Conservatives Take Academic Freedom from Liberals

If you listen to liberals—and I do, very carefully—you sense that “academic freedom” is a concept that has high totemic value for them.

Academic freedom is something that liberals are for, and they know that their support for it defines them as a force for reason and enlightenment. It is all that is noble and decent, and it defines the courageous researcher beavering away on the frontiers of knowledge beset by the forces of darkness and superstition. He knows that, but for academic freedom, yahoos and fundamentalists would put him out of a job.

In consequence, the Academic Bill of Rights campaign of radical-turned-conservative David Horowitz makes liberals very angry. For Horowitz is speaking truth to academic power and he is saying that college professors abuse their power damnably.

Horowitz’s campaign is now three years old, and Valerie Richardson reviews the progress. Eighteen states have passed academic freedom laws, and a couple of state university systems have passed academic freedom policies to avoid legislation. Princeton university students passed “a version of the Student Bill of Rights by a vote of the entire student body.”

And that is the point of the movement. Academics have a right to academic freedom, but student have a right to an education, not an indoctrination. And that seems very hard for some professors to understand, so convinced are they of their sacred right to academic freedom.

Not that anyone should be surprised. When you give people tenure and rights then they will start to abuse it. One man’s freedom is another man’s servitude.

As kings learned to understand their powers as a Divine Right, so professors, without court jesters to bring them back to earth, have discerned in the heavens a Divine Right to academic freedom. And God forbid that any jester should make fun of college professors.

I don’t really understand all this business about academic freedom. If you can’t find someone to fund your research then you are out of luck. If you don’t do the job teaching your student then you should be out of a job.

And if you are a dedicated left-wing activist longing to bring peace and justice to the world, then surely there is some left-wing foundation that is willing to pony up the cash to keep you in business.

Of course, if you are just a run-of-the-mill lefty academic without any distinguishing talent or original work product... Sorry. Academic freedom was never intended to give you a sinecure.

If it was, then I’m against it. Get a job, pal.