More on the "War against Brains"

http://www.voanews.com/english/AmericanLife/2005-03-07-voa61.cfm
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American Colleges Debate Limits on Academic Freedom
By Maura Jane Farrelly
New York
07 March 2005
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[source page contains audio links]
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The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution guarantees that any American can challenge the status quo and not be thrown in jail because of it. University professors enjoy an additional protection known as academic freedom.
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[this is under attack]
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First, there was the case of Ward Churchill, an ethnic studies professor at the University of Colorado at Boulder. He had written in an essay that the civilians who died in the terrorist attacks of September 11th, 2001, were deserving of their fate.
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A second controversy involves Harvard University president Lawrence Summers, who suggested that biological differences may explain why more women are not in the fields of math and science.
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A third debate concerns Columbia University's Middle Eastern Studies Department, which has been an ongoing concern for Jewish students. They are calling for the resignation of several prominent professors who have published papers highly critical of Israel's policies toward the Palestinians.

Cases such as this are dangerous because they undermine the very purpose of a university, according to Jonathan Knight, who directs the Program on Academic Freedom and Tenure for the American Association of University Professors. "We want to tolerate the freedom of the professors to teach and do research and write as they think right," says Mr. Knight, "because, in the end, what they do contributes so greatly to the betterment of our society."

Jonathan Knight says academic freedom does not guarantee that a professor will never lose his or her job. But he says it is a promise that a professor's research and ideas will not be judged by the changing winds of the political climate.
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[tenure] must be determined by those who have the long training and experience to assess whether an individual faculty member has strayed egregiously from the path."

Increasingly, however, lawmakers, students, and members of the general public are insisting that they have the right to determine whether a faculty member stays or goes.
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"What I found is that the crucial factor in determining who gets into trouble and who gets punished is not the seriousness of the charges against them, but rather the political context."
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Conservatives have been far more aggressive than liberals in their attacks on academia.
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[David Horowitz goes on to say that faculties have too many liberals in them. He does not go on to explain, however, that any good school would naturally contain a disproportionate number of thoughtful people who challenge the status quo. Too many liberals for a fascist dictatorship, more like it.--MAF]
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"Lawrence Summers was not saying that women are innately inferior to men in science
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Ward Churchill's fate in Colorado is still undetermined. And Rashid Khalidi, one of the professors at Columbia whose comments about Israel have generated controversy, was recently dismissed by New York City's Department of Education
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http://www.voanews.com/english/AmericanLife/2005-03-07-voa61.cfm