The head of the
American Council of Trustees and Alumni has
penned a letter in today's
Boston Globe claiming widespread liberal bias in the Academy. Since I make my living as a college professor, this debate fascinates me.
Liberal bias is defined by ACTA (founded by, among others, Lynne Cheney and Joe Lieberman - if you live in CT, vote Lamont tomorrow!) as not being biased toward conservatives. How many Ward Churchills? Who cares? I have problems with Churchill because his research is shoddy, but one crank shouldn't be enough to tar an entire profession.
I wonder if they're equally opposed to the pro-Capitalism/conservative bias of our business schools. No, they just pick some obscure assistant professor of Dinosaur Husbandry that no one outside of the field has ever heard of and promote that as The Symbol Of All Modern Academia.
ACTA (and its sister groups and folks like David Horowitz - now THERE'S an unpleasant soul) are determine to erode public higher education even further. I saw this in my days in Ohio. The UC Board of Trustees was composed primarily of big donors to the Governor's campaign who wanted free football and basketball tickets, with the occasional conservative ideologue thrown in (Joanie Herschede, after some lengthy and tense but finally-settled contract negotiations, proposed closing every department that didn't turn a profit or promote conservative values, because that should be the raison d'être of higher education).
To my mind, this is symptomatic of the right-wing belief that all government is bad. Gov. Mitch Daniels (R-Not My Man) of Indiana is privatizing the Indiana Toll Road, and the same idea is being thrown around in Ohio. Ideologues have been going after public education for decades. They know that a decent infrastructure and good schools level the playing field, and that's the last thing they want. They're the unholy love children of Alexander Hamilton and Ayn Rand (shudder).
WF