The AFT has expressed concerns about a statement issued by higher education organizations in response to the conservative-sponsored Academic Bill of Rights now making the rounds in state legislatures.  The new statement, which the American Council on Education and others released June 23, is called "Statement on Academic Rights and Responsibilities." The AFT contends that it has the unfortunate effect of tacitly affirming the notion that local or federal government can interfere in academic matters.

In contrast, the AFT and its activists have taken the position that politicians and government officials should stay out of curriculum development and teaching on campus and avoid legislating "intellectual diversity" under any guise. They have asserted this view, with considerable credibility, at the state and federal level ever since the California-based Center for the Study of Popular Culture started pushing the Academic Bill of Rights (ABoR) in 2003.

ABoR is model legislation that dictates how institutions can encourage a variety of political and religious beliefs in their hiring, curriculum and classroom management practices.  A version of it is included in House Bill 609, which is proposed as part of the reauthorization of the Higher Education Act. 

The American Council on Education (ACE), the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) and 26 other higher education organizations issued their own statement  challenging the language of ABoR. Their statement generally affirms traditional academic principles, asserting, for example, that intellectual diversity is a matter to be defined and protected by educators on campus and that all ideas in the political spectrum do not need to be given equal weight in achieving educational goals.

The AFT is concerned that the ACE statement, however, will be viewed as alternative ABoR legislation. AFT  vice president Bill Scheuerman, who heads the 28,000-member AFT local, the United University Professions at the State University of New York, points out that promulgation of the ACE statement hands ABoR proponents the victory of "compromise" and, in their view, puts them a step closer to ensuring that the language stays in the final reauthorized  Higher Education Act with some semblance of a blessing from the higher education community.

In fact, the day the statement was distributed, Rep. John Boehner (R-Ohio), who chairs the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, declared in his own release that ACE's "consensus language" would be included when the committee takes up the Higher Education Act this summer. That release quotes David Horowitz, the  founder of Center for the Study of Popular Culture and author of ABoR, who says that the ACE statement is an admission on the part of colleges and universities that exclusion and harassment of conservatives on campus does exist.

"We favor getting rid of the provision altogether as a bad precedent for federal intrusion into academic decision making," says Scheuerman, who is also an AAUP member who disagrees with AAUP's support of the statement.

"The federal government should not be getting into this business," says Larry Gold, AFT higher education director. "The passage of any federal law would give a hunting license to conservative legislators to hold biased hearings around the country."

The AFT will continue to work at convincing legislators as well as educators that the government should keep out of academic  matters.  "When it comes to academic freedom," Scheuerman says, "the AFT will not compromise." [Barbara McKenna and Virginia Kelly]

July 6, 2005