November/December 2007

FACULTY MINDSETS The latest study on college faculty’s political leanings holds good news, bad news and lots of interesting information. "The Social and Political Views of American Professors" is a working paper that was presented during a daylong symposium at Harvard University on Oct. 6.

Invoking a 1958 study, The Academic Mind, this paper’s authors, Neil Gross, an assistant professor of sociology at Harvard, and Solon Simmons, an assistant professor of conflict analysis and sociology at George Mason University, explain that they undertook the research to move “the study of professorial politics back into the domain of mainstream sociological inquiry.” The study was based on a survey of 1,417 full-time professors and shows that “while conservatives, Republicans and Republican voters are rare within the faculty ranks, on many issues there are as many professors who hold center/center-left views as there are those who cleave to more liberal positions, while the age distribution indicates that, in terms of their overall political orientation, professors are becoming more moderate over time, and less radical.”

JUST IN TIME FOR HALLOWEEN Did you see this? Oct. 22-26 was Islamo-Fascist Awareness Week on some campuses--a week of events orchestrated by David Horowitz and his so-called Freedom Center to draw attention not just to dangerous radical extremist movements in the world, but also to women’s studies programs and the academic left, which Horowitz often suggests are synonomous. Thus, IFA Week gave conservatives a chance to kill two birds--terrorists and academic lefties--with one stone.

The week’s purpose: “to confront the two Big Lies of the political left: that George Bush created the war on terror and that Global Warming is a greater danger to Americans than the terrorist threat.” And, he added: “In the present campus climate, this program is bound to be controversial. It will test universities’ claims to be politically open and intellectually diverse.” Some of the planned activities on some 150 campuses included speakers like Horowitz, Ann Coulter and Sean Hannity; panel discussions; and screenings of movies. Sure enough, the days leading up to the week (which had not yet taken place as AFT On Campus went to press) did prove polarizing. At George Washington University, the Washington Post reported, campus police pulled down fliers with the headline “Hate Muslims? So do we!” It was not clear who was responsible for them. Muslim students, and other campus and civil liberties groups such as Free Exchange on Campus encouraged campus communities to respond to events with open discussion and reasoned arguments.

TELL YOUR FREE SPEECH STORY Free Exchange on Campus, the coalition of student, faculty and civil groups that is opposing “intellectual diversity” and so-called Academic Bill of Rights legislation in the states, is sponsoring a campaign called “Campus Voices.” The campaign has activities that are aimed at accurately capturing and representing the true nature of discourse on campus.

To that end, Free Exchange will be sponsoring two essay/video contests, one for students and one for faculty. Each contest will award a $500 first prize and two $250 runner-up prizes.

The Student Voices contest asks students to articulate how they have been challenged and engaged by the unfettered intellectual environment they have encountered on campus.

The Faculty Voices contest asks professors to nominate a peer for his or her noteworthy contributions to the free exchange of ideas through exceptional research, teaching and service. Entrants must submit a 1,000-word essay or a three-minute video. More details on preparing entries are available at www.freeexchangeoncampus.org/index.php?option=com_docman&task=doc_download&gid=
105&Itemid=25.

REVISITING THE CANON WARS A Sept. 16 essay in the New York Times Book Review raises the age-old question: What should an educated person know and how should that be reflected in the college curriculum? The essay, written by Rachel Donodio, a writer and editor at the Review, marked the 20th anniversary of the release of The Closing of the American Mind: How Higher Education Has Failed Democracy and Impoverished the Souls of Today’s Students, by Alan Bloom. Donodio surveys the books, the debates and the discussions that ensued between traditionalists and multiculturalists after publication of Bloom’s best seller. She also spoke to some of the leading academic pundits about where we are today in the canon wars. It’s a thoughtful essay that spurred more discussion in the blogosphere.