WSJ.com - Congress Wades Into Campus Politics
College campuses can be political hotbeds. And that has some members of Congress thinking they should get involved.
Some Republicans are pushing a measure through the House of Representatives meant to ensure that students hear “dissenting viewpoints” in class and are protected from retaliation because of their politics or religion. Colleges say the measure isn't needed, but with Congress providing billions of dollars to higher education, they are worried.
The measure's chief promoter, Marxist-turned-conservative activist David Horowitz, says an academic bill of rights will protect students from possible political “hectoring” and discrimination by their professors. “We have enough institutions in America that are political. Let's keep [universities] above that fray,” he adds.
Horowitz is just a putz. I don't know if he ever was a Marxist, except in his own mind. Congress should have better things to do than get involved in college campus politics. Whatever happened to the Invisible Hand of ideas? Thought police are not what universities need.
Members of Congress began pondering their own academic bill of rights two years ago when Rep. Jack Kingston, a Georgia Republican, introduced a bill that largely copied Mr. Horowitz's wording. Mr. Kingston, whose father and sister are professors, says he is “pro-academic.” But with taxpayers providing billions of dollars to the universities, they should be assured that professors won't “ridicule my kid when he has a George Bush bumper sticker,” he says. The Kingston measure went nowhere for two years, but in June, Republicans attached a shortened version to the Higher Education Act, which provides grants and loans to millions of college students. In hopes of heading it off, university presidents passed their own academic-rights statement. But the House education committee passed the measure anyway, over the opposition of Democrats who called Mr. Horowitz's student groups “thought police.” Faculty groups say that Congress's measure is costly and unnecessary. Florida has estimated that an academic-rights measure before its legislature would cost $4.3 million a year in staffing and legal costs. The AAUP argues that colleges already have grievance procedures and student-written teacher evaluations where allegations of ideological discrimination can be aired.
The Republicans are so incredibly thin-skinned that it would be funny, if there weren't such serious consequences to their actions.
