Academic Bill of Rights
See also: Academic freedomThe 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.
Read more about this topic: David Horowitz
Famous quotes containing the words bill of rights, academic, bill and/or rights:
“Is a Bill of Rights a security for [religious liberty]? If there were but one sect in America, a Bill of Rights would be a small protection for liberty.... Freedom derives from a multiplicity of sects, which pervade America, and which is the best and only security for religious liberty in any society. For where there is such a variety of sects, there cannot be a majority of any one sect to oppress and persecute the rest.”
—James Madison (1751–1836)
“If we focus exclusively on teaching our children to read, write, spell, and count in their first years of life, we turn our homes into extensions of school and turn bringing up a child into an exercise in curriculum development. We should be parents first and teachers of academic skills second.”
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“As for farming, I am convinced that my genius dates from an older era than the agricultural. I would at least strike my spade into the earth with such careless freedom but accuracy as the woodpecker his bill into a tree.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Don’t forget your great guns, which are the most respectable arguments of the rights of kings.”
—Frederick The Great (1712–1786)