INTELLECTUAL DIVERSITY? NOT ON CAMPUS

By Jeff Jacoby

(Note: This column is slightly expanded from the version that appears in The Boston Globe.)

The left-wing takeover of American universities is an old story. As far back as the 1930s, Irving Kristol recalled in "Memoirs of a Trotskyist," City College of New York was so radical that "if there were any Republicans at City -- and there must have been some -- I never met them, or even heard of their existence." Soon the virus had spread to the nation's most elite institutions. In 1951, William F. Buckley Jr. created a sensation with "God and Man at Yale," which documented the socialist and atheist worldview that even then prevailed in the classrooms of the Ivy League institution he had just graduated from.

Today, campus leftism is not merely prevalent. It is radical, aggressive, and deeply intolerant, as another newly-minted graduate of another prominent university -- Ben Shapiro of UCLA -- shows in "Brainwashed," a recent best-seller. "Under higher education's facade of objectivity," Shapiro writes, "lies a grave and overpowering bias" -- a charge he backs up with example after freakish example of academics going to ideological extremes.

No surprise, then, that when researchers checked the voter registration of humanities and social-science instructors at 19 universities, they discovered a whopping political imbalance. The results, published in The American Enterprise in 2002, made it clear that for all the talk of diversity in higher education, ideological diversity in the modern college faculty is mostly nonexistent.

So, for example, at Cornell, of the 172 faculty members whose party affiliation was recorded, 166 were liberal (Democrats or Greens) and 6 were conservative (Republicans or Libertarians). At Stanford, the liberal-conservative ratio was 151-17. At San Diego State, it was 80-11. At SUNY Binghamton, 35-1. At UCLA, 141-9. At the University of Colorado-Boulder, 116-5. At the University of Texas-Austin, 94-15. Reflecting on these gross disparities, The American Enterprise's editor, Karl Zinsmeister, remarked: "Today's colleges and universities . . . do not, when it comes to political and cultural ideas, look like America."

At about the same time, a poll of Ivy League professors commissioned by the Center for the Study of Popular Culture found that more than 80 percent of those who voted in 2000 had cast their ballots for Democrat Al Gore, while just 9 percent backed Republican George W. Bush. Asked to name the greatest president of the last 40 years, 26 percent chose Bill Clinton; 4 percent said Ronald Reagan. While 64 percent said they were "liberal" or "somewhat liberal," only 6 percent described themselves as "somewhat conservative" -- and none at all as "conservative."

And the evidence continues to mount.

The latest campaign-finance records reveal that the most partisan organizations in America, as measured by employee donations to a presidential candidate, are the University of California and Harvard. Together, the two institutions accounted for $942,000 in contributions to the Kerry campaign -- 19 times the amount donated to the Bush campaign.

Last month, The New York Times reported that a new national survey of more than 1,000 academics shows Democratic professors outnumbering Republicans by at least 7 to 1 in the humanities and social sciences. At Berkeley and Stanford, according to a separate study that included professors of engineering and the hard sciences, the ratio of Democrats to Republicans is even more lopsided: 9 to 1.

Such one-party domination of any major institution is problematic in a nation where Republicans and Democrats can be found in roughly equal numbers. In academia, it is scandalous. It strangles dissent, suppresses debate, and causes minorities to be discriminated against. It is certainly antithetical to good scholarship. "Any political position that dominates an institution without dissent," writes Mark Bauerlein, an English professor at Emory, in The Chronicle of Higher Education, "deteriorates into smugness, complacency, and blindness. . . . Groupthink is an anti-intellectual condition."

Worse yet, it leads faculty members to abuse their authority. The American Council of Trustees and Alumni has just released the results of the first survey to measure student perceptions of faculty partisanship. The ACTA findings are striking. Of 658 students polled at the top 50 US colleges, 49 percent said professors "frequently comment on politics in class even though it has nothing to do with the course," 48 percent said some "presentations on political issues seem totally one-sided," and 46 percent said that "professors use the classroom to present their personal political views." That nearly half of the respondents expressed those views is all the more striking, since only 13 percent described themselves as conservative.

Academic freedom is not only meant to protect professors; it is also supposed to ensure students' right to learn without being molested. When instructors use their classrooms to indoctrinate and propagandize, they cheat those students and betray the academic mission they are entrusted with. That should be intolerable to honest men and women of every stripe -- liberals and conservatives alike.

"If this were a survey of students reporting widespread sexual harassment," says ACTA's president, Anne Neal, "there would be an uproar." That is because universities take sexual harassment seriously. Intellectual harassment, on the other hand -- like the one-party conformity it flows from -- they ignore. Until that changes, the scandal of the campuses will only grow worse.





BUREAUCRATIC HATRED OF PRIVATE SCHOOLS SURFACES IN BRITAIN

There was not even a pretence at justice

"Test results at one of the country's top junior schools have been annulled because investigators found evidence of cheating. Waltham Holy Cross Junior School in Essex was stripped of its results for 11-year-olds in English, mathematics and science, sending it to the bottom of performance tables published today. The Qualifications and Curriculum Authority (QCA), which monitors the national curriculum tests, said that it believed that pupils had not completed papers unaided.

Diane Stygal, the head teacher, said that the school had been condemned by a kangaroo court. Mrs Stygal said: "We vigorously deny that anything went on. Just two months before the tests, we had an Ofsted report that said our children were in line to achieve very challenging targets." Waltham Holy Cross was rated among the top 5 per cent nationally for test results last year. But the QCA took the unusual step of awarding the ninety-one pupils zero scores in all three subjects after its inquiry at the school in June.

"We concluded that the results did not reflect the independent and unaided work of pupils," a QCA spokeswoman said. The authority's concerns were thought to focus on the invigilation of the tests.

Mrs Stygal said that staff had no opportunity to defend themselves because they were never told what the allegation was or who made it. QCA officials had told the school that there was no mechanism for appealing against its decision. "It has been extremely stressful and it is beginning to tell on all of us. But the parents of the children concerned were fabulous, and many of them have written wonderful letters of support," she said. Lorraine Kent, the chairman of the school's governors, said that the QCA was "unable to find any direct evidence relating to the allegation". She added that the governors continued to have confidence in Mrs Stygal, who has been head for nearly five years. "The governors and head teacher of the school are dismayed at the way QCA have dismissed the teachers' and children's hard work in this way, and by someone seemingly wishing to do harm to the school," she said.

Essex County Council said that the inquiry was triggered by a complaint against the school by a member of the public".

More here





THE LEFTIST VERSION OF VALUES

In the first attempt to include a set of values in an Australian schools curriculum, Victoria will adopt five "principles" that all schools must follow as the Government prepares to release its new curriculum within weeks. The new principles have drawn immediate criticism, with the head of the Independent Education Union of Victoria, Tony Keenan, describing them as "just a statement of the bleeding obvious". "Teachers will roll their eyes," he said, also noting the academic focus of the principles. The introduction of the five principles follows the rejection by Education Minister Lynne Kosky of a more detailed set of values, which created heated debate when proposed earlier this year.

The question of values in schools has been a key issue this year, after claims by Prime Minister John Howard that the drift of students to private schools was partly because government schools were "values neutral". A national study conducted for The Age by the Australian Council for Educational Research also found that a mix of "traditional values" was the main attraction for parents who chose private schools.

The new curriculum and its principles will apply to both government and private schools in Victoria. Openness of mind, pursuit of excellence and respect for evidence are among the new principles. The other two are "learning for all" - the idea that all students can learn - and "engagement and effort" - if students work hard, they will improve. Ms Kosky told The Age the five principles were "a higher set of principles that really are fundamental to a democracy".

But Mr Keenan said: "If she's hoping to avoid the values debate, which we think is a bit of a non-issue anyway, I don't think that will do it." Mr Keenan said there was nothing offensive about the principles, but they did not deal with issues such as respect for others and co-operation. "And they're not even difficult areas," he said.

The body in charge of writing the new curriculum, the Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority, originally proposed a list of 10 values, agreed by state and federal education ministers five years ago. The Age reported last month the list had prompted an intense debate over what values should be taught. Those proposed included tolerance and understanding, respect, social justice and freedom. Only one of those values has made it into the new principles - pursuit of excellence.

More here

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For greatest efficiency, lowest cost and maximum choice, ALL schools should be privately owned and run -- with government-paid vouchers for the poor and minimal regulation.

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