Customer Reviews

Reforming Our Universities: The Campaign For An Academic Bill Of Rights

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The author not only uses anecdotes but backs them up with statistics re the one-sided indoctrination extant on many campuses. This is not just argument but conclusion based upon many abuses in so-called humanities and "studies" depts.

Not to discount the statistics and history behind the effort in this book, as described more in depth by other reviewers, I found the message of the struggle itself to be very important. In a time when we are struggling in just about every area of our culture, Horowitz is inspirational. Many people would have given up this fight long before. He makes progress, they knock it down or disregard it, and he takes a fresh approach over and over. If we all had this kind of dedication, our country would not be in the mess it is now. I hope readers will learn from this and keep fighting the good fight.
We also have to make others aware of just how vital it is for students to be exposed to many viewpoints rather than indoctrinated. His fight here should be everyone's fight. The brainwashed students of today are the (potentially) Marxist power players of tomorrow.

My original review begins below with "A GREAT BOOK. . ." This introduction was added September 10.

In that earlier review of "Reforming Our Universities", I went directly to what I perceive as some shortcomings of this book because I expected to see an abundance of highly positive reviews. To my surprise, those positive reviews have not yet materialized in over two weeks since my first review. So here is my overview of what I expected to see written but has not yet appeared.

The problem articulated in this book is that Academic America, at least in the liberal arts, has failed us in the following ways: 1) it has rejected its traditional mission of providing a fact-based education to its students, 2) it has stacked its faculties overwhelmingly with collectivists from the political left, and 3) it has failed to tolerate dissent from the politically correct views of its leftist faculties by its students or by visiting scholars. In addition, Horowitz maintains that other departments than liberal arts have capitulated or worse by refusing to criticize this clear divergence of academia from the traditions of true liberal education.

Horowitz's writing is clear and concise. He does not denigrate or attack those in disagreement with him as apparently they have repeatedly done to him during many of his campus visits. The problem with academia that he discusses is critically important to the survival of America as a constitutional republic. He understands the gravity of this threat and treats it with honesty and dignity. Horowitz has dedicated his life to solving this and other problems foisted on Americans by fuzzy-thinking, politically correct, collectivist, and truly un-liberal people in our society. For this he should be honored as one of our modern American heroes.

And now to my original review . . .

A GREAT BOOK . . .

David Horowitz writes on page xxi about the purpose of his book: "What follows is the history of the campaign--the obstacles we encountered along the way, the successes we achieved, and the prospects for making further progress. It is in some ways a personal story . . . The possibility that this history might be of service to other reform efforts is the most important reason for publishing it."

That's a worthwhile objective, and as a personal history, it is well done. In addition, his mission is an important one for the sustainability of our constitutional republic because academia is a critical element of that republic. He has concisely documented a problem with academia and his attempt to fix it. There will be other reviews extolling his and the book's virtues, so let me fast-forward to . . .

BUT . . .

-- Insufficient Data --

In the first few chapters, Horowitz lays out the case against academia's evolution toward authoritarian faculty tactics and the substitution of the teacher's opinion for provable facts. The problem with his case is that it doesn't really prove what he says it proves. He presents several anecdotes about the authoritarian actions of several universities that he visited, but he never compiles a statistically significant data set for his campus experiences with any kind of evaluation scheme to show quantitatively how un-liberal academic America really is. Reading a half dozen accounts of intellectually and physically shabby treatment out of hundreds of campus visits speaks very poorly of those few universities, but hand-selection of data is exactly one of the biases that many academics use today that he is fighting against.

Likewise he cites a study of the political party affiliations of 150 departments at 32 "elite universities." The few extremely low ratios of Republicans to Democrats he presents really do indicate a possible serious bias. But his data set comprises an average of five selected departments from each of 32 selected universities. If your intention is to prove something, then prove it with a broad sample of academia. Anything less is disingenuous. The reason I'm being so rigorous about this is that members of academia who want to reject his hypothesis have no problem shooting his "proofs" full of holes. I have read some of those rebuttals; and, though they themselves are soft arguments, they have merit. A major question Horowitz has not answered is -- how much of academia has been infected by the extremely un-liberal behavior he has presented in his book? Is it 10% of the faculty at 20% of the universities (a total of 0.1 x 0.2 = 2% of academia), or is it 60% of the faculty at 90% of the universities (a total of 54%). It makes a great deal of difference. A scientific approach to clearly dichotomize fact from opinion is essential, especially in this debate.

-- Missing Documents --

Horowitz states that his Academic Bill of Rights is "based squarely on" the "Declaration of the Principles on Academic Freedom and Academic Tenure," which was issued in 1915 by the American Association of University Professors. He needs to present as much of that declaration as necessary for us to make our own independent judgment. He did not. Likewise the American Council on Education issued a statement in 2005 that "shared key principles with the Academic Bill of Rights." He needs to present that statement so we can make our own judgment. He did not. There is always pressure on writers to keep the size of the book within some bounds, but at 258 pages with large margins, a large font, and wide line spacing, the $28 price can surely support significantly more information without even adding more pages.*

-- Other Strategies --

Horowitz has created an Academic Bill of Rights that is confrontational to the academic establishment. That's fine as a strategy, but he then carried the confrontation only to the legislatures for muscle to force a reformation of universities. That has had only marginal success. There are three other avenues he has not yet addressed.

1) The schools of science, engineering, business, medicine, and law know the difference between fact and opinion. They should be embarrassed by their association with an institution that exhibits such ideological zeal at the expense of reality. Why does Horowitz not carry his case to them to stand up to the obviously frivolous and authoritarian methods of the social science and humanities schools? He merely hints at this issue in one sentence in the second-last paragraph of the book.

2) There are state and federal laws that are being broken. File suits.

3) The alumni can be a huge source of pressure against universities. And as people age, they generally become more conservative. Recruit them.

-- Motive --

The thing that everybody wants to know in a mystery story is motive -- why did the criminal act the way they did? Motive helps us understand and thus believe. In this case, the big question is -- how could such a huge growth in academic irresponsibility have taken place in an institution so dedicated to truth and its free access? It's difficult to fully accept the intellectual fraud of academia presented by Horowitz without understanding why it happened. Horowitz makes no attempt at answering this question. So let me try.

The founders of the American government understood a simple fact about autocracies that Americans seem to have forgotten. Jefferson said it best:
"Experience hath shewn, that even under the best forms of government those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny."
The evolution of academia (since about 1970 according to Horowitz) has taken place during the same period as: 1) the rise of big-money politics fed by big-money multinational corporatism, 2) the decline in individual responsibility in favor of collectivism, and 3) the destruction of the United States Constitution by reinventing it as a politically malleable "living constitution" rather than the law of the land. These are related to the growth of authoritarianism and thus the decay of academic integrity.

Big Money, Government, and the Intellectual Elite are all working toward authoritarianism, but they each have a different reason to support government growth since powerful government benefits each group in different ways. It's not a conspiracy. Each group is simply following its own path toward its own goal. Big Money sees a great benefit in growing Government. Since Big Money intends to own Government and groom it to serve it at the expense of We the People, Big Money wants Government to dominate We the People, not be accountable to them. The Intellectual Elite (academia, think tanks, research institutes, media) get their pay, status, and perks from Government and Big Money, both directly and via the media's access to the Government celebrities. Since 1970 we have created a Department of Education and dramatically increased the flow of federal dollars and regulation to education. The quality and independence of education at all levels has declined dramatically as a result. This focus on money and authoritarianism has turned academia toward political correctness, following rules, and soft logic, especially in the humanities and social sciences.

* The 42 pages of endnotes, if replaced by footnotes, would add only about 12 pages to the main text, thus saving 30 pages for more information without adding any more total pages to the book. In addition, the footnotes would be much more convenient to use than continually paging to the endnotes.

A great read. Everyone concerned about higher education in this nation should read this book. The left bias of academia is apparent to anyone who has attended university, but Horowitz concisely documents the bigotry and hypocracy.

Very interesting read.

Education is one of the most vital aspects for the future. "Reforming Our Universities: The Campaign for An Academic Bill of Rights" discusses the problems with today's universities, placing much blame on politically charged curriculums that indoctrinate instead of educate. Calling for an academic bill of rights for a more level playing field in campus politics, he wishes for colleges to resume to being an avenue for the exchange of ideas. "Reforming Our Universities" is an intriguing addition to the debate of modern education, highly recommended.

David Horowitz has been waging a rather lonely battle pushing an "Academic Bill of Rights" which does its best to protect students from experiencing one-sided political indoctrination in the classroom. For example, the notion that gender differences between men and women is a social construction is an article of faith in women and gender studies programs. Yet, it is not established in biology. However, teaching students the notion of social construction as established fact is not considered, by these academics, to be indoctrination. They do not feel the slightest obligation to bring in opposing points of view or information from other disciplines that might call their cherished notions into question.

This book is an account of the struggles Horowitz has had, the attacks and calumnies his opponents have cast upon him, and the few successes his efforts have had. I think it is a book worth reading because I believe so strongly in the need to rid our schools and universities of these political workshops masquerading as classes and academic disciplines.

You might also be interested in these related book on this topic from Horowitz:
One-Party Classroom: How Radical Professors at America's Top Colleges Indoctrinate Students and Undermine Our Democracy

Indoctrination U: The Lefts War Against Academic Freedom

One-Party Classroom: How Radical Professors at America's Top Colleges Indoctrinate Students and Undermine Our Democracy

Reviewed by Craig Matteson, Saline, MI

In Indianapolis, at IUPUI, a janitor was found guilty of racial harassment from reading a LIBRARY BOOK. The book was "Notre Dame vs. the Klan: How the Fighting Irish Defeated the Ku Klux Klan." It was an anti-Klan book. This sounds like a paranoid fantasy doesn't it? Absolutely true. It was only the intervention of the ACLU that stopped this outrage.

David Horowitz's latest book, Reforming Our Universities, is above all a clarion call to action on the part of all who believe in the founding principles of the United States of America and wish to preserve it as founded. That is to say that there are forces intent on transforming the U.S. into a European socialist-style nation, and that one of the most effective weapons in their arsenal is not just the domination of liberal arts faculties at American universities by leftist ideologues, but the way in which these professors often brazenly indoctrinate students into their belief systems without fear of reprisal by their administrators.Horowitz's account of his seven-year campaign to have his Academic Bill of Rights (ABOR) adopted by major universities and his very limited success in doing so to date is a cautionary one. It is important for freedom-loving people to understand the sad state of affairs that exists at liberal arts colleges throughout the nation and the grave threat this poses to American exceptionalism. These institutions are training our future K-12 public and private school teachers, a fact that will, if academic freedom rights for university students remain unenforced, inculcate leftist principles into our nation's youth and thereby ensure that our existing constitutional republic is radically altered, if not completely dismantled, in favor of the socialist model.

I would in fact argue (though I am by no means certain Horowitz would agree) that Barack Obama could not have been elected President, nor could the Democrat Party as currently constituted have achieved its recent dominance in Congress if it were not for the sorry state of American public education over the past 40 years and the increasing promotion of leftist ideas in our public schools. These ideas, as Horowitz has demonstrated in The Professorsand in One-Party Classroom, are taught uncritically as accepted doctrine by many university professors, often in courses where such ideas are irrelevant to the subject matter at hand. They are not settled facts, but highly controversial issues for which any responsible academic would expose students to opposing sides of the arguments and encourage students to evaluate the evidence and form their own opinions. This is clearly not being done in far too many instances, and as Horowitz's long battle illustrates, the situation is being perpetuated by the dominance of radical leftists on university faculties and teacher unions and their intimidation of administrators.

Herein lies another important lesson of Horowitz's campaign for ABOR and the massive resistance and campaign of misinformation waged against it everywhere he has attempted to encourage its adoption: leftists will relentlessly attack and misrepresent what has been essentially a basic tenet of liberal education since 1915, when it was officially promulgated by the American Association of University Professors. That basic principle is simply a commitment to professional standards based upon the scientific method, without regard to religious or political orthodoxies. One might well ask why institutions which ostensibly support this principle would fight so hard against the adoption of Horowitz's ABOR, which simply codifies this idea and explicitly secures academic freedom rights to students. The answer is an unpleasant but obvious one: the leftists who now dominate the vast majority of university liberal arts faculties have no interest in dispassionate inquiry into these controversial matters. Rather, they seek to break away from the model of the modern research university and return to a secular version of the American university as it existed prior to the second half of the nineteenth century - as a means to instill religious doctrine. Their religious doctrine is their radical leftist orthodoxy, in which the United States is a racist, sexist, homophobic, imperialist force of evil in the world.

Horowitz recounts in the introduction the depressing fact that no major conservative policy organization supported his campaign, and further, that it was ignored by such notable conservative intellectual journals as National Review and the Weekly Standard. He attributes this to a general discomfort among conservatives regarding organized movements and in particular, institutional reform campaigns. Further, he notes a general aversion among conservatives for arousing the ire of the intellectual establishment and inviting ad hominem attacks. I'd add to this that the Republican Party leadership has exhibited this same aversion over the last 20 years, allowing the abuses of the political left to remain unchecked, and to in fact intensify. Hence we find ourself at this critical juncture in American history.

Reforming Our Universities does provide, however, in its account of Horowitz's hard-won ABOR campaign successes, a blueprint for continued progress. Conservatives in general and the Republican Party in particular must make the enforcement of student academic freedom rights on university campuses a priority. Without grass-roots support along the lines of the Tea Party, and continued pressure upon Republican Party leaders to support the adoption of ABOR-supportive resolutions within state legislatures, the effort to have our universities re-embrace the modern research university model will fail. To be clear - Horowitz explicitly rejects the idea of legislative control of curricula - what he is suggesting is that pressure be brought to bear on the many good people within university administrations to adopt and enforce a set of academic freedom rights for students. The story of Horowitz's noble campaign and his detailed accounting of the obstacles he has faced and overcome in its course suggests that with wide public support for these reforms and subsequent pressure on university trustees and administrators, much greater success can in fact be achieved. If we wish to preserve this nation as founded, conservatives must get involved and aggressively advocate for this reform. It is a battle we must fight and win.

.. the essence of Trotskyite thinking is that the "revolution" must be universal: if it is restricted to only some countries or sectors of life it has, in the opinion of the Trotskyite, *failed*. The crux of Mr Horowitz's personal jihad - consistent across a number of years - is to ferret out the remaining pockets of resistance to his program. Academia, apparently, is one. If - in Horowitz's view - the university is a seething cauldron of "anti-American sentiment" and "enablers of Radical Islam," it only goes to show how powerless academia is in terms of shaping American opinion. I would argue, based on personal experience on two U.S. campuses, that the author's premises are out of line with reality. In short, the thought circulated at colleges today is almost as reactionary as what one hears from media and government officials. Sure, there are exceptions. Sure, there are those who find the concept of "Left Interventionism" in foreign policy as noxious as the "Neoconservative" fad .. but those voices are in the minority and - for the protection of the State's *idea* of itself - Horowitz has boldly stepped in to silence them. That's his idea of "diversity," I suppose: indulging his Stalinist whims as well.