This evening a few of us interns (and by a few, I regretfully mean only myself and the National Security interns, Maggie and Dan) ventured away from the hustle and bustle that has been our first week at CAP and caught the opening day showing of “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.”

To be quite honest, I wasn’t expecting much.  I mainly ended up going because Dan seems like a nice guy and he had been talking this film up all week.  Additionally, and probably the most pure reason for why I made an effort, my social life thus far as been considerably lame as work has left me surprisingly exhausted. Every night I crawl into bed by nine or ten, usually falling asleep with the lights on, yuck!  (Note:  I said “surprisingly” for all of you who might be screaming at your computers WTF? you’re just the video guy!)  But my apparent lack of stamina doesn’t have me worried because I figure that, just like the gentle ascension climbers must make up Mount Everest, it seems I too must acclimate; adapting my college, “concert or keg till 4am”, lifestyle to the grueling 9-6 of this pseudo “real-world” internship. 

Anyway, I digress.

As Free Exchange on Campus points out, the University of Colorado’s Chancellor is planning on raising $9 million for an endowment to fund a “Professor of Conservative Thought and Policy” in an effort to bolster the campus’s intellectual diversity. [Campus Progress is part of the Free Exchange on Campus Coalition].

 As argued by Free Exchange:

Again, there's nothing wrong with seeking job candidates who either specialize in conservatism as a substantive area of study or who bring a conservative perspective to their field.  However, rather than setting up a token conservative job opening - especially one that privileges political leanings over scholarship - CU should consider working with its faculty and academic departments to create positions for these specialties within the traditional university structure.

A couple weeks ago we interviewed David Horowitz. Once we're done transcribing and editing everything, we'll be posting it, of course. Should be good.

In the meantime, I've been emailing back and forth with him a little. Though I disagree with 99% of what Horowitz says (or perhaps because of it), arguing with him has been interesting so far. I've posted a couple emails after the jump, with more to follow tomorrow. This particular chain was set off when I sent him to a recent blog post I wrote in reaction to a Weekly Standard article of his. (My co-associate editor, Kay Steiger, reacted here.)

There was a brief debate yesterday via Campus Progress email that’s worth a blog entry or two. David Horowitz recently wrote an article for The Weekly Standard in which he—surprise!—attacked “the politicization of higher education.” He’s mad that the American Association of University Professors argued in a recent report that students should be taught whatever is “accepted as true within a relevant discipline.” If this is the standard, he’s saying, then any politically motivated group that gets its own “discipline” can proceed to teach whatever it wants as the truth.

Paul Sracic, professor at Youngstown State University, has an interesting essay on Inside Higher Ed today. He made a nuanced case against talking about liberal or conservative values in the classroom, and argues that endorsements of a candidate are not only inappropriate, they actually discourage students from deciding themselves. He called such discussion of political views a "sin."

According to Inside Higher Ed, administrators at St. Thomas agreed Wednesday to allow Archbishop Desmond Tutu to speak on campus.

While some questions remain about the demotion of a professor who criticized the administration's Tutu embargo, it seems like the issue is resolved and the St. Thomas community is moving toward a larger discussion about on-campus speakers. In a letter to the university, president Rev. Dennis Dease noted the school's history of mishandling speaker-related situations and called for an examination on the school's policies:

In the past, we have been criticized externally and internally when we have invited controversial speakers to campus — as well as when we have not. Rather than just move from controversy to controversy, might there be a positive role that this university could play in fostering thoughtful conversation around difficult and highly charged issues?

This is exactly what should come out of situations like this: St. Thomas messed up, but they've not only corrected the mistake but intend to examine the underlying problems it raised. It's heartening to see an attempt at actual conversation coming out of a situation that other schools would sweep under the rug.

Check out the continuing discussion of the Archbishop's controversial comments on Kay's original post. 

Both Inside Higher Ed (free) and the Chronicle of Higher Education (sub. req.) highlight a study (PDF) by assistant professors at Harvard and George Mason universities. This study is slightly more valid than what's been thrown around in conservative circles by people like David Horowtiz in recent years. What the study shows is that while the numbers of self-identified conservative professors are low--under 10 percent--the number of moderate professors is growing and the number of liberal professors is declining.

So what does this all mean? Inside Higher Ed cited Larry Summers' analysis (yes, that one), "pointed to a problematic liberal domination at elite research universities."

What's confusing to me is why this is "problematic." No one surveys investment bankers, although they mostly all are likely to come out somewhere in the libertarian camp. No one surveys social workers for "liberal bias." To me, how a person identifies politically has very little to do with his or her job. But in the last couple of decades, both professors and journalists have come under fire for having political beliefs.

It appears that former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld moving to a position as a "distinguished fellow" at Stanford's Hoover Institution has struck a nerve. There's already a petition with close to 4,000 names that object to his title and his placement at Hoover. It's been made clear that Rumsfeld won't be teaching classes or conducting seminars. In fact, he's assigned to a task force that has an either undetermined or undpurpose.

Conservatives are seizing on this as a protest of "liberal bias," preventing a diversity of veiwpoints on campus. Propornents of the petition say that the objection is over his title. Also, some professors want the opportunity for Rumsfeld's viewpoints to be in the public arena where they might be challenged, rather than hidden away in the Hoover Institution.

Guess what, freshman conservative college student? In a couple of weeks you’re going to have your liberal campus and its professors shove more crap down your throat than Rosie does her gullet during Chili’s Monday Night Nacho Monster Blowout Special, that’s what.

In his weekly column over at Townhall.com, Doug Giles lists ten tips for young conservatives to survive college, “the Liberal’s madrasah” where “purveyors of the anti-American propaganda” deliver “the liberal Kool-Aid crunch” in every classroom. Giles warns:

Your values, for the next four years, will be violated much like Linsday Lohan’s nose, liver, Mercedes and panties have been for the last five years.

Interesting imagery Giles uses to make his point.

Churchill, an author and University of Colorado professor, got in some serious trouble a few years ago when he called victims of September 11th “little Eichmanns.” Many called for him to be fired from his position at the University of Colorado, and the conservative “academic freedom” movement used him as an example of everything they thought was wrong with academia. He was given the pink slip yesterday because a review of his academic work seems to show falsification and plagiarism.

Our friends at Free Exchange on Campus just put up a blog post about the controversy that sums it up nicely:

ACTA [*] and others claim that Ward Churchill is just one of many dangerous academics, and a sign that academics are so out of line that the only thing to be done is to start imposing academic diversity in the classroom and limiting the number of tenured faculty positions created to let these overly-politicized professors run amok. […]

But contrary to popular belief, he's not the norm, and using him as a rallying point to make academia an even more difficult field to work and learn in than it already is won't help form the independent critical thinkers and good citizens they want to be made at the university.

The picture they paint of various "Ward Churchills" is bleak, but it's not the picture of academics I have had painted for me, and it's certainly not the picture that inspired me to go for grad school.

The Politico’s report that Lynne Cheney has been floated as a possible replacement for the late Sen. Craig Thomas (R-WY) spurred the latest e-mail thread to threaten destroy workplace productivity at my summer internship.

The latest news in the struggle for “academic freedom” comes from the University of California-San Diego where two teaching assistants were let go after raising a fuss about changes to the curriculum for a year-long sequence required for freshmen at UCSD’s Thurgood Marshall College. In a nutshell, administrators changed the way “Dimensions of Culture” was taught in response to complaints of a left-leaning bias. The T.A.s claimed the changes watered down the program at the expense of teaching students how to examine material critically. Get the whole scoop from Inside Higher Ed here.

Recently Stephen Colbert commented on a great evil plaguing college student all over the country: exposure to ideas you do not agree with.

Thanks in part to the work of Free Exchange on Campus (a coalition in which Campus Progress participates), David Horowitz's censorship legislation, the Academic Bill of Rights, hasn't moved forward in eight of the nine statehouses in which it's been introduced in 2007. But look out in Arizona, where a state senate committee just approved a bill that could fine, suspend, or terminate professors for:

• Endorsing, supporting or opposing any candidate for local, state or national office.

• Endorsing, supporting or opposing any pending legislation, regulation or rule under consideration by local, state or federal agencies.

• Endorsing, supporting or opposing any litigation in any court.

• Advocating “one side of a social, political, or cultural issue that is a matter of partisan controversy.”

• Hindering military recruiting on campus or endorsing the activities of those who do.

What's particularly fascistic here is the suggestion that professors can't even take a stance on "social, political, or cultural issues that are matters of partisan controversy." Could someone lose their job for suggesting gay people have the right to marry? Or that women have the right to have an abortion? Think about how this would stifle discussion in law school classrooms, for example, where questions of rights and morality are so central to interpreting the law.