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Correction in the Globe
Last week, the Boston Globe ran a review of a new book about academic freedom that doubled as something of a hit piece directed at ACTA. Neve Gordon's account of Academic Freedom After September 11, amounts to an uncritical endorsement of a book that elaborately develops the questionable truism that there is a "new assault on academic freedom" rivalling that of the McCarthy era, one that specifically targets left-of-center academics who dissent from an implicitly conservative status quo.
The review opens with a caricature of ACTA as an exemplary instance of the threat outside critics currently pose to academic freedom:
Immediately after Sept. 11, the American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA), founded by Lynne Cheney and Senator Joseph Lieberman, published a report accusing universities of being the weak link in the war against terror and a potential fifth column. As if the general hint at treason were not enough, an appendix to the report listed the names of more than 100 "un-American" professors, staff members, and students, and the offending statements they had made.A few months after ACTA's study was disseminated, Daniel Pipes, the director of a think tank called Middle East Forum, launched an Internet site called Campus Watch, which publishes dossiers on scholars who criticize US policy in the Middle East or Israel's treatment of Palestinians. On the website, one finds a "Keep Us Informed" section, where Pipes encourages students to inform on any professor who deviates from "correct conduct."
As Beshara Doumani, a University of California at Berkeley history professor, points out in his compelling introduction to "Academic Freedom After September 11," Pipes and friends have cynically appropriated the liberal terminology of the New Deal and civil rights eras, employing code words such as balance, fairness, diversity, accountability, tolerance, and not least, academic freedom in order to justify the enforcement of a political orthodoxy that undermines these very values.
ACTA president Anne Neal responded to both Gordon's depiction of ACTA (which amounts to a caricature) and to her misguided assumptions about academic freedom (which facilitate her readiness to reduce ACTA's work to a cartoonish image of ideological thuggery). Neal's response ran in the Globe earlier this week:
ACADEMIC FREEDOM is not freedom from criticism or freedom from responsibility. That is what the American Council of Trustees and Alumni has been saying since well before Sept. 11 . But you wouldn't know that reading Globe correspondent Neve Gordon's misguided review (Living/Arts, Aug. 2) of the book "Academic Freedom After September 11," which accuses ACTA of attempting to impose a political orthodoxy on the academy.In truth, ACTA is the true defender of academic freedom, calling the academy back to first principles. As we document in our latest report, "How Many Ward Churchills?", course catalogs and faculty websites nationwide indicate that professors are pushing a political agenda in their classrooms.
This flies in the face of seminal statements such as the American Association of University Professors' 1915 "Declaration of Principles," which condemns "taking unfair advantage of the student's immaturity by indoctrinating him with the teacher's own opinions."
Contrary to what Gordon suggests, the threat to academic freedom today actually comes from the continuing defense by so many in the academy -- in the name of "academic freedom" -- of classroom politicization and ideological homogeneity.
Such tactics are rapidly eroding the public's trust, without which the special autonomy granted to higher education will not long survive.
Gordon's review is self-discrediting in its willingness to pillory a group that works tirelessly to defend intellectual diversity and academic freedom on campus. ACTA's views may run counter to those held by many academics, but that does not make ACTA an enemy of academic freedom--it makes ACTA an important voice in an essential debate about what academic freedom is and what it is not. As Neal points out, it is not only academics themselves who have a stake in academic freedom; to suggest that outside critics such as ACTA are automatically attackers and assailants when they deliver unwelcome analysis is to reduce what should be a vital, useful debate to absurdity.
Posted by acta online at August 9, 2006 04:09 AM
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Comments
The Boston Globe is at the level of Reuters and the NYT in terms of reliability. The treason hyperbole is a classic touch.
It takes very serious delusion to allege that leftists in the contemporary academy are subject to censorship and oppression. On the contrary. Leftists have purged the academy of anyone even minimally capable of questioning orthodoxies that have controlled universities and what is permissibly thought in them for decades. Further, the writer shows no understanding of what academic freedom does and does not mean.
This "review" is nothing more than a political hatchet job.
Posted by: Federal Dog at August 9, 2006 10:45 AM
Thank you for all the laughs.
When a motley crew of socialist billionaires (Soros), millionaire socialist whiners (M. Moore) paroled terrorists (Billy Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn), billion-dollar endowments (Harvard U and Ford Foundation), radical phony/fakers lip-locked on the public teat (W.L. Churchill), taxpayer-subsidized weirdo's (Grover Furr, UW-Madison's Barrett), hoods from the 'hood (BAMN), et al., complain how they are mistreated economically and financially -- that's comedy.
That's why "The Daily Show" mocks them. And average Jane Taxpayer -- facing fierce global competition that is eating her job alive -- gets it.
Messrs. Soros and Moore want to help the U.S. masses? Create durable products that are world-competitive.
Never done that? Never actually created thousands of jobs? It shows. And Jon Stewart knows it.
Posted by: A.D. at August 9, 2006 05:00 PM