Horowitz Charges Me With "Hypocrisy and Intellectual Cowardice"
Our article, which appears in the latest issue of AHA Perspectives, describes our failed efforts to get a resolution from the AHA linking speech codes and the Academic Bill of Rights (ABOR) as leading threats to academic freedom.
Horowitz charges that in
this article, Beito, Luker and Johnson shift ground. Now it is their claim that by promoting intellectual diversity the ABOR risks encouraging students to make false claims of indoctrination, thus chilling professorial discourse. This is like opposing the First Amendment to the Constitution on the grounds that someone might make a false claim that their free speech right had been infringed. The solution to this problem is quite simple. Universities can set up grievance committees to ajudicate such claims. In fact they could simply extend the mandates of existing grievance committees that deal with racial and sexual discrimination to handle these matters. What's the problem, then?
The problem? Where do I start? The best analogy to illustrate the dangers of the ABOR is the (now mercifully dead) Fairness Doctrine. Supporters of the Fairness Doctrine, like supporters of the ABOR, touted the need to enshrine multiple points of view. As Jesse Walker points out, however, the opposite proved the case. For decades under the Fairness Doctrine, media commentators steered clear of controversial issues out of fear that they might be forced to give “equal time” to the other side. The same chilling effect is bound to occur on a campus governed by the ABOR. It would destroy most of the remaining vestiges of free and open discourse in the classroom and render it safe, sanitized, and dull.
Horowitz’s solution of free speech “grievance committees” that he would explicitly model after existing committees dealing “with racial and sexual discrimination” is quite a stunner. This recommendation shows a breathtaking (and apparently unquestioning) faith in the good intentions of campus administrators. Instead of challenging the corrupt power of the administrative diversity police, he calls for adding to their power by giving them yet more rules to enforce. Aren’t our overly bureaucratic campuses already stifled by too many rules, guidelines, and mandates? Apparently not for Horowitz.
Meanwhile there are courses in universities across the country which are self-evidently courses in indoctrination for which there is no present remedy. Social Work 510 at Kansas State University, for example, is billed in the catalogue as a course in Social Welfare. The entire syllabus, however, is a chapter by chapter reading of Howard Zinn's atrocious diatribe,"A People's History of the United States." The ABOR is a suggested remedy for a widespread problem which is corrupting the intellectual enterprise of universities across the country. But Beito, Luker and Johnson prefer to ignore this problem in favor of addressing the greater threat allegedly presented by my bill. Interestingly not of them or anyone else in the academic community has approached me with any suggestion as to how the wording of my bill might be changed to accommodate their concerns while achieving its goals of promoting intellectual diversity and ending the practice of political indoctrination in our academic classrooms. This failure shows their bad faith. I have been open from the beginning to suggestions from sincere critics of my bill -- that is critics who are concerned about the political abuse of the universities by faculty activists. I once had the illusion that David Beito and K.C. Johnson might be such critics. I no longer am. Their AHA resolution was an attempt to strengthen the credibility of the enemies of academic freedom in the university at the expense of an effort to protect it.
Why should I propose changes to the ABOR when I think that the entire concept of an ABOR is wrongheaded? Instead I have suggested (and suggest again) that the major stumbling blocks to quality education are not liberal professors but professional administrators. On campuses throughout the country, they continue to dumb down standards because of an obsession with student body count, salaries, and empire building.
If Horowitz wants to improve higher education, he should join in the fight to expose grade inflation and other abuses of this bloated administrative elite. He wouldn't have to start from square one. Some of us have been waging this fight for years through groups like the Alabama Scholars Association. Unfortunately, instead of following this constructive route, Horowitz promotes a policy regime that will entrust more power to the same administrative elite that is the source of most problems on campus.