At Brown University, 94.7% of the professors whose political affiliations showed up in primary registrations last year were Democrats, only 5.3% were Republicans. The academic freedom movement seeks to correct such situations.

Situation: In America and across the world, students and faculty members who assume the right of academic freedom are regularly shown otherwise.  In America, higher education is assumed by the general public to be nonpartisan and open to all.  Schools that boast centuries of adherence to liberal education promise an open-minded experience to all and pay lip service to the idea that people of all ideologies and backgrounds may study on their campuses.  Yet when one actually looks into the ideological bent of many an American campus, one finds that schools are overwhelmingly biased to liberal thought.  The resulting climate, ironically, is one that claims tolerance but practices ideological oppression.

Statistics: The work of David Horowitz has proven extremely helpful on this issue.  In the last few years, Horowitz and his researchers have uncovered the following:

• At the University of New Mexico, 89% of the professors were Democrats, 7% Republicans and 4% Greens. Of 200 professors, ten were Republicans, but zero in the Political Science Department, zero in the History Department, zero in the Journalism Department and only one each in the Sociology, English, Women’s Studies and African American Studies Departments. 
• At the University of California, Santa Barbara, 97% of the professors were Democrats. 1.5% Greens and an equal 1.5% Republicans. Only one Republican professor could be found. 
• Eric Schaefer, chair of the College Republicans at Michigan’s Delta College, recently saw university officials at his school seize an entire press run of the conservative campus newspaper, Vox Veritas.

Anyone who surveys these facts and concludes that the American academy is unbiased is not simply mistaken but delusional.

The problem is not limited to America and in fact becomes more severe beyond its borders.  To give just one example, Dayan Dawood, rector of Syiah Kuala University in Banda Aceh, capital of the restive Aceh province of Indonesia, was killed on September 5 by unidentified men. He was the second Acehnese rector to be killed in as many years. Aceh has witnessed increased violence in recent years as pro-independence guerrillas battle counterinsurgency forces of the Indonesian military and police. Both groups have been responsible for political assassinations and both sides have accused the other in Dawood's murder. Dawood met with Human Rights Watch in December 2000 and discussed his hope that the university could play a role in forming a nonviolent resolution to the conflict in Aceh. Numerous other international examples could be given of the suppression of academic freedom.

YOU SHOULD CARE because whatever your political affiliation, it is clear that the claim of tolerance in the American academy is a hollow one indeed. Raise your voice with those who refuse to stand for the suppression of academic freedom, those who are committed to wiping the self-satisfied grin of many administrations off of lips that drip with hypocrisy.

• 03/28/2007 16:45
  • 03/28/2007 16:44
  • 03/28/2007 15:56