[The Montana Professor 17.1, Fall 2006 <http://mtprof.msun.edu>]
Kermit L. Hall (deceased)
President and Professor of History
SUNY at Albany
"I encourage [students] to use the language that the left has deployed so effectively on behalf of its own agendas," writes David Horowitz, the president of the California-based Center for the Study of Popular Culture and the chief architect of the much-debated Academic Bill of Rights. "Radical professors have created a 'hostile learning environment' for conservative students," Horowitz continues, and "[t]here is a lack of 'intellectual diversity' on college faculties and in academic classrooms. The conservative viewpoint is 'under-represented' in the curriculum and on its reading lists. The university should be an 'inclusive' and intellectually 'diverse' community." The solution, according to Horowitz, is for universities to engage in a kind of affirmative action for the right, making sure that persons of conservative views are brought into the academic tent and that courses are taught in a way that provide "balance" among competing views.
Horowitz's campaign for change in the academy has drawn the attention of the higher education establishment, in part because the Academic Bill of Rights has found traction among conservative politicians and university trustees. Anne D. Neal, the head of the American Council of Trustees and Alumni, insists that trustees should make sure that "all faculty...present points of view other than their own in a balanced way" and that their institutions do not permit "political discrimination" in either the classroom or tenure committees. And, for good measure, she suggests that such monitoring be made available to the public.
In June 2005 the higher education establishment responded to these developments. The American Council on Education and twenty-seven other higher education organizations issued a "Statement on Academic Rights and Responsibilities." The signatories to this manifesto included the National Association for State University and Land Grant Colleges, the American Association of University Professors, and the National Collegiate Athletic Association. The "Statement" came after several months of deliberation inside and among the various organizations, and those deliberations were in turn a response to the supposed threat posed by the political right in general and Horowitz in particular. While Horowitz's name does not appear in either the "Statement" or in the press materials that accompanied its release, he, Neal and others were clearly driving developments. The actions of ACE and the other organizations stemmed directly from an acute political awareness that Horowitz's efforts were generating not only some support on campuses but that a few state and federal politicians had found a convenient political horse to mount in an attack on universities, especially tax-payer supported public institutions. In more than a dozen states legislation had been proposed to adopt the Bill of Rights and similar measures appeared in Congress as part of the negotiations to re-authorize the Higher Education Act.
The leadership of these higher education institutions and their governing boards did what they had to do: issue a statement indicating that they, too, supported intellectual diversity in teaching and learning. The response from Horowitz was predictably positive and to some extent mocking, since those who now tried to placate him and his political allies had once dismissed both as nothing more than troublesome right-wing ideologues. He praised the college associations for issuing the statement. "This is the first time," he was quoted as saying, "the door has opened to a conversation." Efforts in Congress to adopt the Academic Bill of Rights as part of the re-authorization have faded, as they have in the states. There is little likelihood that it will become part of federal law. Assuming that the "threat" posed by Horowitz was in fact serious, then ACE and the others have rung up a political victory.
Exactly what that "victory" has purchased, however, remains uncertain. Horowitz and his supporters seem unlikely to withdraw from the field. Will ACE or one of the other signatory groups to the "Statement" now invite Horowitz to one of its annual meetings where the "conversation" might be pursued more fully? Or, will we be back to business as usual? And should we be back to business as usual?
Horowitz's Bill of Rights and the "Statement" do have real value since they ultimately address, while never completely engaging, the important issue of the independence of higher education in the face of growing governmental intrusion. Both are likely to strike anyone who follows the course of international higher education as oddly provincial and, to some extent, beside the point. That is because both ignore the current existing strengths of U.S. higher education on the very issue that they implicate--the independence of American higher education. Students of human and intellectual rights constantly remind us of the importance of higher education in maintaining a free society and the necessity of its independence as a pre-condition for so doing. In many places in the world that independence is in question. As universities seek greater support from governments, they run the risk of greater political control and fuller public accountability. It is an old issue, of course. How much can the people who created and pay for the system in the first place have to say about what it does to provide educational services to them?
The answer seems to be, "more-and-more." Take the dramatic surge in the costs of public higher education around the world. Rising rates of tuition, for example, are not unique to the United States. But everywhere there is a trade-off between what is given to higher education and what is expected of it, even in places where one might suppose that such trade-offs were not likely to happen.
Australian universities offer an interesting comparison. They have achieved in the past three years a new burst of funding support, giving cash-strapped institutions badly needed financial resources. With the money have come new demands, however. While grosser attempts to provide the Australian higher education bureaucracy the power to deny funding to any institution based on specific courses and course types went down to defeat, the opportunity to intrude more directly on these institutions has grown. New legislation allows the minister to deny commonwealth funding support to students in specific courses and leaves such determinations open to parliamentary review. And these new practices are in a nation with a relatively strong record of support for academic freedom.
The Australian example is instructive in another way. That nation's education minister stated that the government would look seriously at so-called "cappuccino courses" that would not be acceptable for funding. But even more important, American and Australian governments present their public universities with much the same question: how to be of the world of market forces without being entirely in that world. We want universities to respond to market forces in ways that will produce useful research and job-ready students. At the same time, government expects public universities to look to other, private sources for funding without relinquishing governmental control.
This tug-of-war between governments and universities is not unique either to Australia or to the United States. The case can be made that Australia is better off than its immediate neighbor, New Zealand. Government authorities in New Zealand have a substantial say in what is taught and by whom. Authorities there require all publicly funded universities to develop a charter, in consultation with stakeholders, which provides a description of its mission and role and a profile containing information about its academic programs and activities. These will be assessed for their strategic relevance to the government's education priorities, and since 2005 the government has reserved the right to withhold funding for activities that are poorly aligned or that represent unnecessary duplication.
We in the U.S. like to think of ourselves as paragons of academic freedom, but the situation is not so clear cut, as Horowitz points out. American higher education is hardly free to do as it wishes and those who work in it are hardly immune from the tides of politics. Almost all American public universities are funded on a year-to-year basis through unstable state budgets and governed by boards often composed of political appointees who exercise control over an institution's mission and academic program. In some states, universities live with a range of more profound, and in some instances bizarre, legislated controls. These range from rational mechanisms for steering the system of higher education, to somewhat arbitrary, historical, or ideologically driven interventions. In Colorado, for example, until recently the General Assembly defined the distinctive missions of each campus of the publicly funded universities, including the qualifications of students to be admitted and the fields of study that each university has exclusive rights to offer, or must offer by government mandate. In Virginia, the State Council of Higher Education must approve all new academic programs and can discontinue any "non-productive" or duplicated academic program. All publicly funded colleges and universities in Arkansas are required to "give instructions in the essentials of the United States Constitution, including the study of and devotion to American institutions and ideals," and students are ineligible for a degree unless they have passed a course in American history or civil government. Two years ago, for the first time, Congress began to require that all institutions of higher learning that receive federal funds must present programs to celebrate Constitution Day. California requires universities to develop a plan for integrating instruction in business ethics into their business programs. Texas has recently ruled that universities must provide equal admissions treatment to students with a non-traditional secondary education undertaken in non-accredited, including home, settings. In Florida, the legislature requires universities, community colleges, and schools to "provide articulated programs so that students can proceed toward their educational objectives as rapidly as their circumstances permit." In Washington and Utah, recent legislation mandates that universities and community and technical colleges develop a system of articulation based on student competencies, rather than the accumulation of credit.
And these actions can have re-distributive economic consequences. While most states, faced with tight budgets, have been willing to let institutions raise tuition to substitute for state support, there are often limits and conditions. In Washington, for example, universities must direct 10 per cent of all revenues raised as a result of graduate tuition increases towards assisting needy low and middle-income resident graduate students.
The constitutions of several states insist on the independence of the higher education establishment. Thus, the California constitution states that "the university shall be entirely independent of all political and sectarian influence and kept free there from in the appointment of its regents and in the administration of its affairs." Yet 18 of the 26 members of the board of regents of the University of California are required to be appointed by the governor for 12-year terms.
The point is that the independence of American higher education is not absolute, but is, in comparative terms, very significant. The ACE Statement's implied suggestion that what Horowitz's effort is doing in seeking a "balance" in the academy is wrong is simply not true. It happens every year around budget time. Public universities have become masters at splitting the difference between their institutional needs and public demands. Most find themselves, as a result, in what amounts to a Catch-22. The more university leaders succeed in convincing politicians and the general public that education is central to economic development and social well being, the more governments will feel justified to intervene to make sure that those goals are realized. Public policy, then, is like cholesterol--good and bad.
I think it is fair to say that the underlying issues posed by the struggle between ACE and its partners and Horowitz are not about intellectual diversity as much as both sides would like to so anoint them. Their argument, instead, is over another, related, and more important question: how independent should public universities be of the political forces that created them in the first place? When framed around this question and viewed in a comparative perspective with the developing world, the debate seems self-absorbed, narrow, and close to being beside the point.
American public higher education is hardly alone in navigating increasingly uncertain political seas. But difficulty does not mean danger; we should keep the challenge presented by Horowitz in perspective. The distinction is important, because the picture in much of the rest of the world is far less encouraging when it comes to political intervention with universities. A recent National Tertiary Education Union investigation, commissioned by UNESCO and the International Labor Organization, found multiple breaches of UNESCO standards of academic freedom in the Asia-Pacific rim, including a requirement in one country for public university staff to sign a loyalty oath that limited their ability to comment on government policies and actions. The UNESCO-initiated Network for Education and Academic Rights (NEAR) also monitors breaches of academic freedom globally, and its website offers numerous disturbing reports of the lengths some governments go in inhibiting independent thought and its expression. Founding members of the network are the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Human Rights Watch, the Council for Assisting Refugee Academics, Association of University Teachers, the worldwide teacher organization Education International, the Scholars at Risk Network (University of Chicago), and the Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa.
The NEAR website, for example, provides examples of actions by governments against higher education that are genuinely troubling. In many parts of the world, fear is the underlying condition for university academics and students. Killings, imprisonment, abuse, and harassment are on the increase. The NEAR website alerts governments and international agencies about countries with the worst records of abuse of higher education. It is a catalog of unrelenting violence that makes clear that in developing countries the link between independent higher education and democratic government has yet to be made. The NEAR website, however, carries no report of David Horowitz and the Academic Bill of Rights as a threat to higher education in the United States or to human rights generally. In comparative terms, Horowitz turns out to be political milk toast.
The typical pattern is for government to intervene in the business of universities. In Ethiopia in 2005, forty-nine people were killed in clashes, most of these linked to universities and schools. Amnesty International reported that security forces used "excessive force against students and other demonstrators." University students and schoolchildren were rounded up by police for demanding greater freedom of expression. The Addis Ababa University Students Association pleaded with the international community that "We are in grave danger...we want the world to hear our side of the story...many students are seriously wounded and are being detained." Scores of academics have fled over the last decade rather than face imprisonment.
There are other examples. Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Indonesia, Myanmar, China, Malaysia, Belarus, and Uzbekistan all have higher education systems at risk because government has intervened directly in their operations with the goal of variously driving ideological, religious, and political agendas. This is the short list of countries where higher education is at risk.
There are real costs throughout the world for taking academic positions with which the state does not agree. In Afghanistan, the Taliban forced academics to flee to Pakistan where they endured additional harassment and threats. In Serbia, the legacy of Slobodan Milosevic's attempts to control the universities that opposed his government persists. The University Act of 1998 subjected faculty members to political oversight and deprived them of the right to select their administrators. As a result of this law, Belgrade University alone lost some 180 instructors and professors. Opposition to the University Act was one of the central demands of students and academics protesting against the Milosevic government. University professors and students played an important role in defeating Milosevic, and one of the first moves of the new Serbian Minister of Education was to rescind the University Act. While Yugoslav universities now operate under the law as it was before 1998, the universities have yet to establish their autonomy, let alone their independence.
No nation on earth has placed a greater emphasis on higher education than China, but doing so has not translated into anything like institutional independence. The presidents of Chinese universities constantly look over their shoulders at the functionaries appointed by the Communist party to keep watch over them. When Chinese academics get out of bounds, government and party officials have hustled them off to prison and refused to grant them trials.
When viewed in this way, the intrusion by American politicians into higher education seems almost quaint. Too bad that the ACE "Statement" missed the opportunity to tout the independence of American higher education, not its institutional diversity, as its most salient feature. To have done, so, however, the "Statement" would have had to identify Horowitz, his Bill of Rights, and his actions directly, not by implication. To have done so, ACE would have had to engage the issue directly. One might argue, in that regard, that ACE and its supporters protest too much and shrink from controversy too quickly, given the comparative advantages that American academics enjoy.
If there is any political culture that might actually have a forthright debate about "intellectual diversity" and "balanced" learning as a right, surely America has it. And if there are any groups well positioned to lead that debate, they are surely the signatories to the ACE Statement. Instead, the document passes the buck. It insists that the "diverse" nature of higher educational institutions (from two-year colleges to research universities) means that national leadership cannot tackle the issue; instead, it must be addressed on a local and individual institutional basis. It would seem when tackling the sticky question of intellectual diversity what is good for the national goose is not good for the local gander.
The "Statement" misses the opportunity to argue that governmental intervention based on sound evidence and rational arguments of national benefit can add value to institutions and society alike, but that interventions based on ideology or knee-jerk reactions to particular issues run the risk of stifling innovation and inhibiting university responsiveness to community-driven needs. The traditional paradigm holds that higher education is best able to perform its mission to pursue research, teaching, and learning unfettered by political controls. The point of Horowitz's argument is that under the current circumstances the ideology of the political left has actually truncated the independence of institutions and thereby their overall effectiveness. I doubt that Horowitz is right, but his argument deserves a response, not dismissive genuflexion to institutional diversity and local control. ACE's Statement should have hailed the independence of American public higher education, especially in comparison with the rest of the world.
The commitment of America's most important academic associations to "Rights and Responsibilities" seems to accommodate a modest political actor while treating the more central issue of institutional independence hardly at all. And, even on the question of where to conduct the debate, the American higher education associations provide little guidance to its member institutions. Given the opportunity to reach out to the rest of the world when faced with a middling threat, American higher education took the expedient course of playing to the political right instead of reiterating the basic message that the quest for knowledge should be unfettered by political baggage. To do that, however, the "Statement's" authors would have had to confront Horowitz directly.
Ironically, less than a month after the "Statement" was released, a group of sixteen presidents from around the globe, known as the Colloquium of University Presidents, issued a far bolder statement focused on academic autonomy through the rights and responsibilities of scholars, students, and universities. In simple form, the Colloquium statement underscored that scholars and students must be able to do their work without fear of intimidation, scholars must resist corrupting influences and the peddling of their own ideological baggage, and universities must remain autonomous.
The "Statement," of course, contains much that is worthy of support, even if it is notable for its timidity in asserting it. It calls for the free exchange of ideas, grading free of political bias, a classroom environment free of political intimidation, and trumpets the value of "intellectual pluralism." But the document ultimately offers little guidance, even less than does Horowitz, on what really constitutes intellectual pluralism and, even more importantly, how it can be achieved on campus. There is at least some reason to take the claims of Horowitz and his allies seriously. Some surveys do reveal that most college faculty are Democrats, that some students feel that they will be penalized if their point of view differs from their professors. Only the most obtuse observer would conclude that the cartoons that festoon the doors of American faculty are politically neutral. The "Statement," however, fails to explain where the 28 institutions believe the floor and ceiling of responsibilities and rights are. The "Statement" insists that colleges and universities already have their procedures and that there is, as a result, no need for a Bill of Rights, a position in which I concur. Yet if that is the case, why is the "Statement" needed in the first place, other than to make a manifest attempt to shape American public opinion and to re-butt expedient politicians bent on making higher education an ideological whipping post? In short, the "Statement" refuses to admit that a problem exists and then proceeds to offer generalities that might lead to the conclusion that the American higher education establishment is better at dissembling than leading. Even more importantly, and to put the matter simply, the "Statement" refuses to address the most important assertion made by Horowitz; viz., that intellectual diversity is a stand-alone academic value, just like free speech. But, as Stanley Fish has explained, both "can be a help in the pursuit of truth, but neither should be identified with it; the (occasional) means should not be confused with the end." After more than a half century of arguing that racial and ethnic diversity are essential to the success of American college campuses, the higher education establishment, which strongly supported the University of Michigan in its recent affirmative action litigation, finds it hard to say that diversity in any form is not important.
But the simple fact is that the very institutional diversity of American higher education makes the "Statement" of marginal value to begin with and, at the same time, compromises the broader leadership role that these same organizations might play at home and throughout the world. The real point of the Statement should have been to make the case for why political hands-off higher public higher education is a social good not just a political expedient.
The strongest argument against Horowitz is not his substantive demand for taking account of a variety of views, but the method he proposes by which to realize it. David Horowitz is hardly James Madison; the process he has pursued to press the Academic Bill of Rights is hardly democratic. In fact, it is downright chilling in its invitation to have government enforce his form of political correctness. What Horowitz wants is for state legislatures to impose their wishes on public institutions when it comes to the critical question of what is taught, how it is taught, and by whom it is taught.
That said, Horowitz may have the best of the argument. ACE and the other higher education associations miss entirely the opportunity to co-opt Horowitz and his arguments by refusing to engage issues behind his assertions: can American higher education be trusted? This matter is of central importance to universities, to the entire structure of American democracy, and to a large portion of the world where higher education is under the heel of government. To appreciate this point, one need only look at a recent Harris poll that revealed that in the public's eye university teachers are the professionals most likely to tell the truth. As Fish points out, that is a very good sign. It means, among other things, that telling the truth is what the public expects the academy to do. The problem with the "Statement" is that it really does not address the truth, which ironically only gives credence to Horowitz's arguments that some slight of hand is regularly practiced in higher education. Only when these same groups themselves open their meetings, publications, and boards to Horowitz and his followers are we likely to engage meaningfully charges that American universities discriminate in hiring faculty, offer one-sided course readings and campus speaking events, and punish students who do not hue to the left's ideological line. It is simply not enough to preach; a genuinely independent higher education establishment should also practice the academic values it espouses. The debate, however, needs to take place based on a respect for the state of higher education in the rest of the world and in recognition that no other higher education system has a greater responsibility to address the issues than those who are the most independent to do so.
So, mark the ACE Statement up as an opportunity lost and a document unlikely to make a difference. It pales, for example, before the touchstone manifesto on these issues, the 1915 Proclamation by the AAUP, on academic freedom, crafted in times even more tumultuous for higher education than today. And mark one up for Horowitz who managed to get his critics to respond without ever engaging the merits of his argument. And, finally, mark American higher education down as the real loser, since Horowitz's essentially unchallenged arguments will continue to corrode the nation's respect for one of its most trusted institutions of democracy, public higher education.
[The Montana Professor 17.1, Fall 2006 <http://mtprof.msun.edu>]