The Academic Bill of Rights

I have said that there is no statistical evidence that I could find and that the subject may not even lend itself to such statistical study, so that if that is insisted upon, forget it. However, plenty of valid evidence HAS been given. I think CS said something similar.My last post that included the link explained that the way the site was laid out it was impossible to link to different sections of it and that copying out paragraphs and trying to give directions to them in that format didn't seem worth it in the atmosphere of this discussion. If you want to use that as an excuse to dismiss the topic I couldn't care less as that's all anybody here does anyway with the very best of evidence given them.This message has been edited by Faith, 06-09-2005 03:07 PM

This links to the page, the post is #281http://EvC Forum: Should those of religious faith be allowed to run this country? -->EvC Forum: Should those of religious faith be allowed to run this country?About the political views of the promoters of this bill, of course it's a conservative effort, it's the conservatives who are getting tyrannized at the moment.The wording of the bill makes it ABSOLUTELY clear that it will not favor ANY particular point of view so your concern about the originators of the bill is unwarranted.And I am quite sure that if leftists had originated it nobody here would complain one bit.

You obviously don't have a clue about Horowitz do you? "Little?" "Fascist?" He was raised by Communist parents in New York, a "red diaper baby," and grew up to be a leader of the New Left in the Sixties, editor of the radical Ramparts magazine. His autobiography Radical Son is a good read, especially for someone like me who was surrounded by Leftist craziness in the Sixties and needed it exorcised. After the murder of a friend by the Black Panthers, whose cause he had championed, he became disillusioned and exited the Left. He's written many books, (Amazon listing),
some that have won awards. He calls himself a liberal now and I think that fits him, although he attracts many conservatives to his cause.

I do not follow your reasoning. This is a measure to protect students from intimidation about their religious and political beliefs by professors who should be teaching them the course curriculum instead. What's "working" if this is going on?You seem to be anticipating a ton of lawsuits. Why? Because you can't see leftist professors giving up their harassment of conservative students? In that case the cost of the prosecution of these cases will be well worth it. But the optimum result will be that professors will stop doing this and there will be no lawsuits. It ISN'T "anti-conservative!!" Who said that???? It's NEUTRAL. It's designed to prevent ALL kinds of intimidation of this sort in the classroom no matter who is the victim of it. It is conservative and religious students who are suffering from this intimidation at the moment, which is a conservative cause. Nobody's going against anything. You just can't imagine that a conservative could draft a truly egalitarian bill, but that's what has been done here. The original motive is to stop the intimidation of conservative students, but the solution protects ALL students. Legislation to protect freedoms and rights is definitely a conservative cause and worth whatever it costs.

I haven't overlooked it, I just can barely believe you are making an issue of it. It is a nonissue. The concern is for what is happening in the universities and this is not about big government if you have any grasp whatever of what big government means. This is strictly a bill to give teeth to existing regulations that for one reason or another are ignored or toothless.

Let's be quite sure you both mean this now. So you would not complain about many many incidents being reported in many universities across the country of conservative professors of say literature courses or history or political science or even science courses spending class time just before the election to rant about John Kerry's lousy credentials for being President, his phony purple hearts, his betrayal of his nation that really should have been prosecuted; or when Clinton was in office how he bombed a pharmaceutical plant in Sudan to take the heat off his doings in the "Oral Office," or just general rants at any time at all against "liberals" and "leftists" say Rush Limbaugh style? How about if they regularly referred to the top Democrats as moral cretins or something of the sort?You wouldn't think it out of place if in a poli sci course an assignment was to write an essay defending Bush's reasons for going into Iraq and how his critics are just leftists trumping up false objections, or how the UN is a corrupt institution that the sovereign United States should not obey? How about if they denounced the Palestinians for supporting terrorism and defended Israel as acting in self defense?You would not be concerned if the faculty of the vast majority of the universities in the nation had from oh 85% to 98% Bush-Reagan-Nixon conservatives as tenured professors? You would not be concerned that with such numbers one would naturally think that political bias in the hiring and firing process somehow determined the numbers? You wouldn't be concerned if the few liberals on the staff were generally treated with disdain by the majority at most of these campuses?I find it hard to imagine this situation myself as conservatives as a group are fair and generous people who wouldn't treat anyone this way, but this is just to make the point.

To prevent or provide grounds for action against professors' promotion of partisan biased political and religious opinions in the classroom, which have no relation to the course curriculum, and intimidation of students who have different political and religious views. OK, but I don't remember the post. Possibly it was Canadian Steve. That would be a complete miscarriage of the intent of the bill of rights, and nothing I've seen on the subject has even touched on such a possibility.If there really is a danger of that, I would support a specific amendment to clarify that complaints about the presentation of evolutionism as a legitimate curriculum are explicitly excluded. I'm sure Horowitz and company would be happy to accommodate that, as they have no argument with evolution. But as I read it, there is no such loophole in it.Ridiculing belief in creationism, however, or grading students down for maintaining such a belief despite a demonstrated grasp of the course content, would come under its provisions. Otherwise I would assume that truly reasoned arguments against creationism could be given as part of the course content with impunity. {EDIT: Are students to be excluded from -- or subjected to ridicule for -- trying to defend creationism with reasoned arguments by the way?} It's partisan one-sided harassment and intimidation that are the aim of the action.{EDIT: I'd say a professor would be right to insist that the student treat the evolutionist reasoning as correct and be able to argue it effectively as far as grading goes, but wrong to ridicule the student's belief}This message has been edited by Faith, 06-09-2005 08:38 PM

By their ridicule of and absolute refusal to give any credence to the other side of an issue.

I googled the questioned case myself and found apparent proof that the complaint against it was correct: http://blogs.salon.com/0002874/2005/05/23.html,
then wrote to the academic rights site to say they should remove it, and got this answer back: This message has been edited by Faith, 06-10-2005 07:06 PMThis message has been edited by Faith, 06-10-2005 07:09 PM

Yeah, the bill of rights is designed to promote freedom and end oppression of a dependent weaker class by people in power. Again, that's a LIBERAL value. I guess we know where all YOU guys stand. Foursquare behind intimidation tactics by the tenured Establishment.This message has been edited by Faith, 06-09-2005 10:02 PM

I'm not assuming the student has done no research on the subject to answer that part of your post.As for when humor might become intimidating ridicule I can't judge. I suppose that would have to be decided case by case.You'd have to ask the framers of the bill about this, as I don't know all the thinking that went into it, but again I don't see why in principle there should be any problem, and again if it seems it could be a problem then I think the hegemony of evolutionism should be protected by an amendment to the text of some sort. I'm a creationist but I know evolution is not going to be overthrown any time soon and there's no point in creating conflict over it. Creationists simply have to put up with it and learn it as taught, but they don't have to put up with personal attack.{EDIT: P.S. I decided *I* should ask the people who are behind the bill and again wrote to the Students for Academic Freedom site about this particular concern, to ask if it's come up before and if they think it might help to include something in the text to prevent possible nuisance complaints by creationists about evolutionist curricula.This message has been edited by Faith, 06-10-2005 01:30 AM

Yes, that's the point. There IS no balance. This IS indoctrination. Both sides are NOT presented, and the anti-Bush teaching was not just an exercise in thinking to say the least, it was propaganda plain and simple.

Canadian Steve quoted it in #284 of the forum
Should those of religious faith be allowed to run this country?where he also provided the link to the source at Students for Academic FreedomThe quote:

Thank you. I care about this bill of rights and want them to do it right.

Here is Horowitz's answer to that article. I tried to find relevant excerpts to quote but it's a convoluted story and I'd have copied out most of it.The main thing is that the professor had destroyed the evidence and there was no way to prove what the original exam question was or what grade the student was given. The one you quote is said by the student to be a different exam question made up after the incident. She also says she did get an F on the exam and had to do extra work to get a B in the course.Inside Every Progressive Is A Totalitarian Screaming To Get Out - David HorowitzThis is the last article published at FPM on the subject but there are four or five other articles on this incident if you go there and search the site-- I searched on "student exam war-criminal F"I wish you well on your hospital experience.This message has been edited by Faith, 06-10-2005 03:39 AM