Academic Intolerance

There was a discussion I tuned into for a few minutes today about the fact that the vast majority of University professors are left-wingers, and there are a great many radically so. Apparently the person I was listening to was David Horowitz, who wrote the book called The Professors.

So I went to Amazon to check it out. Here's the gist of the book:

From the Inside Flap
Coming to a Campus Near You: Terrorists, racists, and communists— you know them as The Professors.

We all know that left-wing radicals from the 1960s have hung around academia and hired people like themselves. But if you thought they were all harmless, antiquated hippies, you’d be wrong. Today’s radical academics aren’t the exception—they’re legion. And far from being harmless, they spew violent anti-Americanism, preach anti-Semitism, and cheer on the killing of American soldiers and civilians—all the while collecting tax dollars and tuition fees to indoctrinate our children. Remember Ward Churchill, the University of Colorado professor who compared the victims of the September 11 terrorist attacks to Nazis who deserved what they got? You thought he was bad? In this shocking new book, New York Times bestselling author David Horowitz has news for you: American universities are full of radical academics like Ward Churchill—and worse.

Horowitz exposes 101 academics—representative of thousands of radicals who teach our young people—who also happen to be alleged ex-terrorists, racists, murderers, sexual deviants, anti-Semites, and al-Qaeda supporters. Horowitz blows the cover on academics who: — Say they want to kill white people. — Promote the views of the Iranian mullahs. — Support Osama bin Laden. — Lament the demise of the Soviet Union. — Defend pedophilia. — Advocate the killing of ordinary Americans.

David Horowitz’s riveting exposé is essential reading for parents, students, college alums, taxpayers, and patriotic Americans who don’t think college students should be indoctrinated by sympathizers of Joseph Stalin and Osama bin Laden.

The Professors is truly frightening—and an intellectual call to arms from a courageous author who knows the radicals all too well.

It's no surprise that so many in academia are so radical. It was pretty much true way back when I was in College, although I wonder if it hasn't gone even further over the top. We’ve already heard plenty of stories about the fact that students can and are ostracized and even kicked out of liberal schools for simply expressing views in support of the Bush Administration and the Iraq war, against homosexuality, or about their Christian faith.

Some people have tried to suggest that Horowitz is in favor of suppressing these profs' free speech rights. Not having read the book, I can't say whether or not they are right, but I have a feeling they're not. Because if he shares the view of most more conservative or moderate thinkers, he's not proposing that we make anybody shut up, but that we begin to let our universities - especially our State Universities that live on tax money - know that college should be about the exploration of knowledge and ideas, and not indoctrination of students by a bunch of leftover 60's communists and anarchists who somehow conned themselves into tenure.

My favorite professor at Ball State was a gregarious guy whose classes were always interesting and even entertaining. He was my Honors Humanities prof, and enjoyed creating lively debates in the classroom about various topics. To do this, he would sometimes bring in guests who held particularly radical points of view on the topic for the day. Or, in the absence of a guest, he would take it on himself to espouse a point of view deliberately chosen as most likely to be opposite of that of the majority of the class.

Spirited debates took place, with people in the classroom taking sides and expressing a variety of opinions on the topic. Sometimes the professor's arguments would evoke emotional responses from some class members, but at the end of class he would "come clean" and tell us that he really didn't personally hold those opinions, but wanted to present a controversial viewpoint for the sake of the discussion.

What I'm eventually getting to is this: Any professor worth his/her salt who engages their students in debate on the issues of the day must hold to some basic principles, regardless of their personal views. The discussion must be relevant to the course - it's obviously inappropriate to waste valuable classroom time in a math course debating, say, affirmative action.

The professor must not only permit, but encourage divergent opinions on the topic. Although the arguments made can be judged on their merits with good support, logic and reason. And the professor must never punish a student for offering an opinion in conflict with his own.

Finally, if public universities are employing terrorists and criminals, they are certainly more than justified in terminating such people. We're not talking about protecting free speech if there's an actual criminal on the faculty.

The sum of my argument on this topic is this: We should indeed do more to hold universities accountable for hiring and maintaining quality faculty that represent excellence in their instructional abilities. So it's OK to employ a Marxist professor of Political Science who lets his views be known in class, as long as he does not punish or suppress open disagreement and honestly presents the pros and cons of other non-Marxist models. But, if the professor is a rapist, drug abuser, and openly advocates the violent overthrow of the American government, they should be terminated.