The shibboleth “academic freedom” is raised and repeated whenever a conservative criticizes a professor’s left-wing pronouncements or a parent objects to offensive lessons in public schools. The liberals proclaim that every professor and public school teacher should have the “academic freedom” to teach or assign whatever he wants.
At Stanford University a couple of years ago, Steven Mosher discovered that he was not allowed the academic freedom to write about forced, late-term abortions in Mainland China. He was dismissed as a Ph.D. candidate in anthropology for daring to publish an article on that subject which provided proof with pictures.
Now, James B. Stockdale, a retired admiral and winner of the Medal of Honor for his leadership and resistance during eight years as an American POW in Vietnam, has felt the same lash of liberal intolerance. Since 1983, he has been teaching a course at Stanford called “Moral Dilemmas of War and Peace.”
Stanford said that it cancelled the course this year because it needed the other man who was co-teaching the course, Professor Emeritus Philip Rhinelander, to give a course in the philosophy of law. It is widely reported and believed, however, that the real reason for the cancellation was Stockdale’s ideology plus his affiliation with the Hoover Institution, which is a conservative oasis on the liberal Stanford campus.
During the Vietnam War, some young men were able to avoid the draft by choosing a career in teaching. These “occupational deferments” resulted in many anti-defense teachers and professors.
With so many anti-Vietnam ideologues and activists on college faculties, wouldn’t you think that they could tolerate one course taught by a highly-decorated patriot? At Stanford, the answer is no. Academic freedom is only for liberals.
Harvard University will celebrate its 350th anniversary in September of 1986, an event of considerable note in Western Hemisphere academia. Naturally Harvard wants the importance of the occasion to be recognized by accolades from prestigious persons, and so that most newsworthy of all Americans, President Ronald Reagan, was invited.
It is the custom at most colleges and universities to show their appreciation to their distinguished speakers at Commencements and other formal events (as well as some Big Donors) by awarding them honorary degrees. This augments the pageantry of the occasion.
The invitation to President Reagan has become an on-campus controversy at Harvard rivaling divestiture. Professors and students are writing letters attacking the notion of awarding an honorary degree to Ronald Reagan.
The members of Harvard’s governing corporation include Supreme Court Justices Harry Blackmun and William Brennan (the liberal, pro-abortion Justices), Joseph Califano, Adlai Stevenson III, and Henry Kissinger. They decided not to give any honorary degrees at the 350th anniversary event — not exactly a profile in courage.
Harvard isn’t saying why it won’t give Reagan an honorary degree. It could be because he favors reducing the number of $14,000-a-year students the federal taxpayers subsidize at Harvard. More probably it’s just the double standard of the liberals who think it was fine for Harvard to give honorary degrees to Presidents John F. Kennedy and Franklin D. Roosevelt but balk at honoring our conservative President.
Our third example of current double standards in education is the way schoolpersons are upset at a federally financed survey asking teachers across the country such impudent questions as how often they go to church or “engage in sexual activities,” their views on abortion and euthanasia, and whether they voted for Ronald Reagan or Walter Mondale. This survey is being conducted by the National Center for Education Information under a $72,461 grant awarded by U.S. Secretary of Education Terrel Bell before he left office.
These are the same types of questions which schools for years have been administering to pupils and about which parents are so upset. These are the types of psychological questions which led the Reagan Administration a year ago to issue strong regulations to enforce the Pupil Protection Amendment. The proper answer to all these questions, whether asked of teacher or pupil, is, “It’s none of your business.”
The National Education Association, People for the American Way, and other liberals are impassioned critics of the Pupil Protection Amendment. They defend the school’s “academic freedom” to invade the privacy of schoolchildren by asking all sorts of personal questions. But, when the shoe is on the other foot, they are indignant that teachers are asked the same questions.
