ACTA's Must-Reads

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You make the call

A New York Daily News column details recent instances of ideological double standards at Columbia University -- and poses an interesting limit case for those who are interested the question of where academic freedom begins and ends:

Consider the approach taken by Prof. Peter deMenocal to the teaching of evolution in "Frontiers of Science," a required course on scientific thinking that has nothing to do with politics. As he lectured on the differences between man and ape, he displayed a slide with six unflattering photos of Bush -- interspersed with six pictures of monkeys striking similar poses.

Confirming the episode, DeMenocal, who teaches Earth and environmental sciences, said in an e-mail, "The lecture itself had no political content or commentary."

Teaching a mandatory class to 550 freshmen "needs some levity," he added. "The slide got a little laugh, and we moved on to the science of what makes us human."

Not every student was chuckling. Chris Kulawik, the president of the College Republicans, said he was horrified at the trashing of the President and the politicization of a nonpolitical science class. "He got cheap laughs from a majority of students at the expense of a minority of students who were offended," he said.

But Mike Nadler, his rival as president of the College Democrats and the son of Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-Manhattan), said his professors' political views have never tainted their teaching missions. "My teachers often hide their political opinions and philosophies and tell students both sides of the story so we can form our own educated opinions," Nadler said.

Academic freedom? Or abuse of authority? Political content? Or harmless, meaningless joke? Readers are invited to share their thoughts in the comments.

Posted by acta online at 08:53 AM | Comments (26) | TrackBack

U.S. exports cheating

An Australian newspaper reports how easy it is for college students to pass off bought essays as their own work--and how eager U.S.-based companies are to assist cheats down under:

THE American woman on the other end of the phone could hardly have sounded more professional. Without ever using the word, she asked if she could help me cheat."

We noticed you started to place an order on our website but didn't finish it," she twanged. "We wanted to check everything was OK."

Er, yeah. Thanks for asking."

Well, if you would like to finish the order and have any questions, please give me a call."

Her manner suggested she could have been selling steak knives but this polite, businesslike stranger was from masterpapers.com, a web-based US company that provides made-to-order essays for the global student cheating market.

Advertised as the "world's finest custom writing service", Masterpapers is one of a growing number of sites that promise essays overnight and PhDs within five days for between $A30 and $A40 a page.

Their rise has prompted academics to warn that cheating is becoming nearly impossible to detect and could cheapen the value of degrees unless something is done to curb it.

It prompted The Age to investigate whether Australian students prepared to buy their way through a degree get what they pay for. And whether universities, which largely deny cheating websites pose a threat, should be more concerned than they let on.

Three academics agreed to supply questions on topics from international relations to indigenous history and then mark the essays and analyse whether they needed to do more to thwart cheats. The Age picked the websites and footed the bill.

In some cases the results were impressive enough to raise serious questions about the way university degrees are assessed.

The essays provided by two sites - Masterpapers and Deveraux and Deloitte - were flawed but, depending on how specific the question was, could have scored a pass or better at an elite Australian university - more than enough for a student chasing a university degree but not the knowledge that comes with it.

Nick Bisley, a senior lecturer at Monash University who specialises in international relations, set the first 2500-word essay: "Has political reform changed Indonesia's role in the Asia- Pacific region?" A five-day order was placed with masterpapers.com, costing $328.

The essay that arrived back was alarming, Dr Bisley said, largely because it did not "set alarm bells going".

It was an average essay, enough to earn a pass or maybe a credit. It had a mix of good and bad references, some factual errors and too many words eaten up explaining background before arriving at its unsophisticated conclusion - that Indonesia's instability has caused some regional problems.

Prediction: As foreign universities realize the threat to academic integrity posed by American paper mills, another American enterprise--internet services that detect cheating, such as Turnitin.com--will make a killing.

As for whether Turnitin.com works, some swear by it, and others don't. Some are concerned about the intellectual property issues it raises (students must post their essays to the website in order for the service to compare them to its database; the essays then become part of the database). And some are concerned about the damper the service places on learning environments (some teachers feel that using the service chills the learning environment because it openly assumes students are cheating; they also argue that teachers who find themselves needing to use such a service to combat cheating have failed as teachers).

Readers are invited to post their thoughts on student plagiarism, paper mills, online detection services, and the expanding culture of cheating that underlies them all.

Posted by acta online at 05:41 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack

Ideology trumps choice in San Francisco

Boston Globe columnist Jeff jacoby says what needs to be said about the San Francisco school board's recent vote to abolish the city's enormously popular--and affordable--JROTC program:

"In the first place God made idiots," observed Mark Twain. "This was for practice. Then he made school boards." The San Francisco Board of Education's 4-2 vote last week to abolish the Junior Reserve Officers' Training Corps program, which has been active in the city's high schools for 90 years, tends to support his view.

Why is JROTC being done away with? It isn't for lack of interest. More than 1,600 San Francisco students currently take part in its voluntary activities. "Kids love this program as if it's family," notes the San Francisco Chronicle. It is "a program that students and their parents wholeheartedly support."

Finances aren't the problem either. Operating JROTC costs the city less than $1 million out of an annual school budget of $356 million.

Nor is the problem bad management. The Chronicle reports that "no one has offered an alternative as coherent and well-run as JROTC."

Safety? Also not a problem. Though cadets have uniforms, they carry no weapons; the nonviolent programs emphasize leadership, self-discipline, citizenship, and teamwork. "This is where the kids feel safe," says one JROTC instructor, retired Army Lieutenant Colonel Robert Powell.

And the problem certainly isn't an absence of diversity. In a story on JROTC cadets at Galileo High School, Chronicle reporter Jill Tucker writes: "These students are 4-foot-10 to 6-foot-4. Athletic and disabled. College-bound and barely graduating. Gay and straight. White, black, and brown. Some leave school for large homes with ocean views. Others board buses for Bayview-Hunters Point." Several of the students come from immigrant families. At least one is autistic.

So what is the problem with JROTC? There isn't one. The problem is with the anti military bigotry of the school board majority and the "peace" activists who lobbied against the program on the grounds that San Francisco's schools should not be sullied by an association with the US armed forces.

"We don't want the military ruining our civilian institutions," said Sandra Schwartz of the American Friends Service Committee, a far-left pacifist organization that routinely condemns American foreign policy and opposes JROTC nationwide. "In a healthy democracy . . . you contain the military." Board member Dan Kelly, who voted with the majority, called JROTC "basically a branding program or a recruiting program for the military." In fact, it is nothing of the kind: The great majority of cadets do not end up serving in the military.

Jacoby has much more to say about San Francisco's history of anti-military activism, as well about the effect the decision is likely to have on the city's public schools.

Posted by acta online at 06:40 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Clemson students fight for free speech

The Clemson Conservatives are giving Clemson administrators a much-needed tutorial on the First Amendment--and they have FIRE's help:

A Clemson University student organization, the Clemson Conservatives, protested Friday against the school's free speech policies.

Clemson officials said Friday they are reviewing the university's sales and solicitation policy, part of which deals with free speech. The policy lists the Hendrix Student Center, which sits between Tillman Hall and the Edgar A. Brown University Union, as a free-speech area on campus.

Andrew Davis, chairman of the student group and a Clemson senior, said Friday he does not believe the university may define where students may engage in free speech on campus.

In part of an earlier public statement, Mr. Davis stated "no public university should have the right to restrict, limit, or abridge this fundamental right (to free speech) except in those circumstances ascribed by common law, given they are the constitutionally appointed arbiters of these constitutional rights."

The protest arose after the Clemson Conservatives were verbally admonished and censured by the university in regards to an Oct. 30 protest. The group protested at the scene of a Clemson Gay Straight Alliance rally, which was not at one of two "free speech areas" referenced in university policy.

George Smith, university union director at Clemson, said the Clemson Conservatives did not receive the proper approval to protest where they did on Oct. 30. The Clemson University Police Department did not approve the action, Mr. Smith said.

The Clemson Conservatives decided to protest where they did because they felt university policies are unconstitutional, Mr. Davis said.

The free-speech area policy is meant to provide the university with a way to be aware of events happening on campus so student safety is protected, Mr. Smith said Friday.

"By having free-speech areas, we're in no way trying to censor free thought or expression of ideas," he said.

Sophomore Steve Buffington, vice chairman of The Clemson Conservatives, said students do not give up their rights as Americans. The issue of protecting free speech is one that unites students across the political spectrum, Mr. Buffington and Mr. Davis said.

Establishment of free speech areas puts the university on a slippery slope to possible erosion of the rights of those on campus, Mr. Buffington said.

A total of about 160 students and faculty members signed a petition Friday at the protest indicating they feel free-speech areas are unconstitutional, Mr. Davis said. Plans call for the presentation of the petition to Clemson officials.

The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, a group based in Philadelphia, has sent a letter to Clemson officials expressing concern about the university's free-speech policies. Foundation officials have requested a response to the letter by Nov. 27, and Clemson officials are composing that reply, said Gail DiSabatino, the university vice president for student affairs.

"Constitutionally protected speech is permitted at the university," Ms. DiSabatino said.

Clemson officials are working to compose a revised policy by Jan. 1 that then would be reviewed by students, faculty members and staff.

It is to Clemson's great credit that administrators appear to be responding appropriately to the news that the school's policy on free speech is unconstitutional (and there is no doubt that establishing free speech zones on campus does pose a constittional problem, as courts have already determined). And here's to the Clemson Conservatives for fighting to guarantee not just their own expressive rights--but those of everyone on campus, no matter what their views.

Posted by acta online at 10:55 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Defending ROTC at Tufts

Andrew Lee, a Tufts sophomore who is also a midshipman in Navy ROTC, has written a revealing column about Tufts' historical relationship to the military. Noting that Tufts has not allowed ROTC on campus since 1969--Tufts ROTC students must commute to MIT to take classes and train--Lee has a number of choice comments for his campus community:

Here at Tufts University we are guilty of separating our scholars and warriors. Due to the faculty's myopic opposition to the military, and because of the lack of involvement on the part of the student body, we are all negatively affected.

First of all, the faculty lies when they say they are opposed to midshipmen and cadets receiving academic credit for their military science courses because of the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" law. For those unaware, "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" dictates that the military will not ask recruits their sexuality, will not investigate a serviceman or woman's sexuality without evidence, and that homosexuals will not announce that they are homosexual. If somebody violates DADT, they are prohibited from the military.

The proof that disagreement over DADT is not the only reason for the faculty's opposition is the 24-year hiatus between when Navy ROTC was kicked off campus and the implementation of DADT (1969 to 1993). It is a blatant and bold-faced lie to say there is no ROTC on campus due to the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" law.

The disagreement extends beyond the faculty and administration. Many students are opposed to the armed forces on the principle that DADT wrongly discriminates. But let me convey that just because you are in the military does not mean you have to agree with this law. Protesting the presence of ROTC on campus because of this policy is misguided.

Politicians, such as former President Bill Clinton, instituted this policy. If the faculty, administration, and student body are opposed to it, then the most logical course of action is to protest politicians on Capitol Hill. In contrast, our campus on Walnut Hill is not the appropriate environment for protest if one disagrees with DADT. The military does not have the power to change "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," so why are we being punished?

The lack of ROTC presence on the Tufts campus sends the wrong message to ROTC midshipmen and cadets. In actuality, we need to encourage undergrads to be knowledgeable about, or actively involved in, the military. The potential benefits are numerous. Imagine highly educated and worldly students that have a military background. It is only with this experience that future leaders and decision makers will be able to speak with real credibility on whether this law is beneficial or detrimental to the armed services.

The fact of the matter is that ROTC is still banned from Tufts because the faculty holds an extremely liberal bias against the military in general and grasps at any straw to keep us off campus or punish us. Tufts' current policy of not accepting credits for ROTC classes punishes our midshipmen and cadets who are training to protect every citizen's democratic ideals and civil liberties. The TCU Senate in 2004 voted in favor of a nonbinding resolution declaring that midshipmen and cadets should be granted credit for these courses.

The faculty should respect the outcome of the resolution and approve these courses for academic credit. While liberal arts students graduate with 34 credits, ROTC students take an extra course each semester for a total of 42 classes during the course of four years. Yet these courses, taken at MIT in such topics as history, engineering, and leadership, are not even recognized on our transcript.

Another point of contention that limits the presence of ROTC on campus is the theory that the program would militarize Tufts. As Tom Ricks of the Wall Street Journal said, "It [ROTC on college campuses] would liberalize the military. And that's a good thing, not only for the military, but also for every citizen. The military in a democracy cannot be 'them'; it has to be 'us', collectively, all Americans."

The problem with the current schism between the military and civilians on campus is that students do not gain an appreciation and understanding for the workings and importance of the military. Misunderstandings are fostered by a lack of dialogue. As a result there is a gap between the future political leaders who will send us to war and those who are on the front lines fighting wars. The decision makers are increasingly illiterate in matters of the doers.

Author Kathy Roth-Douquet noted in the 1st Annual Kyle Fisher Panel on Civilian and Military Relations, that "at elite institutions, such as Tufts, only three tenths of one percent join the military." Out of 5,000 students at Tufts there are only approximately 20 midshipmen or cadets, a pathetic number for a proud school that during the Korean War had 70 percent of male undergraduates participate in the ROTC program, according to Tufts Magazine.

Perhaps if more of us brilliant and capable Tufts students joined, we could be on the front lines to prevent tragedies that occurred at Abu Ghraib, and Haditha, not to mention saving the lives of our fellow servicemen and defending freedom and democracy around the world.

I urge the faculty to reconsider their current policy in order to show outward support and solidarity for our troops, and to bridge the knowledge gap between civilian students and ROTC midshipmen and cadets.

I'll close with an invitation and a challenge for you to learn more about the ROTC program and the military in general. Future politicians, academics, and students need to be knowledgeable about our country's armed services.

Lee is right--and he does a good thing when he challenges the ignorance and the ideological narrowness that contributes to his situation. And Lee is not alone--many ROTC students at many elite universities are in exactly the same boat. More should speak out--and more should take notice.

Posted by acta online at 09:29 PM | Comments (8) | TrackBack

Whither ROTC?

One of the more interesting books about higher education to appear this year is Kathy Roth-Douquet and Frank Schaeffer's AWOL: The Unexcused Absence of America's Upper Classes from Military Service -- and How It Hurts Our Country. The authors write as liberals who found themselves--quite to their surprise--in the midst of military families; the tension between their unexamined assumptions about the military and their love for family members who work in the military has forced them to think hard about how America's educated elites think about military service, how higher education reinforces that thinking, and how that thinking is fundamentally flawed.

The authors spoke at Dartmouth Friday about citizenship, service, and privilege, and they elaborated further in an interview with The Dartmouth:

According to their book AWOL: The Unexcused Absence of America's Upper Classes from Military Service -- and How It Hurts Our Country, less than one-third of one percent of Ivy League graduates enroll in the military each year.

Roth-Douquet and Schaeffer emphasized the loss of a sense of national duty among the upper class, which they defined as a highly-educated group of people who have a myriad of lifestyle choices.

"Increasingly, the military feels alienated by its upper classes. It feels disrespected by them," said Roth-Douquet, who has been a political strategist and veteran of every presidential campaign of the past 20 years.

Schaeffer and Roth-Douquet said the disconnect between the military and a class that produces many of our political, cultural and business leaders is harming the country, its democratic ideals and its ability to make informed decisions.

"We believe this issue is a pre-political issue," said Schaeffer, who is also the author of non-fiction novels that focus on the experience of military families. "It's about being an American. There are some issues that have nothing to do with who you voted for."

Roth-Douquet described America as a country on the verge of a crisis, steered by civilians and leaders who are increasingly ignorant about the inner workings of the military despite crafting policy that dictates the Armed Forces' actions.

In an interview with The Dartmouth, Roth-Douquet and Schaeffer examined the changing definition of citizenship among the upper class.

In their view, it has shifted from serving the nation in a military capacity to abstaining from national service altogether. Schaeffer said the upper classes need to rise above their indifference toward the military and put aside their feelings of moral superiority. Roth-Douquet said that surprisingly many Americans seem to view themselves as better citizens for dissenting and refusing national service.

"I think we live in a fundamentally selfish society," Schaeffer said. "It's not a culture conducive to the values that actually make life worth living. It's a society focused on personal gain."

Roth-Douquet and Schaeffer are naturally quite interested in elite universities' less-than-welcoming attitude toward ROTC, which they see as a misguided institutionalized anti-militarism. They note that Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Chicago, Brown, and Columbia forbid ROTC recruiting on campus; implicit in this criticism is another important fact: None of these schools has a campus-based ROTC program. Students at these schools--and at a great many similarly exclusive universities--must travel to other schools to train, and don't get credit for the ROTC courses they take elsewhere. In some cases, this amounts to substantial hardship--Yale students have to travel nearly 100 miles to get to their ROTC classes at UConn. Columbia students have rallied to restore ROTC to their campus, and have even passed a student referendum supporting it--but administrators aren't receptive, and "don't ask, don't tell" has a lot to do with it.

It's good to see Dartmouth inviting the sort of discussion that Roth-Douquet and Schaeffer are trying to start on campuses. More schools should follow their example.

Thanks to Maurice Black for the link.

Posted by acta online at 08:42 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

The new civic ignorance

A number of recent studies have documented in distressing detail the extent of American ignorance about First Amendment rights. This passage from Timothy Shiell's essay, "Three Conceptions of Academic Freedom" (from Gertsmann and Streb's 2006 collection from Stanford University Press, Academic Freedom at the Dawn of a New Century), sums it all up:

A 2005 John S. and James L. Knight Foundation survey of 100,000 high school students, nearly 8,000 high school teachers, and more than 500 administrators at 544 high schools across the United States found that nearly three-fourths of high school students either do not know how they feel about the First Amendment or admit they take it for granted; 75 percent erroneously think flag burning is illegal; half believe the government can censor the Internet; and more than one-third think that the First Amendment goes too far in the rights it guarantees. Nearly half think newspapers need governmental approval of stories, nearly four in ten do not know if they take the First Amendment for granted, and one in four does not know if people should be allowed to express unpopular opinions. Knight Foundation president and CEO Hodding Carter III says, "The results are not only disturbing; they are dangerous. Ignorance about the basics of this free society is a danger to our nation's future."

The First Amendment Center's "State of the First Amendment 2005" survey found that few Americans can name any of the five specific rights guaranteed by the First Amendment, only 58 percent believe newspapers should be allowed to freely criticize the military, and 67 percent believe public school students should not be allowed to wear T-shirts that others might find offensive, 50 percent believe people should not be allowed to say things in public that might be offensive to religious groups, and 43 percent believe people should not be allowed to say things in public that are offensive to racial groups.

A 2004 survey of Wisconsin adults found the same abysmally low ability to identify any First Amendment rights; the survey also found that one in ten Wisconsin adults thinks people should be punished for protesting on public property or for criticizing the government during wartime, one in four thinks the government should censor journalists, nearly half think the government should violate religious freedom in the fight on terrorism, six in ten think people should be punished for burning the flag in political protest, and eight in ten think schools should punish offensive speech.

Finally, and most telling, the 2003 Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) surveys found that "college and university students are woefully ignorant about freedom of speech and freedom of religion," that "administrators who govern student life on campus fared no better," and that "freedom of speech and freedom of religion are undergoing a frightening and powerful assault." For example, one out of every four undergraduates is unable to mention any freedoms protected by the First Amendment, and one in four administrators believes that they have the legal right to prohibit a student religous group from actively trying to convert students to its religion.

It's telling that educators and students fare no better than the population at large in these surveys. In high schools as well as in higher ed, civic education seems to be a case of the blind leading the blind.

Is there anyone out there who would dispute the claim that American schools are failing their students in this regard, and that this poses a clear and present danger to the freedom upon which this country is founded? As the saying goes, a nation that does not educate in freedom is not going to be free for long.

Readers are welcome to comment on where they think the problem comes from and how they think it ought to be addressed.

Posted by acta online at 06:42 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack

Clegg on MCRI

On Tuesday, in the midst of enormous controversy, Michigan voters passed the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative, which bans racial and gender preferences in state-sponsored education, employment, and contracting. Roger Clegg, president and general counsel of the Center for Equal Opportunity, lays out the implications of this historic decision. "Preferences of this sort are very unpopular," he notes:

How unpopular? Well, they were banned by a margin of 58-42 percent of the popular vote; in a blue state; in a Democratic year; with opponents vastly outspending the supporters; and the former calling the latter racists and sexists. The voters approved the amendment over the well-publicized objections of the corporate establishment, and the political establishment (Democratic and Republican alike), and the media establishment, and the civil rights establishment, and the labor unions, and even the clergy. And this success follows that of identical bans--also by decisive margins--in two other blue states (California and Washington) in two other Democratic years (1996 and 1998).

So, pretty unpopular.

Clegg goes on to parse how the mandate for MCRI is likely to play out in other states ("it makes it likely that other states will enact similar referenda"), in party politics ("it makes it more likely that Republicans nationally will rethink their stupid decision not to aggressively oppose preferences, and maybe even that Democrats will rethink their demagogic decision to embrace them"), in the Supreme Court ("those justices who worry about establishment disapproval if they do the [legally] right thing and strike down racial preferences may be reassured if the public, at least, has provided them some political cover"), and in higher ed ("as more and more universities stop using racial-admission preferences, it becomes harder and harder for the remaining schools to insist that one simply cannot run a decent university without them").

Meanwhile, University of Michigan president Mary Sue Coleman has vowed to fight MCRI. "If November 7th was the day that Proposal 2 passed, then November 8th is the day we pledge to remain unified in our fight for diversity," she said in a campus speech; "I am standing here today to tell you that I will not allow our university to go down the path of mediocrity....That is not Michigan." Coleman is right that diversity is essential to a great university--but perhaps now she can focus her attention on the kinds of diversity that are ultimately more germane than skin color or sex to creating vibrant intellectual communities: intellectual diversity, philosophical diversity, and political diversity.

Posted by acta online at 08:46 AM | Comments (19) | TrackBack

Fallout at Gallaudet

The Gallaudet Board of Trustees voted last week not only to dismiss incoming president Jane K. Fernandes but also to overlook the legal infractions of student protesters who had disrupted the University's daily operations multiple times. At the news of the Board's decision, some celebrated what they saw as the end of a long battle to compel the Board to comply with their wishes--but others recognized that the Board's compliance simply marked a deepening of the problems that plague Gallaudet, and deplored the Board's misguided efforts at appeasement.

Now, right on cue, the fallout from that decision is beginning. It takes the form of two resignations from the Board itself--one on the part of acting chair Brenda Jo Brueggemann and the other on the part of Senator John McCain. Both attributed their resignations to the Board's decision to revoke Fernandes' appointment; "I cannot in good conscience continue to serve the board after its decision to terminate her appointment," McCain wrote, noting that the decision "was unfair and not in the best interests of the university." While McCain's resignation appears to have been a matter of principle--Brueggemann says that in five years on the Board she never saw him at a meeting--Brueggemann's was helped along by good old-fashioned harassment. "My personal life, and my professional work as a scholar, teacher, and administrator at my own university, have suffered considerably," she wrote in a statement; after protesters published her home phone number, she was inundated by calls; her office was occupied by protesters who had to be removed by the police; she was even the target of a bomb threat.

ACTA deplored the Board's decision in a press release issued last week. Noting that the Board had "allowed the institution to be governed by the heckler's veto," ACTA observed that the Board must "take time to learn from this pathetic episode, and reestablish credibility in and outside the institution--most particularly with Congress, which appropriates 70 percent of Gallaudet's budget. The board needs to remember that it is in charge, not the loudest students or faculty." The resignations of McCain and Brueggemann--which may be read as votes of no confidence from within the Board itself--suggest just how far Gallaudet has to go to restore its credibility.

Margaret Soltan has more.

Posted by acta online at 07:11 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

CHE profiles ACTA president Anne Neal

Don't miss The Chronicle of Higher Education's in-depth profile of ACTA president Anne Neal, written by Robin Wilson. Wilson reviews the debates that have swirled around ACTA since its founding, with particular focus on what ACTA's mission is, how it differs from those of other academic watchdog groups, and how Neal's work with ACTA has been received by a range of figures from the academic establishment.

An excerpt:

Her 11-year-old group, based in Washington, counts trustees and alumni as its chief constituents. But Ms. Neal has become a self-styled watchdog of the professoriate, criticizing faculty members for taking advantage of their academic freedom by offering what the council sees as ideologically tinged courses on race and gender. And while she has slammed colleges for failing to curb grade inflation and for keeping military recruiters off campus, she has called a lack of intellectual diversity the "most serious challenge for higher education today."

Still, at the council's annual meeting she brushed off the obvious question: What was a woman like her doing in a place like this?

Ms. Neal was quick to point out that ACTA is "not a protest group." Given the tug of war between professors and Mr. Summers, she said, Harvard was a natural place to meet. "There are many good things about higher education," she told the 100 or so people gathered at the Faculty Club. "But it is complacent and in need of reform."

Tempering her criticism with compliments has helped earn Ms. Neal wary recognition from some in higher education. Michael Berube, a professor of English on Pennsylvania State University's main campus and a well-known liberal commentator, calls Ms. Neal a "more serious and substantial opponent of academic freedom" than most other critics.

She has worked her way into the national debate--testifying before the Senate Finance Committee, contributing to the deliberations of the federal Commission on the Future of Higher Education, and writing about academic freedom for the journal of the Association of American Colleges and Universities.

"Anne Neal is a legitimate player," says Gordon G. Brittan Jr., a philosophy professor at Montana State University at Bozeman who invited her to the campus last March to speak during a forum on academic freedom. "There is a concern about what's going on in the classroom, and Anne is expressing what a number of parents who are increasingly shouldering college bills are worried about."

But make no mistake, says Roger W. Bowen, general secretary of the American Association of University Professors: Ms. Neal is dangerous. "Anne is on a mission from God to remake the academy in the image of conservative values," he says. "She is part of a larger, national campaign to take over higher education and influence its agenda. If you're conservative, you say, 'We've got the White House. We've got the courts. We've got Congress. What we don't have is higher education, and if we want to control the country, that's where we have to implant ourselves.'"

Neal counters characterizations such as Bowen's handily, with a frank recognition that for critics such as Bowen, "conservative" is a dirty and ultimately dismissive word; ACTA is "bipartisan," she notes, adding that ACTA's mission is far removed from the sort of lobbying Bowen insinuates lies at its heart: "ACTA does not as a general matter look to the federal government as an answer to the problems we're addressing." Neal counters claims that a non-academic such as herself has no business getting involved in academic politics with similar frankness. "There's a traditional concept that anyone who's not in the academy should just leave well enough alone," she says. "But that kind of a response underscores the insularity of those inside the academy, which is part of the issue we're trying to address."

There's much more worth reading in this piece, which not only clarifies the work of ACTA, but also offers a rare window into who its leader is--as a professional and as a human being.

Posted by acta online at 08:14 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

ACTA applauds Dartmouth alumni

In a press release issued yesterday, ACTA praised the Dartmouth alumni for voting down a proposed new constitution whose parameters would have placed severe restrictions on their ability to participate usefully in Dartmouth governance:

ACADEMIC FREEDOM AND STANDARDS WIN AGAIN AT DARTMOUTH

Alumni Stand Up to Electioneering, Vote Down New Constitution

HANOVER, NH (November 3, 2006)--Dartmouth alumni have decisively rejected a proposed new constitution for alumni governance. The American Council of Trustees and Alumni, which has long supported concerned Dartmouth alumni, applauded the vote.

"This vote is another signal victory for academic freedom and standards," ACTA president Anne D. Neal said. "The new constitution would have imperiled future reform candidacies and silenced concerned alumni."

The voting was held from September 15 until October 31. A two-thirds "yes" vote was needed for ratification, but a whopping 51 percent of alumni voted "no."

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, academic excellence for undergraduates, and support of athletics. All three opposed the proposed new constitution because it would have imposed 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.

Student newspapers from across the political spectrum and the leaders of the New Hampshire Young Democrats and Dartmouth College Republicans all opposed the new constitution

ACTA also expressed concern this fall over electioneering on the part of the Dartmouth administration, which had promised to remain neutral. The irregularities included:

--A recent graduate said 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;

--A student employee 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;

--Four mass e-mails encouraging a "yes”"vote were sent to alumni using Dartmouth e-mail servers;

--Dartmouth president James Wright voted--in his capacity as a Dartmouth trustee--to recommend that alumni vote "yes" on the proposed constitution;

--Wright also endorsed the proposed constitution in a speech, going on to accuse concerned alumni of uttering "many misleading statements" and "attacks on Dartmouth's alumni volunteers"; and

Concerned alumni said the online ballot was biased. For each provision on it, the Executive Committee of the Dartmouth Association of Alumni inserted a large multi-colored statement endorsing or rejecting the proposed change. No such statements were available to other viewpoints.

"It is extremely telling that the new constitution failed by 18 points, despite a massive internal effort to have it passed," Neal concluded. "Dartmouth alumni have spoken, clearly showing that majority sentiment favors more openness to alumni concerns and petition trustee candidates. We hope the insiders who pushed so hard--and lost--have gotten the message."

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.

The Chronicle of Higher Education has more on the Dartmouth story and on ACTA's prominent role in it.

Posted by acta online at 06:10 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Dartmouth alumni get it right

For over a year, ACTA has been charting controversies at Dartmouth surrounding alumni governance. ACTA applauded the election of dark horse petition candidates Todd Zywicki and Peter Robinson to the board of trustees, deplored the alumni association's decision to prolong its officers' elected terms by postponing an election date, and challenged the Dartmouth administration to cease its electioneering activities in favor of a new alumni constitution that would make it much harder for petition candidates to win election to the board. While Dartmouth administrators never admitted wrongdoing or mended their ways, the alumni saw through their machinations and voted down the new constitution. For the new constitution to be voted in, 66% of voters would have had to approve it. In the end, only 49% did, while 51% voted against it.

InsideHigherEd.com has the details, along with a quote from ACTA president Anne Neal, who called the vote a "significant victory." "This is substantial vote because alumni want to ensure free speech and thought," Neal said. "There's a traditional perception that alumni should put up and shut up. That attitude has been changing across the country--it's a healthy situation."

Congratulations to Dartmouth alumni on a decision well made! While the new constitution would have concentrated power among inside candidates, the existing one does much more to encourage genuinely democratic process when it comes to placing alumni on the board of trustees.

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A word to commenters

Gentle readers,

Allow me to direct you to the prominently posted comments policy for this blog, located at the top of the page. Please note that while comments are welcome, they should be on topic "and should not contain profanity, personal attacks, or constitute spam or advertising." In the year and a half or so that I have maintained this site for ACTA, I have never made a practice either of deleting comments or of banning commenters. The site really is committed to the free exchange of ideas, and as a result, I've approved a great many comments that contain slurs against ACTA and against myself. I have also approved a great many comments by readers who at times spend more time attacking one another than they do debating issues. I write this post now because I want to remind readers that this is a blog about ideas, and that it does not welcome ad hominem attacks of any sort, against any person. I don't want to have to get into the business of banning commenters, or singling particularly nasty comments out for deletion. So, to everyone who comments here, please make a particular effort to ensure that your tone is civil, and that your focus is on ideas and issues, and not on personal attacks. If everyone can make that commitment, discussion will improve immensely, and all will benefit.

Posted by acta online at 06:24 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack