Indoctrination U

The Lefts War Against Academic Freedom

David Horowitz

• Publisher: Encounter Books
• Year: 2009
• ISBN:
  9781594033674
• Topic: Politik & Internationale Beziehungen
• Subtopic: Politische Ideologien

In 2003, David Horowitz began a campaign to promote intellectual diversity and a return to academic standards in American universities. To achieve these goals he devised an Academic Bill of Rights and created a national student movement with chapters on 160 college campuses. Take No Prisoners is a riveting account of the reaction to Horowitz's campaign by professor unions and academic associations, whose leaderships have been taken over by the political left.

Notes

Preface to the Paperback Edition

1 Stephen H. Aby, editor, The Academic Bill of Rights, 2007, p. 1.

2 Aby, op. cit., p. 197. See pp. 39–45 of the present text for a discussion of Joan Wallach Scott

3 Ibid.

4 John K. Wilson, Patriotic Correctness, 2008, p. 70

5 Bruce L.R. Smith, Jeremy D. Mayer, L. D. Fritschler, Closed Minds? Politics and Ideology in American Universities, Brookings, 2008

6 Closed Minds, op. cit. p. 96

7 The legislation which I am associated with can be found here: http://www.studentsforacademicfreedom.org/documents/?c=Legislation-Texts.

8 Pp. 17–18; 71–80

9 Confusion on this matter has arisen because most universities do provide grievance machinery for students who feel they have been unfairly graded. Administrators who testified at the Pennsylvania hearings played on this confusion to claim that their students’ academic freedom was already protected and did not require an Academic Bill of Rights. But the matter of grading is only one area affecting the academic freedom of students. The templates for the existing grievance procedures do not include statements defining academic freedom and consequently do not provide guidelines to students, or a framework for academic freedom complaints. One of the issues brought before the Pennsylvania hearings was that students were unaware of the academic freedom statements of their universities (which at the time did not apply to students) and therefore would be unaware of any rights they might have under them. One of the Committee recommendations was to make students aware of their rights.

10 http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/25/national/25bias.html?_r=1&scp=2&sq=gibson%20armstrong&st=cse&oref=slogin; David Horowitz, Ideologues at the Lectern, Los Angeles Times, January 23, 2006 http://www. frontpagemag. com/Articles/Read.aspx?GUID=906B5004-A8A5-4B7A-8927-35F80 6E5BE41.

11 Indoctrination U., pp. 17-18

dp n="173" folio="140" ?

12 Closed Minds, op. cit., pp. 129-133

13 Indoctrination U., op. cit. p. 80. In fact, the hearings were designed to be as far from a McCarthy witch-hunt as possible. They specifically excluded the mention of any professors’ or students’ names, precisely to avoid the abuses for which McCarthy was famous. On the first day of the hearings, the Committee chairman, Tom Stevenson laid down the hearings guidelines: “This Committee’s focus will be on the [academic] institutions and their policies, not on professors, not on students.” The Committee strictly adhered to this directive, which didn’t dissuade Curry from making his irresponsible attacks.

14 Most of this testimony is reprinted in Chapter 4 of Indoctrination U, pp. 71–80

15 This part of my testimony is not included in the present volume, but can be found here: http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Printable.aspx?GUID={093DA6DC-A6C5-4269-86C7-89E28BD8BFA6}.

16 One of them, Lynn Herman, represented a district containing Penn State University and was retiring from office.

17 I was the author the original report which was then revised by the majority counsel. It was to be ratified by the Republican caucus a week before the filing date but two Republicans, including Herman, failed to show up, making a quorum impossible. A week later Herman and the Democrats staged their coup. The Republicans, demoralized by their electoral defeat, and facing a majority coalition of the Democrats and the two Republicans, agreed to sign on to the final result, which expressed the position the Democrats had maintained throughout the hearings (that there was no problem and the hearings were essentially a waste of time).

18 The text of the original report before it was gutted and its recommendations rewritten by the Democrats and Republican legislator Lynn Herman can be found here: http://www.studentsforacademicfreedom.org/news/2324/pennsylvanias-academic-freedom-reforms.

19 Ibid.

20 Administrators from Penn State,Temple and the University of Pittsburgh all testified, falsely, that students were already protected and that complaints were rare. At Penn State, to take one example, there was indeed an academic freedom policy but it could only be found in the university’s “Employee Handbook” and its grievance procedure specifically stated that it was for faculty members. This defect was remedied by the passage of Faculty Senate Resolution 20.00, which was a direct response to the hearings. None of these facts were reported by the education press, and none appear in Closed Minds.

21 Indoctrination U, pp. 122–3.

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22 A copy of the complaint was sent to me by Abigail Beardsley.

23 I advised Mr. Fluehr throughout the process. Mr. Fluehr also filed a complaint about a second class that was rejected. A record of his complaints is available at: http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/viewSubCategory.asp?id=522.

Preface

1 For a portrait of these academic radicals, see David Horowitz, The Professors, 2006.

2 See Chapter Six below; and Sol Stern, “ ‘Social Justice’ and Other High School Indoctrinations,” Frontpagemagazine.com, April 13, 2006.

3 The 160 campus chapters of Students for Academic Freedom are autonomous. For information on this movement see: www.studentsforacademicfreedom.org.

4 For reasons described in The Professors, these activists are almost exclusively on the left.

Chapter 1: Academic Freedom

1 The complete text of the Academic Bill of Rights is reprinted in the Appendix to this volume. Stephen Balch, president of the National Association of Scholars, made extensive revisions to the original text and played an important role in its wording.

2 http://www.campus-watch.org/article/id/566.

3 Ibid. The document was written by two academics, Arthur O. Lovejoy and E. R. A. Seligman.

4 http://www.aaup.org/Com-a/index.htm. The 1970 statement added the word “persistently” to the 1940 statement: “teachers should be careful not to persistently introduce into their teaching controversial matter which has no relation to their subject”—but the intent was the same.

5 Some examples are provided in Chapter Three below. Others can be found at http://www.studentsforacademicfreedom.org/comp/default.asp; www.noindoctrination.org; and www.ratemyprofessors.com. See also David Horowitz, The Professors, 2006.

6 A third statement was posted by Gary Holcomb, an associate professor of English at Emporia State University:

Date: 8/16/2006

From: Gary Holcomb

I have used Sam Hamill’s Poets Against the War (Thunder’s Mouth Press/Nation Books, 2003) in a course on Literature and Globalization. With poems by Creeley, Dove, Merwin, Pinsky, Rich, Snodgrass— almost a wh...

Table of contents

• Praise
• Title Page
• Dedication
• Preface to the Paperback Edition
• Preface
• ONE - Academic Freedom
• TWO - A Revealing Debate
• THREE - Facing the Opposition
• FOUR - Indoctrination U.
• FIVE - Dangerous Professors
• SIX - Battle Lines
• CODA
• APPENDIX I - The Academic Bill of Rights
• APPENDIX II - Academic Freedom Code for K-12 Schools
• Acknowledgements
• Notes
• Index
• Copyright Page