I wrote the following editorial for my school newspaper in response to criticism about my local chapter of Students for Academic Freedom
I understand opponents of the so-called Academic Freedom movement. In many cases, they are honest, good teachers, who feel that the attacks could conceivable be thrown their way, even if `academic freedom' proponents don't target them now.
In other cases, they are lazy professors who have been teaching a certain way for years, have tenure, receive acceptable, if mediocre teacher evaluations, and have no desire to see a student movement derail their teaching style.
In a small minority of cases, they are demagogues who have used the classroom as a pulpit for so long, they have forgotten that liberalism came about to dismantle the unilateral power of the pulpit.
In any case, I would like to devote some time, first, to the argument of the Students for Academic Freedom, and then, to opponents of their point of view. By way of disclosure, I voted for the Defense of Academic Freedom Act on the Student Government Assembly.
Academic freedom has long been defined as the right of professors to engage in political speech in the classroom and in the Academy without fear of retribution. To SAF, academic freedom is expanded to "protecting the intellectual independence of professors, researchers and students in the pursuit of knowledge and the expression of ideas from interference by legislators or authorities within the institution itself."
The controversial section of that passage is the inclusion of the term `students.' Remove that word, and all opponents of SAF would embrace the definition.
In principle, the national academic freeom movement, as well as Brooklyn College's independent group, advocates for students who argue that they are often subjected to classes in which only one point of view is promoted to the exclusion of others.
Their argument is most salient when applied to required courses, like Core 3, which represents most students' only contact with sociology and political science in the academic sense.
Given its importance in this respect, it's probably not too much to ask that students who take the course be exposed to points of view that are different from the professor's own.
Political science professors often point to vigorous debates they had with their own deeply biased professors as evidence of a biased education gone right. Those professors, unfortunately, are arguing from a personal experience that simply does not match the experience of most students. For a professor of political science, who took numerous courses in political science in undergraduate and graduate work, the occasional demagogue would surely provide an opportunity for the growing political scientist to sharpen his views.
On the other hand, accounting, biology, and English students often only take one course in political science. It is important that those students be exposed to as many ideas as possible. Many students have yet to form any political opinion, and providing them with only one point of view because of personal experience is unfair to those students.
Professors often argue that students are not so stupid as to need to be protected by the academic freedom crowd. Again, this is the accidental belief that students are as the professors are. Unfortunately, many students have not been exposed to any sort of political science until college, and will not, again, after their own short burst in Core 3. Those students are not stupid, but they are human.
As many sociologists and political scientists know, human beings are very susceptible to appeals to authority, and authority figures who use appeals to authority are very effective.
The trap many good-hearted professors fall into at this point is to say, "Wait a minute! I don't do that. And I know my colleagues. They wouldn't do that either. You're just making it all up."
But the unfortunate truth is that power often corrupts. And it's extremely tempting, as a professor who feels strongly about a particular subject, and sees a group of impressionable students, to educate them about the "truth."
Which is, perhaps, the larger problem here. Biased professors rarely see the one-sided propoganda they teach as debatable. Professors who talk about George W. Bush as `an idiot,' or `an extreme right-winger,' or even `wrong,' don't see those characterizations as debatable. They see them as truth. And what's wrong with providing students with true facts about our nation's leader? To take it further, many professors believe that Fahrenheit 9/11 is objectively true. That's why at least one English professor cancelled the regular lecture, about English, and showed all of his students that movie right before last year's election.
But wait. Isn't it only fair that students, who have been indoctrinated all their lives by right-wing capitalist propoganda, hear the other side? Even if it's not balanced?
First off, that very argument betrays bias. Second of all, there's no need for that kind of `education' to take place in an English class. Professors of English are no more qualified to talk about the political ramifications of the war in Iraq than your barber is. If your barber dispensed with cutting your hair the week before the election to give you a lecture on the war in Iraq, no matter how reasoned, and no matter how often you'd been subjected to `capitalist' propoganda, you'd promptly demand your money back.
On the subject of political scientists, however, who are well-qualified to discuss the material in question, I have no problem with such professors discussing whatever they must in Special Topics courses or other upper-level classes.
I do have a problem with taking a lower-level class, presumably to gain exposure to some sort of knowledge, and instead am treated to the bald assertions of the professor, treated as fact.
The reason so much attention has been placed on Core 3 is because it is often students' only exposure to political science, and it is almost always their first. Why not open students' minds to the various ideas that are possible.
The arguments of those who defend one-sided teaching may sound good to those defenders, but what's the good argument against talking about Locke and the Federalist Papers in a fashion that doesn't automatically cause students to hate them.
What's wrong with leaving open the possibility that our founding fathers actually believed in freedom and democracy, and weren't simply using those terms to protect the aristocracy?
What's wrong with discussing topics of political science, at least sometimes, not as though it was solely a study of race and gender?
As a student, I'm better off for having been exposed to those ideas, but am saddened that I have not learned of the alternatives.
Some background: I am a member of my college's Student Government, where we passed a (fairly weak, toothless) "Defense of Academic Freedom Act." This was at the exhortation of (but not sponsored by) the local chapter of Students for Academic Freedom (who are only marginally affiliated with David Horowitz).
Last year's SG election focused, to some degree, on the frustrations of many conservative students (in this liberal Brooklyn, NY college) that they were not being exposed to the entire gamut of ideas in the classroom. Specifically, these studenys targeted Core 3, the college's required politics course, as "Marxism 101."
I wrote this editorial in response to an editorial by a professor who co-edited the "Core 3" reader that was highly critical of the "Defense of Academic Freedom Act."
One final piece of background: this article was the weekly edition of my "Democratic Solutions" column, which has included attacks on the Bush social security plan, a plea for free tuition in the City University of New York, and several other "liberal" ideas.