Political Parties Set the Stage for Campus Debate · 14 February 2005
Liberal professors butt heads with conservative students
By Rion A. Scott--Press & Sun-Bulletin--02/12/05
Periodically, Ali Mazrui's liberal views will get him into trouble.
Lectures critiquing American foreign policy and Israel just before and after the start of the Iraq war brought a crowd of protesting students to his office door. Some waved signs that labeled the Binghamton University professor a "cancer" to the school.
During his courses on terrorism and war at the time, students he terms "militant supporters of Israel" would engage in angry exchanges with Mazrui, labeling him anti-Semitic.
"It got a bit ugly, but it was all verbal," said Mazrui, BU's Albert Schweitzer Professor in the Humanities and director of the Institute of Global Cultural Studies. "Nobody was throwing anything."
Traditionally, clashes over academic freedom have pitted politicians or administrators against instructors who want to express their opinions and teach as they saw fit. But increasingly, it's students who are invoking academic freedom, claiming biased professors are violating their right to a classroom free from indoctrination.
Louis Leonini, a BU senior and editor of the Binghamton Review, a conservative student newspaper, said the school's liberal dominance is palpable. A double major in Philosophy, politics and law, and history, he said he once took a Japanese history class in which the professor spoke more about the Iraq war than Japan. Leonini said he might have done better on assignments in that class if he had gone along with the professor's views.
"A true liberal arts education cannot be reached without a fostering of the exchange of ideas," the 21-year-old Staten Island resident said.
Leonini said a conservative counter-culture is starting to bring a balance to academia. There are 16 people on the staff of Leonini's monthly conservative newspaper, more than last year.
In many ways, the trend echoes past campus conflicts but turns them around. Once, it was liberal campus activists who cited the importance of "diversity" in pressing their agendas for curriculum change. Now, conservatives have adopted much of the same language in calling for a greater openness to their views.
Similarly, academic 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, those same guidelines are being invoked by conservative students who support the war in Iraq.
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.
"Even the most contentious or disaffected of students in the '60s or early '70s never really pressed this kind of issue," said Robert O'Neil, former president of the University of Virginia and now director of the Thomas Jefferson Center for the Protection of Free Expression.
Those behind the trend call it an antidote to the overwhelming liberal dominance of university faculties. But many educators, while agreeing students should never feel bullied, worry that they just want to avoid exposure to ideas that challenge their core beliefs -- an essential part of education.
Mazrui said he is often troubled by protests over professors' beliefs. He said he knows professors who watch what they say to preserve their jobs.
"I could understand with the younger professors who aren't more established, it could be harder to be themselves," he said. "I have colleagues who are more cautious about what they say in classrooms and this is very bad for universities."
A conservative think tank found that of Binghamton University professors questioned about their beliefs, liberals outnumbered conservatives 35 to one, according to a 2002 American Enterprise study quoted in a recent Boston Globe column.
A recent study by Santa Clara University researcher Daniel Klein estimated that among social science and humanities faculty members nationwide, Democrats outnumber Republicans by at least seven to one; in some fields, it's as high as 30 to one.
Many teachers insist personal politics don't affect teaching. But in a recent survey of students at 50 top schools by the American Council of Trustees and Alumni, a group that has argued there is too little intellectual diversity on campuses, 49 percent reported that at least some professors frequently commented on politics in class even if it was outside the subject matter.
Thirty-one percent said they felt there were some courses in which they needed to agree with a professor's political or social views to get a good grade.
A self-described conservative, BU sophomore James Corcoran of Long Island has yet to find a professor with conservative views. However, the chemistry major said some English and sociology professors he had weren't afraid to share liberal views, even if they were off topic.
Leading the conservative movement is the group Students for Academic Freedom, with chapters on 135 campuses and close ties to David Horowitz, a one-time liberal campus activist turned conservative commentator. The group posts student complaints on its Web site about alleged episodes of grading bias and unbalanced, anti-American propaganda by professors often in classes, such as literature, in which it's off-topic.
The Associated Press contributed to this story.
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