Students For Academic Freedom

California State Senator Introduces ABOR as SB 1335 · 08 April 2004

Wade Teasdale
April 8, 2004
(916) 445-3731

MORROW OPENS NEW CALIFORNIA FRONT IN 'REVOLUTIONARY WAR' FOR ACADEMIC FREEDOM IN AMERICA

Sacramento- Stating that he is opening a new front in the war for academic freedom, California State Senator Bill Morrow (R-Oceanside) today announced he is authoring Senate Bill 1335, a legislative "Academic Bill of Rights" designed to protect students and promote learning in California's public universities and colleges.

The Republican legislator, who represents northern San Diego and southern Orange counties, said, "Our universities and colleges must embody certain American principles of learning. Free inquiry and free speech within the academic community are indispensable to the pursuit of truth, learning to think critically, and developing intellectual integrity. Indeed, you can almost present it as a mathematical formula: Honest Pursuit of Truth + Intellectual Diversity = Healthy Democracy."

" Our children are systematically being denied a full education on too many campuses," said Morrow.
" They are not exposed to the diversity of social, economic, historical and political perspectives that characterizes the world they will enter upon graduation. We're not adequately preparing our young people for reality."

The senator added, "Instead, too many campuses sanction policies and behaviors that destroy information flow and honest debate. We see public humiliation and harassment of students who insist on thinking for themselves. Theft and destruction of student newspapers. Organized demonstrations against and shouting down of visiting speakers who present alternative points of views. Reluctance to hire or grant tenure to professors who promote intellectual diversity. We're sliding into a medieval 'Dark Age' mentality that is actively hostile toward truth, learning and free speech."
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Senate Bill 1335 would implement several affirmative principles that protect the academic freedom of students and faculty. The legislation would direct the California State University system and California Community Colleges to adopt the safeguards. SB 1335 would recommend voluntary adoption by the Board of Regents of the more autonomous University of California system. The principles include:

• • Students shall be graded solely on the basis of their reasoned answers and appropriate knowledge of the areas studied, not on the basis of their political and religious views.
• • Curricula and reading lists in the humanities and social sciences shall respect the broad pursuit of truth by providing dissenting sources and viewpoints and welcoming a diversity of approaches.
• • Faculty shall expose students to the spectrum of significant scholarly viewpoints on the subjects examined in their courses and not use the courses as platforms for the purpose of ideological, religious or anti-religious indoctrination.
• • Selection of visiting speakers, allocation of speaker program funds, and related activities shall observe the principles of academic freedom and intellectual pluralism.
• • Faculty shall be hired, fired, promoted and granted tenure on the basis of their competence and appropriate knowledge in their disciplines and not on the basis of their personal political or religious beliefs.
• • Faculty shall not be excluded from tenure, search and hiring committees on the basis of their personal political or religious beliefs.
• • Academic institutions and professional societies shall maintain a posture of organizational neutrality with respect to the substantive disagreements that divide researchers on questions inside or outside their fields of inquiry.

Morrow added, "We create laws to protect workers from hostile work environments, yet we don't protect our young college students from hostile learning environments. We protect them from sexual harassment, but not from intellectual harassment. Schools, colleges and universities should be safe houses where students can feel comfortable opening their minds, ears and mouths in pursuit of a full education."

The senator concluded, "It is inherently anti-democratic and inordinately dangerous to muzzle free speech in a nation that has a representative form of government. We need to honor the timeless principles of the academy and fully respect the First Amendment to the United States Constitution."

SB 1335 is scheduled to be heard in the Senate Education Committee on the morning of Wednesday, April 21, 2004.

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