Beware Right Wing Trojan Horse-"Academic Bill of Rights"

[chlamor]

Here is a heads up on the assault on our already stilted academic freedoms:


Beware Strange Right Wingers Bearing Trojan Horse Gifts; The Student Bill of Rights
 By Rob Kall
 
 www.OpEdNews.Com
 
David Horowitz has proposed an "Academic Bill of Rights." It's really an aggressive attempt at censorship of university and college instructors, particularly tenured ones.
 
Just as the clear skies initiative is bad for the environment, this deceptively labeled proposal is another attack on America the free, democratic and beautiful by a traitor who would be happy to sell out our nation's rights and freedoms for the sake of promoting the corporatist, fundamentalist policies he has sold his soul for.
This right wing “project” would  turn back the clock of freedom to a time when only lords and Bishops could determine what was taught.
 Horowitz proposal could be used to force instructors to, for the sake of “balance” include extreme right wing points of view, creationist science and right wing textbooks. On the surface, this Student Bill of Rights, may seem innocuous, but it is dangerous.  The right wing has hundreds of millions of dollars of resources annually that could and would be used to attack professors accused of violating these “balance” rules. We know full well that the right wing is far more aggressive and nasty in their use of litigation and accusations. This “bill of rights” would be used as a bludgeon to attack and silence academics, and probably as an excuse to revoke tenure.
 <snip>
Consider this student bill of Rights to be a Trojan horse that will be used to first stultify free discussion of ideas at the universities. Along with the decrease in funding that has already begun, it is just another attack on education. An educated populace is far less likely to tolerate these assaults on our freedoms. The voucher system is another thinly veiled attempt to shut down public schools.
I wanted to round off this op-ed with a quotation from Sinclair Lewis’s 1937 novel, It Can’t Happen Here. In this dark portrayal of what could happen in the US if the same trend that was happening in 1930s Nazi Germany crossed the ocean, all the universities are taken over by right wing thugs, and all real academics are thrown out. I’d written the previous comment about the dark ages before finding this prescient quote.

 “We can go back to the Dark Ages! The crust of learning and good manners and tolerance is so thin! It would just take a few thousand big shells and gas bombs to wipe out all the eager young men, and all the libraries and historical archives and patent offices, all the laboratories and art galleries, all the castles and Periclean temples and Gothic cathedrals, all the cooperative stores and motor factories—every storehouse of learning…”

And here is a intro to the group who wants to spearhead this campaign:

The Academic Bill of Rights is a declaration of independence from the tyranny of intellectual oppressors on college campuses. David Horowitz, president of the Center for the Study of Popular Culture, is its founding father.

Colleges and universities ruled by imperious leftists allow like-minded tenured professors to perform intolerable acts of intellectual coercion on those not accepting their extremist orthodoxy.
http://www.studentsforacademicfreedom.org/

"Ignorance is Strength"

[theorist]

1. Here's a link to a thread about my LTTE that was published this week.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=151x1767

It's a good thing that this bill is dead in the Indiana General Assembly....

[chlamor]

2. Excellent

:toast:


Getting direct comments by Horowitz et al, as you did in your letter, exposes how irrational and intolerant these folks are. Well done.

[theorist]

4. They're nuts!

Have you seen this site:
discoverthenetwork.org

Putting a picture of Conyers in close proximity to Zarqawi. Shameful. If anything, they're funny. It would be great to see them get caught up in a GOP payola thing.

[American Renaissance]

3. I have mixed feelings,

While I don't feel that the government should be enabling right-wing brats who only goto college to be disruptors.

I do think there should be measures in place to deal with academic frauds who are completely full of shit are are unfare to all students.

When I was in college I had to cope with a few instructors both right and leftwing who should be thrown out on the street.

There has to be improvements to academic governence to address academics who are just plain assholes.

[theorist]

5. Here at IU, they've just revised the whole system.

It was almost completely written by students. Let's see if it works.

The worst academic scandal I can remember here is when a prof set up a blog (on a school server) and did tons of posts about homosexuals being more prone to being pedophiles and, therefore, shouldn't be allowed to become teachers.

The blog was shut down for one or two days (I think?) for review. It was then put back up.

[American Renaissance]

6. lovely...

I had to cope with a woman who was freshly tenured and threw out the entire sylabus during the middle of a semester and just subjected the class to a different temper-tantrum each class on any random subject.

I got in a dispute with her in the middle of the semester on something unrelated to school, and then proceeded to get awful grades on all the remaining assignments and the final exam. Had I not received an A on the midterm, I would have received an F on the entire course, thanks to the A, I just barely passed.

I had two professors backing me, but my appeal was still rejected and the crazy woman went on to bad mouth me to anyone who would listen.