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Defending Students'
Rights
by Professor KC
Johnson
A few weeks ago, The
Excelsior brought welcome news of a new group on campus,
Students for Academic Freedom. Devoted to ensuring that
students feel free to engage in academic discourse, regardless
of their political viewpoints, the organization promises to
publicize instances of ideological bias in the classroom. It
also will promote a Student Bill of Rights, a measure designed
to protect students from retaliation for expressing their
beliefs.
Although we usually think of
the concept as pertaining to the faculty, all Brooklyn College
students have a legal right to academic freedom. The college
Bulletin—which is a contract between the college and
its students—asserts, “The tradition of the University as a
sanctuary of academic freedom and center of informed
discussion is an honored one, to be guarded vigilantly. The
basic significance of that sanctuary lies in the protection of
intellectual freedoms: the rights of professors to teach, of
scholars to engage in the advancement of knowledge, of
students to learn and to express their views, free from
external pressures or interference.” Therefore, “academic
freedom and the sanctuary of the University campus . . .
cannot be invoked by those who would subordinate intellectual
freedom to political ends or who violate the norms of conduct
established to protect that freedom.”
The local Students for
Academic Freedom chapter, which is soliciting reports of
dubious classroom practices at saf4bc@yahoo.com, forms part of a
broader national movement seeking to restore intellectual
diversity on college campuses. Two generations ago, in the
height of the McCarthy era, the chief threat to academic
freedom came from the right. Now, however, it seems to come
from an intolerant permutation of left-wing thought, which
holds that those perceived as “conservative” or even who teach
subjects perceived as “conservative” need to be purged from
the academy; and that the best way to create a new generation
of social activists is to ensure that students receive only
one side when taking classes on issues that relate to
contemporary political debates.
A few examples of the
pattern: at Duke, the chair of the philosophy department was
asked about figures showing that, in humanities departments,
registered Democrats outnumbered registered Republicans by
almost 20-to-1. His response? “We try to hire the best,
smartest people available. If, as John Stuart Mill said,
stupid people are generally conservative, then there are lots
of conservatives we will never hire.” At St. Lawrence
University, a sociology professor lambasted the “Fascist,
Racist College Republicans” for not denouncing matters such as
“the Saddam s---” (the liberation of Iraq) and “economic
policies that favor rich, white f---s” (tax cuts). A
Connecticut College professor of romance languages recently
penned a New York Times op-ed complaining that since
her students seemed insufficiently opposed to the war in Iraq,
she would adjust her future syllabi to focus less on academic
matters and more on what she termed “wakeful political
literacy.”
These professors, and those
who similarly believe that their academic positions entail a
responsibility to teach “wakeful political literacy,” seem
unlikely to foster an environment tolerant of divergent
viewpoints. Ferreting out ideological bias in the classroom,
however, can be very difficult: the examples above
notwithstanding, few professors provide first-hand
testimony.
Outsiders can examine syllabi
to determine whether a professor seems more inclined to teach
his or her own views about contemporary political issues
rather than the subject matter of the course—but this option
is available only for those faculty members who post their
syllabi on-line. Or, as Daniel Tauber’s op-ed in the
Excelsior two weeks ago pointed out, occasionally
public documents from curricular programs can reveal an
unmistakable ideological bias. An example is Brooklyn’s own
“Arts of Democracy” project, an 11-course cluster that
purports to teach that “democracy” entails fidelity to a
multicultural political agenda.
In the end, however, students
themselves must work to create a campus that respects academic
freedom. A few organizations already exist to help. The
Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, a campus free
speech organization, has published guides on how to combat
attempts to squelch free exchange on campus.
Noindoctrination.org publishes student accounts of
classroom intolerance (after the website coordinator verifies
the submissions for accuracy). Two courses at Brooklyn have
received noindoctrination.org postings: descriptions of
both reveal a troubling degree of ideological bias in the
course content and pedagogy, with the accounts strengthened by
the fact that—in both instances—the professor in question
declined the website’s offer to post a response challenging
the student’s version of events.
Since September 2001, we’ve
heard a lot at Brooklyn about “diversity,” but the academic
administration has displayed little or no interest in
intellectual diversity. Indeed, in a September 2003 interview
with former Excelsior editor Yehuda Katz, the provost
expressed no concern with professors using in-class speech
codes—a tactic that has generated lawsuits at several
institutions (most recently the University of South Carolina)
and seems to violate the commitment to student academic
freedom outlined in the Bulletin.
Perhaps the establishment of
Students for Academic Freedom signals a new direction,
especially since Judaic Studies Department Chairperson Sara
Reguer has signed on as its faculty advisor. At least,
however, the organization can provide a resource to students
concerned about ideological bias in the classroom but
uncertain about how to proceed. Few of us—students or
faculty—would publicly defend the proposition that professors
should use their classroom to promote a specific ideological
agenda informed by their own personal viewpoint on current
political events. To the extent that Students for Academic
Freedom can bring instances of such abuse to general attention
and promote a climate in which such teaching methods are not
tolerated, the organization will help create a campus that
respects the principle of intellectual
tolerance. |
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