School plan blasted - Colorado

The Rocky Mountain News ^ | September 9, 2003 | Peggy Lowe

[garmonbozia]

GOP college proposal called McCarthyism

Democrats lashed out Monday at a GOP plan to get more Republicans on Colorado's college campuses, calling it academic McCarthyism and quotas for conservatives.

College professors, too, recoiled at the notion of ratifying the "Academic Bill of Rights," an eight-point plan that calls for more Republican professors and more "intellectual diversity" on the nation's campuses.

"This is affirmative action for conservative Republicans, to get them into universities," said Sen. Joan Fitz-Gerald, D-Golden, the state Senate minority leader. "There is something chilling and troubling about a movement like this."

As reported by the Rocky Mountain News Saturday, GOP leaders hope to pass next year a plan that calls for implementing the Academic Bill of Rights, either through legislation or the Colorado Commission on Higher Education.

The idea is being promoted nationally by David Horowitz, a conservative lighting rod. His group, Students for Academic Freedom, says universities are hotbeds of liberalism that lock out conservative faculty, students and speakers.

Among Horowitz's ideas, which include getting state legislatures to require schools to use the plan, is the investigation of professors' political registrations and voting records.

That idea didn't work in the 1950s during the McCarthy era, Fitz-Gerald said, and it won't work now.

"They're going to create a climate of fear in our universities, fear of being the professor who says the wrong thing," she said.

Gov. Bill Owens, appearing on KOA radio's Mike Rosen Show on Monday, said he supports the plan but doesn't know how to mandate the idea to the schools. He repeated his belief that political science departments are loaded with liberal Democrats and should have more balance, but said he wouldn't want a school's funding tied to ratification of the Academic Bill of Rights.

"I don't think you can tie nor should you tie funding to any sort of quota system. I'm opposed to quotas in all of their elements," Owens said. "And I also would be opposed to a quota that would require a certain number, for example, of Republican professors."

Tim Foster, CCHE's director who also supports the Academic Bill of Rights, was questioned about the plan Monday at a meeting of the faculty council at the University of Colorado at Boulder.

Foster echoed Owens, saying he would not want to see the matter become a legislative mandate because of the difficulties in implementing it.

But he told professors he sees some substance in Horowitz's criticism of academia.

[garmonbozia]

...but it's okay to have racial quotas for college admittance? huh?

[AK2KX]

"This is affirmative action for conservative Republicans, to get them into universities," ... There is something chilling and troubling about a movement like this."

This is a joke, right? Surely the speaker can't be serious?

[Bonaparte]

Hahahahaha! The dems are freaked out by this! Wonderful! Hahahaha!

[Bonaparte]

It's a scream, isn't it? "Oh, noooo! We can't have another viewpoint! Especially not the viewpoint of the tens of millions of Americans who gave Ronald Reagan a landslide victory in '84! Noooooo!"

[Adder]

"They're going to create a climate of fear in our universities, fear of being the professor who says the wrong thing," she said. "

Gee, sorta like there is now if you are a professor who says the politically conservative thing?

[aardvark1]

This will be the struggle the left will fight to the death over. They believe, rightly, that this is where they can do the work of changing America to their perceived socialist paradise.

[goldstategop]

Liberals are worried sick over the end of their stranglehold on Colorado's universities and colleges. This complaint of theirs is rich in a state that has a Republican State Legislature and a GOP Governor.

[LiteKeeper]

INTREP - Academic Freedom

[GovernmentShrinker]

The main solution to this problem is for parents and self-supporting students to vote with their dollars and feet.

There is also a legislative approach that I would strongly advocate, but it's very different from the one discussed in this article. The number one obstacle to students and parents putting these leftist cranks out of work is that colleges have set up degree requirements which force students to take a lot of these propaganda courses. Even sensible sounding requirements, like taking one U.S. history course, turn into propaganda requirements when the only courses available that fill the requirement are taught by leftist propaganda purveyors. Federal student loan eligibility is governed largely by requirements like being a matriculated degree-seeking student, making satisfactory prgress towards graduation, etc. Furthermore, most graduate and professional schools require an undergraduate degree for admission. And many federal jobs require, or give higher pay for degrees.

The solution?

1)Federal legislation requiring all schools which want to maintain eligibility for their students to receive federal financial aid, to allow non-degree students equal access to all undergraduate courses, and to base admission to graduate programs on satisfactory completion of a list of relevant courses, without regard to whether they were part of a degree program, or at how many different schools they were taken.

2) Federal legislation barring undergraduate degrees as a requirement for any position, and substituting a list of required courses.

The result would be freedom for students (and tuition-paying parents) to pursue an academic program of their own selection. If the school you're attending offers only leftist anti-American U.S history courses, you just take a U.S. history course at a different school, with your federal financial aid applicable at any eligible school. If you want to focus on science and math course, and skip all the bias-prone humanities and social science courses, go right ahead.

[Greg Luzinski]

The problem here, I hate to say it, is David Horowitz. It is tremendously harmful for the cause to have such a rash, obnoxious, totalitarian-personalied individual trying to put himself at the forefront of such an important issue for his own selfish reasons. Especially in a state like Colorado.

I've had extensive dealings with Horowitz, and he is no doubt a brilliant man and a brilliant writer. Maybe in his younger days, he was good at organizing anti-American activities, but, as of 2003, he simply should not be organizing projects like this and should not be organizing legislative efforts. He also should not be organizing, from L.A., campus groups that pretend to be autonomous and spontaneous.

Horowitz blew it, among other ways, by claiming this was a bipartisan issue, then only inviting Republican legislators to rather secretive meetings.

Gee, you think Horowitz maybe, just maybe, envisions exorbitant speaking fees coming to him as a result of this campaign?

Anyhow, poor judgment is an ongoing theme with Horowitz. It is well-known, for example, that Horowitz's political consultant has had sexual harassment issues in the past. But Horowitz keeps him because Horowitz makes a lot of money from "Restoration Weekend," which that consultant's wife organizes. (Sexual harassment and inappropriate behavior by this individual is the reason that a few invited speakers left early last year and won't be returning this year.)

We should keep in mind that what is good for the cause of academic freedom does not necessarily equate to what is good for David Horowitz!

[Kuksool]

***This is affirmative action for conservative Republicans, to get them into universities," said Sen. Joan Fitz-Gerald, D-Golden***

LOL! So much for liberals being the self-appointed guardians of diversity.

[lainde]

bttt

[Hobsonphile]

Belated ping.

*****

Leftism on Campus ping!

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Regards...

[Tolerance Sucks Rocks]

Let's just say that I'm reluctant to support quotas of any sort on campus...

[Tolerance Sucks Rocks]

According to this post, this Bill of Rights does not initially sound like a quota system to me.

Go for it!