There is currently a discussion (some would say “bombs being thrown”) here in Florida regarding a bill Representative Dennis Baxley proposed and passed through committee. House Bill 837, the “Academic Bill of Rights,” would guarantee a students right to "free inquiry and free speech" in the classroom.

Many on the right have worried about the increasing influence of leftist ideology on college and university campuses and the suppression of centrist or conservative ideology that contradicts the professorial line of thought. Many students have related stories of being marginalized on campus and targeted academically for holding to views different from their professors.

The situation has concerned some to the extent that websites and organizations have been formed to organize the effort to increase diversity of thought and ideology on the university campus. David Horowitz’s Students for Academic Freedom is on the forefront of this effort helping to craft model legislation.

But the problem isn’t limited to student marginalization. Many conservative thinking professors, researchers, scientists and administrators complain of a wall of ideology and intimidation barring them from freely expressing their ideas. This has been seen recently in the prestigious Smithsonian Institute when Richard Sternberg had his standing as a researcher at the Institute called into question when an article favorable to Intelligent Design was published in a journal he edited.

It didn’t matter that Mr. Sternberg didn’t write the article or that it is a peer reviewed study. The article sites biologists and paleontologist who question the Darwinian theory. But the real story is that it was the messenger, the publisher of the article, who is being brought to task.

As Mr. Sternberg’s complaint cites, the chairman of the Zoology Department called his supervisor and questioned his religious and political affiliations, assuming he was both a “religious fundamentalist and a right-winger.” Sternberg, who describes himself as a Catholic with lots of questions, says that though he was able to beg a small office in the Institute, his colleagues ignore him in the halls and old colleagues at other institutions now refuse to work with him.

The interesting thing in this particular case is that it was Sternberg, the messenger, who has been attacked for allowing diversity of thought, peer reviewed thought, in an academic journal. Of course the problem is that this particular thought brought into question the “holy grail” of elitist, liberal academia, Darwin’s evolution.

The automatic response that Sternberg was surely a “religious and political fanatic of the conservative bent” tells the tale of those ensconced in our institutions of higher learning. They don’t wish a debate of ideas; they wish only their ideas to be the rule of the classroom. While this is certainly a broad brush, it is a brush with substance. According to a Washington Post article, 72% of university professors describe themselves as liberal, while in the elite universities 87% of faculty labeled themselves as such.

Here in Florida, a debate on TheSky97.3 on Friday between Mr. Baxley and a representative from the University of Florida (I truly wish I could recall his name) was essentially cordial, but the true underlying issue was revealed when Baxley’s opposite charged that his bill was merely a ruse to push Christianity and Creationism in the guise of intellectual freedom in the classroom.

Baxley countered that the purpose is to truly open the university setting to diversity of ideas in the same way the left has opened it to diversity of gender, color, race, sexual preference and so on. If diversity is good in those areas, why not in the area for which the university was created, the expression of thought and ideas?

Were HB837 truly designed for the purposes of promoting Christianity, so what? Isn’t the opposition’s reaction proof of the problem the bill is designed to deal with? Are not thoughts and ideas, from all sources, valid for discussion and exploration? How can one fully understand their position on any idea or issue until they are challenged?

It would appear the left is all for diversity until that diversity challenges their ideology. To suppress full and open discussion is an admission of fear of the potential validity of the idea.

Perhaps that is what the elitist academians fear, a challenge for which they can provide no rebuttal.

Futher reading:
The Branding of a Heretic
Science's new heresy trial
Fighting in Florida
A Victory in Florida
College Faculties A Most Liberal Lot, Study Finds
Summers Storm
Who Stole Harvard?
Colleges need intellectually diverse professors
Why an Academic Bill of Rights is Necessary
Academic Freedom


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