I had, of course, been aware of the controversy about the intellectual abuse of conservative students in some colleges and universities, but I hadn't been aware that there were stirrings of legisltive efforts to address it in the Academic Bill of Rights.
chronicle.com
I have some doubts about this approach. But I also have doubts about the response of the AAUP. Which is at:
aaup.org
First of all, the use of "purporting" in the statement "Based upon data purporting to show that Democrats greatly outnumber Republicans in faculty positions..." is ingenuous. The research is compelling -- nay, overwhelming -- that registered Democrats vastly outnumber registered Republicans in the faculties of most of American colleges and universities. (There are a few exceptions, such as Oral Roberts University.) But would they say, if they were addressing gender pay inequities, "Based upon data purporting to show that women earn less then men in equivalent positions..."? Of course not. They would assert the findings as fact and move on. So the "purportedly" starts out showing their prejudice.
Then they say that "Committee A endorses this principle, which we shall call the "principle of neutrality," ...", and goes on to say "There are already mechanisms in place that protect this principle, and they work well." Oh? They are saying that mechanisms to balance political diversity are working well? That's would have been like saying in 1950, when fewer than 1% of college and university professors were minorities, that we support racial equality in hiring, but we don't need to make any special efforts to hire minorities because the present system is working well.
If the system were working well, we wouldn't have the large disparities we do.
Isn't it amazing how intellectually dishonest academics can be when they're trying to protect their liberal turf? |
