Free Republic

Last week marked the final set of hearings on academic freedom by members of the Pennsylvania state house. The Select Committee on Academic Freedom met at Harrisburg Area Community College (HACC) on May 31st and June 1st to hear administrators, union officials, professors and students. Dr. Peter H. Garland and Dr. James D. Moran came representing the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education (PASSHE) and said that it is their goal “to ensure that the more than 107,000 students attending the 14 PASSHE Universities receive the very best education possible” and said that each school already has policies in place...

Unlike the state assemblymen tasked with investigating the controversy, I personally know that there is a problem with academic freedom in the Keystone state and around the country and a lack of student testifiers is not proof otherwise. While running a booth at the Pennsylvania Leadership Conference, I met students, parents and grandparents all concerned with the unchecked liberal bias on their campuses. I met a young man who wrote a final paper from a perspective he finds revolting just because he knew it was the only way to get an A. He said writing it literally made his stomach...

Dear Ms. Seymour, I recently caught your article, “Professor Condemns Committee” (May 19, 2006). I believe that we spoke at the Millersville hearings, directly following my testimony, though I spoke to so many that day, it is difficult to keep the names and faces together. If it isn’t too forward of me, I would like to address a few items included in your article. You say, “Smith did not mention that Horowitz has said that the idea for ABOR is taken from the 1940 statement on Academic Freedom and Tenure of the AAUP…” You imply, I think, that I was...

Professor Mark Bauerlein of Emory University traveled from Atlanta, Georgia to Millersville, Pennsylvania for hearings on academic freedom in late April to share his thoughts on how bias in academia becomes institutionalized. “If we get too much uniformity, too much agreement on debatable issues, too little dissent, then the group slides into complacency, insularity, and groupthink. Within the group, attitudes harden. As the years pass and the members reinforce each others’ opinions, those opinions start to look like more than just opinions. They become the truth. To agree with them is simply to be rational and ethical. Anybody who disagrees...

Perhaps the most contentious issue surrounding the academic freedom movement is whether or not legislators should get involved with passing things like the Academic Bill of Rights. At the national Academic Freedom Conference held on April 6-7 in Washington, D.C. one panel of legislators, some who have been vilified publicly for their concerns, discussed measures taken within their own states. Former state Senator John Andrews of Colorado said that what many denounce as anecdotal evidence, legislators term “putting a human face on the problem.” “We were the first state to consider legislation,” said Sen. Andrews, explaining that a bill was...