Why I Worry About Horowitz's Academic Bill of Rights

by Liberty and Power

Here is another reason that I don’t like what David Horowitz is up to:

We do not go to our doctors' offices and expect to see partisan propaganda posted on the doors, or go to hospital operating rooms and expect to hear political lectures from our surgeons. The same should be true of our classrooms and professors, yet it is not. When I visited the political-science department at the University of Colorado at Denver this year, the office doors and bulletin boards were plastered with cartoons and statements ridiculing Republicans, and only Republicans. When I asked President Hoffman about that, she assured me that she would request that such partisan materials be removed and an appropriate educational environment restored. To the best of my knowledge, that has yet to happen.

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Aster Francesca - 2/7/2006

And if such a policy were put in place, which materials would really end up in trouble as "partisan"? One might speculate- depending on who got to do the judging. But who thinks truly radical ideas would stand much chance in such an atmosphere?

Sudha Shenoy - 2/7/2006

This so-called 'Bill' would open the door to even more political strife -- all sides could start claiming 'lack of diversity'. The administration puts enough obstacles, as it is, to genuine teaching & research. Now they -- & hostile department heads -- would have an even greater excuse to interfere in details.

David T. Beito - 2/6/2006

Heck, around here a lot businesspeople have religious tracts or flyers posted in their offices. It doesn't bother me a bit and actually adds a bit of color to the premises.

I could have included Horowitz's next paragraphs which "qualifies" this statement by saying that the ABOR might not actually ban such cartoons because it is yet another example of Horowitz can be so slippery when people try to pin him down on specifics. He's the same on the Ward Churchill issue.

Jonathan Dresner - 2/6/2006

...interesting article, if only because it is pretty much boilerplate at this point, including the -- highly questionable -- "vetting" of the ABoR by liberal academics.

I've been in plenty of professional offices with a cartoon or two, with magazines I consider biased in the waiting room; I've shopped at stores that advertise in avowedly conservative publications....

It's one thing to say that political discrimination is a bad thing; but the kind of free speech restrictions he's talking about posit political identity as a sort of protected class, a position that just makes a mockery of academic freedom and normal civil rights.