ACTA's Must-Reads

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SLPC's campus disinformation campaign

On Thursday night, Brandon Wilson, outreach coordinator for the Southern Poverty Law Center, visited the University of Dayton. Speaking before an audience of 400 students, faculty, and community members, Wilson urged his listeners to become "willing activists" in the fight to eliminate hate on campus. Arguing that students need to be "dedicated to ensure that colleges around the world embrace diversity," Wilson's message was that students who fight campus hate today are taking their place in the great tradition of peaceful agitation for civil rights. Wilson invoked Rosa Parks and other scions of that movement, urging Dayton students to ensure that theirs is a campus free from the kinds of hateful acts that have marred other campuses recently. "One month ago, at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, a male urinated from his window on the head of an Asian woman," he told them.

It's a powerful example, and that's undoubtedly why Wilson chose it. The only problem with it is that it isn't true. It is true that one month ago, a Michigan student was accused of urinating off his balcony onto an Asian couple passing below. But what's also true is that the accusation was false. Witnesses to the event have all sworn that no one urinated on anyone; it has also been shown that it is physically impossible to urinate off the balcony in question. What is also true: Michigan activists jumped on the case as an instance of anti-Asian hate, demanded punishment for the accused and reparations from the administration, and stuck to their guns even when it became clear that the accusations just were not credible (it turns out that what landed on the people passing underneath the balcony was beer thrown by a student who did not check first to see if anyone was in his line of fire).

Wilson has his facts wrong--even though the truth about the Michigan case is readily verifiable online. He is spreading misinformation in order to create a problem where, at least in this instance, none exists. In the process, he discredits his cause, distorts the issues, and participates in the bad faith of the Michigan activists who came right out and said that it ultimately did not matter whether the event had happened or not, since it was such a useful platform from which to agitate for change.

All of this, it should be noted, was done in the name of the Southern Poverty Law Center's campus initiative, 10 Ways to Fight Hate on Campus. Perhaps it has not occurred to Wilson or the SPLC that one of the best ways to fight intolerance--which typically stems from ignorance--is to tell the truth.

Posted by acta online at 05:11 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

ACTA signs onto Hosty brief

ACTA has joined a range of organizations--among them Coalition for Student & Academic Rights, Feminists for Free Expression, Ifeminists.net, the National Association of Scholars, and Students for Academic Freedom--in signing a FIRE-authored friend-of-the-court brief urging the Supreme Court to hear an appeal of Hosty v Carter. This is an enormously important case for campus speech; it has wide-reaching implications not only for the freedom of the student press, but also for the expressive and associative freedom of student fee-sponsored student groups.

Hosty v Carter originates in a dispute between Governors State University administrators and the student staff of the university-funded campus paper, The Innovator. In 2000, Governors State administrator Patricia Carter demanded the right to review the content of The Innovator before publication, with the intention of preventing it from publishing criticism of the Governors State administration. The paper's staff cried censorship; the administration cited the fact that the paper receives funding from mandatory student fees to justify its desire to control the paper's content. Led by Margaret Hosty, editor of The Innovator, the paper's staff sued the university for violating its expressive rights--and lost in a Seventh Circuit appellate ruling that defies logic and sets a dangerous precedent for the future of the student press.

In the Seventh Circuit ruling, the appellate court found that Hazelwood v. Kuhlmeier, which allows high schools to regulate the content of student media, applies to colleges--even though the vast majority of college students are adults who enjoy First Amendment protections, even though a free student press is a crucial component of higher education's ability to foster and maintain a campus atmosphere of free inquiry and intellectual vitality, and even though the Supreme Court has been quite clear that student fee-sponsored groups at public colleges and universities have full First Amendment protection.

In a press release issued yesterday, ACTA president Anne D. Neal noted that "If allowed to stand, the Hosty decision poses a serious threat to the free exchange of ideas on our college campuses and wrongly appropriates high school guidelines to the college and university context. ... At a time when robust debate on campus is too often threatened by campus thought police, this case risks undermining even further the right and ability of college students to express their viewpoints."

Hosty has been overshadowed by media coverage of Rumsfeld v FAIR, which the Supreme Court will begin hearing in December. But it's nonetheless an extraordinarily urgent case, one that ought to take its place alongside the Supreme Court's other landmark rulings about the associative and expressive freedom of student organizations receiving funding from student fees: Rosenberger v University of Virginia (1995) and University of Wisconsin Board of Regents v Southworth (2000).

The brief is concise, clear, and impeccably argued. Read it here.

Posted by acta online at 08:28 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

A rare real debate

Harvard has distinguished itself recently for its willingness to elevate the quality of campus discourse about the Solomon Amendment by staging a genuine public debate between two constitutional experts who stand on opposing sides in Rumsfeld v FAIR. Berkeley, too, did something equally good last week, with an equally tough issue: affirmative action. Over 500 people turned out to hear conservative black activist Mason Weaver debate Shanta Driver, national spokesperson for BAMN (By Any Means Necessary), on the merits and demerits of race-based affirmative action. Co-sponsored by the Berkeley College Republicans and the campus chapter of BAMN, the event marked the sort of impassioned, informed exchange that college campuses ought to be all about. Weaver defended Proposition 209, which forbids public California schools to consider race in hiring or admissions, and spoke of affirmative action as part of America's new bureaucratic "plantation system," while Driver argued that affirmative action is necessary to combat "institutionalized racism." Weaver argued that affirmative action is a type of racism; Driver argued that it is an important guarantor of opportunity; an audience member called Weaver a "shameless opportunist"; Weaver declared his belief that public education should be dismantled. Discussion was heated because the issue matters to people, and the audience was appreciative of the effort the College Republicans and BAMN had gone to to offer a forum where opposing views about the issue could be thoroughly aired and tested. As one freshman put it, "I think it was a productive event ... It gave students a good foundation."

More schools should do what Harvard and Berkeley are doing. It's intellectually responsible, and it shows a depressingly rare faith in the ability of students to evaluate arguments, consider complex issues, and make up their own minds about what their personal positions on those issues will be.

Posted by acta online at 10:28 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Protesters tell recruiters to kiss off

The Supreme Court will soon decide whether colleges and universities may bar military recruiters while still receiving federal funding, and in anticipation of that event, students across the country are staging increasingly strident protests. There was the one-man protest at George Mason that became a scuffle between protester and recruiter and resulted in the arrest of the protester (the ACLU is now defending him against charges of trespassing and disorderly conduct); there was the Stanford protest in which JAG recruitment was disrupted while a dean delivered a speech about why the military should not be allowed to recruit on campus; there was the Holyoke Community College protest that ended in a brawl. This week, UC Santa Cruz became the scene of what must be the most "in your face" anti-military protest yet: a "queer kiss-in" to stage a graphic and unforgettable objection to the military's "don't ask-don't tell" policy. For the kiss-in, same-sex activist couples blocked access to recruiters by engaging in erotic embraces in front of their tables (pictures here). The protest took place peacefully, and while many got kissed, no one got hurt.

Meanwhile, Harvard--which reluctantly agreed to allow recruiters on campus this fall after the Pentagon warned the university it would lose hundreds of millions in federal funding if it did not--appears to be taking a more sophisticated and responsible approach to the debate about military recruiting on campus. While other campuses seem to be registering their awareness of the upcoming Supreme Court decision simplistically and confrontationally--with noisy agitations and staged agitprop--Harvard is attempting to get the issue aired in all its astounding complexity. For example, two law professors who hold opposing views on the validity of the Solomon Amendment recently held a public debate at the law school:

Kent Greenfield, a professor at Boston College Law School, joined John C. Eastman, a professor at Chapman University School of Law for a debate in Pound Hall sponsored by the HLS Federalist Society.

[...]

Greenfield, who is also president of FAIR--a coalition of over 30 law schools and other institutions--reiterated his group's contention yesterday that the Solomon Amendment violates the Law School's right to free speech and association.

"In effect, the Solomon Amendment is one of the most aggressive attempts on the part of Congress to restrict the exercise of Constitutional rights," Greenfield told the packed room of nearly 100 people.

Eastman, who filed a friend-of-the-court brief in July supporting the Solomon Amendment, called the dispute an issue of "fundamental moral principle." He countered the arguments of a friend-of-the-court brief filed by a group of 40 HLS professors, calling their argument against the Solomon Amendment "too clever by half."

He added that a "compelling argument" could be made that the government's "don't ask, don't tell" policy--which prohibits gay men and lesbians from serving openly in the military--only discriminates against homosexual behavior, not specifically a gay person's identity.

"There is a serious argument to be made that this is not invidious discrimination going on at all," he said. "That distinctions based on the conduct people choose to engage in is not the same as discrimination based on the color of one's skin."

Eastman added that he thought the government, and therefore, the armed services, should be considered a unique employer at the Law School because it provides Harvard with more than $400 million in grants each year.

"Harvard is not being forced to accept that grant...it's not compelled speech. But if they take that grant with that condition, they are obligated to that condition," he said.

Greenfield responded to Eastman's argument with a list of possible conditions he thought the government might freely attach to grants if it were given free rein.

"So what's the next law likely to be?" he asked. "A condition on your student loan that says that you are not to protest on the Iraq War during your time in school. Or a welfare benefit conditioned on your wearing a 'W'button?"

In a question-and-answer session, Greenfield addressed concerns that overturning the Solomon Amendment could nullify other government statutes, including Title IX.

"In this case, law schools are the ones that are fighting against discrimination and the government is the one that is forcing us to be a conduit for discrimination," he said. "It would be a difficult doctrinal move to then say if we win, then it's a violation of the First Amendment any time any institution wants to disagree with a government restriction."

Marches and placards and shouted slogans and kiss-ins are all very well. But they are, finally, anti-intellectual gamesmanship that cheapen the issues they pretend to defend. In the case of Rumsfeld v. FAIR, such tactics do nothing whatsoever to enlighten, illuminate, complicate, clarify, or persuade. More schools should follow Harvard's example.

Posted by acta online at 08:22 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Not so intelligent administrative designs

Yesterday, Cornell University president Hunter Rawlings delivered a state of the university address to hundreds of faculty members and trustees; normally, the address concentrates on institutional achievements and related issues, but Rawlings departed from the template to address a matter of growing national concern: the teaching of intelligent design as a viable alternative to evolutionary theory. Rawlings called the building movement to ensure that intelligent design theory is taught in science classrooms "very dangerous," and described it as "religious belief masquerading as a secular idea." Noting that 42% of Americans presently believe creationism should be taught instead of evolution, Rawlings urged his audience to recognize that the intelligent design controversy "is playing out in school districts, cities, counties and states across the country."

What's also playing out: the assumption that it is acceptable for university presidents and administrators to effectively banish certain lines of inquiry because they find them intellectually repellent. Idaho State president Timothy White recently banned intelligent design from the science classroom; University of Kansas chancellor Bob Hemenway has taken a similar stand. Likewise, Lehigh University's department of biochemistry has posted a notice on its web site officially rejecting the work of Michael Behe, a Lehigh biochemist who has published a book arguing that there is a biochemical basis for intelligent design theory. Behe's belief in academic freedom is such that he supported his department's decision to post the notice. But he is also a tenured professor whose book on intelligent design, Darwin's Black Box, was a bestseller; in other words, he can afford to have his ideas singled out by his employer as wrongheaded and anti-intellectual. One suspects that things will play out differently for people such as Guillermo Gonzalez, an assistant professor of astronomy at Iowa State whose work on intelligent design spurred the Iowa State faculty to circulate a petition denouncing "efforts to portray intelligent design as science."

Denunciations are not reasoned refutations. Administrative bans on intellectual inquiry do more to chill debate than to foster it, and do considerable damage not only to the ideas being banned, but also to those being protected from challenge or dispute. As Donald Downs, University of Wisconsin political science professor and author of Restoring Free Speech and Liberty on Campus argued in a speech Thursday, "First, all comments can be wrong, therefore they need to be challenged. ... Second, even if the statements are not false, they still need to be challenged in order to keep them vital ... any orthodoxy needs to be challenged or it may become an injustice."

Universities should be actively fostering debate about intelligent design, not seeking to shut down investigation of the idea entirely. And they should be doing this not because intelligent design is right, or even viable--fostering debate about an idea does not mean endorsing that idea--but because it is anti-intellectual and hypocritical of them to do otherwise. Free inquiry exists to test ideas, to allow the weak ones to be exposed as weak and strong ones to prove their strength. Clearly, such a debate is needed in this instance. One might well ask why leaders of major research universities such as Rawlings, White, and Hemenway are reluctant to allow this particular clash of ideas to play out. Do they think students can't think for themselves? Do they think evolutionary theory cannot stand up to the challenge posed by intelligent design? Are they afraid of ideas that attempt to reconcile scientific methods with belief in God? If they are, shouldn't they also be banning the study of Einstein--who argued that "Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind"?

Thanks to Maurice Black for drawing my attention to the Einstein quote.

Posted by acta online at 12:23 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack

Churchill at De Paul

De Paul University is presently being sued by former adjunct professor Thomas Klocek, who was suspended, defamed, and denied due process after getting into an altercation last fall with some pro-Palestinian students. The students filed a complaint against Klocek, and without ever verifying the complaint, getting Klocek's version of the story, allowing Klocek to face his accusers, or considering the basic fact that an argument is hardly an assault, De Paul relieved Klocek of his teaching duties and then proceeded to issue public falsehoods about his mental health. When De Paul offered to reinstate Klocek as a teacher in exchange for his apology, he refused. Klocek remains suspended, and his law suit is pending.

De Paul's treatment of Klocek has been deplorable. But rather than correct institutional errors, De Paul is deepening its public image as a university where hypocrisy reigns. Klocek's politics were wrong--and so he was punished severely for his sins. But Ward Churchill's politics are apparently right--even though they involve blaming the victims of the 9/11 attacks, advocating "fragging," and even, possibly, producing corrupt scholarship (the University of Colorado is presently investigating this one). Churchill is being paid to speak at De Paul today, on the subject of human rights for men of color.

Not surprisingly, De Paul administrators are not willing to explain how it is that the one individual has to be indefinitely suspended for offensive speech while the other must be paid a hefty speaking fee to come deliver offensive speech. According to Hawaii Reporter,

While the DePaul administration is actively supporting this event with student fees, they have recently punished students and faculty for exercising their own free speech rights and academic freedom by expressing viewpoints counter to Ward Churchill and his supporters, including suspending DePaul Professor Thomas Klocek (who has filed suit against the University) for entering into an argument with Muslim student groups over their anti-Semitic and anti-Israel brochures.

When a concerned student, Nick Hahn, inquired of the Administration as to why Ward Churchill was invited to speak at DePaul and how he was being funded, he was met with great hostility and denied any information. Executive director of the Cultural Center, Dr. Harvette Gray, reportedly responded by saying, "I'm the Executive Director of the Cultural Center and I don't have to explain to you!" before storming out of the meeting. Hahn was then banned from entering the Cultural Center and barred from contacting Dr. Grey, under orders of Dean of Students Greg MacVarish.

The De Paul College Republicans plan to protest Churchill's visit, but they were refused permission to post flyers publicizing some of Churchill's more outrageous comments, and they have been barred from attending a workshop devoted to discussing Churchill's views.

Link via Maurice Black.

Posted by acta online at 11:46 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

More on the high stakes in Rumsfeld v FAIR

For universities seeking to bar military recruiters while still accepting federal funding, hundreds of billions of federal research dollars hang in the balance. That tends to be what we hear about when we listen to arguments against the Solomon Amendment. As the amicus brief filed last month by Harvard, Penn, Yale, Columbia, NYU, Chicago, and Cornell put it, "Universities cannot decline federal funding without fundamentally altering their character and dismantling a significant component of the nation's research and development infrastructure." But there is a crucial flip side to this argument that has not received nearly as much play: Without access to campus recruiting, the quality of the American military will also "alter" in "character" and a "significant component" of national defense may be "dismantled."

The U.S. Army is already suffering a significant recruiting shortfall, and is compensating for that by lowering intellectual standards for recruits:

The US Army has fallen more than eight percent short of its recruitment goal for the year, army officials said, acknowledging a setback for plans to enlarge a force strained by combat operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The army is responding in part by increasing the percentage of prospective recruits with low scores on aptitude tests who will be eligible for service, officials said.

"It does have an impact," General Richard Cody, the army's vice chief of staff, said of the recruiting shortfall.

Cody said the army ended the 2005 fiscal year September 30 with a little more than 73,000 new recruits, well short of its goal of 80,000 new recruits.

He said the shortfall means that the army will not be able to increase in size to 502,000 as planned, and instead will lag at around 492,000 to 493,000.

The increase was supposed to give the army a cushion as it builds 10 new combat brigades and increases the size of its combat force by at least 30,000 troops from 315,000 today.

[...]

On recruiting, Harvey said the army has decided to adopt Defense Department quality standards that are less demanding than those followed by the army.

The army required that 67 percent of its new recruits score in the top 50 percentile on the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery test, while the Defense Department set a lower 60 percent level for the services as a whole.

Barring military recruiters from campus means preventing them from coming into contact with the most educated and intellectually able prospects in the nation. People may disgree about the validity of "don't ask, don't tell." But surely we can all agree that the last thing the military needs is a systematic dumbing down.

Posted by acta online at 01:44 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

What's at stake in Rumsfeld v FAIR

As the Supreme Court prepares to hear oral arguments in Rumsfeld v. FAIR, and as campuses across the country erupt in protests, the precise figures at stake in the heated national dispute about the Solomon Amendment are well worth studying. Today, ACTA released that information for a number of top schools that wish to bar military recruiters while still receiving federal funds from the Department of Defense and other agencies covered by the Solomon Amendment. The numbers are instructive, revealing both the hefty price tag the government has placed on schools' wish to bar military recruiters as well as the substantial lack of principle at work in institutions' increasingly common claim that they ought to be able to bar recruiters--and thus protest the Pentagon's "don't ask, don't tell" policy--while still depending on federal grant and contract money to finance their research programs.

Harvard, for example, had planned to bar military recruiters this year until the Pentagon warned the university that doing so would cost Harvard its funding from the departments of defense, education, labor, and health and human services; upon receipt of that warning, Harvard decided to allow military recruiters after all--and to keep the $386 million that would have been the price of a principled stand.

At Berkeley, the University of Pennsylvania, Michigan, and many other schools, similar logic is in place: Schools are allowing military recruiters on campus because they fear losing federal funding that is pegged to their compliance with the Solomon Amendment--but they are doing so grudgingly, and they are hoping that the Supreme Court will grant them the right to have things both ways. In an amicus brief filed last month by Harvard, Yale, Cornell, Columbia, the University of Pennsylvania, NYU, and the University of Chicago, the signatory schools collaborated to argue that it is in fact their constititional right--not to mention their academic freedom--to have things both ways. Without any sense of contradiction, they also argued that they cannot afford to lose the research dollars they presently get from the government without losing their standing as top research universities. Thus does lofty moral principle merge with undisguised self-interest.

ACTA's research reveals that for Cornell, $200 million is at stake; for Columbia $457 million; for Chicago $346 million; and for Penn, $496 million. This is not all the federal funding each of these schools receives, but it's most of it--at most top research institutions, federal funding accounts for 70-80% of the research budget. "The case coming before the Supreme Court should alert trustees to the manner in which the political activism of administrators is both hypocritical and fundamentally at odds with the university's commitment to give students the right to think for themselves," said Anne D. Neal, ACTA's president.

ACTA's press release also notes the unethical aspects of universities' wish effectively to prevent students from making truly informed career choices by denying them access to military recruiters. "It simply defies understanding how institutions such as Yale can claim they are educating their students and then deny them basic information about possible careers and the defense of our country," said Neal.

The release concludes with a call to trustees to insist that their institutions stop placing an activist agenda ahead of their obligations to students. "Rather than hiding behind the faculty and administrators, trustees must act in the best interests of students and the public," Neal said. "They should commit their institutions to ensuring that students have appropriate access to recruiters. ... These elite institutions offer a perfect case study in Hypocrisy 101. Either they should reject federal money because of their convictions, or let recruiters on campus, now and forever."

The full release along with funding figures can be read here.

Posted by acta online at 02:15 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

Michigan makes a problem for itself

The University of Michigan has revised its policies regarding student groups--and has quite possibly created a legal problem for itself in the process. Some of the new regulations are innocuous enough--to count as a student organization, a group must have a minimum of ten members; student groups will be classified according to type, and allocations of funding will follow procedures set for each type; groups will be held accountable to their constitutions; all groups must send their treasurer to a workshop in money management. All groups must also agree to abide by the university's nondiscrimination policy. This last may seem reasonable and unexceptionable--but in fact it poses a serious potential problem for the associative rights of student groups whose beliefs don't dovetail neatly with the university's own stated stance.

The University of Michigan's policy on nondiscrimination runs like this:

The University of Michigan, as an equal opportunity/affirmative action employer, complies with all applicable federal and state laws regarding non-discrimination and affirmative action, including Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 and Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973. The University of Michigan is committed to a policy of non-discrimination and equal opportunity for all persons regardless of race, sex, color, religion, creed, national origin or ancestry, age, marital status, sexual orientation, disability, or Vietnam-era veteran status in employment, educational programs and activities, and admissions.

At colleges and universities across the country, religious student organizations have fallen afoul of such policies because their own beliefs about homosexuality do not tally with their institutions' statements banishing discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. And at colleges and universities across the country, religious student organizations have successfully fought adminstrations that have tried to deny them recognition on the basis of their viewpoint; student groups are required by law to be treated in a content neutral manner, and efforts on the part of university administrations to adjudicate which groups will be recognized by examining their beliefs--which is what the requirement that student groups abide by the nondiscrimination policy amounts to--are patently unconstitutional. Hence the recent cases of the Muslim Students Association at Louisiana State, the ReJOYce in Jesus Campus Fellowship at the Milwaukee School of Engineering, an interfaith coalition of Muslim and Christian students at Ohio State, and the Christian Legal Society at Southern Illinois University.

Michigan--which is home to numerous Christian student groups, as well as a range of other faith-based groups--needs to rethink this one.

Posted by acta online at 05:56 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

The week in protest

As the Supreme Court prepares to hear Rumseld v FAIR, students on campuses across the country are mobilizing to protest the presence of military recruiters on campus. At George Mason, a student staging a solo protest against military recruiters was arrested after getting into a scuffle with a recruiter; the ACLU is now defending him. At Stanford, a coordinated protest included an oration by the dean of the law school and appears to have disrupted--or dissuaded--JAG recruiters: "As the protesters left," the Daily noted, "they leaned their picket signs up against the side of room 172, where the JAG recruiters were supposed to be conducting interviews. "Don't Ask, Don't Tell, Don't Recruit," read one sign. Inside, the lights were off and the recruiters were nowhere to be found. The posted schedule for interview times was conspicuously empty." Protests also took place at Cornell, Iowa, and Harvard.

Significantly, none of the protesting student groups is suggesting that their school forego federal funds in order to secure the unequivocal right to ban recruiters. Protesters appear to want their schools to stand up for certain principles, but they seem to think that there should be no costs associated with adhering to a principled position--even when those costs would not be terribly high. Holyoke Community College, for example, receives a miniscule amount of federal money--$7 million a year, as compared to the hundreds of millions received annually by institutions such as Harvard, Stanford, and Columbia. But at HCC, protesters want to have it both ways: "Students said they believe the school can legally ban military recruiters from campus without risking the $7 million in federal assistance." They are wrong about that, but the reasoning is telling. For these protesters, taking the moral high ground apparently involves redefining the law to suit themselves. In other words, the principled protesters at Holyoke Community College are not principled at all.

Posted by acta online at 10:24 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Not disposed for lawsuit

It's become common for schools of education to evaluate students according to their pedagogical "dispositions." The word, which has been elevated to the level of theory--as in "dispositions theory"--marks the formal adoption of ideological criteria for assessing aspiring teachers' competence, and as such opens ed schools to all manner of legal repercussions. Dispositions theory emerges from the new rhetoric of "social justice," another ideologically loaded if innocuous-sounding phrase that signals the academy's increasing willingness to collapse crucial distinctions between knowledge and belief, professional competence and political conformity.

American schools of education increasingly identify themselves with the rhetoric of social justice, noting that it is the work of the teacher to promote what amounts to a liberal agenda: Social justice, in ed school parlance, can only be achieved through such left-leaning projects as affirmative action and multiculturalism; it is the term of art for describing a pedagogical approach centered on the specifically political aims of running an "anti-racist," "anti-sexist," and "anti-homophobic" classroom. Ed schools that evaluate students according to dispositions theory are in fact assessing whether each student is in line with the school's own ideological positions.

The problems with that type of assessment are obvious, though they have not dissuaded the schools that employ it. Brooklyn College history professor KC Johnson has elaborately documented the manner in which the use of dispositions theory at BC's ed school has resulted in the punishment of students who object to both the heavily doctrinaire classroom environment at the school as well as to the manner in which ideological litmus tests have supplanted more objective and competency-based forms of assessment. That ed school faculty responded to Johnson's criticisms not with a reasoned defense of its methods, but with a threatening letter suggesting his own political nonconformity could well lead to professional sanctions, speaks loudly to the highly politicized atmosphere of intolerant entitlement ed schools ultimately promote.

Two cases of ed school students who have been expelled for failing to conform to their schools' liberal orthodoxy are now in the news. Each case centers on a conservative, Christian student who also happens to be a white male; each case involves the school's determination that the student does not possess the proper "disposition" to be a teacher because his beliefs do not tally with those his school thinks he ought to have.

The first is the case of Scott McConnell, who was cut loose by Le Moyne College's ed school after he expressed his opinion that corporal punishment is sometimes justified in schools; Le Moyne--a private, Catholic institution--favored McConnell with a letter informing him of the school's "grave concerns" about his "personal beliefs." Originally defended by FIRE, Le Moyne eventually sued the school for failing to live up to its own stated policies regarding tolerance and expressive freedom.

The second case is that of Edward Swan, a Washington State University education student who was threatened with expulsion after failing a character evaluation. Swan opposes affirmative action and gay adoption; he espouses traditional ideas about the roles men and women ought to take in the family. These beliefs earned him negative character evaluations; one teacher wrote him up for writing "diversity is perversity" on his textbook, while another wrote that Swan--who is the father of four mixed-race children--is a "white supremacist" who has an alarming tendency to wear camouflage clothing and to talk about how he enjoys hunting. Swan was given a choice this fall: agree to certain conditions or be expelled. The conditions included submitting to sensitivity training, doing certain assigned (presumably sensitizing) projects; and agreeing to greater-than-usual supervision as a student teacher. Swan responded by contacting FIRE.

A New York court recently found for Le Moyne over McConnell as the presiding judge evinced an unwillingness to interfere with the school's discretionary power to admit and expel students. McConnell plans to appeal. Meanwhile, FIRE has convinced Washington State to back off. Swan has been reinstated, and he does not have to undergo mandatory consciousness raising. Meanwhile, the dean has been motivated to review the school's evaluation practices to ensure that they can pass legal muster.

In June, ACTA called on the U.S. Department of Education, governors, and higher education administrators to disavow dispositions theory. With each new case, the need for such public disavowal becomes all the more urgent.

Posted by acta online at 08:12 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Lies at Bucknell and the liars who tell them

Bucknell administrators have been hearing from members of the public about their chilling and inappropriate response to the student Conservatives Club's use of the phrase "hunting terrorists" in a campus-wide email announcing an upcoming talk--and those administrators have been lying about the facts in order to try to make the problem they created go away.

Evan Coyne Maloney reports that Bucknell is formally responding to criticism by saying that the students who were called into an administrator's office and berated for their inappropriate phrasing were, in fact, "exaggerating" the content and the tone of a "casual conversation" that was largely about other things. It's Homecoming Weekend at Bucknell, so apparently the university has decided that it's better to downplay its censorious behavior--even if it means insinuating that the members of the Conservatives Club are liars--than to own up and apologize.

The trouble with Bucknell's approach--apart from its sorry absence of ethics--is that the president of Bucknell himself left an email trail documenting his plan to punish the Conservatives Club for its speech by rescinding his own support from the planned speaking event and by scheduling a meeting with Club members to discuss the "unfortunate language" of the email:

From: Brian Mitchell
Date: August 29, 2005 8:36:15 PM EDT
To: Chris Imbriano
Cc: Kathleen Owens
Subject: Re: Conservatives Sept. Speaker

Chris,

First, I am disappointed that the College Democrats did not wish to co-sponsor his event, assuming that it was non-partisan, as you have certainly inferred it was to me. At any rate, I hope so. I will ask them why because I believe that it was a missed opportunity.

Second, I am going to decline on the public sponsorship on this one. I had planned to offer assistance but saw some fairly unfortunate language describing the event over the e-mail. Dr. Kathy Owens will be writing or speaking to Matt about this issue. To prevent this from happening again (much like the issue with Dominic, who handled it very gracefully last year), I will need some assurances on the public relations associated with the speaker. Once we get this kink worked out, you should continue to feel free to seek reasonable support from my office.

Regards,
Brian C. Mitchell
President
Bucknell University

Woops.

Brian Mitchell is new to Bucknell. Before taking up the Bucknell presidency a year or so ago, he was, for sixteen years, president of Washington & Jefferson College, where speech codes are not a problem. Despite presiding for many years over a school without a history of expressive intolerance, Mitchell seems to be quite willing to engage in repressive and chilling behavior when it suits his institutional ends.

In this case, the goal appears to be to pressure Bucknell students not to employ phrasing that would place them politically as pro-war and as unimpressed with left-leaning quibbles about who the "real" terrorists are, and about whether it's possible to call any organization or individual who opposes the (terroristic) U.S. and its imperialistic ways anything other than freedom fighters. That goal in turn seems to be tied to the mistaken notions that it is the job of Bucknell students not to contradict their school's official orthodoxy, and that it is acceptable for an institution such as Bucknell to have an official stance on matters of contemporary foreign policy.

Mitchell would almost certainly deny this reading. But it's hard to comprehend his issues with the phrase "hunting terrorists" any other way.

Posted by acta online at 08:17 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack