undergrad over a decade ago, I published a piece about a particularly egregious honors seminar, and did so in the journal of the National Association of Scholars. It would be fair to say that the offending faculty were not amused to see their antics held up to scrutiny. But never would I have sought to "prosecute" them for "wrong" teaching.

Does Horowitz REALLY think such a tool as he proposes is not a sword that can cut both (or many) ways?

[Ray]

At Arizona State, you could perform flawlessly in every course taken and still not graduate if your "awareness" courses are not completed.

Things like this need to be confronted.

[Ray]

JB,

But you're taking instances and projecting them across the entire spectrum.

You could teach at AZ State and they'd give you a big hug party.

[Jean Bart]

Ray,

No more so than Horowitz's comments are. But that's right; he's the "authority" on this. Somehow my juxtaposed evidence is simply without merit, right? If I draw contrary conclusions based on contary evidence, that's just oh so wrong of me. Keep your shilling for Horowitz to yourself.

[thoreau]

Ray-

I won't say that Horowitz created the reparations debate per se. Being a news junkie I had certainly heard of it before Horowitz brought it up. But Horowitz brought far more attention to reparations than anything I had seen previously. Some things won't go away if they're ignored, but other things will go nowhere if ignored. Reparations is one such topic.

If universities are really such bastions of intolerance, why didn't Horowitz pick a more substantive issue? How about affirmative action? It's much more relevant to college campuses and still related to race. But then he'd face opposition from people outside the lunatic fringe. He'd have to debate more eloquent opponents, not just frine figures. So he picked a soft target.

As for creationism, when I was a freshman my friends who took intro to biology all had to read books on evolution (Dawkins and Darwin, among others). One person objected and said that they should teach such a "controversial" subject in college. Um, if not in a college biology class, then where should it be taught? Should we put it on the same list as quantum field theory, arcana that only the advanced graduate students get to tackle?

[thoreau]

CORRECTION:

The statement

"One person objected and said that they should teach such a "controversial" subject in college"

should have read

"One person objected and said that they shouldn't teach such a "controversial" subject in college"

[Sir Real]

Ray-

I provided links. I can't make you read them, but I can certainly ignore your Horowitz love fest if you don't.

As for disregarding the people who disagree because they're liberal- why on earth should we take Horowitz's or your claims of abuse seriously? After all, you're conservative- of course you're going to hallucinate the PC police under every bush.

Of course, JB, Thoreau and the others won't make that claim, because they're actually trying to debate. You should try it sometime.

[Jean Bart]

Sir Real,

I'm neither a liberal nor a libertarian; I'm a pragmatist (in the philosophical sense of the term) and a moderate skeptic.

[Jason Ligon]

JB,

I'm chewing on what pragmatism might mean for one's political view. Utilitarians tend toward modern liberalism by way of Rawls' maxi-min.

Your basic Pierce pragmatist argues that principle does not matter; only effects we experience in our sphere of detection matter. These are usually metaphysical arguments, though. There are effects to redistribution and effects to letting markets function. In a metaphysical sense, the pragmatist can analyze these effects, but it seems to me that the preference for one set of effects over another has to encompass something beyond pragmatism.

Just thinking out loud ...

[dhex]

here's a question: if our nation's universities are such bastions of marxism and other unsavory characteristics - and i'm really that sold on this, except outside certain areas like "cultural studies" - why doesn't this carry over into the "real world" both politically and socially? or rather, i don't think the political environment in a college has that much of a lasting impact on the people who pass through it. (i.e. apathy and fear of being different will always trump abstract righteous indignation)

[joe]

Ray thinks it's funny for liberals to denounce Communists. Tell it to Harry Truman. Or the Solidarity UNION.

Mao is Lennin is Debs is John Lennon is Ralph Nader is Bill Clinton. Doesn't this idiocy ever get old for you?

[Jean Bart]

Horowitz convinced me that he was an idiot when he claimed that 60s radical groups were America's "first terrorists." One wonders why Horowitz has never heard of say the KKK, or John Brown's gang for that matter?

[joe]

JB,

There's a granite marker at a spot along the old Mohawk Trail in Turner's Falls, Massachusetts:

"In 167?, a company of men led by Captain John Turner surprised and destoyed over 200 Indians camped on this spot."

And got a monument for their efforts.

[Jean Bart]

joe,

Well, that was during "King Philip's War"; many bloody attacks occurred during the war committed by both sides. You can read more about the war and its aftermath, and the nature of English and Indian relations at the time in:

"The Name of War," by Jill Lepore

Also there is Karen Kupperman's "Indians and English: Facing Off In Early America"

[joe]

Growing up in a town where a famous battle took place, I'm familiar with that period of history. Terrorism was remarkably common on both sides. Th English (can we call them Anglo-Americans yet?) were worse.

[Mark A.]

JB,

Leave out the parenthetical and change 'moderate' to 'centrist', and I could have written your post at 8:01 AM.

Sometimes I swear Ray is just baiting us. (must...resist... ad hominem...temptation....must...resist...)

[citizen Able]

I never read Horowitz online. I can't wipe off the spit he sprays on the inside of my monitor.

[thoreau]

I don't worry about the handful of campus marxists. Why? Here's why:

http://www.theonion.com/onion3416/marxist_student.html

http://www.theonion.com/onion3842/marxists_apartment.html

[Anonymous]

16,000 marxists? That's like blackmailing the government for ONE MILLION DOLLARS.

[Ray]

JB,

"Having completed a Ph.D. I have as yet to find any sort of discrimination against me"

I'm sure you have a hard time looking at yourself objectively and I really don't mean this in a derogatory manner but you are a Leftist. Of course you didn't feel discriminated against.

[Jean Bart]

Jesse,

Just so that you know, when I taught at Auburn University I was assailed, as were other instructors, with complaints by at least a dozen students each year when the subject of evolution came up in "Technology and Civilization" (Auburn's version of "World History). Some even told me that I should be fired for teaching the subject. Its these sorts of actions that Horowitz's so-called Bill of Rights would encourage; and they would chill the academic freedom of professors (who are after all running the show in classrooms).