ACTA's Must-Reads

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Collegiality, ideology, job security

Brooklyn College history professor KC Johnson reports that a law professor at Indiana University School of Law at Indianapolis has been denied tenure for being "uncollegial". WIlliam Bradford is a beloved teacher, an accomplished scholar, an Apache Indian--and a decorated veteran who supports the war in Iraq. According to the Indianapolis Star, Bradford's problems stem from his politics, which run counter to two of the law school's most vocal anti-war faculty, professors Mary Harter Mitchell and Florence Wagman Roisman. Mitchell and Roisman have apparently voted "consistently" to deny him tenure, and Bradford has been informed that "someone" in the school has been calling him "uncollegial."

The Star does not connect all the dots there, but it does document Bradford's ongoing difficulties with Mitchell, an anti-war activist, and Roisman, who proudly describes herself as "a person of very progressive politics" who is "the most to-the-left person" on the law faculty. Bradford appears to have gotten on her bad side when he refused to sign a letter Roisman wrote defending Ward Churchill; he also appears not to have endeared himself with certain of his colleagues when, in the wake of 9/11, he wrote a defense of the flag and hung it in the school lobby. The defense came down when other faculty complained about it.

The Star does not document Bradford's case, so much as it serves as a vehicle for floating Bradford's own thesis about why his tenure case has gone south. At the same time, though, it does sound an alarm, citing senior law professor Henry Karlson as saying that Bradford is "perhaps the finest young man we have recruited," and that "Some members of the faculty, for reasons I cannot ascertain, are trying, for lack of a better term, to drive him away." The Star also reports a fact that is suggestive of the law school's ideological climate--when law professor Susannah Mead was recently appointed interim dean, Mitchell and Roisman threw a party for her. Only women faculty and staff were invited.

Johnson, who knows better than most how accusations of uncollegiality can be used to sink the careers of junior faculty who disagree with departmental power-brokers, has promised to investigate Bradford's case and to publish what he finds.

UPDATE 6/28: InsideHigherEd.com offers some clarification about Bradford's situation: Bradford has indeed been accused of being "uncollegial," he does have different politics from some of his senior colleagues, he has been warned that there is a sizable faction of senior colleagues who oppose his tenure, and it has been whispered to him that his politics have a lot to do with that opposition and with the characterization of him as "uncollegial"; however, he has not been denied tenure. In fact, he hasn't even come up for tenure yet--a point the Star article unforgivably elides. Bradford, who has published more during his first three years as an assistant professor than many publish during Indiana's six-year probation period, is looking for work elsewhere.

Posted by acta online on June 27, 2005 at 10:16 AM | Comments (0)

Religious freedom or false advertising?

Seton Hall University is unusual among Catholic institutions in having on its books an anti-discrimination policy that expressly states the school's position that bias on the basis of sexual orientation is wrong: "No person may be denied employment or related benefits or admission to the University or to any of its programs or activities, either academic or nonacademic, curricular or extracurricular, because of race, color, religion, age, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, handicap and disability, or veteran's status," Seton Hall states. "All executives, administrators, faculty and managers, both academic and administrative, are responsible for individual and unit support of Seton Hall University's EEO/AA programs. EEO/AA policies are to be applied in all decisions regarding hiring, promotion, retention, tenure, compensation, benefits, layoffs, academic programs, and social and recreational programs." It was this policy that led Anthony Romeo to enroll at Seton Hall; as a gay man, Romeo wanted to attend a Catholic school that would not make an issue of his sexuality, and Seton Hall seemed to fit the bill.

So it happened that when Romeo tried to form a gay student group and was refused permission to do so, he sued Seton Hall for violating its own anti-discrimination policy. And he lost. The courts threw Romeo's case out, citing a series of rulings showing that religious institutions cannot waive their right to act in accordance with their official doctrine. Despite Seton Hall's stated commitment to providing equal academic opportunity regardless of sexual orientation, the court determined that the university retained an inviolable right to invoke its religious status as the basis for discriminating against gay people, and that therefore it had not mistreated Romeo.

Seton Hall is happy with the ruling. "We don't allow discrimination in admissions and hiring," a spokesman said. "We want our gay and lesbian students to feel comfortable on campus, but we also have to balance that with the mission and goals of being a Catholic institution." The fact remains that Romeo would not have enrolled at Seton Hall if he had understood that the university reserved the right to back out of its non-discrimination policy. Seton Hall has not acknowledged that while the courts may not have a problem with what amounts to false--or at least misleading--advertising on its part, prospective students might. If Seton Hall truly wants "gay and lesbian students to feel comfortable on campus," it should be honest with them about just how far their rights do--and do not--extend.

Posted by acta online on June 23, 2005 at 09:59 AM | Comments (0)

Home is where the history is

Writing for the L.A. Times, David Gelernter argues that "only fools would rely on the schools" to teach their children history. An excerpt:

My son told me about a high school event that (at first) I didn't understand. A girl in his English class praised the Vietnam War-era draft dodgers: "If I'd lived at that time and been drafted," she said, "I would've gone to Canada too."

I thought she was merely endorsing the anti-war position. But my son set me straight. This student actually believed that if she had lived at the time, she might have been drafted. She didn't understand that conscription in the United States has always applied to males only. How could she have known? Our schools teach history ideologically. They teach the message, not the truth. They teach history as if males and females have always played equal roles. They are propaganda machines.

Ignorance of history destroys our judgment. Consider Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill), who just compared the Guantanamo Bay detention center to Stalin's gulag and to the death camps of Hitler and Pol Pot--an astonishing, obscene piece of ignorance. Between 15 million and 30 million people died from 1918 through 1956 in the prisons and labor camps of the Soviet gulag. Historian Robert Conquest gives some facts. A prisoner at the Kholodnaya Gora prison had to stuff his ears with bread before sleeping on account of the shrieks of women being interrogated. At the Kolyma in Siberia, inmates labored through 12-hour days in cheap canvas shoes, on almost no food, in temperatures that could go to minus-58. At one camp, 1,300 of 3,000 inmates died in one year.

"Gulag" must not go the way of "Nazi" and become virtually meaningless. Europeans love calling Israelis "Nazis"--a transparent attempt to slough off their guilt like rattlesnakes shedding skin. ("See, the Jews are as bad as we were!") I'd like to ban the word "Nazi" except when applied to … Nazis. Lawbreakers would be ordered to learn what Nazi actually means.

I was amazed to hear about teenagers who don't know Fact 1 about the Vietnam War draft. But I have met college students who have never heard of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge--the genocidal monsters who treated Cambodia in the 1970s to a Marxist nightmare unequaled in its bestiality since World War II.

And I know college students who have heard of President Kennedy but not of anything he ever did except get assassinated. They have never heard JFK's inaugural promise: that America would "pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to ensure the survival and the success of liberty." But President Bush remembers that speech, and it's lucky he does.

To forget your own history is (literally) to forget your identity. By teaching ideology instead of facts, our schools are erasing the nation's collective memory. As a result, some "expert" can go on TV and announce (20 minutes into the fighting) that Afghanistan, Iraq or wherever "is the new Vietnam"--and young people can't tell he is talking drivel.

Gelernter's focus on recent U.S. and world history allows him to show with damning efficacy how Americans' deepening historical ignorance--which is in many ways the result of schools' substitutions of trite ideological lessons for more textured and subtle explorations of events and issues--makes them vulnerable to the sorts of outrageously manipulative comparisons and equivalencies that have become common in politics and the media. Because increasingly we as citizens do not know what we do not know, we cannot recognize that we cannot think.

Gelernter's article is a useful reminder of what we already know about the state of history education in the U.S. In 2000, ACTA published a troubling report on this very issue. Entitled Losing Our Memory: Historical Illiteracy in the 21st Century, the report documents how little even the most elite college students know about the past. Among other things, ACTA learned that only a little more than half the students surveyed knew basic facts about American democracy and the Constitution; that only about a third knew that Washington was a general at the battle of Yorktown; that only about a fifth could recognize a passage from the Gettysburg Address; and that more than a third did not know that the U.S. Constitution establishes the division of power in the American system of government. By contrast, 99% knew who Beavis and Butthead are, and 98% knew Snoop Doggy Dogg to be a rapper. The report is well worth a look; you can take the 34-question multiple choice quiz that was used as the basis of the study and compare your own answers to those given by the surveyed students.

Posted by acta online on June 22, 2005 at 10:18 AM | Comments (1)

The media as academic watchdog

Two weeks ago, the Rocky Mountain News ran a four-part series on Ward Churchill, the University of Colorado ethnic studies professor whose academic integrity has come into question since his comment about the "little Eichmanns" who died on 9/11 became nationally known. Each part investigated one aspect of the charges that the University of Colorado is itself presently investigating: there was a segment on whether Churchill fabricated historical events to make the U.S. treatment of native Americans look worse than it was; there was the segment on whether Churchill plagiarized others' work; there was the segment on whether Churchill had mischaracterized two federal Indian laws; and there was the segment on whether Churchill had misrepresented himself when he claimed to be of native American ancestry. The News found Churchill guilty as charged; it also unearthed new information about the extent of Churchill's falsification of fact as well as the number of times he presented others' work as his own. Now the paper's report--which displays remarkable thoroughness as well as commendable efficiency--could become an integral part of the University of Colorado's investigation. UC interim chancellor Paul diStefano has asked the Standing Committee on Research Misconduct to include the articles in its assessment of whether the charges against Churchill have enough merit to warrant further investigation. The Committee was supposed to announce its decision this month, but will now how an additional sixty days in which to consider the case.

Posted by acta online on June 20, 2005 at 10:18 AM | Comments (0)

Missouri acts fast

Bryan Le Beau, the University of Missouri dean who delivered a 2003 commencement speech that contained passages plagiarized from Cornel West and Russell Baker, has been placed on administrative leave. Le Beau will continue on in his capacity as history professor; his salary has been reduced to reflect his lightened administrative load. Lebeau's leave lasts through the end of 2005; UM administrators will use that time to investigate the allegations against him.

Posted by acta online on June 20, 2005 at 09:22 AM | Comments (0)

Outing the copycats

It's well known that college students cheat with disturbing regularity--at most schools, about 75% of students admit to it. What's less well known is how often their professors engage in the same behavior. The extent to which plagiarism has taken hold as a sort of unspoken, unspeakable practice among academics is only beginning to be uncovered. In December 2004, the Chronicle of Higher Education published a landmark report on academic plagiarism, exposing four cases of plagiarism that had not been previously discovered, and using those cases to ask pressing questions about what plagiarism actually is, how often it occurs, why and how it occurs, how it should be handled, and by whom.

The newest addition to the decidely shameful pantheon of academic plagiarists is Bryan Le Beau, history professor and dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Missouri at Kansas City. In 2003, Le Beau delivered the university's commencement address--and in doing so he lifted a number of passages from a commencement speech delivered a decade ago by Princeton professor and well-known public intellectual, Cornel West. No one noticed the problem at the time, and Le Beau's speech was posted on the university's website, where it remained until the Chronicle of Higher Education linked to it earlier this week in its coverage of Le Beau's plagiarism (the link is now dead, and the page has been removed). Le Beau's plagiarism was only recently discovered when an adjunct law professor at UNC-Chapel Hill ran a Google search in an attempt to locate the origins of a certain passage from Hegel. Her search turned up the two speeches, each of which cite the passage in question, and each of which share a lot more than a single quotation (compare and contrast here). Le Beau has acknowledged his wrongdoing and has apologized, though he also says he's never seen West's speech.

Le Beau has withdrawn his candidacy for the position of executive vice president of academic affairs at De Paul University, where he was one of three people shortlisted for the job. Whether he will keep his deanship--and his professorship--at Missouri remains a question. The university's office of academic affairs is presently "reviewing the issue."

UPDATE 6/17: Turns out that Cornel West wasn't the only person Le Beau plagiarized. There's lots more on the case at Cliopatria. Bryan Le Beau responds to the allegations against him at History News Network.

Posted by acta online on June 16, 2005 at 10:48 AM | Comments (0)

When minds don't meet

Cornell University alumnus and current president Jeffrey Lehman has stepped down after only two years on the job. His reasons are veiled, but apparently amount to an inability to agree with trustees about the mechanisms of management. In a "state of the university" speech delivered to alumni on Saturday, Lehman concluded a long and laudatory recounting of Cornell's achievements--the awards won by students and faculty, the soaring number of applications, increasing media presence, unparalleled alumni support--with the surprising news of his resignation:

But as encouraging as these signs are for Cornell's future, there is today an important obstacle to Cornell's ability to realize its full potential. Over the past few months, it has become apparent to me that the Board of Trustees and I have different approaches to how the University can best realize its long-term vision. These differences are profound and it has now become absolutely clear that they cannot be resolved.

Imagine for a moment an airplane that is supposed to fly from New York to the beautiful island of Bali. It can get there by flying east. Or it can get there by flying west. But even if the pilot and the co-pilot are each highly skilled, even if they have the highest regard for one another, the plane will not reach its destination if they are unable to agree about which direction to take.

Cornell University is meant to fly. Its pilot and co-pilot must agree on the strategic direction to be taken. Since I now understand that it is impossible for such an agreement to emerge as long as I am president, I have notified the Chairman of the Board, Peter Meinig, that I will step down as Cornell's eleventh president at the end of this month.

In my talk at last year's reunion, I observed that Cornell enters one's soul in a way that no other university does. It teaches us hope and optimism and it makes us brave. It nurtures the conviction that what we do in the world really matters, and it inspires us to take chances so that we will leave that world a better place than we found it. Cornell binds us to one another as a community that transcends all boundaries of time and place. And in turn that community inspires Cornell to continue to evolve to meet the changing needs of humanity.

My fellow Cornellians, our alma mater has entered my soul, and it will never leave. It has taught me to believe in the capacity of great institutions to evolve to meet the changing needs of humanity. And that lesson is a gift I will treasure forever.

Kathy and I are profoundly grateful for the many kindnesses you have shown us these past two years. You have taken us into your homes and into your hearts. You have made us members of your extended family. Revolutionary and beloved, Cornell always has inspired me. This is the university that recognizes the transformative power of the horizon. This is the university of Why not? And What if?

Revolutionary and beloved, Cornell always will inspire me. This is the university of life, of wisdom, and of sustainability. I can imagine no greater honor than to have been asked to be the eleventh president of Cornell University. I have served with all the ability that was mine to offer. Thank you for having given me the opportunity to do so.

Speculation about the precise nature of Lehman's disagreements with Cornell trustees is rampant--and still very much on the level of gossip. Some point to concerns about nepotism--Lehman's wife came to Cornell from Michigan with him, and now occupies a high-level administrative post. Some point to concerns about favoritism--Lehman offered two different deanships to former Michigan colleagues. Some cite the recent departure for Yale of one of Cornell's top fund raisers.

For his part, Lehman is sticking strictly to vague metaphors of uncoordinated and unpleasant travel. When asked by InsideHigherEd.com to specify his reasons for departure, he said, "Let's say you are driving down a road for 18 months and it's smooth and then you hit your first bump. You think, 'it's still a smooth road,' and then you hit another bump, and then in a few months, you realize you've hit 20 bumps. None of them is a mountain, but this is a bumpy road." It's a telling, and less careful image, than the airplane one that he used in his speech. If Lehman is a precise image-maker, he has revealed the time frame of his discontent--the last six months--if not its exact contours. He's also intimated that the problem with his presidency may have been obstructionist behavior on the part of the trustees. But images aren't accusations, and for the moment Lehman's precise reasons for leaving his post remain undisclosed.

Hunter Rawlings, a classics professor who served as Cornell president before Lehman, will act as interim president beginning July 1.

Posted by acta online on June 13, 2005 at 06:18 AM | Comments (1)

ACTA releases recommendations on UNC governance

The University of North Carolina presents interesting problems for governance. It has sixteen campuses, each with its own specific needs and its own trustees. And it is presently run by a Board of Governors whose thirty-two members are selected by the state legislature. The size of the Board, the Board's power to set blanket policy across diverse campuses, and the manner in which Board members are selected all raise the question of whether the UNC system's governance system is structured as well as it could be. This was the question before ACTA when it commissioned the John W. Pope Center for Higher Education Policy to study and assess UNC's governance procedures.

The results of the study, entitled Governance in the Public Interest: A Case Study of the University of North Carolina System, were published last week. The study praised current board members for their commitment to their work, but nonetheless found that the structure of the UNC system diffuses rather than concentrates responsibility, and that as a result the UNC system lacked strong statewide leadership. In a press release, ACTA summarized its findings:

According to the study: "Right now, with legislators selecting every member on the UNC Board of Governors, often with more regard to local considerations than statewide needs, there is no comprehensive vision, no statewide leadership, no clear accountability."

The study recommends that the Governor appoint all governing board members, plus all boards of trustees. "A revised structure would provide valid checks and balances and ensure a clear and constitutional separation of powers," the report says.

"It is much easier for a board to be proactive when a governor appoints them and gives them a mandate to address critical issues consistent with a broad state vision," said Phyllis Palmiero, education expert and author of the report. "The current structure, where the governor has no formal authority over higher education in North Carolina, makes this impossible."

The study finds that the Board of Governors could more effectively address state-wide concerns by a greater delegation of authority to the individual boards of trustees. According to the report, "local trustees are in a much better position to make direct decisions on issues pertaining to their particular campuses than the system-wide board." The study recommends that appointment of senior staff and conferral of tenure, appeals, and compensation be fully delegated to the boards of trustees, with the Board of Governors retaining general oversight.

The study also finds that the 32-member Board of Governors is too large for effective deliberation and recommends that it be downsized to no more than 15 members.

ACTA is distributing the study to Governor Michael Easley, North Carolina state legislators, the UNC Board of Governors, institutional board members, interested citizens, and the media. "The power to appoint is the power to lead," said ACTA president Anne D. Neal. "If higher education is to have statewide leadership, that can only come from the highest elected official, the Governor."

Posted by acta online on June 12, 2005 at 07:54 AM | Comments (0)

ACTA protests political screening of teachers

Yesterday, ACTA called on the U.S. Department of Education, governors, and institutions of higher education to disavow ideological litmus tests imposed on prospective teachers. Disturbed by the news that the new guidelines issued by the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE) require education schools to assess the "dispositions" of teacher trainees as a requirement for certification, ACTA sent letters to Education Secretary Margaret Spellings, whose Department formally recognizes national accreditors, governors of states that require NCATE accreditation, and Christopher Kimmich, president of Brooklyn College, where the school of education has punished students whose beliefs fall afoul of the proper "disposition."

ACTA outlined its position--that the concept of "disposition" amounts to an ideological litmus test for future educators, and that NCATE's new guidelines subordinate education to social engineering--in a press release issued yesterday:

According to the NCATE standards, "dispositions" encompass "beliefs and attitudes related to values such as caring, fairness, honesty, responsibility, and social justice."

The new accrediting guidelines are being adopted in hundreds of institutions across the country accredited by NCATE, the primary accreditor of teacher preparation programs, recognized by the U.S. Department of Education. Seven states mandate NCATE accreditation for teacher-training programs, and NCATE has formal partnerships with 46 states for conducting joint reviews of schools of education, making NCATE's standards the virtual benchmark for teacher preparation across the nation.

According to the New York Sun, students at Brooklyn College recently expressed fears that the new guidelines were being used against prospective teachers who did not share the political views of their professors. Several students complained that they were penalized in a course on high school literacy when they sought to challenge the education professor's assertion that grammatical English was a language of oppressors.

"It is unconscionable for any college to impose guidelines which invite a political or ideological litmus test as a condition for a degree or entry into a profession," said Anne D. Neal, president of the American Council of Trustees and Alumni. "To do so is patent discrimination against college students on matters of conscience, a violation of the First Amendment, and hostile to the very essence of a college education--the robust exchange of ideas."

More on this subject when and as Spellings, Kimmich, and others respond.

Posted by acta online on June 09, 2005 at 09:12 AM | Comments (0)

Liability, professionalism, and academic freedom

In the wake of Harvard president Lawrence Summers' costly remarks on sexual difference and University of Colorado ethnic studies professor Ward Churchill's potentially career-ending comment about the "little Eichmanns" who died on 9/11, media attention has been even more closely focussed than usual on the public statements of prominent academic figures. It came as no surprise, then, when Timothy Shortell, a Brooklyn College sociology professor, made the news when he was nominated for the post of department chair. Despite earning his Ph.D. at Boston College, a Jesuit institution, Shortell is a virulent and unapologetic critic of religion who has written that religious believers are "moral retards" who are "incapable of moral action." On learning of Shortell's uncompromising and cutting words, some called for Shortell's head, and others defended his speech; Brooklyn College responded by launching an investigation into Shortell's competence that promised to respect his rights.

Yesterday, Shortell withdrew his name from consideration; in an email sent to a group of his colleagues and later forwarded to the New York Sun, Shortell described himself as the victim of a political attack, and criticized Brooklyn College for inadequately defending his academic freedom. BC's faculty union is sympathetic to this complaint, and has asked the AAUP to assess whether Shortell's academic freedom was violated. But the AAUP is hedging its bets; according to the Sun, AAUP program officer Robert Kreiser "questioned the extent to which a department chairman--who holds an essentially administrative post--is covered by the protections of academic freedom. He said a college administration may not want to have as chairman someone whose views 'are outside the mainstream' of the department or the college."

Brooklyn College history professor KC Johnson, who has learned the hard way everything there is to know about the politics of academic freedom at Brooklyn College, agrees. In a hard-hitting and detailed post at Cliopatria, Johnson explains not only why Shortell's academic freedom has not been violated, but why CUNY has a legal obligation not to place people whose speech might damage the institution in administrative posts.

Posted by acta online on June 08, 2005 at 03:13 PM | Comments (0)

Hate studies 101

One of the more pressing curricular issues in American higher education has to do with the place of those highly specialized, expressly politicized emergent fields known as "area studies." Women's studies, Middle East studies, African-American studies, Latino studies, peace studies, and a host of similar fields have emerged in recent decades as splinter disciplines dedicated to promoting a more or less explicitly left-wing agenda in the classroom, in scholarship, and in institutional administration. Though the intellectual ethics of such programs are questionable in their tendency to conflate indoctrination and education, they have enjoyed real success as niche disciplines built on the premise that left-oriented activism is a legitimate scholarly pursuit. As such, they have also paved the way for new area studies oriented around perceived political problems. Last weekend, at the National Conference on Race and Ethnicity in American Higher Education, for example, a group of panelists discussed the merits of introducing "hate studies" as a distinct academic discipline that would seek to understand intolerance and to conceptualize an "effective response" to that controversial criminal category, the hate crime. Read a summary of the panel at InsideHigherEd.com, where a telling article title-- "Majoring in Hate"--registers the distinct possibility that "hate studies" may do more to create hatred than to eliminate it.

Posted by acta online on June 06, 2005 at 08:47 AM | Comments (2)

What's good for the goose...

The collegiate gender gap isn't what it used to be, InsideHigherEd.com reports. For the past ten years, the infamous gap has been gradually but decisively inverting itself: Where it was once the case that women were under-represented among college students, it is now increasingly the case that men are. First felt at community colleges, historically black colleges and universities, and liberal arts colleges, the new gender gap is now becoming pronounced on the flagship campuses of large public universities. At the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, for instance, 58% of this year's freshmen are women--and the trustees are worried. Some have gone so far as to recommend affirmative action for men, though the university has no plans to undertake such a project. Similar imbalances can be found at the University of Virginia, where 56% of next fall's entering class will be female, and at the University of California, where women make up 57% of those admitted systemwide for the fall.

The Department of Education's 2004 report, Trends in Educational Equity of Girls & Women, which forms the basis for InsideHigherEd's piece, is an instructive document. Noting that in 2000, 56% of all undergraduates were women (as opposed to 42% in 1970) and that 58% of all graduate students were women in 2000 (as opposed to 39% in 1970), the report is a veiled but eloquent argument for rethinking the issue as one of educational equity for boys and men. Boys, as Business Week noted in a cover story two years ago, are fast becoming the second sex.

Posted by acta online on June 03, 2005 at 08:37 AM | Comments (1)

ACTA defends free inquiry at Rhode Island College

Rhode Island College's School of Social Work has expelled a student for refusing to conform to the school's openly partisan political agenda. The trouble began last fall, when Robert Felkner wrote an email to one of his professors questioning the political bias of his teaching. The professor replied by suggesting that the problem was not his doctrinaire pedagogy so much it as was Felkner's personal politics: "I revel in my biases," he wrote. "So, I think anyone who consistently holds antithetical views to those that are espoused by the profession might ask themselves whether social work is the profession for them . . . or similarly, if one finds the views in the curriculum at RIC SSW antithetical to those they hold closely, then this particular school might not be a good fit for them."

Felkner's academic experience deteriorated from there. The same professor who suggested Felkner and his politics were not welcome in either the school or the profession of social work required Felkner, as a member of his class, to lobby the Rhode Island legislature for a policy position he did not support; when he wrote a paper criticizing the policy position he finally did choose, reluctantly, to lobby for, he received a failing grade. "You did not write from the perspective you were required to use in this academic exercise," his professor wrote. "Therefore, the paper is must [sic] receive a failing grade."

Most recently, when Felkner attempted to fulfill the School of Social Work's policy internship requirement by working in the policy department of Republican Rhode Island Governor Donald L. Carcieri, he was expelled. To fulfill the requirement, an internship must meet eleven criteria, six of which mandate that students work toward advancing "progressive" policies. In choosing to do his internship in the office of a Republican official, Felkner ensured that he would fail RIC's ideological litmus test.

Rhode Island College's rank disregard for the most basic ethical and educative principles--the free exchange of ideas, open and unfettered debate, respect for honest intellectual inquiry--combined with its cavalier willingness to discriminate openly against a student whose views differ from those the school endorses, has begun to draw the attention of campus watchdog groups across the country. FIRE has been defending Felkner for months, and last week, when Felkner was expelled, ACTA wrote to the Rhode Island Board of Governors for Higher Education. Noting that "it is unconscionable for any college to impose a political or ideological litmus test on its students as a condition for a degree or entry into a profession," ACTA's letter is an impassioned plea for the Board to "meet its obligation to protect the First Amendment and intellectual diversity on campus. We urge you to insist that state institutions support and foster the robust exchange of ideas and recommend that you call for a full and immediate accounting by the RIC President of the circumstances behind this dismissal." Read the full letter here.

Posted by acta online on June 01, 2005 at 07:47 AM | Comments (0)