Students For Academic Freedom Forms on UT-Austin Campus · 25 July 2004
By Brendan Steinhauser--Contumacy
Last semester, I took a class on Arab-Israeli politics with government professor Clement Henry. Not only was the quality of instruction inadequate, but the presence of differing views was too. Dr. Henry provided the class with a list of overwhelmingly one-sided texts that were required reading for the course. And his lectures reflected almost verbatim the same ideas about the controversial and volatile situation in the Middle East. But Dr. Henry's attempt at political indoctrination was not complete without actually silencing a student who had a differing opinion. That student was me and the opinion concerned US foreign policy.
While challenging Dr. Henry's assertions about the illegality of the Iraq war, I must have made a valid point. In the middle of one of my sentences, he turned on a video which drowned out my opposing perspective. The entire class was shocked and could see my utter humiliation. All I could do was stop talking and wait for the end of the class to consider my options of dealing with this act of censorship.
Since The Young Conservatives of Texas was compiling a professor watchlist for these types of professors, I decided to add Dr. Clement Henry's name. I also filed an official complaint form with an organization that I had read about recently. It was a nationwide group calling itself Students for Academic Freedom. I then decided to build a local chapter of SAF right here in Austin, Texas to combat the abuses that myself and other students have faced. I am pleased to announce now the creation and development of the UT chapter of Students for Academic Freedom.
The nationwide group hopes to curb the trends of political indoctrination and disrespect for conservative and libertarian viewpoints. The movement is led by conservative writer David Horowitz and SAF national director Sara Dogan. There are over one hundred chapters across the country working to promote the most important type of diversity in academia: intellectual diversity. SAF hopes to use the radical left's language against it by promoting the "inclusion" and "respect" for all political thought. College administrators will be encouraged to voluntarily adopt the Academic Bill of Rights, written by Horowitz, making it official policy of their universities.
To address problems in the classroom that I described from my own experience the bill outlines the following principle: "Curricula and reading lists in the humanities and social sciences should reflect the uncertainty and unsettled character of all human knowledge in these areas by providing students with dissenting sources and viewpoints where appropriate. While teachers are and should be free to pursue their own findings and perspectives in presenting their views, they should consider and make their students aware of other viewpoints." The national chapter hopes to get versions of the bill of rights passed by student governments, state legislatures and the Congress. A House resolution by Representative Jack Kingston (R-Georgia) has already been filed and referred to a committee where it awaits further action.
The bill will also attempt to counter the overwhelmingly skewed number of liberal professors in academia. Since ratios of conservative to liberal professors averages around ten to one, SAF feels that it is important to make certain this is not due to intent on the part of faculty hiring and firing committees. The bill states that "Academic freedom and intellectual diversity are values indispensable to the American university...no political, ideological or religious orthodoxy will be imposed on professors and researchers through the hiring or tenure or termination process, or through ay other administrative means."
The bill of rights would also address the problem of campus criminals vandalizing racks of conservative publications. It states, "An environment conducive to the civil exchange of ideas being an essential component of a free university, the obstruction of invited campus speakers, destruction of campus literature or other effort to obstruct exchange will not be tolerated." This plank clearly outlines the commonly accepted ideal that one's free speech cannot drown out or prevent the free speech of someone else. There are certainly plenty of examples of this on the UT campus, including the obstruction of Henry Kissinger's plans to speak and the theft of issues and racks of Contumacy.
This chapter of SAF will also address other pertinent academic freedom violations on our campus. The recently released diversity task force report contains a number of free speech and freedom of expression restrictions that are antithetical to the purpose of a university: namely, the free exchange and debate of ideas. Obscure language about an honor code and honor council invokes Orwellian clichés that are certainly applicable. SAF will make official statements on the report, and will lobby individuals and groups in an effort to prevent some of the more egregious violations from being implemented. Speech codes are a pervasive form of censorship that have permeated the institution of higher education. Countless examples abound across the country and have been covered by publications such as Campus magazine and organizations like the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education. The Cato Institute recently published a book by David Bernstein entitled, You Can't Say That, which exposes the true reasons for speech codes as preventing the expression of "politically incorrect" language and concepts. Censorship of affirmative action bake sales at Southern Methodist, UC-Irvine and Washington prove that the motives of the campus thought police are to silence opposing views.
This chapter of Students for Academic Freedom will work alongside groups that share its interest in promoting the ideals of free speech, open political discourse and classrooms void of indoctrination. Our current main focus is on fighting aspects of the diversity task force report and collecting evidence of professor bias and abuse. We maintain complaint forms that students can use to document their experiences, and we will build a database that can be used as evidence in future legislative committee hearings. The forms are also located on the national website at http://www.studentsforacademicfreedom.org/comp/complaints_form.asp
I encourage all students who want to remedy the problems of political indoctrination, suppression of conservative viewpoints and old boys clubs of leftist professors to join the local chapter of SAF. If you have time constraints that prevent you from devoting much time for the organization, then the next best thing you can do is submit complaint forms to our national database. The left-wing assault on free speech and thought can only be checked by active students who stand up to the fascist policies of mind control.
Brendan Steinhauser is the media director of SAF-UT and the author of The Conservative Revolution: How to Win the Battle for College Campuses. This article originally appeared in the UT campus journal of politics and culture, Contumacy.
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