THE UNITED States House of Representatives is scheduled later this term to consider authorizing a so-called "Academic Bill of Rights," a bill that the creators believe will force additional amounts of time and funding to be spent in universities to represent "pluralism." Additionally, the bill would have professors appeal to a wide variety of methodologies among differing viewpoints, according to the Students for Academic Freedom Web site. In reality, what this bill would create is a de facto political quota in which highly qualified professors and speakers, within the University as well as across the nation, will be turned down solely because of their political beliefs, in favor for potentially less qualified conservative counterparts.
The primary goal of the Academic Bill of Rights is to diminish what conservatives believe is a liberal stronghold within academia, and to create a more conservative campus by establishing rules limiting funding and requiring more conservative commentary. What groups such as Students for Academic Freedom believe is that by passing the bill, conservative professors and speakers over time will establish an academic base within universities while limiting what they believe is a "one-sided" debate in the university setting.
The bill incorporates eight main goals. One of the most controversial is a requirement -- admittedly without a clear enforcement mechanism -- that schools provide more funding for visiting speakers and professors with differing viewpoints. There are many fields where most experts subscribe to the same single political ideology, and it would be a waste of resources to unevenly divide resources for a smaller group with a different ideology over a larger one.
Most qualified social sciences and anthropology professors happen to be left-wing in their political beliefs. However, to believe that professors discriminate on the subject of political beliefs is unfounded and demeaning. Additionally, most colleges critique and rate their professors; any blatant favoring of one political ideology over another would be strongly criticized by not only the academic community, but the students and the general public as well. Politics Prof. William Quandt, who has been targeted by the same cadre of conservative activists in the past, wrote in an e-mail that "If a student has a problem, there are procedures in place to write a grievance. This bill would add nothing to this, but might convince some people not to pursue an academic career out of concern for growing regulation of academic freedom."
Quandt, like many other professors who oppose this bill, believes that the First Amendment and colleges' own regulations already address the issues covered by the Academic Bill of Rights. The bill would have no initial consequence, but over time could intimidate professors to allocate more time within the classroom to promote beliefs that they do not think are correct. In essence, the government would be telling professors what they should teach.
There is both a strong presence of a range of political ideologies within most universities. Our University has a strong University Democrat and College Republican presence, and both groups are primarily devoted to swaying people to their particular ideology. There are multiple chances for University students to hear viewpoints from all parts of the political spectrum, as the University hosts both conservative and liberal speakers on a wide variety of issues. Many of the most well-known conservative leaders have come from predominantly liberal schools, such as Harvard or Yale, because of those leaders' ability to personally evaluate ideas taught within the college.
David Horowitz, the executive director of Students for Academic Freedom and self-proclaimed "hot-button conservative," described to The Cavalier Daily in a News article last week that the aim of this bill would be to make classrooms more "professional." However, in reality, the professional world is much more biased than any teachings within the University.
The Academic Bill of Rights, in essence, would create a new era of ideological affirmative action. Horowitz himself admitted that he was not discriminated against by any of his professors while an open Marxist in Columbia University, and admitted that "If the University of Virginia lives up to its own precepts, there will be no legislation." It would be foolish to lower a college's standards just to create a narrow sense of ideological "diversity" -- an intellectual quota would move the academic community in the wrong direction. Sometimes the most "balanced" view is not the correct view, and it should be professors, not politicians, who decide how to convey their message to the classroom.
Adam Silverberg is a Cavalier Daily Viewpoint writer.
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