Convention Report: Academic Bill of Rights

Academic freedom is a hot issue on campuses today. With students speaking out against politically indoctrinating professors, an unbiased education is coming to a campus near you.

This concept mostly applies to state schools, since they are funded by the government. All colleges have rules that say professors may not discriminate based on ideas. If a student brings an issue forward and the school in question isn�t following its own principles, a hearing is held to determine if the school is in violation of the Academic Bill of Rights.

Representative Gib Armstrong (Lancaster, PA � R) works with David Horowitz, author of The Campaign for Academic Freedom, as an advocate for students at campuses with professors preaching instead of teaching. "This isn�t about beating liberals with the right wing agenda, it�s about leveling the playing field,� said Armstrong.

Resolution 177 is the Academic Freedom Resolution, which is aimed at keeping teachers� biases out of the classroom. There is a lack of accountability in higher education, said Armstrong.

Recently at Temple University, a hearing was held to discuss the economics department. Armstrong informed our group about the hearing. He said that Karl Marx is taught, but not Adam Smith or Milton Friedman. �Nothing about the free market,� Armstrong said.

He said administrators say that if teachers wants to teach Smith, etc., that they are free to do so.

�They are teaching a failed economic system,� said Armstrong. �We go to college not to learn what to think, but how to think for ourselves.�

�Universities promote every kind of diversity imaginable, except the diversity of thought,� said Logan Fisher, a senior at Temple University.

Armstrong encouraged students to go to their �higher-ups� in their college�s hierarchy to achieve better results from reporting incidents of indoctrination in the classroom. For the left, liberalism is a religion, he said. The left doesn�t recognize two sides to the issue. They live in a relative world. �[With] relativism,� Armstrong said, �there is no absolute truth.�