The Academic Bill of Rights

David Horowitz, the conservative commentator, has a movement to rile up academia. He argues that all of academia is mired in political correctness and the only way to solve the problem is to impose new legalistic rights on students and faculty which would lock colleges into endless litigation.

When I was a freshman at the University of the Pacific, I was also the county youth chairman for Barry Goldwater. In the middle of my first semester, in a course on Western Civilization, the professor began what turned out to be a six lecture exercise in pre-political correctness. He stopped our discussion of the Summerians and began to argue that Goldwated and fascism were the same thing. I listened to one lecture (or most of it) and by the second began to debate him in class. It was a wonderful experience. By the third class some other students began to feel empowered and raised questions both in support of me and the professor. The diversion limited my understanding of those parts of ancient history that we should have been studying but it was still valuable. When I first asked out my wife on a date - she went back to her dorm and one of her dorm mates said "Don't go out with him - he debates professors."

Horowitz's solution is simply the wrong way to go. Assume for a moment that higher education is pervasively PC. Even if it were, wouldn't it be better to try to get this generation of students to react in a different way - to begin to use their class sessions as a way to confront the intellectual slackers who resort to PC? At the University of Santa Clara, three conservative professors developed an extra program for students so inclined to learn about free market thinkers. The students read the great books of free markets and the Civil Society Institutealso holds lecture series on campus to stimulate debate and discussion on key issues. The American Council of Trustees and Alumni have even offered bounties to UCLA students who record leftist professors. Again, not a good way to solve a problem. The Civil Society Institute and creating clones in other academic settings seems a much better way to assure balance.

The point here is that universities should be a place of debate and discussion not litigation. Horowitz should think more creatively rather than reflexivly running to legalistic solutions.