Students For Academic Freedom

What Has Happened to American Liberals? · 15 September 2003

by David Horowitz

American liberals were once known for supporting intellectual liberty, academic freedom, and the right to express one's views without being tarred and feathered through guilt-by-association. Liberals' great villains were businessmen Babbitts who wanted to interfere with the free exchange of ideas at the universities they funded and political McCarthyites who wanted to stifle opinions of professors they found objectionable.

But now it seems academic freedom and intellectual liberty are "conservative" issues and a governor who supports them is "pandering to the far-right crowd." At least that is what the Denver Post has charged in a remarkable lead editorial ("Absurdity in Higher Ed) appearing in its September 13th edition. Joining liberal columnists at the Denver Rocky Mountain News, the Boulder Daily Camera and its own editorial cartoonist, the Post has ferociously weighed in on one side of a public debate in Colorado over The Academic Bill of Rights - a measure which Governor Bill Owens and Senate leader John Andrews have been discussing as a suggested remedy for observed abuses in the academic system. As proposed, this measure would protect professors of all political persuasions - left and right - from being fired or hired on the basis of their political views.

According to the Post: "The flap began in January, when Gov. Bill Owens told KOA-Radio listeners that far too many political science professors were liberal lefties. Since then, he and other GOP lawmakers have met with David Horowitz, the conservative leader of Academic Freedom, which pushes for political diversity in academic hires. Horowitz, for his part, says his bill of rights has nothing to do with quotas."

In fact, I do say that. But so does the Academic Bill of Rights. Its provisions expressly prohibit quotas or even potential "affirmative action" attempts to provide political balance in hiring. You cannot impose quotas or promote balance under the provisions of a bill that says in so many words: "No faculty shall be hired or fired or denied promotion or tenure on the basis of his or her political or religious beliefs." (Text available at www.studentsforacademicfreedom.org.)

Could anything be clearer? Yet, in its editorial, the Denver Post ignores the plain meaning of these words in order to accuse the Governor and the Republican Party of promoting the Academic Bill of Rights as a means to stack university faculties with Republicans: "The same party that's been squawking over race-based college admissions now apparently wants universities to check voter-registration rolls when hiring faculty to ensure more conservatives are added to the ranks."

This is true "absurdity in higher ed." The Republican Party and conservatives want no such thing, nor is there a shred of evidence to suggest that they do. In mentioning "voter-registration rolls," the Post editorial is here referring to a report issued by the Center for the Study of Popular Culture which showed that 94% of the faculty at Colorado University (Boulder) whose political affiliation the Center was able to identify were registered Democrats as were 98% of the faculty of Denver University. These statistics were offered by the Center to demonstrate a prima facie case that there is political bias in the hiring process at these schools. At no time did we suggest that this process was a good thing or that its bias should be reversed. We are unalterably opposed to hiring professors on the basis of their political views, which is why we have proposed the Academic Bill of Rights.

So the real issue is this: Are liberals in the state of Colorado willing to endorse an Academic Bill of Rights that guarantees professors the right to be hired without regard for their political beliefs and students the right to have access to a diversity of views, or are liberals going to persist in these efforts to thwart a measure that would guarantee the principles of academic freedom?

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