PrintMay/June 2007
We’ve been hearing more and more lately from the American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA). The organization is vying with David Horowitz to have its version of restrictive speech legislation introduced where Horowitz’s so-called academic bill of rights (ABOR) fails to fly.
With president Anne Neal as its lead spokesperson, ACTA has been selling a legislative or board policy alternative that has the stated goal of ensuring "intellectual diversity." As with the academic bill of rights, the model legislation relies on innocuous-sounding language, but is really an attempt to legislate the educational environment on college campuses.
So what is ACTA? Free Exchange on Campus has put together an eight-page backgrounder, which tells you about its founders Lynne Cheney and Joe Lieberman (who quickly disassociated himself from the group); its funding sources (the Bradley and Olin foundations) and some of its right-wing advisors ( Irving Kristol, William Bennett, Laurence Silberman, Ward Connerly and Candace de Russy). After you read it, you’ll see why free speech will be protected on your campus if you keep ACTA away from your legislature.
Indoctrinate U
Attendees at the AFT’s higher education conference in Portland last month found their jaws dropping when AFT vice president William Scheuerman screened a video trailer for Indoctrinate U. This new "documentary" purports to find evidence of an epidemic of liberal bias on American college campuses. It captures Michael Moore wannabe Evan Coyne Maloney traveling a college circuit to document "things we usually associate with the repressive regimes of North Korea, China, Cuba and the former Soviet Union." Some of his more provocative claims: Old-time segregationists would love higher education today, and colleges and universities are violating Title IX by not having men's studies departments.
Revisiting the Higher Ed Act
We hear that the 110th Congress plans to quickly pick up the ball on Higher Education Act (HEA) reauthorization, which languished in last session. Not that we minded SO much, since there was pesky academic-bill-of-rights language embedded in the original proposed Senate bill. This time around, the Senate, specifically the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee, will craft its bill before the House. In anticipation of that effort, the Free Exchange on Campus coalition sent letters to members of the HELP committee urging them to focus on the core mission of the Higher Ed Act—helping more students attend and succeed in college—and not to include language based on the so-called student bill of rights. Let's hope this Congress doesn't look to David Horowitz for education policy recommendations.
A Missouri blip
Last month, the Missouri House passed H.B. 213, the ACTA-inspired bill that mandates annual reporting to the coordinating board of higher education on issues of "intellectual diversity," including protecting the viewpoint that "the Bible is inerrant"--to quote from the bill. Rep. Jane Cunningham, 213’s sponsor, wants the good folks of Missouri to believe her bill is needed because of the experiences of many students. But the bill, known as the Emily Brooker Intellectual Diversity Act, is a response to an individual case. Perhaps Missouri legislators should listen to a broader group of students?
For example, the University of Missouri Intercampus Student Council issued a statement urging the Legislature not to take an "imprudent and hasty step to micromanage every public institute for higher education in the state of Missouri in response to a single incident that was properly corrected by established procedures already in place."
And a story in the Columbia Tribune reports that both University of Missouri Republican and Democratic student groups oppose the legislation.
Red states opt out
Elsewhere in the country, three "red states" have joined a growing list of states where the "academic bill of rights" and ACTA’s similar "intellectual diversity" legislation have failed to become law. In the Montana House, an ACTA-inspired intellectual diversity bill was defeated with bipartisan support, 57-43 (unfortunately its sponsor is recycling it in a changed format). In Texas, ABOR has permanently stalled after Sen. Jeff Wentworth (R-San Antonio) did not show up for a hearing of the Senate Subcommittee on Higher Education, where the bill would have been considered. And Georgia is the most recent state where such anti-academic freedom legislation failed to thrive.
