David Horowitz - Academic Bill of Rights

Academic Bill of Rights

The issue of alleged political abuse by universities is currently Horowitz's main focus. He, Eli Lehrer, and Andrew Jones published a pamphlet, "Political Bias in the Administrations and Faculties of 32 Elite Colleges and Universities" (2004), in which they find the ratio of Democrats to Republicans at 32 schools to be more than 10 to 1.

Horowitz's book, The Professors: The 101 Most Dangerous Academics in America (2006), criticizes individual professors for their professorial conduct. Horowitz accuses these professors of engaging in indoctrination rather than a disinterested pursuit of knowledge. Horowitz states that his campaign for academic freedom is ideologically neutral.

Horowitz and others promote his Academic Bill of Rights (ABR), an eight-point guide that seeks to eliminate political bias in university hiring and grading. Horowitz says that bias in universities amounts to indoctrination, and charges that conservatives and particularly Republicans are systematically excluded from faculties, citing statistical studies on faculty party affiliation. Critics of the proposed policy, such as Stanley Fish, have argued that "academic diversity", as Horowitz describes it, is not a legitimate academic value, and that no endorsement of "diversity" can be absolute.

In 2004 a version of the ABR was adopted by the Georgia General Assembly on a 41–5 vote.

In Pennsylvania, the House of Representatives created a special legislative committee to investigate the state of academic freedom and whether students who hold unpopular views need more protection. In November 2006 it reported that it couldn’t find evidence of problems with students’ rights.