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Dartmouth refuses to be accountable
ACTA has been monitoring Dartmouth's disturbing and undemocratic manner of handling the business of its alumni association for some time--and so has the major media. No one seems to think that Dartmouth is in the right but Dartmouth, but that has not stopped Dartmouth administrators from digging themselves into a deeper hole by carrying on as if their actions were entirely inconsistent with reasonable standards of governance.
In a press release issued yesterday, ACTA reviews the details:
DARTMOUTH ELECTIONEERING
ACTA Asks: Can't Ivy League Graduates Make Up Their Own Minds?
HANOVER, N.H. (September 25, 2006)--Despite growing alumni concern about fairness and due process, Dartmouth College administrators have refused to respond to inquiries from the American Council of Trustees and Alumni concerning questionable election procedures.
Graduates of Dartmouth College are currently voting on whether to accept a proposed new alumni governance constitution. The document--which a broad coalition of students and alumni opposes as undemocratic--would dramatically restrict Dartmouth's unique petition process for alumni trustees.
According to Dartmouth's student newspaper, college spokesman Roland Adams pledged that the administration would remain "uninvolved" in the debate. "This is a discussion mainly among Dartmouth alumni, and that's as it should be," Adams said.
But, before the voting even began, 2006 graduate Nick Stork told the student newspaper that during his senior year he was called into a meeting with two administrators and berated about an e-mail he had written opposing the new constitution. Student employee Andrew Eastman also said that his supervisor--a Dartmouth administrator--called him in for a meeting in which he was verbally "attacked for what [he] had written" about the proposed constitution on a website. And two mass e-mails encouraging a "yes" vote were sent to alumni using Dartmouth e-mail servers.
In an August 23 letter to Dartmouth president James Wright, ACTA noted these irregularities, asking him to take immediate steps to make certain his administration was keeping its pledge of neutrality to alumni. Over a month later, Wright still has not responded. Instead, he and others have stepped up the administration's electioneering in favor of the proposed new constitution.
On Sept. 9, Wright himself violated the neutrality pledge when he voted--in his capacity as a Dartmouth trustee--to recommend that alumni vote "yes" on the proposed constitution. Wright also endorsed the constitution in a speech, going on to accuse concerned alumni of uttering "many misleading statements" and "attacks on Dartmouth's alumni volunteers."
The day after the trustees voted, Dartmouth sent another mass e-mail to alumni, this one with an exhortation from the chairman of Dartmouth's board to vote "yes." Dartmouth administrator Patricia Fisher also sent a mass e-mail from her College account on Sept. 11 with an alumna's call to "advocate for the proposed constitution."
Concerned alumni say the online ballot--which will be available through Oct. 31--is also biased. For each provision on the ballot, the Executive Committee of the Dartmouth Association of Alumni has inserted a large multi-colored statement endorsing or rejecting the proposed change. No such statements are available to other viewpoints.
"Can't Ivy League graduates make up their own minds?" ACTA's Neal asked. "It truly is a sad day when a college thinks it must force feed its own alumni on how to vote on matters affecting the future of their alma mater."
ACTA has been supporting concerned alumni at Dartmouth for over a decade. ACTA National Council member William K. Tell, Jr. spearheaded the creation of Dartmouth Alumni for Open Governance in the 1990s. In 2004 and 2005, ACTA lauded the election of alumni petition candidates--T.J. Rodgers, Todd Zywicki, and Peter Robinson--to the Dartmouth Board of Trustees on platforms of free speech, an undergraduate focus, and support of athletics. All three now oppose the proposed new constitution because it would impose burdensome new requirements on future petition candidates.
The campaign to enact the proposed constitution began in May, when the leaders of the Dartmouth Association of Alumni announced that they were "postponing" the scheduled elections for their own offices. ACTA protested this move in a June 1 letter, which resulted in media coverage in the New York Times, New Hampshire Union Leader, Boston Globe, and many other outlets.
The Wall Street Journal has since editorialized against the constitution, joined by Dartmouth's liberal and conservative student newspapers and the leaders of the New Hampshire Young Democrats and Dartmouth College Republicans.
"At a time of many challenges in higher education, alumni and students can offer informed and thoughtful input," Neal concluded. "We hope President Wright will reverse course and keep his promise to let the alumni debate this issue themselves. The administration's electioneering is neither necessary nor appropriate."
The American Council of Trustees and Alumni is a nonpartisan, nonprofit, national organization dedicated to academic freedom, academic quality, and accountability. ACTA has a network of trustees and alumni around the country including those from Dartmouth. ACTA has issued numerous reports on higher education, including How Many Ward Churchills?, Intellectual Diversity: Time for Action, The Hollow Core, and Losing America's Memory: Historical Illiteracy in the 21st Century. For further information, contact ACTA at (202) 467-6787.
If Dartmouth wants to become known for corrupt administrative practices and failure to respect democratic decision-making processes when it comes to its own alumni, it's doing a wonderful job.
Posted by acta online on September 26, 2006 at 08:00 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Colorado fights grade inflation
The University of Colorado has taken up the pressing and oft-ignored problem of grade inflation--and ACTA president Anne Neal has weighed in on the seriousness and importance of that endeavor:
People are quite familiar with the problem of monetary inflation. As prices rise higher and higher, the value of the dollar shrinks. The problem of grade inflation is similar: As student grade averages rise, the value to a student of earning a higher grade average declines. The consequences of grade inflation are as dire for students as monetary inflation is for the economy.The American Council of Trustees and Alumni's report, Degraded Currency: The Problem of Grade Inflation, has shown that, with only a few exceptions, persistent grade inflation exists in colleges and universities nationwide. Similarly, in their book When Hope and Fear Collide, Arthur Levine and Jeannette Cureton examined grading data from 4,900 undergraduates across a wide range of institutions. They found that the number of "A" grades given increased from only 7 percent in 1969 to 26 percent in 1993.
Conversely, the number of "C" grades fell by 66 percent.
This doesn't mean that American college students are getting smarter - only that professors are giving away grades that students once had to earn.
By its very nature, grade inflation is dishonest. It undermines the essential purpose of a grading system: to distinguish the excellent from the mediocre and the unsatisfactory.
Indeed, grade inflation turns the important moment of student evaluation into a sham - inflated grades do not tell students the truth about their academic performance, but unearned A's and B's do tell them that fraud and corruption are acceptable.
So rampant is grade inflation that grades have become all but meaningless; as Harvard professor Harvey Mansfield has noted, grades have been reduced to "worthless tokens of self-esteem."
Students and employers are both poorly served when professors say students have done excellent work when they have not. When grade averages become unreliable indicators of effort and achievement, businesses must find other, more costly ways of distinguishing among job applicants. Meanwhile, recent graduates - many of them carrying a mountain of debt - are left wondering why there is so little correlation between their grades and their bankable skills.
Noting that grade inflation is more common in the humanities and social sciences than in the hard sciences, Neal goes on to suggest that one reason this country is failing to produce adequate numbers of college graduates with math and science skills is that grade inflation creates a conflict of interest for students who feel pressured to maintain sky-high GPAs. It's easier to do that in the softer disciplines--and students flock to them as a result.
Duke, Dartmouth, and Princeton have all adopted measures to neutralize the effects of grade inflation; as a public university, Colorado is setting an important precedent in following suit.
Posted by acta online on September 25, 2006 at 09:31 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack
Educational devil's advocate
To spend time on a college campus these days is to recognize how many students are deeply uninterested in getting a college education. College has become, for many, a system to be gamed on the way to acquiring the degree, which in turn is regarded as a marketable credential; for a great many, too, college has also become a sort of adolescent holding pen, a place where young adults can delay maturation for a few more years, avoiding responsibility, living on the parents' dime, and nesting comfortably in the insulated and infantilizing world of the contemporary amenities-oriented campus. These things are not true for all college students--but it's true for enough of them that the overall caliber of higher education has suffered and the value of the degree has been proportionately damaged. Getting more people to college has become, in this country, an exercise in enrolling a lot of people who don't really want to be there. This is turn has encouraged grade inflation, the dumbing down of standards, and a population of graduates who, studies have shown, are becoming less and less literate over time.
So what's the solution? George Leef plays devil's advocate:
... the notion that we will put our country's future in jeopardy unless we get more students through college is mistaken. The US already puts too many unmotivated students into college, where they learn little.There are lots of American students who are eager to learn and proceed to master skills that aid them in their careers. But government and private support already get almost all of these passionate pupils into college. The trouble is that many other students enter college with no enthusiasm for learning. Boosting college participation would mean recruiting still more of these disengaged students. Increasing their numbers will not give us a more skilled workforce; it will just put more downward pressure on academic standards.
Already standards have been falling for decades, as schools have lowered expectations to keep weak, indifferent students enrolled. Indeed, many students who graduate from college are deficient in even the most basic skills that employers want. Last year's National Assessment of Adult Literacy found, for example, that less than a third of college graduates are proficient in reading and the ability to do elementary mathematical calculations. Similarly, the National Commission on Writing has found that many business executives are appalled at graduates' poor writing skills.
And although the word on the street is that more jobs demand a college degree (and presumably, college-level skills), that's not necessarily true. More employers require job applicants to have a degree not because the work is so challenging, but because there are so many college graduates in the labor force that they can afford to screen out those with less formal education.
In reality, although we may have entered the so-called "knowledge economy," the true backbone of the economy will continue to consist of low- and medium-skilled jobs. Take a look at the Bureau of Labor Statistics's 10 fastest growing occupations between 2004 and 2014, and you'll find that six of the 10 professions do not require a four-year degree, and four of these call for no academic degree at all.
We currently find many college graduates employed as waiters, cashiers, healthcare aides, and in other jobs that don't require any special background. Expanding college access will just mean more young people with college debts doing low-paid work.
Clearly, the US does not have a quantity problem with regard to higher education. Rather, it has a quality problem. As one student I know puts it, "People would be amazed if they knew how easy it is to graduate without learning anything." Certainly there are numerous positions that demand college-level skills, and we need talented graduates to fill them.
To turn out a more capable crop of young adults, colleges and universities should do their part: Raise academic standards to ensure that only those who want to be in college get there. Also, admissions counselors should remind prospective students that there are good career options for those who don't feel drawn to scholarly work. America is so rich in learning opportunities other than those found in college classrooms that we don't need to raise college graduation statistics for mere numbers' sake.
Right now, the momentum in this debate all runs one way--so much so that it's not really a debate. There is a consensus that college education is necessary for participatory democracy and for economic opportunity, and there is not much examination of the information that suggests a problem with the premises behind that consensus. We need a debate on this issue. Higher education needs serious reform--but that's not likely to happen unless the assumptions we bring to the concept of higher education get closely examined.
Posted by acta online on September 25, 2006 at 07:37 AM | Comments (8) | TrackBack
Reviewing a review
The publication of Michael Berube's What's Liberal About the Liberal Arts? has made something of a splash in academic circles (due in no small part, no doubt, to Berube's tireless promotion of same on his own website). This will be a book for critics of academe to contend with, as Berube has styled himself as an authority on matters of intellectual diversity, academic freedom and the culture wars, and since the general consensus among academics seems to be that he's right to have styled himself as such. He runs an immensely popular website where he voices his opinions on everything from academic politics to actual politics, and his commenters are, with few exceptions, remarkably uniform in their admiration for him.
But those with the most immediate cachet are not always those with the best arguments, and Berube doesn't draw anywhere near as much thoughtful criticism as he might. An exception may be found in Mark Judge's review of Alan Wolfe's New York Times review of Berube's book, which, Judge notes, loses its analytical edge in the inexplicable manner of so many of Berube's admirers.
... while reviewer Wolfe writes that Berube does not make a coherent case against Horowitz, he then shifts gears, collapsing into full leftist rhetoric mode and subverting the very points he made earlier in his piece. It's a whiplash performance that can leave the head spinning like a Coney Island ride."Left-wing domination of academia is so obvious a fact that Berube never tries to deny it," Wolfe writes. Instead, Berube claims that there just aren't enough conservatives to hire. Bunk, says Wolfe. Further, writes Wolfe, Berube pointing to the "diversity" between left-liberals and poststructuralists Marxists isn't exactly an advertisement for a comprehensive and diverse education.
But then the bottom falls out. The real reason conservatives hate academia--aside from its contribution to the debasing of culture--is that "universities work remarkably well." They create jobs and don't lay off people as often as the private sector. Then comes the coda from Wolfe: "They even do a good job educating students."
Hugh? Let me see if I get this straight. Berube admits that universities are liberal reeducation camps; furthermore, when he does offer a defense, Wolfe pounces, writing that it "hardly addresses the widespread perception that [university courses in] cultural anthropology [have] little room for those who might believe that America's presence in a third-world country might bring about some good."
Yet despite this, the kids are getting a good education. Conservatives, Wolfe concludes, "attack universities because they prove that the liberal idea of open-minded inquiry can be so powerful."
Stop the ride. I'm getting dizzy. So Wolfe--and Berube--out and out admit that open-minded inquiry doesn't exist at elite--and other--American universities. But those conservatives like David Horowitz, while irrefutable in their arguments, still get it wrong, because universities are places of the liberal idea of open-minded inquiry. An inquiry that by the admission of Wolfe and Berube does not exist.
Though Berube's admirers are already pre-emptively mocking readers who might disagree with his argument that there is no problem with political bias in higher education, those readers should still read the book, and they should still formulate and publish opinions on his arguments. Defenders of the academic status quo don't want to be argued with, and they go to great lengths to shut down such argument in advance. But that's all the more reason for substantive debate.
Posted by acta online on September 24, 2006 at 08:33 PM | Comments (14) | TrackBack
Knowing what we need to know
A provocative op-ed by William Bennett and Rod Paige in yesterday's Washington Post argues that we need to set national standards for what K-12 students should know. Acknowledging that No Child Left Behind is not working, Bennett and Paige work through various pragmatic and philosophical issues to arrive at a recommendation: "Washington should set sound national academic standards and administer a high-quality national test. Publicize everybody's results, right down to the school level. Then Washington should butt out," they write. "States that prefer to cling to their own standards and tests -- and endure the rules and meddling of federal bureaucrats -- would be free to do so. Some surely would. But many would welcome a new compact with the Education Department."
The arguments against standardized testing are so well known as to be hackneyed. But as valid as some of the criticisms of testing are, they don't offer a viable alternative. We need to know what students know--and there is no other way to find out. And we need to set standards for what students should know--and tests are the most sensible way of establishing and maintaining those standards.
Readers are welcome to comment on testing as a national strategy for setting educational standards--but what I'm even more interested in is what readers have to say about what those standards ought to be, particularly for high school seniors. We know that there is a serious disconnect between what high schools say students need to know to be ready for college and what colleges say they should know--and it follows that to bring both sets of expectations in line we need to have a national discussion about what a high school diploma means. What should a college-bound high school graduate know? What skill levels should he or she have? What kinds of problems do readers foresee in trying to answer these questions, and in trying to implement policy based on them?
Comments are open.
Posted by acta online on September 22, 2006 at 07:54 PM | Comments (9) | TrackBack
Remembering free speech
It's an established fact that fewer and fewer Americans understand their history or their rights--and it's a reasonable conjecture that one result of this will be a growing, global confusion about the nature and value of free speech. Colleges and universities, as ACTA has shown, aren't teaching civics or U.S. history--but they are enforcing codes of sensitivity through mandatory training programs and through speech codes. When they do so, they deny that they are infringing on students' rights; they invoke their anti-discrimination clauses; and they quibble about how free offensive speech should be. Along the way, they erode some of the most elemental principles of a free society, and they pave the way for a nightmare world in which feelings rule over reason, collectives dominate individuals, appeasement displaces justice, and putatively oppressed groups tyrannize over everyone else.
Trains of thought such as the one sketched above are routinely dismissed by defenders of the academic status quo. But that's as short-sighted as it is cynical and self-serving. From time to time, we get a cold, hard glimpse of what the nightmare world described above will be like--because from time to time, the West experiences two simultaneous systemic failures: It fails to comprehend the importance of defending free speech, and it fails to recognize that the right not to be offended is no one's right.
We are in one of those moments now. Anne Applebaum explains.
Colleges and universities need to educate citizens who aren't gluttons for appeasement, who don't think that someone's outrage should silence another's speech, who know their rights, and who can consequently recognize both civic cowardice and collective hypocrisy when they see it.
Posted by acta online on September 21, 2006 at 08:02 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack
Arguing by degrees
The New York Times sounds a bit like ACTA this morning: "Unless America renews its commitment to the higher education policies that made the country great, we could soon find ourselves at the mercy of an increasingly competitive global economy," a staff editorial declares; "And if we let ourselves hit bottom, it could take generations for us to dig ourselves out." This is a point ACTA has been making for years.
And the Times is right that affordability is a big issue--if people can't afford college, they won't get a college education. As the paper of record puts it, "Cuts in college aid and soaring tuition at state colleges have made it difficult for young people to educate themselves at a time when a college degree has become the basic price of admission to both the middle class and the global economy." But money isn't everything, and it certainly isn't a substitute for a strong core curriculum.
What the Times ignores in making a standard-issue argument that the solution to the problem of America's higher ed woes is to throw money at it, is that graduating more people from today's colleges and universities does not guarantee that they will be educated. As studies devastatingly show, the college degree in this country is becoming increasingly meaningless as grade inflation and curricular degradation combine to produce a generation of graduates whose degrees don't appear to be worth the paper they are printed on.
More and more students are graduating from high school without the literacy skills they need for college--and those who go to college with reading deficits don't have much success catching up while there. As the National Assessment of Adult Literacy announced last December, only 25% of college graduates today are proficient readers, as compared to 40% a decade ago.
Until those who claim to care about higher education recognize that access must be combined with accountability--that making college more affordable will mean little unless we also make college more rigorous and more responsible--we aren't going to solve the problem. As ACTA president Anne Neal remarked over the summer, when the Spellings Commission made the same mistake the Times makes today, "Access and completion rates are simply irrelevant if the education received is incoherent and fails to guarantee the common ground of training and outlook on which our society depends."
Readers interested in the twin questions of grade inflation and core curricula should have a look at ACTA's reports, The Hollow Core, Becoming an Educated Person, and Degraded Currency.
Posted by acta online on September 16, 2006 at 07:02 AM | Comments (10) | TrackBack
Ostriches at UNH
The University of New Hampshire has rejected ACTA's suggestion that it conduct a thorough review of its course offerings to ensure that teachers are not substituting indoctrination for education. ACTA's request was prompted by widespread public concern about the classroom conduct of 9/11 conspiracy theorist William Woodward. A press release issued yesterday has the story:
UNH DROPS THE BALL Trustees Fail to Respond to 9/11 Controversy with Commonsense Reforms DURHAM, NH (September 14, 2006)--University of New Hampshire professor William Woodward thinks the World Trade Center was destroyed five years ago by a government conspiracy. He mentions such conspiracy theories in class. Yet UNH's governing board has rejected the nonpartisan American Council of Trustees and Alumni's commonsense proposals to make sure UNH students receive an education, not indoctrination.
"UNH doesn't get it," ACTA president Anne D. Neal said. "A nationwide network of conspiracy theorist professors has surfaced. Some of them bring their unscholarly theories into the classrooms. The public is concerned. And they deserve a response."
Woodward's classroom practices came to light due to recent press accounts in New Hampshire. The tenured psychology professor--like University of Wisconsin-Madison religion instructor Kevin Barrett--brings theories on building collapse into his classroom.
When outsiders have suggested that conspiracy theories have no place in responsible classrooms, universities have essentially responded that academic freedom means "anything goes."
Kevin Reilly, the leader of the University of Wisconsin System, insisted that he does not "find Mr. Barrett's arguments about 9/11 at all credible," but concluded that a "core part of a university's mission is to be a forum for the free exchange of ideas, even when many of us find some of those ideas ridiculous or offensive."
Acting UNH president Bonnie Newman told the media that even though Sept. 11 is known to be the work of terrorists, the university encourages "the open inquiry of ideas."
"The assumption here seems to be that professors' free speech rights insulate them from professional standards," noted Neal, a former First Amendment attorney. "But freedom of speech and academic freedom are not the same. Freedom of speech protects all sorts of vulgar or silly expression. Academic freedom protects a professor's right to instruct students on the subject of his expertise--not on whatever he wishes."
ACTA wrote to trustees of the University System of New Hampshire on September 1, reminding them that "academic freedom does not mean anything goes." ACTA referred the trustees to American Association of University Professors statements making clear that--as the AAUP's general secretary recently put it--"with academic freedom comes academic responsibility."
ACTA's letter said that since "fanciful and unfounded 'conspiracy theories'...would not appear to deserve the special protections of academic freedom," it is proper to be concerned about Woodward's teaching.
More importantly, ACTA encouraged the trustees to implement systematic steps to ensure integrity in classrooms throughout the system. In a 2004 ACTA survey of the top 50 American universities, huge numbers of students reported that professors "use the classroom to present their personal political views."
ACTA's proposed solutions came from its 2005 report Intellectual Diversity: Time for Action, which trustees praised for its sensitivity to academic freedom. These commonsense reforms included:
--An institutional self-study of the classroom atmosphere;
--Post-tenure review;
--Assessing hiring and promotion practices to ensure that quality research and teaching (not ideological litmus tests) are the criteria for job security; and
--Incorporating intellectual diversity concerns into teaching guidelines and course evaluations.
Andrew E. Lietz, chairman of the University System of New Hampshire Board of Trustees, rejected ACTA's suggestions in a September 6 letter.
"Standing pat here is not an option," Neal concluded. "To retain the public trust, it is incumbent upon trustees to ensure that teaching adheres to scholarly standards. If they continue to fail to call for action, they will be abdicating their fiduciary responsibility to the parents and taxpayers of New Hampshire."
ACTA is a national education nonprofit dedicated to academic freedom, academic quality, and accountability. It has issued numerous reports on higher education including How Many Ward Churchills?, Intellectual Diversity: Time for Action, The Hollow Core, and Losing America's Memory: Historical Illiteracy in the 21st Century. For further information, call 202-467-6787 or visit www.goacta.org.
The Barrett and Woodward cases pose a fascinating and important limit case for debates about academic freedom. How far will higher ed administrators go in their hands-off approach to pedagogical integrity? And how far will they be able to stretch the concept of academic freedom--which actually places quite clear limits on what teachers and scholars may do--before the public revolts?
Posted by acta online on September 15, 2006 at 07:28 AM | Comments (7) | TrackBack
On the rights of speakers
The AAUP recently proposed a much-needed statement defending the practice of inviting controversial speakers to campus and warning colleges and universities against disinviting such speakers once invitations have been issued. But the AAUP sidestepped the problem of colleges and universities exercising poor and partisan judgement when deciding what speakers will and will not be invited. This is a more pressing and elemental problem--a controversial speaker must be invited before he or she can be disinvited, and in the current campus climate, some controversial speakers are more acceptable than others. It is also a much murkier one for the simple reason that the double standards and disingenuous rationales underwriting decisions about who will be invited to speak tend to be very deeply submerged.
Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz has identified Harvard's invitation to former Iranian president Mohammad Khatami as one such instance, and parses the politics surrounding Khatami's visit with consummate skill:
The Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University should not cancel the scheduled speech by former president Mohammad Khatami of Iran. Universities must never submit to censorial pressures by individuals or groups that disagree with, or are deeply offended by, a speaker's ideas.This does not mean that those who invited Khatami to deliver a lecture on the ``Ethics of Tolerance in the Age of Violence" -- a subject on which, based on his lifetime of intolerance, he has nothing to contribute -- made a wise decision. Would they have invited David Duke to lecture on racial harmony or the late Meir Kahane to educate our students on the proper way to protest? I doubt it.
[...]
Derek Bok, acting president of Harvard, is right when he says that ``a wide exchange of views" is essential to a university. But there are only two tenable positions a university may take in this regard: the first is that they have no substantive standards for who should be invited -- in other words any speaker who wishes to engage in ``a wide exchange of views," and who is invited by any student or faculty group, must be entitled to stand on the Harvard podium. Under this ``taxi cab" approach -- a cab driver must accept any rider who can pay the fare -- Duke and Kahane would have to be invited to speak if there were students or teachers who wanted to hear them, regardless of who might be offended. The second alternative is to have substantive standards -- such as academic achievement or political prominence -- that are applied rigorously and equally, without regard to whether the speaker is left or right, offensive to Jews or to Arabs, etc.
Most universities fall into the uncomfortable middle. They have implicit standards, but they refuse to articulate them or apply them with what I call ``ism equity." The truth is that Duke is not getting invited to Harvard any time soon, but Khatami has been. Is the only reason for this difference that Duke is a failed politician who lost his bid for election in Louisiana, while Khatami was ``elected" (appointed? anointed?) in Iran? I don't think so. The difference may relate, at least in part, to the relative unacceptability in this university community of their substantive views. Duke would offend more members of the Harvard community than Khatami would. If this is even partly true, it is indefensible.
Dershowitz can't talk about the motives behind Harvard's speaking invitations without speculating, and his argument will be dismissed accordingly by those who are looking for reasons not to grapple with the issues he raises. But that doesn't mean he doesn't have a point, and it doesn't mean that Harvard--and many institutions like it across the country--have a lot of work to do when it comes to understanding its own motivations. Our colleges and universities must do this difficult and taxing work if they are to bring their actions in line with their stated commitments to free inquiry.
Khatami's talk proceeded as planned yesterday.
Posted by acta online on September 12, 2006 at 09:54 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
More on UNH
Erin notes in her post that the Associated Press is watching UNH thanks to ACTA's letter. We're also happy to report that the Boston Globe is, too. See this follow-up article from Sunday's paper.
Posted by cmitchell on September 11, 2006 at 10:28 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Academic freedom and conspiracy theories at UNH
Last week, ACTA wrote to Andrew Leitz, chair of the University of New Hampshire board of trustees, urging him to take action to ensure that all those who teach in the UNH system are doing so according to professional standards as laid out by the AAUP. The precipitating event was the news that Professor William Woodward, who advocates the belief that the U.S. government played an instrumental role in engineering the 9/11 attacks, would be carrying on in the classroom as usual this year, despite evidence that he has abandoned scholarly standards of reasoning. Woodward plans to bring his ideas into his courses--and UNH, after a brief moment of concern, has announced that he has the academic freedom to do that.
UNH has not responded yet. But the Associated Press has:
WASHINGTON -- A national group has suggested that a formal review of a University of New Hampshire professor's teaching is necessary, including his views that government officials orchestrated the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.The American Council of Trustees and Alumni, in a Sept. 1 letter to the chairman of UNH's board of trustees, suggested that "a formal investigation is necessary" into William Woodward.
Faculty bear primary responsibility for maintaining professional standards, and in exchange, the public grants institutions the independence that allows faculties to support those standards as they see fit, wrote Anne Neal, president of the Washington-based education policy group.
"When, however -- as in Professor Woodward's case -- there is prima facie evidence that a faculty member may not be abiding by professional standards or may be putting personal, social, or political agendas ahead of a fundamental commitment to the objective search for the truth, then a full and formal review is salutary," the letter said. "This is because academic freedom does not mean anything goes."
Woodward, a tenured psychology professor at UNH, belongs to Scholars for 9/11 Truth, whose members believe that Bush administration officials either planned the attacks or knew about them and allowed them to happen in order to get public opinion behind their policies.
Gov. John Lynch has called Woodward's beliefs "completely crazy and offensive" and asked the university system's trustees to investigate Woodward's teaching practices. Lynch headed the board before he was elected governor in 2004.
UNH Provost Bruce Mallory said no students have complained about Woodward's presentation of his opinions, and that after reviewing course materials and student evaluations, he is persuaded that Woodward did not impose his opinions on students. Mallory also said the material was presented in a way that was relevant to the courses Woodward taught.
But University Chancellor Stephen Reno said the board of trustees still may ask for a formal review.
Here's hoping that UNH recognizes this is not the time for administrative officials to bury their heads in the sand. The press is watching.
Read the full text of ACTA's letter here.
Posted by acta online on September 08, 2006 at 08:44 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack
Theorizing Kevin Barrett
While University of Wisconsin-Madison lecturer Kevin Barrett theorizes that the U.S. government played a role in engineering the 9/11 attacks, the people at UW-Oshkosh are theorizing Kevin Barrett. Campus Greens, a student group, has invited Barrett to speak late next month, and the university is responding by framing the event as an opportunity to exercise the most elemental principles of free inquiry--to meet bad speech with more and better speech, to test ideas publicly through vigorous debate, and inquire why it is that some people, even some intellectuals, are so compelled by baseless and illogical ideas.
Here is the press release issued by Oshkosh chancellor Richard Wells:
Campus Greens, a recognized UW Oshkosh student organization, has invited Kevin Barrett to speak at a program it has scheduled for Oct. 26 in the theatre at Reeve Memorial Union, a student fee-funded building. No state or taxpayer dollars will be used for the program. Members of the campus community will decide on their own whether or not to attend.We will take all necessary steps to ensure a safe, civil and tolerant setting for the student-sponsored event, which also will include the showing of the controversial film, "Loose Change 2." We will work with members of Campus Greens to make sure they follow the necessary protocols. Failure to adhere to these protocols would require me to postpone the event, and it would not be rescheduled until I am
convinced we have ensured a civil environment.Many believe that the highly controversial views of Mr. Barrett, who has said the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks were orchestrated by U.S. government officials to spark war in the Middle East, should not be protected by freedom of speech.
I do not in any way endorse the 9/11 ideas advocated by Mr. Barrett. In my opinion, his ideas are nonsensical. His visit, however, provides our students the opportunity to assess critically his views. Any analysis of the tragedy must conform to the most rigorous standards for scholarly analysis.
Mr. Barrett's visit offers us a chance to reaffirm our belief that with freedom comes responsibility. Members of a university community do not have absolute freedom of speech in their official capacities. They are free to pursue academic, artistic and research agendas essential to the university mission, but they must also contribute to an open and collegial environment that promotes reasoned inquiry, intellectual honesty, scholarly competence and the pursuit of new knowledge.
Wisconsin has a long-standing tradition of academic freedom. It was eloquently summarized by Helen White of UW Madison in 1957:
"There is today a good deal of dispute over the advantages of various types of bomb shelters for our bodies. But there is no dispute over one fact, and that is that there are no bomb shelters for our minds. Indeed, I know of no readier way to disarm ourselves than to try to hide from disturbing knowledge, and, conversely, I know of no surer way to steady our nerves and find the courage we need than to take arms against a sea of rumors and alarms and by understanding end them."
In addition, in order to provide a responsible campus environment and a rational, critical analysis of the ideas espoused by Mr. Barrett and the film "Loose Change 2," we have planned the following events:
* During October, panels of UW Oshkosh faculty, staff and students will discuss such questions as "Why Do People Believe Weird Things?", "What Social and Psychological Conditions Predispose People to Develop and Accept Conspiracy 'Theories'?" and "What is the Responsible Exercise of Academic Freedom?"
* On Nov. 7 or 8, we have tentatively scheduled a public talk and classroom lectures by nationally renowned author Michael Shermer, who wrote Why People Believe Weird Things. His topics will include "How thinking goes wrong: 25 fallacies that lead us to believe weird things" and "Why smart people believe weird things."
These events will supplement the critical thinking that takes place every day in hundreds of UW Oshkosh classes. I know that our students are entirely capable of judging the validity of Mr. Barrett's views.
Academic freedom is inextricably linked to the equally important need to exercise responsibly that "freedom." Anything less threatens and diminishes academic freedom. I hope members of the university community will take advantage of our faculty panel presentations and the talk by Mr. Shermer to help engage in the civil exchange of ideas guided by the best use of our critical thinking skills.
It seems clear enough that Barrett should never have been hired--but as long as UW is retaining him, it makes perfect sense to put him and his ideas under the microscope.
Note how Chancellor Wells has turned a scandalous embarrassment--Madison's hiring of Barrett to teach a course on Islam and the provost's subsequent misguided defense of Barrett's academic freedom--into what academics like to call a "teachable moment." Barrett is not being invited to Oshkosh to proselytize, but to be engaged in debate, and, frankly, to be scrutinized and even psychoanalyzed by the entire campus community. If it's a bit hard to see why Barrett would sign on for this, it's not at all hard to see why the Oshkosh campus would leap at the opportunity to assess Barrett's ideas--and the reasons why people have such ideas--first hand.
Note, too, how Chancellor Wells has couched his outline of the Barrett visit in a substantially different notion of academic freedom than the one that typically surrounds people such as Barrett. Academic freedom, Wells notes, is not freedom from accountability, not freedom from criticism, and not freedom to think irrationally. It is a privilege that entails responsibilities. Kudos to Chancellor Wells for understanding this, and for finding a way to make the Kevin Barret fiasco into an opportunity for members of the Oshkosh campus to deepen their understanding of what academic freedom is, what intellectual responsibility is, how the two fit together, and why they must both be upheld if higher education is to be taken seriously.
Posted by acta online on September 07, 2006 at 08:51 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
Dartmouth's arrogance goes national--again
For months, ACTA has been covering--and challenging--the Dartmouth alumni association's outrageous efforts to silence dissent, consolidate its own authority, and prevent "outsiders" from getting elected to the College's board of trustees. Meanwhile, Dartmouth has been unmoved by appeals to reason, fairness, and democratic process--despite unfavorable coverage in The New York Times, the Boston Globe, and other major news outlets.
Now Dartmouth is in the news again, the continuing arrogance and shameful behavior of its officers having earned it a prime location in this morning's Wall Street Journal:
The left-leaning faction that dominates American higher education doesn't take kindly to strangers -- particularly those who challenge the prevailing academic orthodoxies. Just ask Harvard's Larry Summers.Or consider the escalating governance controversy at Dartmouth College. A few reformers have achieved a bit of influence, and now the New Hampshire school's insular establishment is doing everything it can to run them out of Hanover.
Since 1891, Dartmouth has been among the handful of colleges and universities that allows alumni to elect leaders directly. At present, eight of the 18 members of the governing Board of Trustees are chosen by the popular vote of some 66,500 graduates, from a slate nominated by a small, mostly unelected committee. (The remaining seats, reserved for major donors, are filled by appointment.)
In practice, the Trustees have been largely ornamental overseers, rubber-stamping the management decisions of the "progressive" college administration and faculty. The passivity of the Trustees owes, in part, to the fact that many official alumni representatives operate as a de facto wing of the establishment, pushing candidates who won't make trouble.
In 2004 and 2005, however, Dartmouth alumni were finally offered genuine choices. Over three successive Trustee contests, independent candidates bypassed the official channels and got onto the ballot by collecting alumni signatures. Each of the petition candidates -- T.J. Rodgers, a Silicon Valley CEO; Peter Robinson, a former Reagan speechwriter and current Hoover Institution fellow; and Todd Zywicki, a law professor -- ran on explicit platforms emphasizing academic standards, free speech and Dartmouth's acute leadership crisis. All three were unexpectedly elected by wide margins despite intense institutional opposition. Not only did the trend give expression to the general alumni discontent over how Dartmouth is being run (a rare thing in academia), but a critical mass was also building for more muscular stewardship, and, with it, fundamental change.
Dartmouth's inner circles, quite naturally, loathe all of this. And so the Alumni Council -- the representative body of sorts for the whole -- decided there was nothing to be done but change the rules. At issue is a new proposed constitution, cooked up in 2004 and constantly altered in response to events, that would "reform" the incorporation of the Trustees.
Most of the details are too tedious to go into here, but the new document is plainly designed to prevent outsiders from gaining still more Trusteeships.
They say there's no such thing as bad publicity--but perhaps Dartmouth would disagree.
Posted by acta online on September 01, 2006 at 08:59 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack