Free Republic

Freedom of speech on many university campuses is being exercised with an increasingly liberal bias that is staking a worrisome monopoly on the free marketplace of ideas. Evidence of this bias is a new study published in the March issue of Forum, which showed that—by their own description—72 percent of professors in American universities and colleges are liberal and 15 percent are conservative. Hence, it is reasonable to question whether students are receiving a fair and balanced education. The concern is understandable. As stated by one of the study’s authors, Robert Lichter, “In general, even broad-minded people gravitate toward other...

Six weeks ago, a teacher named Phil Mitchell reluctantly spoke to me about his unjust and forced exit from the history staff at the University of Colorado after 21 years in the classroom. All the evidence, notwithstanding the tortured spin of CU and its defenders, was that Mitchell, a reliable and well-regarded instructor, was being "let go" because of conservative political and evangelical Christian beliefs. Mitchell, who by the time I spoke with him was exploring job opportunities in more hospitable environs, decided to come forward with his complaints about the lack of diversity that hampered any true ideological debate....

KALAMAZOO (NEWS 3) - The man accused of dousing former presidential candidate Pat Buchanan with salad dressing has pleaded not guilty in a Kalamazoo court. Samuel John Messick was arraigned on charges of disturbing the peace Thursday. He reportedly tossed a cup of salad dressing on the conservative commentator at a speech he was giving at Western Michigan University on March 31st. Buchanan decided not to press felony assault charges against the man. Messick will be back in court at the end of the month.

Security will be tight at University of St. Thomas on Monday when conservative author and commentator Ann Coulter speaks at 12:30 p.m. in O'Shaughnessy Educational Center auditorium, one block north of Summit and Cleveland avenues. Her topic will be "Liberal Lies About the American Right.'' Coulter's speech is open to the public, but audience members will be asked to check coats and book bags during the program.

After the University of Colorado's Ward Churchill scandal, you might think it's nearly impossible for U.S. universities to get rid of faculty members. It's not so. While it's true that faculty members can embrace terrorists, demean their victims, plagiarize the work of others, lie about their ethnic backgrounds for better positions and generally hold America and Americans in contempt, there is something they can say on the college campus that will get them fired. In fact, I can tell you very easily and succinctly what a college professor can do to get the ax on nearly any university campus across...

A speech about academic freedom turned into a "violation of First Amendment rights," according to Dana Cloud, a member of the International Socialist Organization. Six people, including one juvenile, were arrested Wednesday night after protesting David Horowitz's speech at Townes Hall at the UT School of Law. The Texas Federalist Society hosted the meeting and invited Horowitz, a right-wing advocate and author of the Academic Bill of Rights, to speak. Opposition groups were holding signs and speaking out during Horowitz's speech on Wednesday, but when they were told to stop speaking, some took out noisemakers to mark their disapproval of...

March 23, 2005 OPERATION ACADEMIC FREEDOM Capitol Rally for Academic Freedom to Highlight College Republicans’ annual Convention "We have the distinct privilege to be joined by an long list of leading Republican figures who will address us at various events throughout the weekend," said Mason Harrison, a sophomore at UC Davis and the Convention Director. Speakers include Sen. Tom McClintock, Bill Simon, Rosario Marin, David Horowitz, Ward Connerly, Assemblyman Mark Wyland, Senator Bill Morrow, former congressman Jim Rogan, actor/comedian John O’Hurley and possibly even Gov. Schwarzenegger. The highlight of the weekend will be a bipartisan rally hosted by CCR on...

Politicizing of schools continues By: RICK REISS - For The Californian Parents, keep the Pepto-Bismal nearby. Today while your children attend college, high school and even middle school, they will be subjected to more political indoctrination courtesy of another left-wing pressure group. Today's topic of indoctrination is homosexuality. This is brought to you by the activists at the "Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network." The GLSEN has declared today a "Day of Silence" to advance their homosexual agenda.

My Battle with the Thought Police By Hans-Hermann Hoppe Mises Media April 14, 2005 Readers of [Mises Economics Blog] probably know about my ordeal at my university, which has been covered quite extensively on this site and by the major mainstream press. Now that major combat operations have ended (to employ a phrase used by Bush in reference to Iraq...two years ago), I've had some time to reflect on what happened, why, and whether and to what extent I responded properly. And so here are my thoughts on this incident that took my career as a professor of economics in...

Liberals enjoy claiming that they are intellectuals, thrilled to engage in a battle of wits. This, they believe, distinguishes them from conservatives, who are religious fanatics who react with impotent rage to opposing ideas. As one liberal, Jonathan Chait, put the cliche in The New Republic: Bush is an "instinctive anti-intellectual" and his administration hostile to "fact-driven debate." In a favorable contrast, Clinton is "the former Rhodes scholar who relished academic debates." Showing his usual reverence for fact-checking, The New York Times' Paul Krugman says the Republican Party is "dominated by people who believe truth should be determined by revelation,...

There’s a real demand out there for alternative programs and points of view on college campuses. If Steven Roy Goodman is right, the implications for the academy are immense. According to Goodman, who makes his living advising students who are applying to college, many families are now so fed up with campus p.c. that they’ve started to avoid the most egregiously left-wing schools. That means students are beginning to shun big-name colleges — where politicization is at its worst — in favor of less prestigious, but also less prejudiced, schools. For example, Columbia University seems to be losing applicants in...

ABIGAIL THERNSTROM once described the American college campus as an island of repression in a sea of freedom. The report of Columbia University's ad hoc grievance committee suggests that Columbia is such an island. On its face, the report presents findings and recommendations concerning allegations by Columbia students that they were subjected to intimidation and abuse by members of the university's department of Middle East and Asian Language and Cultures (MEALAC). However, the report is better understood as a directive to Columbia students to take without protest the poisonous medicine being administered by the anti-Israel, anti-American radicals who dominate MEALAC....

Brian BiglinContributing Writer The issue of academic freedom has been brought to the forefront in recent weeks. Apparently academic freedom is being extended so far, in some cases, that a professor in Colorado named Ward Churchill can replace his ethnic studies curriculum with radical, anti-American, anti-capitalist establishment propaganda. Churchill describes with accuracy his feelings regarding the Sept. 11 tragedy. While he says he mourns for the losses of the individuals in the towers and planes, his mourning is coupled with rants on how so many of the victims had it coming, comparing them to Nazis at one point. He spends...

Columbia Unbecoming is on the whole just a series of complaints having to do mainly with manner or etiquette in the classroom, but the real issue has to do with the meager and politicized content that professors choose to teach. As Efraim Karsh, head of the Mediterranean Studies department at King’s College, University of London, implied on March 6 in Uris Hall, Massad’s classroom hysterics are not the real problem. The real problem is a polite and affable man like Professor Khalidi, who nevertheless peddles political propaganda in class, propaganda masquerading as real scholarship.Two articles in the March 23, 2005...

Liberal college students have once again illustrated their never-ending quest for tolerance and their vast ability to think critically about ideas in opposition to their own. Yes, I’m talking about yet another pie-throwing incident involving a conservative speaker on a college campus. The latest chapter in this pathetic story took place at Butler University on Wednesday, April 6. Conservative activist and President of the Center for the Study of Popular Culture David Horowitz was early in his lecture at Butler when he was struck with a pie. “There’s a wave of violence on college campuses, committed by what I’d call...

Predictably, as night follows day, the ad hoc faculty committee appointed by Columbia University President Lee Bollinger to examine the behavior of several Columbia faculty towards Israeli or pro-Israel students has concluded that little or nothing of concern occurred. Rather, given the opportunity to produce a report that is sure to receive widespread publicity, the faculty committee concluded that the more disturbing problem is found elsewhere - with pro-Israel students disrupting lectures on Middle Eastern studies, and some faculty members feeling that they were spied on. So the real problem at Columbia is not anti-Semitism, biased and untruthful teaching, or...

College faculties, long assumed to be a liberal bastion, lean further to the left than even the most conspiratorial conservatives might have imagined, a new study says. By their own description, 72 percent of those teaching at American universities and colleges are liberal and 15 percent are conservative, says the study being published this week. The imbalance is almost as striking in partisan terms, with 50 percent of the faculty members surveyed identifying themselves as Democrats and 11 percent as Republicans. The disparity is even more pronounced at the most elite schools, where, according to the study, 87 percent of...

“Conservatives have a hard time in academia,” Mansfield said. “Just look at my department. There are fifty professors, and two or three are Republicans. How is that possible?”....Graduate School of Education professor Julie A. Reuben said that she believed the abundance of liberals in academia could be due to the fact that as people become more educated, they tend to become more liberal. Harvard’s facetious moniker, “The Kremlin on the Charles,” may be more accurate than previously speculated, according to a report released last week. The study, published in The Forum, an online social science journal, concluded that discrimination may...

    Testimony ofRobert David Johnson, Ph.D.Professor of History, Brooklyn College and The Graduate Center of the City University of New YorkBrooklyn, NYTestimony Before theHealth, Education, Labor, & Pensions CommitteeUnited States SenateHearing on Intellectual DiversityOctober 29, 2003 Mr. Chairman, and Members of the Committee: My name is Robert David Johnson. I am a professor of history at Brooklyn College and The Graduate Center of the City University of New York, where I teach courses in U.S. political, diplomatic, and constitutional history. As a historian of the Senate, I am particularly honored to appear before the committee. I have written...

What do colleges really mean by diversity? As the brochures suggest, they generally mean external characteristics: skin color and ethnic background that supposedly make you different, in very important, if ambiguous ways, from your classmates. If you're black, for example, you're assumed to be somehow crucially different from your white roommate--even if you both graduated from Edina High School. This isn't real diversity, and many students sense it--especially people who've traveled to places that have truly different cultures: India, Singapore, Saudi Arabia, or even France. In America there's really one overarching culture in which all citizens participate, though the experience...