Academic Freedom, Hate Mail And David Horowitz

Where there’s David Horowitz, there’s fire. On the controversial former liberal-turned-conservative’s web site, FrontPage magazine, you’ll find articles with names like Reparations Buffoons On the Washington Mall and Black Crime (In Your Face). Now he’s forcing leftist academics to explain why they suppress the viewpoints of conservatives students.

Horowitz is backing a group called Students for Academic Freedom, which exposes and publicizes leftist professors who allow their anti-American bias to creep into their lectures and assignments.

What a good time to be a conservative student! That they’re shedding a complacent image and using liberal tactics against liberals is refreshing. We all have our biases, but sometimes they must be controlled and subdued. If liberal professors refuse, they’ll have to explain why. Either way, their anti-Americanism will no longer remain unchallenged.

I’ll confess. I wouldn’t mind if more journalists exhibited strong pro-American sentiments in their writing. A conservative professor allowing aspects of his faith to intermingle with various teaching methods wouldn’t bother me. But I understand why it would bother the anti-American and the faithless. Academic freedom is necessary to protect students with different viewpoints. Because academia is dominated by the left, it’s the viewpoint of the “minority” that needs the most protection at present. From the Associated Press:

[A]cademic freedom guidelines have traditionally been cited to protect left-leaning students from punishment for disagreeing with teachers about such issues as American neutrality before World War II and U.S. involvement in Vietnam. Now, conservative students who support the liberation of Iraq are invoking those same guidelines.

To many professors, there’s a new and deeply troubling aspect to this latest chapter in the debate over academic freedom: students trying to dictate what they don’t want to be taught.

I don’t want to be “taught” that the greatest country in the world, where people are sneaking in by the millions and no one is trying to get out (except maybe a few deranged Bush-haters), is a racist, imperialist, warmongering cesspool of dead white men whose ideas have oppressed the rest of the world.

But that’s just me.

Some also fear teachers will shy away from sensitive topics, or fend off criticism by “balancing” their syllabuses with opposing viewpoints, even if they represent inferior scholarship.

“Faculty retrench. They are less willing to discuss contemporary problems and I think everyone loses out,” said Joe Losco, a professor of political science at Ball State University in Indiana who has supported two colleagues targeted for alleged bias. “It puts a chill in the air.”

Conservatives say a chill is in order.

That last line is a great one. And did you catch the part about presenting opposing viewpoints even when they represent inferior scholarship? They admit it! I’d venture to say that most politically correct junk theories represent inferior scholarship, Afrocentrism and “gay studies” (get real!) being examples.

College professors who claim leftist bias doesn’t affect their teaching are either liars or in need of rigorous remedial training. In one instance, a student objected to the Koran as required reading. Why was it mandatory? The Bible, the foundation of Western thought (individual liberty, equal justice, etc.) is not required reading. Why not? There’s no bias at work here?

Anti-American, anti-Western attitudes among academia will not change until more conservatives become professors. Conservative students must continue exposing and embarrassing college administrators and professors. For your edification, see Academia: The Last Liberal Refuge?

And liberal professors will just have to deal with it. Protected in his ivy-covered world of make-believe, one professor whined about receiving hate mail from people critical of his “peace studies” class. Horowitz said, “These people are such sissies. I get hate mail every single day. What can I do about it? It’s called the Internet.”

It’s called reigning in your biases, defending your arguments and taking it like a man, professor. Welcome to the real world.