Radical Academic Credos

Accuracy in Academia ^ | January 6, 2009 | Bethany Stotts

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Radical Academic Credos

Bethany Stotts, January 6, 2010

For supporters of David Horowitz’s student Academic Bill of Rights, academic freedom is about protecting vulnerable students from indoctrination at the hands of radical professors. However, one DePaul University professor recently argued that Horowitz’s conception of academic freedom promotes a “distinctly right-wing agenda” and “contains within it a backhanded insult to the intelligence of the students he is purporting to protect.”

“If the professors listed in Horowitz’s The 101 Most Dangerous Academics in America were as silly and irresponsible as Horowitz suggests, why would any student enroll in their courses?” asked Professor Matthew Abraham at a 2009 Modern Language Association panel entitled “Rhetoric and the New Academic Freedom.”

“Is Horowitz maintaining that the students,” he continued, “…have been so bamboozled by the likes of Robert Jensen and Ward Churchill, that they waste their and their parents’ hard-earned dollars on courses that are simply transparent programs of political indoctrination?” (Prof. Abraham coordinated at least three DePaul speeches by radical UT Austin professor Jensen between 2005 and 2007, according to his curriculum vitae.)

According to Prof. Abraham, the 1940 American Association of University Professors (AAUP) “Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure” upholds the idea that academic disciplines should self-police their own ability to uphold professional norms. But Horowitz argues that “these leftists do not respect and have failed to conform to the professional and institutional norms of the academic profession, essentially forfeiting the claim to academic freedom protections because of their extremism,” he said.

“It’s precisely because academics pose a threat to the right-wing agenda Horowitz champions that he’s so intent in stripping so-called radical professors of their platforms.”...

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“If the professors listed in Horowitz’s The 101 Most Dangerous Academics in America were as silly and irresponsible as Horowitz suggests, why would any student enroll in their courses?” asked Professor Matthew Abraham...

Yeah. I just cannot imagine this....