The Communist Thought Police - The Campus Conscience Police - What's the Difference?

Woodmonkey · 12-28-2005, 20:05

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Campus Conscience Police?

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So write attorneys Jordan Lorence and Harvey A. Silverglate, authors of the just-published Guide to First-Year Orientation and Thought Reform on Campus from the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE).

The Guide is yet another indication that political correctness is faltering on campuses across North America. To those who value the right of individuals to a conscience -- that is, to judge right and wrong for themselves -- this is welcome news.

Political correctness is the belief that certain ideas and attitudes are improper and, so, should be discouraged or prohibited by punishing those who advance them. Conversely, ideas and attitudes that are proper should be encouraged by being enforced.

An example of a politically incorrect idea: inherent biological differences between the two sexes explain why there are more male than female scientists. The correct version: discrimination against women explains the 'gender imbalance' in science, and the discrimination must be remedied.

Both preceding explanations may have merit but PC is not interested in weighing evidence. It acts to quash the ideologically incorrect idea and to champion the correct one.

Last January, when Harvard University President Lawrence Summers raised the mere possibility of biological differences as an explanation for the 'gender imbalance' in science, a vicious PC backlash forced him to apologize publicly no less than three times. After what some called his "Soviet-show-trial-style apologies," Summers made an act of contrition by pledging "to spend $50 million over the next decade to improve the climate for women on campus."

The most important aspect of the sad episode is not whether the explanation of biological differences is correct. It is that the idea cannot be so much as suggested without the 'offender' paying a terrible price in public humiliation and in his career.

The cost to society is high; creativity and intellectual progress wither. The cost to individuals is higher; without competing ideas, people cannot adequately judge for themselves what is true and false, right or wrong, moral and immoral. For me, that private judgment is what constitutes a conscience, to which every human being has an indispensable and inalienable right.

The Summers debacle was a high-profile example of a PC process that has proceeded more quietly across North American campuses for decades.

The ability of students to judge for themselves is restricted by limiting the ideas upon which those judgments would be passed. In turn, this impoverishes the quality of conscience.

FIRE's new Guide -- the fifth in a series of ideological survival manuals for college students -- describes both the manner in which the right of conscience is being attacked on campus and how the tide is turning toward individual rights.

Three common ways in which universities limit a student's access to ideas are speech codes, mandatory 'diversity' tests or training, and 'non-discrimination' policies.

Speech codes prohibit expression that could give offense on the basis of gender, sexual orientation, race or other 'historical disadvantage.' The codes are used primarily to protect women, minorities and gays from words or ideas that they might experience as insulting. The guidelines are often so vague as to prohibit the open discussion of issues like affirmative action or religious objections to homosexuality.

Shippensburg University in Pennsylvania offers an example. In April 2003, the university defined harassment as any "unwanted conduct which annoys, threatens, or alarms a person or group." "[E]very member of the community" was required to adopt the administration's guidelines not only in his or her behaviors but also "in their attitudes." In 2004, the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania issued a preliminary injunction against the university's codes as unconstitutional and they were repealed.

Mandatory diversity tests and training attempt to correct the unacceptable political views of students. The experience of Ed Swan, a self-described conservative Christian at Washington State's College of Education, offers an example.

Swan expressed the belief that white privilege and male privilege do not currently exist in our society. In 2004 he was given low scores on a "dispositions criteria" by which some universities rank the "social commitment" of students. The university threatened to disenroll Swan if he did not sign a contract that committed him to further political screening and re-orientation. Due to a letter from FIRE and a high-profile protest, the contract requirement was dropped.

Non-discrimination policies, which are ostensibly inclusive, have been used to ban "dissenting" groups from campus and from receiving the student funds to which their members are required to contribute. Christian groups seem particularly vulnerable.

For example, in April 2005, the group Princeton Faith and Action sought official student status. Its application was denied because FPA is connected to an outside organization (the Christian Union) that was not yet established at Princeton University. Other groups were not required to meet a similar standard.

On May 13, the student newspaper the Daily Princetonian reported, "Nassau Hall has reversed its policy on the recognition of religious student groups after being contacted by an outside civil liberties organization that protested the treatment of one such group as an 'ongoing injustice'."

The right to judge for yourself what is true and false, what is right and wrong is a prerequisite for both freedom of speech and freedom of religion. The right of conscience is the bottom line of personal liberty itself. And it is being reasserted.

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Woodmonkey · 12-28-2005, 20:38

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FIRE Reflects on Its Busiest Year Ever

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Fire - Foundation for Individual Rights in Education

This past year was the most active yet for the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE). FIRE simply won too many battles for individual students, professors, and student groups’ rights to mention all of them now. Here is a sampling of the successes FIRE had during 2005:

* Vindicating the rights of students at a Florida college who were banned from showing the movie The Passion of the Christ because of its “R” rating—even though the college had hosted a skit called “F**king for Jesus”;
* Defending Rhode Island College social work student Bill Felkner after professors attempted to force him to publicly advocate for political positions with which he disagreed;
* Convincing Princeton University to reject a policy that singled out religious groups for repression by giving administrators the power to arbitrarily refuse to recognize them;
* Continuing freedom’s march across the Ivy League with the elimination of Dartmouth College’s repressive speech code;
* Helping a Christian fraternity at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill prevail in court against an unconstitutional policy banning religious groups from using religious criteria to choose leaders and members;
* Winning similar victories for a Muslim group at Louisiana State University and a Christian group at the Milwaukee School of Engineering;
* Restoring the rights of several student newspapers, including one at the University of Oregon that had lost its funding for making fun of a student senator;
* Successfully intervening when Northeastern Illinois University prevented students from holding an “affirmative action bake sale” protest;
* Restoring freedom of speech at a Florida college where student Eliana Campos had been forbidden to hand out pamphlets from People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals;
* Defeating the State University of New York at Brockport’s speech code in court and coordinating a legal challenge to another speech code at Alabama’s Troy University;
* Securing the suspension of an unconstitutional University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire policy banning student resident assistants from leading Bible studies in their dormitories;
* Eliminating a “harassment” conviction against a Muslim student employee at William Paterson University who sent a private e-mail expressing his religious objection to homosexuality; and
* Defeating Washington State University’s attempt to expel education student Ed Swan for expressing his conservative political and religious views.

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DocDiggs · 12-29-2005, 01:02

In the area of colleges and unversities re PCism, I wonder how much is a frightened reaction to the fedgov EducDept and it's strange policies on funding educational institutions. This dept of gov has a longstanding policy of requireing schools of higher education to conform to standards that are often against the philosophies of those institutions.

For instance, my undergrad school, Wheaton College, in Wheaton, IL., refused to accept fed funding because of the anti-Christian, and extremely restrictive policies of the Dept of Educ. ...and this was waaay back in the 50's when I was an undergrad. They still do not accept fed funding.

I can certainly understand why educational institutions that are heavily funded by the fedgov would be very reticent to go against the fedgov's dept of educ. requirements. They cannot stay "in business" w/o the fed$$$. This doesn't make it right, but perhaps it makes it more understandable.

Woodmonkey · 12-29-2005, 01:21

This is something that universities are doing to students and not the government's fault. It's been building for a long time now from what I've been reading.

DocDiggs · 12-29-2005, 18:08

Well, it's been a long time since I was in college, but at that time if a school accepted fed money, they had to abide by fed rules I a school broke the fed rules, the didn't get the $$$. That's a pretty strong incentive. My college did not take the fed money, but the tuition kept going up to compensate. Also, the letters to alumnae kept getting letters more often for contributions. It look me 13 years to pay my loans after I graduated. Much of this was directly related to non-funding by the fed Dept of Educ.

Colleges and universities simply cannot do w/o outside funding. Yes, this has been building for quite some time. If the schools are at fault...and in some ways they are...it is in many ways because of their financial umbilical chord that is connected to the Dept of Educ.

There are lots of pressures on school administrators and as with most people, they haven't yet learned truly effective ways to deal with them. Society has changed dramatically since we were in college. The fact remains that students much appreciate what they see as repressive tactics...we remember that from all the "troubles" on campuses during the 1960's. While the relaxations by administrators went too far then, the more repressive reactions by administrators now are not coming back to some middle ground, they are headed back and past the student behaviorial requirements from back then. There needs to be a coming together of the schools and the Dept of Educ in some sort of negotiated agreement that everyone can live with, and the DofE needs to stop manipulating and controlling with the threat of stopping their funding.

Woodmonkey · 12-29-2005, 18:45

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Originally Posted by DocDiggs

Well, it's been a long time since I was in college, but at that time if a school accepted fed money, they had to abide by fed rules I a school broke the fed rules, the didn't get the $$$. That's a pretty strong incentive. My college did not take the fed money, but the tuition kept going up to compensate. Also, the letters to alumnae kept getting letters more often for contributions. It look me 13 years to pay my loans after I graduated. Much of this was directly related to non-funding by the fed Dept of Educ.

Colleges and universities simply cannot do w/o outside funding. Yes, this has been building for quite some time. If the schools are at fault...and in some ways they are...it is in many ways because of their financial umbilical chord that is connected to the Dept of Educ.

No it is not because of the Dept of Ed or the Fed government. We are talking religious discrimination (not just Christian either), discrimination against Conservatives, retribution against people who don't have the 'acceptable/appropriate' opinions. This comes from the stranglehold that PC has on campuses.

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