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ACTA publishes report on intellectual diversity
In a report released yesterday, ACTA urges higher education trustees to take responsibility for ensuring that intellectual diversity is respected and protected on their campuses. Entitled Intellectual Diversity: A Time for Action, the report performs two crucial operations: It documents the hypocrisy of higher education administrators who have paid lip service to the importance of intellectual diversity but who have done nothing on their campuses to promote it, and it outlines a series of strategic steps trustees can take to ensure that their institutions are doing all they can to cultivate an environment that truly values a variety of perspectives and cherishes the robust debate that arises when those perspectives clash constructively.
Last June, the American Council on Education and 29 other organizations issued a "Statement on Academic Rights and Responsibilities" that pledged their support for "intellectual pluralism and academic freedom." Published in response to studies and reports suggesting that America's colleges and universities are, by and large, politically one-sided entities that discourage and even punish viewpoints that are at odds with their official, liberal orthodoxy, the statement presented itself as an act of good faith that both acknowledged a problem and promised to address it. But when ACTA wrote to one hundred of the nation's top colleges and universities in September, asking them to document any actions they had taken in response to the ACE statement, not one was able to report doing anything at all to address the problems the ACE statement had defined. Most schools said their existing policies were sufficient--even though those policies have done nothing to avert a pervasive national problem. And only one school, the University of Oregon, could even report taking about the statement. There, the president convened the deans for a "work session" on the statement, but there was no report on what that session contained and there has been no follow up.
In a press release issued yesterday, ACTA president Anne D. Neal said, "It's all talk and no action. ... Higher education simply can't have it both ways. Colleges and university presidents say they, alone, are able to correct the situation in the classroom, but then they refuse to do anything but offer lip service to the idea of intellectual diversity. If the academy were faced with just one study showing racism or sexism in the classroom, they would take immediate actions to address the problem. Here we see study after study pointing out a breathtaking lack of intellectual diversity on campus and nothing is done about it. The double standard is outrageous."
ACTA's report reminds trustees that they abdicate their fiduciary responsibilities when they fail to take responsibility for their institution's commitment to intellectual pluralism in the face of much evidence that campuses are becoming bastions of liberal bias. ACTA also offers guidelines for what trustees can do to ensure that their institutions are living up to the ideals of free inquiry that are the basis for effective higher education. These include conducting "a self-study to assess the current state of intellectual diversity on campus and identify areas for improvement," "incorporat[ing] intellectual diversity into institutional statements and activities on diversity," eliminating speech codes, encouraging balance in speakers and panels, "establish[ing] clear campus policies which ensure hecklers or threats of violence do not prevent speakers from speaking," including "intelllectual diversity concerns" in teaching guidelines and course evaluations, "amend[ing] hiring, tenure, and promotion guidelines as well as student grievance guidelines, and guaranteeing student press freedom.
ACTA's report grows out of Neal's July critique of the ACE statement's rhetorical spinelessness. It will be up to trustees now to put some muscle into their schools' commitment to the principles outlined there.
Posted by acta online on December 13, 2005 at December 13, 2005 12:44 PM
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