The Campaign for Academic Freedom · 15 August 2004
By Katherine Hutt Scott--Gannett News Service, 08/14/04
WASHINGTON -- When Ruth Malhotra told her college professor she planned to miss a class to attend a conservative political conference, the professor wasn't happy.
"You're just going to fail my class," she said the instructor told her.
Malhotra, a student at Georgia Institute of Technology, ultimately filed a grievance with the school, saying the professor used her public policy class to push her outspokenly liberal viewpoints on students.
"We're there to learn the foundations of policy, not the professors' personal platforms," said Malhotra, 20, of Atlanta.
Georgia Tech spokesman Bob Harty said school policy barred him from disclosing how Malhotra's grievance was decided, but he said many of the facts in the case are open to interpretation.
Malhotra is one of a growing number of conservative college students who are complaining that liberal professors are promoting their viewpoints in the classroom and creating a hostile atmosphere for students who favor a more right-wing perspective.
The trend has spawned a group called Students for Academic Freedom, which claims 135 chapters in colleges and universities and hosts a Web site that collects liberal-bias complaints from conservative students across the country.
Those complaints have struck a sympathetic chord with some conservative lawmakers in Congress.
They have proposed a measure that would encourage colleges to present "dissenting sources and viewpoints" in the classroom and to "promote intellectual pluralism" in selecting outside speakers and financing student activities.
The measure is part of reauthorizing legislation to provide billions in college grant and loan money for the next six years.
Republican Rep. Howard P. "Buck" McKeon of California, chairman of the House subcommittee in charge of the reauthorization bill, said the proposals are designed to send a message to liberal academic officials: "You're using the school in many cases to brainwash and not to educate."
College administrators counter that the legislation marks an unprecedented and unjustified attempt by Congress to control college curricula.
"We cannot have officials in Washington D.C. regulating the content of our classrooms," Rebecca Wasserman, president of the United States Student Association, told House lawmakers earlier this year.
The congressional language is based on an Academic Bill of Rights promoted by activist David Horowitz, a driving force behind the campus conservative movement. Horowitz has traveled the country for the past year asking Congress and state legislators to adopt his eight provisions, which he says are aimed at protecting political and intellectual diversity on campuses.
Horowitz said professors who use their position to promote liberal causes are shirking their duty to students.
"You have a responsibility to teach them and not to indoctrinate them," he said.
The language under consideration in Congress faces an uncertain future, but Horowitz's campaign is resonating among state legislators.
Language modeled on his proposals passed the Georgia state Senate earlier this year and has been introduced in California, Washington and Missouri. A state representative in Colorado withdrew similar legislation in March after the state's public colleges agreed to take steps to protect political diversity on their campuses.
Horowitz said many of the liberal professors who inject their partisan views into classroom discussions came to academia during the Vietnam era with the attitude that universities are political institutions.
His group, the Center for the Study of Popular Culture in Los Angeles, promotes its agenda with the phrase, "You can't get a good education if they're only telling you half the story."
Students for Academic Freedom, a division of the center founded a year ago, has posted on its Web site 150 complaints from conservative students alleging unfair treatment at liberal colleges and universities.
Mark Smith, director of government relations for the 45,000-member American Association of University Professors, said he's disturbed by some discrimination allegations from conservative students. But he said other allegations show the students involved don't understand intellectual activity.
"There's a difference between being discriminated against and being disagreed with," Smith said.
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