There’s a profile in today’s USA Today on David Horowitz, the father of the Academic Bill of Rights, which passed the House earlier this year.
You can read more about Congressman Kingston’s efforts to help ensure academic freedom on college campuses here.
We wanted to draw your attention to three interesting posts which popped up�on Human Events Online on Friday.
1. Congressman Kingston is leading the charge for Republicans in the blogosphere.
We appreciate the opinions and commentary of conservative bloggers, like Human Events,�who�continue to�watch and help lead�the New Media Revolution on Capitol Hill.
Happy Easter.
Until then, here’s a quick outline of what the Congressman talked about:
Congressman Kingston wrapped up his speech and then was back to the Capitol for a final series of votes.
As often happens, the real fireworks started later that night when David Horowitz debated Ward Churchill. Human Events U. has nice coverage of the debate and conservative blogger and student, Ian Schwartz of Expose the Left, captured the Hannity and Colmes follow-up.
This is a great example of young conservatives calling it like they see it.
You be the judge. Post a comment and let us know what you think.
UPDATE: PeachPundit agrees.
Subscribe to The JackCast to download the podcast of this issue to your MP3 player. Visit this page to download the clip individually.
As the son of college professors and the father of four students who are either still in college or will be going in the very near future, my ears always perk up when Congress talks about higher education.
I�m sure some of you are walking in my shoes and are used to hearing college students talk about these issues: the key decision of what sorority or fraternity to join, what time to start tailgating before the football game (Go Dawgs!), how bad the food is at the dorm cafeteria, homework, and others. However, one thing that I never expected to hear was students being �punished� by professors for their political beliefs.
For example, the Young America�s Foundation noted that John Daly, a professor at the Warren County Community College sent a threatening email to a student promising �to expose her right-wing, anti-people politics until groups like [hers] won�t dare show their face on a college campus.� As if that wasn�t enough, Daly continued by saying that �Real freedom will come when soldiers in Iraq turn their guns on their superiors.�
John Daly resigned his post and that�s good news for New Jersey students. However, this example is indicative of a nationwide problem.
In fact, a study of liberals and conservatives on college campuses found that the overall ratio of Democrats to Republicans at the 32 schools studied was more than 10 to 1 (1397 Democrats, 134 Republicans).
The learning environment on campuses throughout America is not fair and balanced.
Today, I�m pleased to report that Congress went on record to support legislation containing the Academic Bill of Rights, which will help level the ideological playing field and take the personal politics of liberal professors out of the classroom.
That bill, the College Access & Opportunity Act (H.R. 609), passed the House of Representatives tonight by a vote of 221-199. I was proud to support it.
Though today�s victory is sweet, the road to get here has required a number of key players.
The father of the Academic Bill of Rights is my friend, David Horowitz, the president of the Center for the Study of Popular Culture. He brought this issue to me a few years ago and has really put the ball in play on this issue.
Check out his testimony before the Appropriations Committee of the Kansas legislature where he discussed the importance of the Academic Bill of Rights:
The intellectual corruption of our universities by political radicals has been proceeding without interruption since the Vietnam War. This political movement in the academic world didn�t get into high gear until the 1980s, when the Sixties generation attained tenure rank and with it institutional power in the universities. But it has now become a pervasive and destructive fact of our national life. Entire academic departments and fields are no longer devoted to scholarly pursuits, but have become ideological training and recruitment centers for radical causes.
Educational institutions are the cornerstones of our democracy. This is particularly so in the present historical juncture when we are engaged in a war with totalitarian enemies that seek to destroy us. Teaching the next generations the principles of our system, and developing in them the ability to reason and think for themselves are agendas crucial to the health and survival of our nation. This knowledge and these abilities are the fundamental prerequisites of a democratic culture. And they are in danger in our country today.
Majority Leader John Boehner of Ohio and Education and the Workforce Chairman Howard �Buck� McKeon of California also deserve a lot of credit for this victory.
As then-Chairman of the Education and the Workforce Committee, John worked closely with David Horowitz and the academic community to make sure that the Academic Bill of Rights was a top priority in this bill. He succeeded.
Last week, Majority Leader Boehner wrote a must-read editorial on the importance of the Academic Bill of Rights which gives the history of the legislation and lays out a strong case for why we need it NOW.
Destructive and anti-intellectual forces that threaten free speech and independent thought have taken root across the country. College students are often harassed � and occasionally punished - for holding �unpopular� viewpoints, or those that don�t conform to the campus climate. These practices, and the individuals engaged in them, undermine the marketplace of ideas that American colleges have long fostered.
It�s easy to overlook this quiet assault on free speech and free expression that has plagued many higher education institutions in recent years. It is often couched in terms of �protecting� the feelings of one group from another, or prohibiting �hate speech� or �insensitive� speech. A popular method in the 1990s was the use of �speech codes� that would allow what was considered �acceptable� speech and prohibit that which was �unacceptable.� While that practice has subsided, others have taken its place.
One of education�s strongest allies has been Buck McKeon. Now as Chairman of the Education and the Workforce Committee, Buck and I continued our fight to pass the Academic Bill of Rights by sending a letter to our colleagues urging passage of the bill.
Passing this legislation does not mean the fight for academic freedom is over. A sense of Congress sends a clear message of Congressional intent, but it is not binding. Each college and university must step up to the plate and adopt its own Academic Bill of Rights.
As I�ve always said, Institutions of higher learning should be focused on education, not indoctrination.
Our students go to universities to learn math, science, philosophy, and other academics � not to be barraged with the personal political ideologies and views of their professor. Today�s passage of the Academic Bill of Rights will help ensure just that.
-Jack
UPDATE: Pamela over at Atlas Shrugs has a good post on the Academic Bill of Rights.
David Horowitz, the author of the Academic Bill of Rights and a close friend of Congressman Kingston’s, wrote a must-read editorial in today’s FrontPage Magazine.
Regarding the Academic Bill of Rights he writes:
It is an attempt to restore the educational mandate of a democratic education: Students should be taught how to think, not what to think. Teachers should teach, not preach.
Regarding news that the Academic Bill of Rights will be brought to the floor of the House this week:
That is why the news this week is so remarkable. Despite the witch-hunt conducted by the education establishment and the political left � which is funded by the massive treasuries of the teacher unions — legislation for an Academic Bill of Rights is now being brought to the floor of Congress itself. This is the work of three congressmen, whose political courage under ferocious political fire should not go unnoticed by the American public: Representative Jack Kingston of Georgia, Representative Howard �Buck� McKeon of California, and House Majority Leader John Boehner of Ohio.
The Academic Bill of Rights is, in fact, impeccably liberal, in the principled sense. None of its leftwing opponents have been able to identify a single smoking gun to justify their hysteria. They have not been able to present a single clause as evidence that the bill would restrict free speech, or target leftwing professors as such. The bill (in all its variations) is strictly viewpoint neutral. Strictly. But it is also a bill that would encourage �intellectual diversity� � and this strikes at the heart of all agendas to use educational classrooms for political indoctrination. In attacking the bill so savagely, the leftwing professoriate and their teacher union backers, are in effect conceding that this is exactly their intention. But they�re confident � over confident � because they can count on a complicit media, that is ready to cover for them and defame anyone who has the effrontery to stand in their way.
The entire article is a must-read for anyone concerned about this issue. You may find the reflections by David Horowitz on his meeting with Majority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) particularly interesting.
UPDATE: Majority Leader Boehner (R-Ohio) is blogging about this issue.