One Small Step for Academic Freedom

Last week Ohio state universities took a small step towards academic freedom for their students. As
David Horowitz writes,
“The Inter-University Council of Ohio has reached an agreement
with Senate sponsors of the Ohio Academic Bill of Rights (Senate Bill 24) to implement key
principles of academic freedom
in all public and private colleges and universities in the state.”

It’s a pity though that the Ohio media doesn’t seem to agree. According to Horowitz they spun the
agreement with Ohio State Senator Mumper as “Colleges deflect `Bill of Rights.’” But the Academic
Bill of Rights advocated by David Horowitz merely repeats words used nearly a century ago by the American
Association of University Professors. Today the university professors want to claim that Horowitz’s
Bill of Rights will chill free speech. But, again, as Horowitz writes:

the clause in the Mumper Bill that would bar professors from bringing their
academically irrelevant political prejudices into the classroom is taken almost verbatim
from the American Association of University Professors’ own classic statement on academic
freedom: “Teachers are entitled to freedom in the classroom in discussing their subject,
but they should be careful not to introduce into their teaching controversial matter which
has no relation to their subject.” (AAUP
1940 Statement on the Principles of Academic Freedom and Tenure.)

So why are the professors claiming that an implementation of their own statement on academic
freedom is in fact a violation of academic freedom?