Neocons on Campus

The [legal] invasion of the neocons on America's "liberal" campuses.

To protect students from what one might (mistakenly) suppose to be an epidemic of indoctrination, the bill mandates that students be graded on the basis of their "reasoned answers" rather than their political beliefs. Reading lists should "respect the uncertainty and unsettled character of all human knowledge." Speakers brought to campus should "promote intellectual pluralism," and faculty should eschew political, religious or "anti-religious" bias.

Notwithstanding its contorted syntax, the bill may sound reasonable. But, in fact, it has nothing to do with balance and everything to do with promoting a neoconservative agenda. For one thing, the proposed "safeguards" to "protect" students from faculty intimidation are already in place at all universities, which have procedures to encourage students' feedback and evaluate their grievances. Despite a lot of noise from the right about liberal bias on campus, there are simply no meaningful data to suggest that any of these procedures have failed.

So why does it matter? Acedamia is one of the last strongholds that the conservative movement has not conquored at all, and it is very interested in getting a strong toe-hold [and likely has, judging by the growth of conservative student groups in recent years], by any means necessary. This "equalizing" bill is nothing new, Gov. Owens (R) tried to ram through an acedemic conservative quota program in 2002 in Colorado, which was rightly defeated.

Academic freedom... where's it go from here? As they say, there's no proof (and only the speculation of conservatives) that the systems currently in place don't work to protect students from academic ideology. Which means, of course, that Conservatives wish to inject that ideology into the realm of academia, a world they never have been able to invade.