Don’t let the Academic Bill of Rights become law
in your state

A new intrusion of politics into the classroom comes in the form of state legislation entitled an “Academic Bill of Rights.” It is an Orwellian name for a bill whose aim is to overturn the First Amendment on college campuses, restricting freedoms of speech, religion and association that are as basic to democracy as academic freedom is to scholarship.

The conservative groups behind this legislation, which has been introduced in 15 states, say students and ideas need to be protected from a professoriate that, studies show, is overwhelmingly made up of registered Democrats. Thus, in an ironic conservative application of affirmative action principles, legislating intellectual diversity on campus has suddenly become a measurable goal. In Colorado, where the Academic Bill of Rights first surfaced, legislators asked university presidents for quotas on Democratic and Republican hires to bring more ideological balance to their institutions’ faculty.

The person behind the Academic Bill of Rights (ABOR) is David Horowitz, founder of the California-based Center for the Study of Popular Culture. He has claimed that professors behave as “political advocates in the classroom, express opinions in a partisan manner on controversial issues irrelevant to the academic subject, and even grade students in a manner designed to enforce their conformity to professorial prejudices.”

As an antidote, Horowitz wrote and is promulgating model legislation (see "What the bills say") that dictates how institutions can encourage a variety of political and religious beliefs in their hiring, curriculum and classroom management practices. Through a companion statement, the Student Bill of Rights, Horowitz is pushing colleges to adopt policies that protect students’ rights and establish stronger complaint and grievance procedures.

 On his own, Horowitz and his reactionary ideas are hardly taken seriously. But in this campaign, Horowitz has been picked up and supported by a well-established right-wing movement (see "The fuel behind the Academic Bill of Rights campaign").

 The bills are “very cleverly packaged with mom-and-apple-pie language,” says Larry Gold, AFT higher education director. “However, lying beneath the idea is an inaccurate and downright libelous view of higher education.”

For example, ABOR supporters say liberal orthodoxy, not scholarship, shapes most hiring practices at elite institutions. Professors holding politically different views are not hired or promoted, or, when hired, are isolated or disparaged. Conservative speakers are not welcome on campuses. ABOR proponents say students who do not hold liberal views are intimidated in the classroom and receive poor grades.

“These bills are based on the assumption that academics don’t behave professionally,” says William Scheuerman, AFT vice president and president of the United University Professions/ AFT at the State University of New York. “And they also sidestep the fact that institutions have procedures for students to challenge abusive faculty.

“[Horowitz’s] goal of ‘intellectual diversity’ directly contradicts the principle of ideological neutrality in the classroom, the bedrock of his Academic Bill of Rights,” Scheuerman noted in a Northeast Public Radio commentary he delivered in March. “If professors should keep their politics out of the classroom, as Horowitz argues, why should a dearth of Republicans in the classroom matter? It only matters if you’re a conservative who wants to use the classroom as a platform for preaching your conservative ideology, which is precisely what they want to do.”

Last summer, delegates to AFT’s biennial convention passed a resolution strongly opposing this legislation and urging members and affiliates to do the same. The union has prepared materials for affiliates and members that provides background information on the bills and talking points on why these measures should be defeated—for use in op-ed pieces, public discussions and visits to elected representatives. The materials and the resolution are posted on the AFT Web site, www.aft.org/topics/academic-freedom/index.htm.

Academic Bill of Rights advocates want to bring government onto the campus to impose an ideological litmus test on hiring, curriculum and teaching. This would have a chilling effect on scholarship, teaching and service, say unions, and on the very working conditions and environment of faculty and academic professionals.