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Bollinger backpedals

Columbia University president Lee Bollinger has, at long last, issued a statement regarding student protesters' scandalous disruption of a speech by Minuteman founder Jim Gilchrist -- and the criticism is flying.

Bollinger's statement, issued last week, pays lip service to the importance of free expression on campus, as well as to the necessity of disciplining those who disrupt or interfere with speakers. But what's missing from Bollinger's lengthy attempt at pacifying erudition is what's most telling about it. No mention is made of inviting Gilchrist to return to campus to complete his speech. Bollinger skirts the issue of exactly what disciplinary measures will be taken with the students who shut Gilchrist down--and does so disingenuously, by invoking FERPA. He also announces new policies regarding security at student events as well as monitoring of outside attendees--both of which threaten to impose potentially unreasonable restrictions on campus speech.

The good news is that Bollinger's statement has, by virtue of its very inadequacy, allowed the left and the right to find common ground on this one. Compare the criticisms at Powerline--"It is much clearer to me that the university has adopted new procedures to encumber the hosting of "controversial" speakers on campus than that any appropriate discipline has been administered to those who disrupted the event in issue"--to those offered by John K. Wilson at IHE:

Unfortunately, there are many disturbing aspects to this letter. Bollinger claims, "The Federal Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), however, strictly prohibits the University from divulging details of disciplinary proceedings, including the identities of participants." This is absolutely not true. FERPA might prohibit Columbia from identifying the students it is punishing (although I dispute even that), but it certainly allows Columbia to say how many students are being disciplined, under what provisions, and what the penalties are. It's important to know what these penalties are, to judge whether Columbia's penalties are too light or too severe. Actually, the Dean's Discipline approach seems about right.

Bollinger also declared that it will require "an express agreement in advance of any event--between the University, the sponsoring student group, and the speakers or groups--about how the events will be staged and who from outside the University will attend." This is very alarming, given Columbia's recent attempts to ban "outsiders" from student events. Students not only should be free to organize an event without any administrative approval, they should also be free to invite anyone to attend. Blaming "outsiders" for problems is a common tactic of administrators.

Also missing from Bollinger's statement (and previous statements) is a very basic principle: whenever a speech is disrupted, Columbia should attempt to restore order and continue the speech as soon as possible. If, for some reason, an event must be cancelled, Columbia's administration should commit to reschedule the speaker, and pay all expenses, as soon as possible. Bollinger's record as a free-speech defender has been severely tarnished in the past two years in a variety of cases too numerous to list here. This announcement doesn't restore any confidence in the state of intellectual freedom at Columbia.

If Columbia remains unclear about its commitment to free exchange on campus, the public is becoming increasingly clear about how it feels about higher ed administrators who waffle at precisely the moment when they should be standing up for the principles that underwrite the academic enterprise.

Posted by acta online on December 27, 2006 at 04:05 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Politics trumps education

Hamilton College has scuppered plans--and funds--for a new campus center devoted to the study of Western civilization, and the students are not at all confused about how the ideological agenda of a rigidly left-wing faculty has taken precedence over such elemental issues as educational quality, intellectual diversity, and students' academic freedom to learn. ACTA has long taken an interest in Hamilton College's less-than-stellar track record when it comes to ensuring that doctrinaire agendas don't displace educational aims, and in a press release issued today is condemning the latest in Hamilton's lengthening series of administrative missteps:

THE GRINCH COMES TO HAMILTON

Students Protest as Scandal Reverberates Nationwide

CLINTON, NY (December 22, 2006)--Despite significant student demand, Hamilton College has scuttled a vibrant new center to study Western civilization and Alexander Hamilton. The creation of the new center was announced with fanfare earlier this year, only to be dropped in the wake of faculty objections. Since the announcement, Hamilton has increasingly drawn the ire of national commentators who say the university has allowed faculty politics to trump student needs.

"Students and alumni may rightly say the Grinch has come to Hamilton," said Anne D. Neal, president of the American Council of Trustees and Alumni. "Instead of giving students a new center of learning, Hamilton is taking educational opportunities away--and drawing negative national attention as a consequence. It's simply inexcusable!"

In a recent speech at the University of Notre Dame, Neal condemned the college's actions. ACTA has been working with concerned Hamilton alumni for years to effect reforms on the campus.

Hamilton also received harsh criticism in an article appearing in the national magazine The New Criterion and a recent syndicated column, which called the college's move an example of the "toxic spirit" that "clearly lives on at Hamilton"--among others.

The national publicity joins a chorus of student complaints, including two recent editorials in the Hamilton Spectator, the student newspaper, bemoaning the death of what was to be the Alexander Hamilton Center. In an editorial, students took the college to task: "Hamilton students have lost a great educational opportunity because people could not compromise." According to the editorial:

"We have lost, among other things, the opportunity for internships, fellowships, research stipends and a greater dialogue with other institutions of higher learning, in correspondence with the Center's mission to open up communication with outside colleges and universities and engage in serious scholarship."

Another student columnist later added that the Center "would have significantly enhanced the students' educational experience at Hamilton." He wrote:

"Yet again, many professors, because of their ideological biases, personal vendettas and politics, have deprived students of this great intellectual opportunity. They have ideological blinders on and cannot see that this center would greatly benefit the students, Hamilton and the larger academic community."

"Clearly, this is not just a local issue," ACTA's Neal said. "Hamilton's distaste for intellectual diversity is the symptom of a much larger problem on our nation’s college campuses."

In her speech at Notre Dame, Neal noted that the Alexander Hamilton Center "would have been a part of a growing group of such centers nationwide, including the renowned James Madison Program at Princeton headed by Professor Robert George." But now, she said, the Center's fate has become an example of a "prevalent culture on the modern campus that is politicized, one-sided, coercive, and manipulative." She continued:

"This situation is the product of nearly three decades of postmodernist transformation of the academy. Whereas political bias used to be considered the enemy of dispassionate teaching and scholarship, postmodernism has turned partiality into a virtue...."

Too often the ambitions of the postmodernist academy reflect narcissistic faculty interests rather than student needs; academic freedom without academic responsibility; political agendas in the name of teaching students to think critically.

According to its charter, the Alexander Hamilton Center was to be devoted to the "study of freedom, democracy and capitalism...within the larger tradition of Western culture." Hamilton announced the creation of the Center on September 6. It then announced a $3.6 million pledge from a life trustee on October 13. But in the process, the Hamilton faculty voted overwhelmingly to condemn the Center.

Amid the controversy, a dean sent an e-mail on Nov. 27 saying that "now is not the time to proceed with the establishment of the center on campus." An announcement was also posted on the Hamilton website saying: "Hamilton College has announced that the Alexander Hamilton Center will not be established at this time due to a lack of consensus about institutional oversight of the Center as a Hamilton program."

"Hamilton is due for a serious course correction," Neal concluded. "It has just hired a new dean for diversity issues, but if it continues to neglect diversity of thought, its reputation will be seriously harmed."

Coverage of Hamilton's decision at InsideHigherEd is instructive--commenters have much to say, including the comment that "it might be very interesting--and useful--to compare the proposed governance structure for this center with the charters that govern centers like Stanford's Hoover Institution or Princeton's Woodrow Wilson Center. I'm not completely familiar with how these two centers are governed, but I seem to recall that they are run by boards that are controlled largely by the centers' funders or founders rather than the faculty of the host institutions. This doesn't strike me as being all that different in form." Such a comparison might indeed be very interesting and useful.

Posted by acta online on December 22, 2006 at 02:22 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

AAUP Watch

A press release describes how ACTA has issued a challenge to the AAUP to live up to its own statements about academic freedom:

PROFESSORS ABUSE ACADEMIC FREEDOM

ACTA Challenges AAUP to Uphold Professional Standards

MISSOULA, MT (December 18, 2006)--In a new essay, American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA) president Anne D. Neal criticizes the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) for failing to uphold academic standards. The AAUP is a mouthpiece for professors across the country.

"If we are to have a meaningful dialogue about academic freedom today--and if we are to protect academic freedom for the future," Neal argues, "we must first recognize that the AAUP should be regarded neither as the main arbiter of academic freedom nor as its most trustworthy protector."

In her article, Neal argues that "following the AAUP's lead, numerous academics are abusing the concept of academic freedom, interpreting it to make it mean whatever they want it to mean." Some noteworthy examples include:

--University of Wisconsin lecturer Kevin Barrett, who has invoked academic freedom to teach bizarre conspiracy theories about 9/11 in a course about Islam;

--Faculty at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, who have attempted to use academic freedom as a reason to avoid assigning graded work prior to the midpoint of the semester;

--AAUP general secretary Roger Bowen's own statement that because of academic freedom, campuses should have a right to deny students equal access to military recruiters until "such time as the U.S. military changes its...policies to accord with the more enlightened of the academy";

--The University of California, which has eliminated from its academic freedom statement a prohibition against using the classroom as a "platform for propaganda" on the grounds that there is no longer a difference between the "interested" and "disinterested" scholarship; and

--The recent statements of Bowen and AAUP president Cary Nelson that the AAUP's founding document, the 1915 "Declaration of Principles," is outdated. The Declaration states that "The university teacher...should cause his students to become familiar with the best published expressions of the great historic types of doctrine..and should, above all, remember that his business is not to provide his students with ready-made conclusions, but to train them to think for themselves."

Neal's essay, "Freedom from Accountability?," was published in the fall issue of the academic journal The Montana Professor. It expands upon an address she made last March at the Burton K. Wheeler Center at Montana State University, where a conference was held on academic freedom in the twenty-first century.

The editors of The Montana Professor asked participants at the conference and other education leaders to address the topic of academic responsibility. The new edition includes articles by Neal, the late Kermit Hall (formerly president of the State University of New York at Albany), and the AAUP's Bowen, among others.

Neal calls for accountability on the part of the AAUP and the academics it supports. "We must recognize that the debate surrounding academic freedom is riddled with confusion on the part of academics and non-academics alike, and that some of the foremost self-styled defenders of academic freedom are defending it in bad faith," she writes.

She continues:"And we must also recognize that under such circumstances, outside input is an essential and salutary thing. When universities fail to abide by professional standards; when faculty members put personal, social, and political agendas ahead of a fundamental commitment to truth; when even the AAUP loses touch with its guiding principles, outside input becomes a necessary means of reminding colleges and universities of their professional obligations and of protecting the academic freedom that allows them to govern themselves as they see fit."

As a follow-up, the University of Montana will sponsor an informal debate between Neal and Bowen on February 14 in Missoula.

The debate promises to mark the beginning of a long overdue discussion about what academic freedom is, and, perhaps, what it must become.

Posted by acta online on December 21, 2006 at 01:59 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Zoning for free speech

Student activists at the University of Central Florida were shut down by campus police last spring, in a classic scene of confusion about where First Amendment rights end and where reasonable, legal restrictions on time, place, and manner begin:

One minute, members of Students for a Democratic Society were sitting in a breezeway, holding signs asking other students to discuss a possible war in Iran.

The next, the University of Central Florida police were accusing the campus activists of trespassing and were threatening them with arrest if they didn't move to a designated "free-assembly area."

That event in April launched an ongoing dispute over free speech at UCF that echoes similar struggles between university administrators and students across the country.

Officials at the campus east of Orlando say they're just trying to prevent protesters from blocking entrances or disturbing classes and other university functions.

"We're trying to protect everyone's interest here, not only those who want to demonstrate or protest," UCF spokesman Tom Evelyn said.

Students contend that the real motive is to shut them up.

"They have no respect for the First Amendment, and they want to control what we say," said Patrick DeCarlo, 21, a UCF creative-writing major, SDS member and student senator.

UCF shouldn't and can't allow protesters to stage demonstrations whenever and wherever they see fit. The dispute at UCF centers on whether SDS protesters were exercising their constitutional rights or "interfering with business when they held signs in a breezeway outside the John T. Washington Center, which contains a bookstore, credit union and other services." But it doesn't sound like SDS was interfering with anything at all--and it does sound as though UCF's policy on free assembly areas amounts to license to abuse the right to place reasonable restrictions on the time, place, and manner on student expression.

The courts have determined that public university campuses violate students' First Amendment rights when they confine protesters to free speech zones, or, in this case, "designated 'free speech areas.'" UCF has four such areas (increased from one several years ago)--and as such it has a problem. As the logic goes, to designate certain areas of campus as "assembly" areas is to announce that there is no free speech on the rest of campus. Public universities can't legally do that.

UCF has tried to pretend that's not what it's doing, but the argument is pretty flimsy:

Though students call them "free-speech zones," university officials designate them as "free-assembly areas."

"We attempt to clarify with students that they have free speech everywhere," Ehasz said.

Jay Jurie, faculty adviser to UCF's SDS chapter and an associate professor of public administration, said officials are playing semantic games.

"The university is trying to carve out an artificial distinction between speech and assembly," said Jurie, who was active with the University of Colorado chapter of the original SDS in 1969. "It's absurd and preposterous."

FIRE has taken up the cause of UCF's SDS chapter, and the university is responding by reviewing its policies.

Posted by acta online on December 19, 2006 at 11:37 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Diversity for me -- but not for thee

The Consortium for Faculty Diversity at Liberal Arts Colleges seems, on the surface, to be committed to the right things: "The Consortium is committed to increasing the diversity of students, faculty members and curricular offerings at liberal arts colleges with a particular focus on enhancing the diversity of faculty members and of applicants for faculty positions," begins its mission statement. Who could argue with the goal of ensuring that liberal arts colleges cultivate a wide and enriching variety of students, faculty, and course offerings? Surely that's what liberal education is all about.

But diversity is not always what is meant when diversity is invoked, and that's the case with the Consortium. Reading further in the Consortium's mission statement, it becomes clear that the definition of diversity to which it and its long list of member schools (scroll down) adhere is narrow indeed:

The Consortium was founded as an association of liberal arts colleges committed to strengthening the ethnic diversity of students and of faculty members at liberal arts colleges. The early goals of the Consortium with regard to faculty diversity included encouraging U.S. citizens who are members of under-represented minority groups to complete their graduate programs and to consider faculty employment in liberal arts colleges.

So diversity as a value in itself is not really what the Consortium is all about. It's clear from this paragraph that ethnic diversity is the only sort of diversity that matters here. To be clear: There's nothing wrong with promoting ethnic diversity at liberal arts colleges. But there is something wrong--or at least profoundly disingenuous--about presenting inititatives centered on "diversity" and inititatives centered on "ethnic diversity" as synonymous enterprises. They are not the same thing. And to treat them as if they are is to erase the claims of other forms of diversity that are arguably more immediately germane to intellectual environments. Intellectual diversity, as numerous studies have shown, is sorely lacking in higher education; faculties are enormously one-sided when it comes to political affiliations and the intellectual outlooks that derive from them, even as race-based hiring and promotion initiatives ensure that faculties are becoming ever more ethnically diverse. Increasing ethnic diversity does not increase intellectual diversity, though often the argument justifying the one is that it enhances the other--that a range of skin colors and heritages is needed in order to ensure a range of ideas.

The Consortium makes just this assumption. It is currently accepting applications for dissertation fellowships and post-docs "from those who are U.S. citizens or permanent residents who will contribute to increasing the diversity of member colleges by increasing their ethnic and racial diversity, maximizing the educational benefits of diversity and/or increasing the number of professors who can and will use diversity as a resource for enriching the education of students." The assumption here is that the mere presence of ethnic minorities on college faculties is educational--which in turn presumes a predominantly white, privileged student body so cloistered that the very sight of someone different will be morally edifying. That's an insult to both the minority faculty member, who is treated like a token and a spectacle in this logic, and to the student body, which tends to be more savvy, more experienced, and, well, more diverse, than the logic allows.

The assumption here is also that ethnic faculty members should "use" their minority status--their "diversity"--in the classroom, turn it into a "resource for enriching the education of students." It's hard to picture exactly how this would work in an intellectually responsible way. Faculty members should not be pedagogically bound by identity politics; they ought not to feel that "using" their skin color or cultural heritage in the classroom is part of their job description; their academic freedom is narrowed to the extent that they do feel so obligated. Likewise, students should not be subjected to gratuitous or aggressive professorial "uses" of minority status. That's a violation of their own academic freedom--as some schools are beginning to recognize (Penn State just passed a remarkable statement on student acadmic freedom that clearly prohibits professors from promoting political agendas or deviating from the designated subject matter in class).

Diversity as a concept has a nice, soft appeal. It sounds on the surface like a reasonable and noble aim, one to which only intolerant bigots and the fundamentally ignorant could object. But it doesn't take much examination to begin to see how readily the concept is appropriated in the service of far less reasonable and legitimate aims. The Consortium--which counts schools such as Bowdoin, Carleton, Bryn Mawr, Grinnell, Hamilton, Oberlin, Reed, Swarthmore, Vassar, and Wellesley among its members--is driving an agenda that deserves a skeptical eye.

Posted by acta online on December 15, 2006 at 10:18 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

No white men need apply?

The American Economic Association has taken a strong and important stand on the wording of job ads. InsideHigherEd reports that when the University of Vermont economics department submitted an ad for a tenure-track opening "welcom[ing] applications from women and underrepresented ethnic, racial and cultural groups and from people with disabilities," the AEA put its foot down. Deeming such phrasing discriminatory, the organization refused to run the ad as written:

John J. Siegfried, an economist at Vanderbilt University who is secretary-treasurer of the American Economic Association, said that the group's policy was to bar any mention of any group in a job ad as discriminatory. "We have taken the position that we do not want to help anyone discriminate in any way, shape or form," he said. So while colleges can (and do) include references to being in favor of diversity, or being equal opportunity employers, the minute they mention a group, the ad is edited to remove the relevant phrases. He said that "a few dozen" ads are changed every year, most of them ads that mention a requirement that applicants be members of religious groups (for jobs at certain religious colleges).

Stephanie Seguino, associate dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at Vermont and former economics department chair, is up in arms: "It's ironic that an organization that believes in free markets is disrupting the free flow of information," she said, and she has a point--the AEA can't change Vermont's potentially discriminatory hiring practices just by changing the wording of the ad, and by using the text of the ad to make a point about fair hiring practices, the AEA may be obscuring the fact that Vermont's practices are not fair. Still, the solution is not for the AEA to collude in hiring practices that may have serious equity problems.

Seguino tried to explain how a job ad that excludes white men is not discriminatory, but she didn't do very well. She told IHE that "The economics department was trying to build a diverse pool in a field dominated by white men and that the ad did not suggest any preference in selecting finalists or making an offer, but only wanted to encourage people to come forward for consideration. ... 'To signal to certain groups that have in the past faced discrimination that they are welcome is not discrimination, but is legal affirmative action,' said Seguino, who said that the language Vermont used had been reviewed by the university's lawyers. 'We are just signaling that, unlike some economics departments, we welcome diversity.'"

Other critics of the AEA's decision are quite clear that the AEA has an activist obligation that it is failing to meet: "The International Association for Feminist Economics has written to the AEA questioning the group's policy and saying that it has the potential to hurt recruiting efforts. 'Economics has been described as a discipline with a particularly hostile climate for women and members of underrepresented ethnic minorities,' the letter said. 'We urge the AEA to do everything it can to dispel this image."

The outcry has been such that the AEA's board will meet next month to review its policies on job postings. Here's hoping they stand firm.

Posted by acta online on December 13, 2006 at 09:14 AM | Comments (8) | TrackBack

Tenure, Transparency, Corruption

Tenured Radical has written a post that outlines in lurid detail both how the tenure process can be abused by colleagues who have an axe--political or other--to grind, as well as how departmental cultures tend overwhelmingly and irresponsibly to tolerate this type of behavior. "We all have at least one, probably more, colleague who is erratic to say the least, maybe crazy, maybe senile, maybe an alcoholic," TR writes; "And no one ever does a thing about it, even to the extent of saying to that colleague, post-egregious behavior: 'That was wrong.'"

I have a colleague who, in a tenure case I was not part of because of being on sabbatical, wrote a nasty minority report of one (every one else voted in favor of the case) accusing the candidate of being unsuited to the job because s/he is a bigot. An anti-Semite to be exact. And when asked by the department chair why he did this, the colleague responded that he hadn't really meant to damage the candidate, he was just upset with one of the candidate's mentors and wanted to convey that very strongly.

Oh. OK. I get it now.

Character assassination at Zenith, as at many other places, is not a new thing, it's just that it is usually done where it belongs, in the bathroom or in a department meeting. It is almost unheard of that anyone writes such a thing down and makes such an evil, stick-to-you-like-gum charge part of an official report. I don't think it will do any damage -- apparently the department, one and all, was appalled across political and ideological lines, rallied around, etc. And I'm sure they are eating baskets of Tums over at the various administration buildings, praying that the case just zips through and that all is forgotten. But here is the thing: at the risk of the candidate finding out this horrible hurtful thing, I don't think we should forget about it. And I think there is something very wrong about the tenure system that practically everyone I have discussed this with since I saw the document has said, Yes, it was dreadful, but nothing can be done.

It is also worth saying that this is one in a long string of horrible things this crazy man has done, and when called on it, he claims that he is only being attacked for his conservatism by liberals who want to marginalize him. Ergo, he also believes that it is his task to go after "liberals" or your Dr. Radical, whom he actually refers to publicly as "the department radical," whenever possible and by any means necessary. This includes spreading false gossip, lying, agreeing to things in meetings and then backing out of them later, and telling students not to take classes from certain colleagues (Dr. Radical, Dr. Victorian, and their younger colleagues are among them) because we "don't teach real history." Whatever that means.

OK, but he didn't do anything to me this time, and actually, since I am now a full Professor he can't do anything to me again but annoy me and waste my time, which was mostly his effect on me before because -- sometimes to my great grief -- I respond poorly to bullying and sometimes just have had to take my licks for it and hope that Dr. Victorian could bail me out. Which she does. But what about his effect on others? My feeling is that we all have tolerated lesser bad behavior because it could be managed, and that because everyone acknowledges that he is crazy, we all manage to stay comfortably beyond his reach. But this time he has Gone Too Far, by making such a vicious attack on a colleague at such a critical career juncture.

The first thing I am going to do personally is tell him that I find this behavior revolting. But I also think he needs to feel the pain, which my personal disapproval will not convey (indeed, it will undoubtedly feed his persectution mania.) My feeling is that he should lose his privileges to participate in personnel decisions for a period of time (forever would be great). But I also think that his behavior as a whole (I haven't even gotten to the hideous things he says in the classroom, which are just racist and sexist, not conservative) needs to be addressed by someone with far more authority than a group of departmental colleagues who will not act, and maybe cannot act, despite the fact that perhaps the only thing we agree on as a group is that we would be thrilled to see him vanish without a trace.

What say the rest of you to this grisly tale? And how do we reconfigure the idea of tenure to link its privileges to a set of ethical responsibilities?

TR outlines several issues here: the shoddiness of a professional review process that cannot deal forthrightly or firmly with individuals who abuse it; the manner in which the shoddiness of this process puts a range of administrators in an ethically questionable position--to honor the assessments in the personnel file as they are meant to be honored, or to look the other way when one of them doesn't conveniently fit with the others; the lack of accountability embedded within academic culture, such that even at those odd moments when someone is called on their bad behavior, and even when that someone admits to it, no consequences follow; and, finally, the abuse of the "political persecution" defense to rationalize unprofessional behavior. Let's be clear on that last point: Whether the individual described by TR is or is not a lone beleaguered conservative languishing in a department of liberals, that does not justify using the delicate and highly imperfect personnel process to try to scupper the career of someone whose views don't tally with your own. The same goes for anyone else--and there are many--who uses his or her academic position to adopt a victimized pose.

Anecdotes such as TR's are common in academe, though this is yet another one of those areas where a lack of hard data makes it impossible to know just how widespread the problem is. My guess is that most people who have been around academic departments for any length of time are in possession of similar tales.

Readers are invited to comment on the phenomena of vigilante faculty members, professional bullying, and political excuse-making. They are also more than welcome to address TR's question: "How do we reconfigure the idea of tenure to link its privileges to a set of ethical responsibilities?" and to consider a subsidiary one: "Is it possible to reconfigure the idea of tenure to link its privileges to a set of ethical responsibilities?"

Finally, TR's comments about the "racist and sexist" statements the problem conservative colleague allegedly makes in the classroom are also worthy of consideration. Though TR does not elaborate on what s/he defines as "racist" or "sexist," TR does suggest--and this is something ACTA has long argued for--that faculty members are not absolutely free to use their classrooms as they wish, and that schools should be doing a lot more to ensure that they know what is happening in classrooms and to guarantee that professors of all political stripes are not bringing ideological agendas in with them. What should schools be doing when a professor gets a reputation for misusing the classroom?

Comments are welcome.

Posted by acta online on December 12, 2006 at 12:06 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Speaking out on hecklers and other noisy censors

This staff editorial in today's Michigan Daily shows that Michigan has been having some problems with heckling protesters rather akin to those that have made national news at Columbia--and that at least some students would like to see a more civil intellectual climate on campus:

Raymond Tanter, a former professor in the political science department who currently teaches at Georgetown University, delivered a talk a week and a half ago about the issues surrounding diplomacy with Iran. Better than anything Tanter said, however, attendees probably recall the actions of some pro-Palestinian activists who attended the event, which was sponsored by the American Movement for Israel.

Citing the University's policy on freedom of speech and artistic expression, event organizers repeatedly asked that audience members pose questions respectfully and abide by the policy's guidelines. That policy permits heckling, but it forbids actions that unduly interfere with a lecturer's communication with the audience. Despite these requests, continued angry shouts triggered a domino effect that ended with multiple arrests and allegations of police brutality.

It is admirable that the University maintains a policy that attempts to preserve the free speech of speakers and dissenters alike. If fairly and correctly administered, that policy can avoid undue abridgements of expression while making removal of disruptive individuals a last resort. But though the policy is designed to mediate situations like this one, its application rarely ends up satisfying anyone.

Expressing opinions openly and passionately is a practice central to the goals of the University. But defining the difference between emotionally charged activism and outright disrespect that shuts down discussion shouldn't have to be contentious. Take, for instance, an unpopular event earlier this semester, the "Catch an Illegal Immigrant Day" sponsored by Young Americans for Freedom. Counter-protesters who considered the event racist drowned out the YAF chair's voice with chants whenever he tried to speak - giving ammunition to ideologues convinced that progressives are out to suppress any thought they deem politically incorrect.

Making one's case with intrusive shouts and unrelenting interruptions that seek to shut down an opposing view is, generally speaking, an unproductive means of making a point. The pro-Palestinian activists had every right to attend Tanter's event, ask tough questions and hold up signs - but the fracas that eventually played out probably hasn't done much to advance their cause.

The Daily editors are right about those policies on free expression and dissent--while every school has one, and has one because it needs one, it is nonetheless the case that the enforcement of the policy marks a disappointment and a failure--an event gone bad, a speaker shouted down, peaceful protest warped into the potential for riot. At the same time, though, not enforcing the policy--which is what Columbia is currently doing--is worse. It sends the message that the school takes neither its policies nor the delicate work of reasoned debate seriously, and invites others to emulate those who have heckled and disrupted and threatened and otherwise outdone themselves in the name of preventing certain views from being heard and discussed. Columbia needs to be reminded that strong enforcement is a form of deterrence -- and Michigan should be congratulated for the effort it has made to foster an environment that honors all views.

Posted by acta online on December 11, 2006 at 10:11 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

Thinking through Columbia's inaction

A commenter to this post on Columbia University's failure to act after student activists forcibly shut down a campus visit by the Minutemen wonders what kinds of liability issues President Bollinger might be creating for the school:

The failure of university administrators to discourage such thuggish behavior as we saw in the Tancredo and Minutemen incidents increases the likelihood that someone will be seriously injured or, heaven forbid, killed.

Which raises the interesting possibility of legal action against the institution, on the grounds that its administration was negligent, if not complicit, and should have foreseen the consequences of their decision not to discourage thuggish behavior. After all, if you can sue McDonald's and win because they served coffee that's too hot . . .

Even if such a lawsuit were to be unsuccessful, can you imagine the amount of bad publicity that would deliver to the hapless school's doorstep?

Bollinger has sent the message that heckler's vetoes, physically threatening behavior, and so on are perfectly acceptable at Columbia, at least when the people employing them are on the right side of the political dividing line. Readers are invited to comment on what, if any, potential impact this may have on Columbia's vulnerability to future legal action should someone get hurt in an activist-led melee.

Posted by acta online on December 07, 2006 at 08:37 AM | Comments (5) | TrackBack

Olive branches and battles royale

The Chronicle of Higher Education has conducted a highly necessary and revealing social experiment: Last month, CHE issued lunch invitations to Michael Berube and David Horowitz, with the idea of bringing together two personalities who have come to stand somewhat metonymically for the two sides of the debate about ideological bias in academe. Berube and Horowitz had never met, though they have written about one another quite pointedly quite a bit. The resulting conversation is an interesting instance of two men who have come to be regarded as academe's versions of arch nemeses discovering that they just might have some common ground.

Handled with a delightfully light touch by moderator Thomas Bartlett, who makes sure we know which interlocutor fidgets, which is calm, and what they had for lunch, the discussion transcript can be read without a subscription here.

An excerpt:

Horowitz: You have more experience with students than I do. I'm amazed. I have these Republican kids who sign up -- the reason I'm at Ball State is this kid signed up for a peace-studies course and thought he was going to learn about war and peace, and it turned out to be this guy recruiting people to his anti-military, nonviolent movement. I think the culture has been eroded.

Berube: Don't you find from the students you're talking to that they're not fooled by this? Let me ask: What actual effect does this have?

Horowitz: What you were saying earlier is part of my speech. The kids who suffer the most are the liberal kids because they don't get challenged. The conservative kids, if they open their mouths, they gotta know how to defend themselves. They're the kids who learn a lot . So to me it's the--

Berube: That's what I'm saying; it's not good for liberals ...

Horowitz: Well, maybe we'll start a movement together when this is over. It's the integrity of the academic process to the radicals conducting their radicalism, but just not in the classroom...

An awful lot can happen when people simply sit down and talk. It would be nice to see more such conversations. Who knows how much common ground there might really be between people who have been cast--or who have cast themselves--as virulently opposed?

Posted by acta online on December 05, 2006 at 10:05 AM | Comments (4) | TrackBack

Freedom for me, but not for thee

"All points of view are welcome at Columbia, from Venezuelan presidents to voices from vaginas," writes Columbia junior and U.S. marine Matt Sanchez; "Unless you're in the military."

Sanchez has a way with words, and he has a point. His quarry is not just Columbia's hypocritical approach to diversity--wherein certain kinds of difference are valued, and others are not tolerated at all--but its glaring failure to discipline the students who recently exercised a decisive heckler's veto at en event featuring the Minutemen:

You see, I had a problem: fellow student Monique Dols.

Back on Activities Day, Dols didn't just lecture me on my stupidity in serving our nation; she also yelled that I was a baby killer. For a Marine, being called a killer is almost flattering - but for months Dols and her friends had been disrupting pretty much every event I attended.

Most famously, her crowd rushed the stage at another group's event, preventing the guest (from the border-enforcement advocates, the Minutemen) from delivering his remarks, and nearly causing a riot.

That day, Dols claimed to be protesting for the recognition of the humanity of illegal Hispanic immigrants. Yet somehow her concern doesn't apply to a citizen Hispanics proud to serve this country and eager to go to college.

And the Columbia administration seems to agree. Despite bringing national embarrassment to the university with her actions, she's gone completely unpunished.

It's unlikely that an angry op-ed written by an undergraduate--even one who is a corporal in the U.S. marines--will change Columbia's course of action (or inaction) at this point. But it's telling nonetheless that Columbia has preferred national humiliation at the hands of the media to a fair and reasonable response to the Minutemen incident. After all, it's not as if this is controversial. Columbia has clear, content-neutral rules about disruptive protests.

Here's the student handbook on what you are and are not allowed to do when you are protesting:

440. DEMONSTRATIONS, RALLIES, AND PICKETING.
Demonstrations, rallies, picketing, and the circulation of petitions have an important place in the life of a university. They are means by which protests may be registered and attention drawn to new directions possible in the evolution of the University community. But in order to protect the rights of all members of the University community and to ensure the proper functioning of the University as an institution of teaching and research, it is necessary to impose reasonable restraints on the place and manner in which picketing and other demonstrations are conducted and on activities of counter demonstrators or self-appointed vigilantes.

This is the intention of the Rules of University Conduct: to protect the concurrent rights of both the University community as a whole and demonstrators. While the University as a private institution is not subject to the Constitutional provisions on free speech and due process of law, the University by its nature is dedicated to the free expression of ideas and to evenhanded and fair dealing with all with whom it conducts its affairs. The Rules of University Conduct are thus enacted by the University to provide as a matter of University policy the maximum freedom of expression consistent with the rights of others and a fair and speedy hearing to any person charged with a violation of these Rules.

A violation of these Rules is an offense against the entire University community. However, such violations are not here considered as crimes, and University disciplines should not carry the same stigma as a criminal conviction. All members of the University community are assumed to be innocent until proven guilty of a violation of the Rules. The University shall publicize the existence of the Rules and make them readily available to persons who may be affected by them. Such persons are responsible for being aware of all provisions contained in the Rules.

It would seem that Columbia is violating its own policy--and principles--by failing to follow up with Dols and her compatriots. That, in turn, seems to be a worse offense than the one the hecklers committed.

Posted by acta online on December 04, 2006 at 08:46 PM | Comments (5) | TrackBack

Hamilton Cans Western Civ Center

ACTA is in today's Utica Observer-Dispatch thanks to yesterday's press release on Hamilton College. Both are well worth a read.

Posted by cmitchell on December 01, 2006 at 01:55 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack