This is a cross-post from
AFL-CIO Now.
Sen. Robert Taft was no friend of working families. As author of the retrograde 1947 Taft-Hartley bill, Taft hamstrung the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) passed in the Franklin D. Roosevelt administration. The Taft-Hartley law added so many restrictions and qualifications to the NLRA that today, fewer people can exercise their freedom to form unions than they could in the 1930s and early 1940s.
But even Taft--who was proud of his nickname, Mr. Republican--believed in free speech.
A belief that people such as David Horowitz are sorely lacking.
Back in the mid-century when Taft was approached by his former classmates from Yale to support efforts to limit free speech on campus, Taft refused. To Taft, free speech was core to his conservatism.
But not so for Horowitz, who's making a career out of trying to kill free speech on the nation's college campuses. Horowitz has pushed for introduction of the so-called "Academic Bill of Rights" (ABOR), in 24 states. If adopted, ABOR would limit the speech of college and university professors.
The cover of a book Horowitz recently edited, The Professors: The 101 Most Dangerous Academics in America, sums up his thoughts on our nation's scholars:
Terrorists, racists and communists--you know them as The Professors.
Just as Joe McCarthy--whom even Taft avoided when sharing time with him in the Senate--Horowitz has a blacklist. His includes 101 professors.
Their crimes? Raising concerns about the effect on news by the corporate-owned media.
Practicing Islam.
Questioning immigration policies.
Or being a founding member of La Raza Unida, an organization dedicated to the equal treatment of Latinos.
Horowitz is a familiar breed. A liberal Marxist in his youth, he spent his midlife crisis doing a reactionary about-face. Now, as editor of FrontPage Magazine, Horowitz looks for Communists in every classroom (a quaint idea, that--When was the last time anyone admitted to being a Communist with a straight face?).
Still, Horowitz has stirred up impressionable young students, making them feel aggrieved by the give-and-take forum of democratic academia and incited groups such as an independent association of University of California-Los Angeles alumni. In January, the Bruin Alumni Association (BAA) said it would pay students up to $100 to report UCLA professors expressing liberal views, in their words, "abusive, one-sided or off-topic classroom behavior."
After protests by faculty groups--including the California Federation of Teachers/AFT, the university and even a rival conservative group--BAA backed off its offer of remuneration but not the appeal for students to serve as informants on their professors.
What's the Bruin's beef? Professors who "can't stop talking about President Bush, Howard Dean, the War in Iraq...or any other ideological issue." In fact, universities give students on nearly every campus in the United States a formal channel to complain if they feel their teachers are being inappropriate in the classroom. Complaints are rare.
A coalition of student, faculty and civil liberty groups called "Free Exchange on Campus[A1] "--which includes AFT and the National Education Association--is condemning the blacklist and bringing to light measures in the Academic Bill of Rights that invite unnecessary and inappropriate government interference in academic institutions and impose an ideological litmus test on hiring, curriculum and teaching.
Last week, union leaders at the AFL-CIO Executive Council denounced all efforts to stifle campus speech, stating that ABOR, and its cousin, the Student Bill of Rights, represent "an unacceptable infringement on free speech and an unwarranted intervention of government into academic decision making."
Much of what Horowitz traffics in are downright lies.
For instance, the idea that conservative students are cowed and mistreated is based largely on unsubstantiated stories posted on some websites without the faculty members in question being asked their views of the situation.
As AFT says:
The picture of higher education painted by the people pushing for this legislation--one in which faculty members are all left-wingers who don't care about teaching their students, only in indoctrinating them--is as incorrect as it is insulting. America's colleges and universities are renowned as the world's best--the most diverse, challenging and successful by every reasonable measure. Higher education faculty members are trained professionals who bring a great variety of viewpoints based on their disciplinary knowledge to the classroom.
AFT busts other myths pushed by types like Horowitz. Check it out.