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Education vs. Indoctrination: Does Washington. Have a
Role in Fighting "PC" on Campus?
Each campus in the University of Massachusetts system is required to
have "a program of educational activities designed to enlighten faculty,
administrators, staff and students with regard to ... ways in which the
dominant society manifests and perpetuates racism." A report on
"race and gender enrichment" at Tulane
University declares that
"[r]acism and sexism are pervasive in America and fundamentally present
in all American institutions." Pennsylvania
State University's
disciplinary manual condemns America
as "a society deeply ingrained with bias and prejudice." A report
by the New York State Commissioner of Education's Task Force on Minorities
opened by claiming that intellectual and educational oppression has
characterized the culture and institutions of America and the European world
for centuries. This oppression, we are told, has caused "the miseducation of all young people
through a systematic bias toward European culture and its derivatives."
If those so-called derivatives include individual liberty, an economic system
that has produced a standard of living unparalleled in world history, freedom
to worship God, a system of justice based on the rule of law, and a culture
that believes in the sanctity of human life and is virtually the only culture
interested in learning from other cultures, I say "Guilty as
charged." The so-called PC movement is geared toward re-directing and
ultimately revolutionizing this society to the benefit of certain political
groups. It is ultimately repressive and totalitarian.
The movement is efficient
in one sense-it is focused most aggressively at the institutions that educate
our children, America's
future leaders. Lenin and Mao also knew which institutions to capture in
order to change the direction of society. It appears that the PC police are
now invading our junior high schools as well as the halls of higher
education. Last March, 75 students at Huntley Middle School in DeKalb,
Illinois, staged a walkout and press conference, demanding that their
principal resign and that two students be punished for conducting a survey
demonstrating supposedly "racist' 'attitudes among their classmates. The
demonstrators branded the two girls who conducted the survey as racists not
for the results but for participating in the project at all. It worked. The
principal has stepped down and will be reassigned as a teacher and the school
board has determined, though will not announce, the "proper punishment'
'for the two girls. Yes, and Ben Hart was bitten for delivering the Dartmouth
Review, too. Examples of PC activity abound. They include the lie of
"multiculturalism," which seeks not to expand but to contract the
study of cultures. It seeks to replace, not to supplement, the study of
Western culture. It is odd that the PC thugs claiming to promote multiculturalism
would trash the only culture-Western culture-that is truly interested in
learning from and about others.
Tbomas L. Apping is Director of the Center for Law and
Democracy at the Free Congress Foundation, Washington, D.C.
His lecture at The Heritage Foundation on June 27, 1991, was sponsored by The
Heritage Foundation's Cultural Policy Studies Program. ISSN 0272-1155. 01991
by The Heritage Foundation.
Dis-Inviting Critics. Then
there are the dismlvitations of speakers who hold politically incorrect views.
In March, the Association of American Universities held its annual conference
of public relations directors from its 66 member schools here in Washington. Since I
had been involved in the debate over policies banning politically incorrect
speech on university campuses for over three years, I was invited to
participate on a panel discussing political correctness. Then I was
dis-invited by Peter Smith, the overall conference director, because of the
"overly ideological reputation" of the Free Congress Foundation.
Now I suppose it does take the public relations crowd to turn
"politically incorrect” into "overly ideological," but I
was prevented from speaking on PC because I was not PC. Interestingly, as
National Review pointed out, Peter Smith was once press secretary for Senator
Joe Biden, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, before whom I lobby on
behalf of conservative judicial nominees. Then there is Smith College's
list of manifestations of oppression. Smith tells us that this list will grow
"groups of people begin the process of realizing that they are
oppressed." I think it's more accurate to say "as they are told
that they are oppressed." The list so far contains at least ten kinds of
oppression, including heterosexism, or the oppression of those of sexual
orientations other than heterosexual.
Students can be guilty of
this by failing to acknowledge the existence of these non-hetero individuals.
It is unclear just how this affirmative acknowledgement must occur, or how
students at Smith can determine each others' sexual orientations in order to
properly acknowledge them without also violating their privacy or being
guilty of some other kind of oppression.
PC has also invaded the accreditation process. The Middle
States Association of Colleges and Schools is the accrediting agency for
schools in New York, Pennsylvania,
Maryland, the District of Columbia, and other states.
They have begun conditioning accreditation on what they call
"appropriate diversity" with regard to age, gender, race, and ethnicity
among the students, faculty, and governing board of an institution. Middle
States is up for renewal of its designation as a recognized accrediting
agency. Last November, I presented third-party testimony opposing renewal to
the committee that advises the Secretary of Education on this matter. I
represented several organizations, including the Free Congress Foundation.
The committee first voted to recommend renewal, then changed its decision to
recommend deferral. Secretary of Education Lamar Alexander accepted this
latter recommendation and deferred renewal on April 11.
Yesterday, he appeared before the House Subcommittee on Human
Resources and Intergovernmental Relations, chaired by Ted Weiss, to answer
for his crime. He said "If you are asking whether the Federal Government
should require racial or ethnic or gender balancing at colleges and
universities as a condition of receiving federal funds, my answer is
no."' Robust Exchange. Nothing less than individual liberty and the
future of America
itself is at stake here. In 1967, Justice William Brennan wrote for the
Supreme Court that "[t]he classroom is peculiarly the 'marketplace of
ideas.' The Nation's future depends upon leaders trained through wide
exposure to a robust exchange of ideas ... [rather] than through any kind of
authoritative selection." Ironically, that case, Keyishian v. Board of
Regents, arose at the State University of New York at Buffalo, where I attended for my law school
degree, master's, and Ph.D.
At that very same school, exactly two decades later, the first
example of the most potent weapon in the PC arsenal came to national
attention. In October 1987, the law school faculty at Buffalo unanimously approved a document
titled the "faculty Statement Regarding Freedom, Tolerance, and
Prohibited Harassment." Drafted by my First Amendment professor, this
policy explains the basis for the en- tire PC movement. It declares that
"[b]y entering law school ... each student's absolute right to liberty
of speech must also become tempered ... by the responsibility to promote
equality and justice." It went on to prohibit statements or remarks in
several categories, including those "based on prejudice or group
stereotype." In my work in this area since, I have seen at least 20 different
categories of speech prohibited in the many institutional gag rules that now
exist at two-thirds of America's
colleges and universities. This list includes economic status, position or
function, Vietnam-era veteran status, and marital status. Buffalo prohibited politically incorrect
statements wherever and however th6y occur. Brown
University bans unintentional
expression of political incorrectness, and the under- graduate student
government at Catholic University here in Washington sought last November to ban
"carelessly directing demeaning ... expressions" in eight different
categories. At some schools, entire subjects are simply off limits.
At New York
University Law
School, the moot court
board initially selected as an exercise a case involving the custody rights
of a divorced lesbian mother. The problem was withdrawn because arguments
against giving her custody would be insensitive to homosexuals. Last March,
the Federalist Society at Buffalo
Law School,
which I founded in 1984, invited me back to debate a professor about current
civil rights proposals in Congress. No less than 12 professors in a row
refused to debate me on that subject. Teaching Intolerance. It is clear from
this brief overview, and everything that you have heard and read in recent
months, that freedom of thought and liberty of speech are under direct attack
in institutions of higher education in this country. The irony of this
happening in educational institutions should become a greater sense of
urgency to do something about it because students taught intolerance will
become leaders who practice intolerance. What can be done about it?
The most obvious thing is
to speak. There's no better way to defend the right to freedom of speech than
to exercise it. This must include our national leaders. President Bush
launched a salvo in his May commencement address at the University of Michigan.
People do not know what is happening at schools like Buffalo. They need to know, not only so
that they can make more informed choices about which school for their
children to attend, but so that they can join the debate and defend liberty
more generally by defending intellectual freedom in school in particular. A
second approach is to get alumni informed and involved. Censorship policies
are a very re- cent phenomenon. In just five years, they have spread to more
than two-thirds of America's
colleges and universities. Most graduates can easily remember a day of
greater tolerance and open-mindedness. I did 'a radio talk show yesterday on
PC and a woman who had attended college in Greenwich Village years ago called
and told us of the good old days when schools offered a variety of views and
- dare I say it - had a "diverse" student body. People back then,
she said, celebrated that variety and took advantage of it. They did not seek
to enforce conformity. Two factors may limit the potential effectiveness of
getting alumni energized to combat PC.
The first is that, as
Charles Sykes has so well documented in his books Profscam and The Hollow Men, faculties rather than administrators
or boards of trustees are in complete control of most schools. Faculties,
especially the ones who hate hierarchy but love tenure, are farthest removed
from alumni and care little about what they think. Second, many schools are
less dependent on private alumni giving than in years past. This is large
part due to the shift from teaching to research in many universities and the
corresponding dependence on research grants, particular from government. The
third approach applies to students at public schools, and that is to bring a
lawsuit under the relevant provision of a state or the federal Constitution
that protects freedom of speech. The code at the University
of Michigan was struck down and
those at Buffalo Law School
and the University
of Wisconsin have also
been challenged. The First Amendment exists to protect freedom of speech, and
these campus censorship policies are textbook examples of prior restraint.
When I challenged the gag rule at my law school, I first consulted the New
York Civil Liberties Union and liberal commentator Nat Hentoff. Their opinion
was the same. These gag rules are
classic examples of unconstitutional restrictions on pure speech. Needless to
say, they were more than a bit surprised that my First Amendment professor
had drafted the speech code at my law school.
The fourth approach is legislative. Some who are most
concerned about the PC movement and its shut-down of American higher
education nevertheless immediately insist that government should stay out of
it and do nothing. This view seems to assume that government is doing nothing
right now. But it is. Government, at both the federal and state level,
invests tens of billions of our tax dollars on higher education each year.
Everything I have said so far demonstrates that, right now, the government is
subsidizing the PC movement. It should stop. No dollar can be spent on two
things at the same time. Government, just like you and I, must make
substantive choices about where to spend our money. It can either subsidize
the market- place of ideas or it can subsidize authoritative selection.
And remember, nothing less than America's future depends on which
path is chosen. Therefore, I reject the simple notion that government should
simply do nothing or that a legislative approach is necessarily
inappropriate. Two bills are currently circulating in Congress and each
represents a radically different approach. The first, H.R.1380, was
introduced as the "Collegiate Speech Protection Act of 1991" by
Congressman Henry Hyde on March 12.
It would amend Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to
provide a civil lawsuit for students at private schools similar to that
available under the Constitution to students at public schools. The second
bill, to be introduced as the "Freedom of Speech on Campus Act of 199 1
" by Senator Larry Craig [the bill was introduced as S. 1484 on July
17], would amend Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 to withhold
federal financial assistance from any school with a formal disciplinary code
that punishes students who utter politically incorrect speech. These bills
differ in at least four ways. First, they view the problem differently. The
Hyde bill assumes that there is no problem until someone's discreet legal
rights have been violated in such a concrete way that they can actually
overcome the legal rules of standing and get into court. Yet this rarely
happens. At Buffalo
Law School,
few if any examples of the PC crowd enforcing its dogma were so clear and
could be documented and described in such an obvious manner that our legal
rights were violated. Nevertheless, the educational environment remained
hostile, politically incorrect views were increasingly forced out of the
marketplace, and the party line was enforced. The Craig bill views the
problem not as a violation of individual legal rights but as an oppressive
educational environment. An intellectual Gulag can exist but not offer an
opportunity to meet the rigid requirements of it lawsuit.
Thus the issue is not legal rights but educational policy and
it is appropriate to focus not on the civil rights laws but on the education
laws. Expensive Litigation. The second way in which these bills differ is
their chances for success. A lawsuit under the First Amendment has always
been available to students in public schools. To date, however, only one gag
rule has been eliminated through litigation while they have at the same time
sprung up at hundreds of schools from coast to coast. Litigation is
expensive, time- consuming, and colleges and universities have sizable legal
departments and enormous budgets. In most cases, all they need do is create
delays until students graduate. The Hyde bill offers no brighter prospect for
success since it is based on the very same approach.
The Craig bill, on the other hand, offers a chance for
immediate success. Though the mechanism of certifying compliance with the
requirements of Title VI takes time, passage of this bill would send an
immediate message that if schools want to partake at the public trough, they
will have to address campus problems in ways that are in the public interest.
They will not be able to treat intolerance with censorship policies. The
third difference is the possibility of unintended consequences. There is a
reason by Nadine Strosses, president of the American Civil Liberties Union,
stood beside Congressman Hyde when he introduced his bill in March. The Hyde
bill is a litigation bill and the ACLU litigates for a living. By focusing
broadly on the civil rights laws, the Hyde bill offers the potential of
affecting more than just the educational context. This was one reason why the
Washington Times editorially opposed the Hyde bill immediately after its
introduction. The Craig bill amends the education laws, not the civil rights
laws. It only covers institutions of higher education and only those that
have formal disciplinary codes that punish students for uttering politically
incorrect speech. Finally, the Hyde bill expands government activity in
education where the Craig bill reduces that activity. The Hyde bill opens up
an entirely novel area for litigation that never existed be- fore. The Craig
bill is geared toward getting government to stop some of what it is already
doing - subsidizing the PC movement. Incidentally, this is increasingly an
issue at the state level as well.
Certainly, in a time of wide- spread state budget crises,
legislators at that level want to take a look at how public dollars are
spent. Senator Bill Leonard in California
introduced a campus free speech bill. It recently passed the Senate by a vote
of 30-3 and its prospects in the Assembly look equally as bright. Since California is a hotbed of PC activity on campuses from
Stanford to Berkeley,
this may be a sign of things to come. Marketplace of Ideas. To conclude,
government must get out of the indoctrination business. Billions of our tax
dollars are being used to subsidize quota systems, sensitivity training,
rigged admissions standards, doctored curricula, and institutional censorship
policies. Our tax money is being used to subsidize authoritative selection
rather than the marketplace of ideas in American higher education. Yet the
marketplace of ideas is the only appropriate model for higher education in
this country. It is ironic that as Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union strive
to throw off the shackles, the elite in America's school would be working
to impose them. The Hyde bill misperceives the problem, has little chance for
success, offers the potential for serious unintended consequences, and
actually expands the government's role in education. The Craig bill perceives
the problem correctly as an oppressive educational environment, offers an
effective way to address this problem, has little potential for unintended
consequences, and will actually serve to get government further out of the
educational sphere. I think this legislative approach must be part of an
overall strategy to combat the PC movement in American higher education.
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