Campus Watch/ Accur in Acad

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THIS TERM IS CATCHALL FOR ACADEMIC SUPPRESSION/INTIMIDATIONdisambig campus watch pipes islamophobesee also journalism and science suppression
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Biological Man To Race Against Women In NCAA Division ISeptember 1, 2019, Alex NitzbergTransgender ideology is transforming the anatomy of athletics as biological men who identify as women infiltrate female sports. This bizarre phenomenon affects both high school and college athletics. For instance, a male runner at the…
Two Professors Claim Leftist Ideology isn’t a Big Issue at CollegesAugust 28, 2019, Spencer IrvineTwo professors conducted research and found that conservative students aren’t widely persecuted on college campuses, but pointed out how ideological biases can affect college students’ readiness for the real world.
Michigan Football Coach Jim Harbaugh Defends University Donor and NFL Owner Stephen RossAugust 27, 2019, Spencer IrvineEven the University of Michigan’s football coach was embroiled in controversy surrounding university donor and billionaire Stephen Ross and he recently addressed the issue in a podcast.
University of Michigan Didn’t Fold in the Face of Protests about Billionaire NFL Owner and University Donor Stephen RossAugust 26, 2019, Spencer IrvineThe University of Michigan rebuffed protests from some alumni to halt donations received from billionaire Stephen Ross, after news of his fundraiser for President Trump hit the news cycle.
Johns Hopkins Fired Researcher for Using Bolt Cutters to Check on Computer ServersAugust 23, 2019, Spencer IrvineJohns Hopkins fired a researcher for checking on his computer servers in a building that was occupied by student protesters this past May, he claimed.
Poll: Many Young People Are Ignorant About Socialism And Free MarketsAugust 22, 2019, Alex NitzbergA survey by Young America’s Foundation and Echelon Insights asked American teenagers and young adults between the ages of 13-22 the open-ended question, “How would you best describe the meaning of the term ‘socialism’?” Their…



LISTEN: Dr. Walter Williams Says Many College Students Should Not Be In CollegeAugust 21, 2019, Alex NitzbergMany of the young Americans who pursue higher education should not be in college, Dr. Walter Williams said during an interview on The Alex Nitzberg Show. On the podcast, the George Mason University Professor of…



Facing Budget Deficit, Eastern Michigan University Buys Out 142 EmployeesAugust 16, 2019, Spencer IrvineFacing a budget deficit, Eastern Michigan University bought out 142 employees, most of whom will voluntary retire this fall.



Sex Education Changes are Coming to Red States, TooAugust 15, 2019, Spencer IrvineNBC News posted an article which praised changes in sex education curriculum across the country, citing pro-abortion sources and rhetoric.



Illinois Public Schools To Incorporate LGBT People When Teaching American HistoryAugust 14, 2019, Alex NitzbergAn Illinois law requires public schools to incorporate information about the “roles and contributions” of LGBT people when teaching American and state history. Signed into law earlier this month, the legislation will take effect July…
=<a href="http://www.rightwingwatch.org/organizations/accuracy-in-academia/">http://www.rightwingwatch.org/organizations/accuracy-in-academia/</a>1 eg=off bsMalcolm A. Kline is the executive director of Accuracy in Academia (AIA), a non-profit research group reporting on bias in education. In that capacity, Kline serves as editor-in-chief of AIA’s web site—www.academia.org. Kline also edits AIA’s monthly newsletter, Campus Report. He has hosted a monthly online broadcast on www.rightalk.com.He previously worked as the editor of the National Journalism Center (NJC) and has written for a variety of publications including USA Today, Crisis magazine, The American Enterprise, Organization Trends (from the Capital Research Center), Insight magazine, Human Events, The National Catholic Register, The Non-Profit Times, and Consumer’s Research magazine. A graduate of the University of Scranton, Kline also worked as an intern at the NJC, contributing research for columnist Donald Lambro’s syndicated column.==Columbia Journalism School Ratchets Up BiasSeptember 22, 2017, Malcolm A. KlineWhenever a journalism school claims it has found a new and improved way to train reports, it seems, the result is an even more partisan and ideological training camp than what is already in place.
Read the full article ?Minneapolis: Black Parents Flee to Charter SchoolsSeptember 21, 2017, Malcolm A. KlineThe Minneapolis public school system is experiencing a massive student exodus and guess where they’re going.Constitutional Confusion at Penn/AnnenbergSeptember 21, 2017, Malcolm A. KlineLast summer the Annenberg Public Policy Center (APCC) at Penn elected to test Americans’ Constitutional awareness but may have contributed to historical misconceptions in the process.Title IX TurnaroundSeptember 20, 2017, Malcolm A. KlineU. S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos vow to bring due process and the rule of law back to Title IX investigations of sexual harassment “triggered” much predicable criticism from equally predictable critics, such as former Vice President Joe Biden.
Chicago’s Cradle-to-Grade Graduation RequirementSeptember 20, 2017, Malcolm A. KlineEvery now and then, public officials announce an ostensibly “get tough” education reform, ostensibly to make schools work better. Conversely, it usually involves more governmental control and less individual freedom.
Unmasking Students for Justice in PalestineSeptember 19, 2017, Richard CravattsLong before the hooded, masked, and dressed-in-black Antifa thugs marauded across campuses such as Berkeley, other supposed progressive campus activists had been raging an ideological war against ideas with which they disagreed.
Former Education Secretaries DREAM OnSeptember 18, 2017, Malcolm A. KlineA quintet of former U. S. Secretaries of Education are weighing in on behalf of the so-called DREAM Act designed to benefit the children of illegal aliens.

Remembering the U. S. Constitution: The Law of the LandSeptember 17, 2017, Malcolm A. KlineRepublican presidents from Dwight D. Eisenhower to George H. W. Bush have referred to U. S. Supreme Court decisions as “the law of the land.” Actually, that distinction belongs to the document we celebrate today—the U. S. Constitution.
The Expense of Free CollegeSeptember 17, 2017, Malcolm A. KlineFree College is becoming such an expensive proposal that even Democrats are starting to notice.

Berkeley Profs Take Stand—Against Free SpeechSeptember 13, 2017, Malcolm A. KlineThe university that has proudly proclaimed itself to be the birthplace of the Free Speech Movement may also become its graveyard.
Faculty Lounge
Did Antifa prof call for cop killings?September 22, 2017, No Comment
UNC will Spend 10 Weeks on Discussing Violent MasculinitySeptember 22, 2017, No Comment
No White Student Applicants for an Iowa State University Scholarship ProgramSeptember 22, 2017, No Comment
Pro-Palestinian Student Group is Fine with ViolenceSeptember 21, 2017, 1 Comment
Ohio State University Engineering Chair Lamented How Her Department is Mostly White and Male

COINTELPRO:

The problems extends to campus activism. Accuracy in Academia's "Campus Report" attacked Greenpeace in an April 1990 article headlined "Environmentalism Becomes Radical," and the "1989 Young Americans for Freedom List of Un-American Organizations on Our College Campuses" includes one group opposed to nuclear war, and the respected hunger group Oxfam America. The YAF authors, who warn of "the terrible threat these Hard-Left groups pose to our way of life," boast in their introduction that they have been "able to secretly monitor Leftist groups for the last several years."

http://www.publiceye.org/liberty/greenspy.html

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==This broad-based and even global acclaim for higher education in the United States is strangely at odds with the concentrated political attacks that Cole warns us about and that the academy is currently experiencing. It is particularly out of step with the dark and dysfunctional picture of the academy painted by David Horowitz and his <a href="http://www.frontpagemagazine.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=21302" target="blank" style="">Center for the Study of Popular Culture.</a> [2] If Horowitz were simply a disaffected political crank, as many have hitherto regarded him, then his views on the academy could be easily dismissed. Such dismissal would seem to be all the more in order following his disastrous testimony before the legislative subcommittee in Pennsylvania in which he was <a href="http://insidehighered.com/news/2006/01/11/retract" target="blank" style="">forced to recant as unsubstantiated</a> [3] several of the cases that he had been widely circulating as documentation of alleged malfeasance in the academy.Oddly, however, his campaign goes on. Horowitz, with assistance from Karl Rove and the former House majority whip, Tom DeLay, has briefed Republican members of Congress on his Academic Bill of Rights campaign and DeLay has even <a href="http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0106-30.htm" target="_blank" style="">distributed copies</a> [4] of Horowitz’s political primer The Art of Political Warfare: How Republicans Can Fight to Win to all Republican members of Congress. Rove refers to Horowitz’s pamphlet as “a perfect pocket guide to winning on the political battlefield."

==undated HNN launch announcement: oddly 0 comments<h1 class="no-uc" style="margin: 0px 0px 15px; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; line-height: 30px; letter-spacing: 0.05em; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Campus Watch: Keeping an Eye on Professors Who Teach About the Middle East</h1><a href="http://hnn.us/article/category/6" style="outline: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.2s linear 0s; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Culture Watch</a> by Middle East Forum<div id="bodycopy" style="">Last week the Middle East Forum, which is directed by HNN contributor Daniel Pipes, established a new website known as <a href="http://www.meforum.org/" style="outline: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.2s linear 0s;">Campus Watch</a>. The website lists professors suspected of an anti-Israel bias and asks students to send in names and information. The site currently lists"dossiers" on eight professors, including Juan Cole, who is also a frequent HNN contributor. Mr. Cole <a href="http://hnn.us/articles/988.html" style="outline: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.2s linear 0s;">reports to HNN</a> that since the website was established he and the other professors listed on the site have been targeted by a relentless conspiracy of email hackers.<p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-left: 0px; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); line-height: 26.88px; padding: 0em 2.5em; margin-bottom: 0px !important;">The following statement appears on the Campus Watch website.<h2 style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 10px; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; line-height: 26px; letter-spacing: 0.05em; text-transform: uppercase;">THE PROBLEM</h2>American scholars of the Middle East, to varying degrees, reject the views of most Americans and the enduring policies of the U.S. government about the Middle East.Examples:<blockquote style="background-color: rgb(252, 252, 252); padding: 0px 0px 0px 15px; margin: 0px; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 5px; border-style: dashed dashed dashed solid; border-color: rgb(242, 242, 242) rgb(242, 242, 242) rgb(242, 242, 242) rgb(227, 75, 57); border-image: initial;">There may be a war on terrorism underway, but the scholars downplay the dangers posed by militant Islam, seeing it as a benign and even democratizing force.With only one exception, every American president since 1948 has spoken forcefully about the benefits to the United States from strong and deep relations with Israel. In contrast, American scholars often propagate a view of Middle Eastern affairs that sees Zionism as a racist offshoot of imperialism and blames Israel alone for the origin and persistence of the Palestinian problem.While Americans overwhelmingly supported the war to liberate Kuwait in 1991, the Middle East specialists just as overwhelmingly rejected that use of force; and the same divide has recurred in 2002 with the prospect of a military campaign against Iraq.<p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 26.88px; padding: 0em 2.5em; letter-spacing: 0.05em; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); margin-bottom: 0px !important;">Scholarly offerings frequently present in a benign light such hostile actors as the Islamic Republic of Iran, the Syrian Ba'th regime, and other Middle East despotisms. In contrast, they emphasize and often exaggerate the faults of Israel, Turkey, Egypt, and Kuwait. They blame Washington, not Tehran, for the hostile relations between these two states.</blockquote>Here are some choice but typical quotations:<ul style="padding: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 9px 6em; list-style-position: initial; list-style-image: initial;"><li style="line-height: 26.88px; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); padding: 0em 0em 1em;">Stanford University's Joel Beinin, who also serves as head of the Middle East Studies Association (MESA), blames U.S. foreign policy for the attacks of September 11, 2001, rather than militant Islam. Specifically, he finds that the attacks stemmed from Israel's use of American weapons to defend Israeli civilians from Palestinian terrorism:"The sight of American-supplied F-16 fighters and Apache helicopters bombing civilian targets and carrying out over 50 extra judicial assassinations has raised anger over the American-Israeli alliance to new levels."

Source: <a href="http://www.peaceandjustice.org/nowar/1beinin.html" target="1" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); outline: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.2s linear 0s;">http://www.peaceandjustice.org/nowar/1beinin.html</a></li>

<li style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 26.88px; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); padding: 0em 0em 1em;">John Esposito of Georgetown University condemns President Bush's description of the terrorists as"evil". He claims:"the use of 'evil' all the time … in religious terms translates into, 'You're a believer or you're a non-believer.' It is us and them, forces of good against forces of evil, and what this does is it leaves no middle-ground for anyone, whether it is countries or people. In effect, that is either the explicit or the subtle message that this administration has been giving out." One wonders, how would Professor Esposito have Mr. Bush characterize Al-Qaeda? As misguided?

Source: <a href="http://www.asiasource.org/news/special_reports/esposito.cfm" target="2" style="outline: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.2s linear 0s;">http://www.asiasource.org/news/special_reports/esposito.cfm</a></li>

<li style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 26.88px; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); padding: 0em 0em 1em;">Stephen Zunes of the University of San Francisco, sees only the United States to blame for the atrocities of September 11, 2001:"It is no coincidence that terrorist groups have arisen in an area where the world's one remaining superpower puts far more emphasis on weapons shipments and air strikes than on international law or human rights and even blocks the United Nations from sending human rights monitors or enforcing its own resolutions against an ally. Nor is it surprising that that superpower would eventually find itself on the receiving end of a violence backlash."

Source: <a href="http://www.fcnl.org/issues/air-violence/terror/article_baltsun901.htm" target="3" style="outline: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.2s linear 0s;">http://www.fcnl.org/issues/air-violence/terror/article_baltsun901.htm</a></li></ul><h2 style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 10px; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; line-height: 26px; letter-spacing: 0.05em; text-transform: uppercase;">THE CAUSES</h2>This bias results from two main causes. First, academics seem generally to dislike their own country and think even less of American allies abroad. They portray U.S. policy in an unfriendly light and disparage allies. The closer those allies are (first Israel, followed by Turkey, then at some distance Egypt and Saudi Arabia), the more hostile their analysis. In contrast, they apologize for the Islamic Republic of Iran, the Syrian Ba'th regime, and other rogue states. Likewise, the academics downplay the dangers of militant Islam and terrorism. Revealingly, while Americans overwhelmingly supported the war to liberate Kuwait in 1991 and the war on terrorism today, academic specialists just as overwhelmingly rejected the use of force on both occasions.Second, Middle East studies in the United States has become the preserve of Middle Eastern Arabs, who have brought their views with them. Membership in the Middle East Studies Association (MESA), the main scholarly association, is now 50 percent of Middle Eastern origin. Though American citizens, many of these scholars actively disassociate themselves from the United States, sometimes even in public. Rashid Khalidi, a historian at the University of Chicago (and former president of MESA) said in the preface of his study of the PLO that he owes"the greatest debt of gratitude to those who gave their lives during the summer of 1982... in defense of the cause of Palestine and the independence of Lebanon." When Edward Said of Columbia University wrote,"Palestinians today are separated by geography and by Israel's designs to keep us fragmented and isolated from one another," he wrote"us" as a Palestinian, not as an American.In fact, Edward Said can be held responsible for a large portion of the morass of today's Middle East Studies departments. His 1978 book, Orientalism, was a watershed polemic that equated modern Middle East scholarship to racism, imperialism and ethnocentricity. As Martin Kramer notes in <a href="http://www.ivorytowers.org/" target="ivory" style="outline: 0px; transition: all 0.2s linear 0s;">Ivory Towers on Sand</a>,"In the more than twenty years since the publication of Orientalism, its impact on the broad intellectual climate in American Middle East studies has been far-reaching. Orientalism made it acceptable, even expected, for scholars to spell out their own political commitments as a preface to anything they wrote or did. More than that, it also enshrined an acceptable hierarchy of political commitments, with Palestine at the top, followed by the Arab nation and the Islamic world."<h2 style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 10px; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; line-height: 26px; letter-spacing: 0.05em; text-transform: uppercase;">WHY IS THIS IMPORTANT?</h2>Scholars have an extensive but subtle influence on the way Americans see the Middle East, and set the tone for much of what is taught and learned across America on nearly every level. College students learn from them in the classroom and are influenced by the tone they set for the debate of Middle East politics on over two thousand campuses. High school and elementary teachers take their cue from them. Scholars write newspaper opinion pieces, are quoted in magazine articles, and appear on television. They serve as expert witnesses in court cases. They influence government officials in a variety of ways - a candidate formulating his positions, the CIA seeking outside advice, a congressional staffer preparing legislation, or a speechwriter for the secretary of state.Campus Watch seeks to reverse the damage already caused by the activist/scholars on American campuses. We see this as an ongoing effort, one that should continue so long as the problem exists.<h2 style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 10px; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; line-height: 26px; letter-spacing: 0.05em; text-transform: uppercase;">WHO WE ARE</h2>Campus Watch consists of American academics concerned about US interests and their frequent denigration on campus. Those interests include strong ties with Israel, Turkey, and other democracies as they emerge; human rights throughout the region; a stable supply and a low price of oil; and the peaceful settlement of regional and international disputes.<h2 style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 10px; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; line-height: 26px; letter-spacing: 0.05em; text-transform: uppercase;">WHAT WE DO</h2>Campus Watch will henceforth monitor and gather information on professors who fan the flames of disinformation, incitement and ignorance. Campus Watch will critique these specialists, and make available its findings on the internet and in the media. Our main goals are to:<ul style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); padding: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 9px 6em; list-style-position: initial; list-style-image: initial;"><li style="line-height: 26.88px; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); padding: 0em 0em 1em; margin-bottom: 5px;">Identify key faculty who teach and write about contemporary affairs at university Middle East Studies departments in order to analyze and critique the work of these specialists for errors or biases.</li><li style="line-height: 26.88px; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); padding: 0em 0em 1em; margin-bottom: 5px;">Develop a network of concerned students and faculty members interested in promoting American interests on campus.</li><li style="line-height: 26.88px; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); padding: 0em 0em 1em; margin-bottom: 5px;">Keep the public apprised of course syllabi, memos, debates over appointments and funding, etc.</li><li style="line-height: 26.88px; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); padding: 0em 0em 1em; margin-bottom: 5px;">Keep the public informed of relevant university events.</li><li style="line-height: 26.88px; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); padding: 0em 0em 1em; margin-bottom: 5px;">Continuously post the results of our project on www.campus-watch.org, including articles, reports from campus and other relevant information.</li></ul></div>
<a href="http://hnn.us/articles/986.html">http://hnn.us/articles/986.html</a>=

wiki?

According to the Campus Watch web site, "Campus Watch, a project of the <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Middle_East_Forum" title="Middle East Forum">Middle East Forum</a>, reviews and critiques <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Middle_East" title="Middle East">Middle East</a> studies in North America with an aim to improving them. The project mainly addresses five problems: analytical failures, the mixing of politics with scholarship, intolerance of alternative views, apologetics, and the abuse of power over students. Campus Watch fully respects the freedom of speech of those it debates while insisting on its own freedom to comment on their words and deeds." <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Campus_Watch#cite_note-About_Campus_Watch-0" title="">[1]</a>

The Campus Watch project is the brainchild of <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Daniel_Pipes" title="Daniel Pipes" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Daniel Pipes</a> and <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Martin_Kramer" title="Martin Kramer">Martin Kramer</a>, and has been described as being "dedicated to revealing the alleged bias of mainstream Middle East studies programs at U.S. colleges and universities." <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Campus_Watch#cite_note-1" title="">[2]</a> Initially the website published "dossiers" on critical academics, and it urged students to submit reports on political bias. Campus Watch was established in September 2002. <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Campus_Watch#cite_note-2" title="">[3]</a>

<ul>

<li class="toclevel-1"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Campus_Watch#Background">1 Background</a></li>

<li class="toclevel-1"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Campus_Watch#Push_to_Tie_Federal_Funding_to_.22Standards.22">2 Push to Tie Federal Funding to "Standards"</a></li>

<li class="toclevel-1"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Campus_Watch#Personnel">3 Personnel</a></li>

<li class="toclevel-1"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Campus_Watch#Contact_details">4 Contact details</a></li>

<li class="toclevel-1"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Campus_Watch#Articles_and_Resources">5 Articles and Resources</a>

<ul>

<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Campus_Watch#References">5.1 References</a></li>

<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Campus_Watch#Related_Organizations">5.2 Related Organizations</a></li>

<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Campus_Watch#External_links">5.3 External links</a></li>

</ul>

</li>

</ul>

</td></tr></tbody></table>

<h2>Background</h2>

On its website Campus Watch claims that "University-based Middle East specialists have been consistently wrong in their analyses, as <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Martin_Kramer" title="Martin Kramer">Martin Kramer</a> showed in his Ivory Towers on Sand." <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Campus_Watch#cite_note-About_Campus_Watch-0" title="">[1]</a> CW argues that examples of this include

<ul>

<li>"Portraying militant Islam as a benign movement and suggesting that anyone who thought otherwise is either ignorant or prejudiced. <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=John_Esposito" title="John Esposito" class="mw-redirect">John Esposito</a> of Georgetown University stated that Islamist movements "are not necessarily anti-Western, anti-American, or anti-democratic" and called on Americans "to transcend their narrow, ethnocentric conceptualization of democracy" to include militant Islamic forms of governance. (John L. Esposito, The Islamic Threat, Myth or Reality? New York, Oxford University Press, 1992, pp.212.)";</li>

</ul>

<ul>

<li>"Apologetics: Middle East studies tend to evade, ignore, or apologize for topics that do not fit their politicized agenda:</li>

</ul>

<dl>

<dd>

<dl>

<dd>Internal repression in <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Libya" title="Libya">Libya</a>, <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Sudan" title="Sudan">Sudan</a>, <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Syria" title="Syria">Syria</a>, <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Iraq" title="Iraq">Iraq</a>, <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Iran" title="Iran">Iran</a>, and the Palestinian Authority. Palestinian Authority support for suicide bombing against Israeli civilians; The long-term goals of Islamist movements; The suffering caused by insurgencies in <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Algeria" title="Algeria">Algeria</a> and <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Turkey" title="Turkey">Turkey</a>; The Syrian occupation of <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Lebanon" title="Lebanon">Lebanon</a>; The anti-American, anti-Christian, and anti-Semitic incitement that pervades state-run media through most of the region. As an example of this evasion, out of the <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Middle_East_Studies_Association" title="Middle East Studies Association">Middle East Studies Association</a>'s (MESA) four-day conference in November 2002 where more than 550 papers were presented, exactly one dealt with <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Al-Qaeda" title="Al-Qaeda" class="mw-redirect">Al-Qaeda</a> and one with "fundamentalism." "Militant Islam" was not the subject of a single paper."</dd>

</dl>

</dd>

</dl>

<dl>

<dd>

<dl>

<dd>Many scholars are hostile to any discussion of these issues, lest it cast the region in an unfavorable light. Even after 9/11, Khalidi advises Washington to drop its "hysteria about suicide bombers." Joel Beinin, as MESA's president, disparaged the study of terrorism, mocking it as "terrorology," and lauded his colleagues' "great wisdom" in avoiding it. <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Juan_Cole" title="Juan Cole">Juan Cole</a> of the University of Michigan said "Asking MESA to hold panels on contemporary terrorism, is rather like asking literary scholars to comment on the resignation of Treasury Secretary <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Paul_O%27Neill" title="Paul O'Neill">Paul O'Neil</a>."</dd>

</dl>

</dd>

</dl>

<dl>

<dd>"Unfortunately, Middle Eastern studies specialists responded to the launching of Campus Watch with a campaign of vilification and distortion. Lest there be any confusion, we wish to make explicit several points in response ...:

<dl>

<dd>The charge of "<a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=McCarthyism" title="McCarthyism">McCarthyism</a>" has come up so often that we address this in a separate study which demonstrates why the charge is ignorant, intolerant, and ultimately self-serving. We challenge scholars of Middle Eastern studies to abandon the crude resort to insults and engage Campus Watch on the substance of our analysis." <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Campus_Watch#cite_note-About_Campus_Watch-0" title="">[1]</a></dd>

</dl>

</dd>

</dl>

Joel Beinin, the Professor of Middle East History at Stanford University and the then President of the Middle East Studies Association (MESA) of North America, wrote a pointed critique of Campus Watch's advocacy. "Campus Watch seeks to 'monitor and gather information on professors who fan the flames of <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Disinformation" title="Disinformation">disinformation</a>, incitement, and ignorance.' Campus Watch does not care to ask whether scholars who study the Middle East might actually know something that would lead them to think that the world is not simply divided between the forces of good (us) and the forces of evil (them). Instead, it has compiled dossiers on professors and universities that do not meet its standard of uncritical support for the policies of <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=George_Walker_Bush" title="George Walker Bush">George Bush</a> and <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Ariel_Sharon" title="Ariel Sharon">Ariel Sharon</a>." <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Campus_Watch#cite_note-Beinin-3" title="">[4]</a>

"Campus Watch alleges that Middle East scholars 'seem generally to dislike their own country and think even less of American allies abroad. They portray U.S. policy in an unfriendly light and disparage allies.' Apparently Campus Watch is able to penetrate the psyches of scholars whose opinions it does not sanction. Some Americans - <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Thomas_Jefferson" title="Thomas Jefferson">Thomas Jefferson</a>, for example - naively believed that dissent and debate are an integral part of the democratic process and essential to the formation of educated citizens. Campus watch apparently believes this tedious process allows too much room for unapproved thinking to emerge," he wrote. <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Campus_Watch#cite_note-Beinin-3" title="">[4]</a>

"Campus Watch," he wrote, "notes that 'Middle East studies in the United States has become the preserve of Middle Eastern Arabs, who have brought their views with them. Membership in the Middle East Studies Association (MESA), the main scholarly association, is now 50 percent of Middle Eastern origin.' Some Americans have foolishly believed that all U.S. citizens have equal rights regardless of their country of origin and that pointing to peoples' country of origin to discredit them is a form of racism. This too, is outmoded thinking according to Campus Watch. But imagine the uproar that would be created by the suggestion that because Daniel Pipes is Jewish he may be more loyal to Israel than to the United States."<a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Campus_Watch#cite_note-Beinin-3" title="">[4]</a>

<h2>Push to Tie Federal Funding to "Standards"</h2>

Daniel Pipes and CW favor the U.S. Congress passing legislation mandating university Middle East departments to adhere to "standards" when receiving Federal funding. The unfortunate consequence of the legislation is to censor academics and to prohibit a stance critical of the U.S. and <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Israel" title="Israel">Israel</a>.

<h2>Personnel</h2>

<ul>

<li><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Winfield_Myers&action=edit&redlink=1" class="new" title="Winfield Myers (page does not exist)">Winfield Myers</a>, Campus Watch Director</li>

</ul>

<h2>Contact details</h2>

Email: campus-watch AT meforum.org

Web: <a href="http://www.campus-watch.org" class="external free" title="http://www.campus-watch.org" rel="nofollow">http://www.campus-watch.org</a>

<h2>Articles and Resources</h2>

<h3>References</h3>

<li id="cite_note-About_Campus_Watch-0">↑ <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Campus_Watch#cite_ref-About_Campus_Watch_0-0" title="">1.0</a> <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Campus_Watch#cite_ref-About_Campus_Watch_0-1" title="">1.1</a> <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Campus_Watch#cite_ref-About_Campus_Watch_0-2" title="">1.2</a> "<a href="http://www.campus-watch.org/about.php" class="external text" title="http://www.campus-watch.org/about.php" rel="nofollow">"About Campus Watch"</a>, Campus Watch, accessed September 2007.</li>

<li id="cite_note-1"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Campus_Watch#cite_ref-1" title="">↑</a> Michael Dobbs, "<a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A11400-2004Jan12?language=printer" class="external text" title="http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A11400-2004Jan12?language=printer" rel="nofollow">Middle East Studies Under Scrutiny in U.S.</a>", Washington Post, January 13, 2004 page A01.</li>

<li id="cite_note-2"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Campus_Watch#cite_ref-2" title="">↑</a> <a href="http://hnn.us/articles/986.html" class="external text" title="http://hnn.us/articles/986.html" rel="nofollow">Campus Watch: Keeping an Eye on Professors Who Teach About the Middle East"</a>, History News Network, September 23, 2002.</li>

<li id="cite_note-Beinin-3">↑ <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Campus_Watch#cite_ref-Beinin_3-0" title="">4.0</a> <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Campus_Watch#cite_ref-Beinin_3-1" title="">4.1</a> <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Campus_Watch#cite_ref-Beinin_3-2" title="">4.2</a> Joel Beinin, "<a href="http://www.hnn.us/articles/1001.html" class="external text" title="http://www.hnn.us/articles/1001.html" rel="nofollow">Who's Watching the Watchers?</a>", History News Network, September 30, 2002.</li>

</ol>

<h3>Related Organizations</h3>

<dl>

<dd>Comment: Prof. Beinin finds that these organizations work for the same aims, and some of the principals overlap in several of these organizations.</dd>

</dl>

<ul>

<li><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=AIPAC" title="AIPAC" class="mw-redirect">AIPAC</a></li>

<li><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=American_Council_of_Trustees_and_Alumni" title="American Council of Trustees and Alumni">American Council of Trustees and Alumni</a> (ACTA)</li>

</ul>

<h3>External links</h3>

<ul>

<li>Joel Beinin, "<a href="http://www-personal.umich.edu/%7Ehfc/mideast/newmccarthy.pdf" class="external text" title="http://www-personal.umich.edu/_{hfc/mideast/newmccarthy.pdf}" rel="nofollow">The New American McCarthyism: policing thought about the Middle East</a>", Race & Class, Vol. 46(1): 101-115; (NB: loads very slow)</li>

</ul>

<dl>

<dd>Abstract: September 11 ushered in a sustained campaign by the American Right and the Bush administration to deligitimise critical thought abut the Middle East, Islam and the Arab world. The Middle East Studies Association (MESA) has borne much of the brunt of this campaign, some of it conducted by think-tanks with close links to Israel’s ruling circles. Such attacks on MESA date back to 1967 and the Arab-Israeli war. The role of organisations such as ADL, AIPAC, AVOT and ACTA is examined, as is Campus-Watch and the attempt to introduce legislation in 2003 to place university-level Middle East studies under much closer government control (via HR 3077).</dd>

</dl>

<ul>

<li>Michael Dobbs, "<a href="http://student.cs.ucc.ie/cs1064/jabowen/IPSC/php/art.php?aid=5534" class="external text" title="http://student.cs.ucc.ie/cs1064/jabowen/IPSC/php/art.php?aid=5534" rel="nofollow">Middle East Studies Under Scrutiny in U.S.</a>", Washington Post, January 13, 2004 page A01.</li>

<li>Richard H. Curtiss, "<a href="http://wrmea.com/archives/december02/0212059.html" class="external text" title="http://wrmea.com/archives/december02/0212059.html" rel="nofollow">A Tale of Two Boycotts: The Campus Debate on Israel Heats Up</a>", Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, Dec 2002, p. 59.</li>

<li>Hamid Dabashi, "<a href="http://student.cs.ucc.ie/cs1064/jabowen/IPSC/articles/article0004502.txt" class="external text" title="http://student.cs.ucc.ie/cs1064/jabowen/IPSC/articles/article0004502.txt" rel="nofollow">Forget reds under the bed, there's Arabs in the attic</a>", The Times Higher Education Supplement, October 18, 2003.</li>

<li>Robert Fisk, "<a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/story.jsp?story=344510" class="external text" title="http://www.independent.co.uk/story.jsp?story=344510" rel="nofollow">How to shut up your critics</a>", The Independent, October 21, 2002</li>

<li>Leah Harris, "<a href="http://www.counterpunch.org/harris1228.html" class="external text" title="http://www.counterpunch.org/harris1228.html" rel="nofollow">Why the Pro-Occupation Right is Running Scared</a>", CounterPunch, December 28, 2002.</li>

<li>Kristine McNeil, "<a href="http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20021125&s=mcneil" class="external text" title="http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20021125&s=mcneil" rel="nofollow">The War on Academic Freedom</a>", The Nation, November 11, 2002.</li>

<li>Nigel Parry, "<a href="http://electronicintifada.net/cgi-bin/artman/exec/view.cgi/4/747" class="external text" title="http://electronicintifada.net/cgi-bin/artman/exec/view.cgi/4/747" rel="nofollow">Campus Watch: Interview with Prof. Hamid Dabashi</a>", <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=ElectronicIntifada" title="ElectronicIntifada">ElectronicIntifada</a>, September 30, 2002.</li>

<li>Paul de Rooij, "<a href="http://www.counterpunch.org/rooij0924.html" class="external text" title="http://www.counterpunch.org/rooij0924.html" rel="nofollow">Smear Mongers</a>", CounterPunch, September 24, 2002.</li>

<li>Will Youmans, "<a href="http://www.counterpunch.org/youmans0922.html" class="external text" title="http://www.counterpunch.org/youmans0922.html" rel="nofollow">Campus Watch: The Vigilante Thought Police</a>", CounterPunch, September 23, 2002.</li>

<li>Muhammad Idrees Ahmad, <a href="http://www.spinwatch.org/modules.php?name=Encyclopedia&op=content&tid=321" class="external text" title="http://www.spinwatch.org/modules.php?name=Encyclopedia&op=content&tid=321" rel="nofollow">Spinwatch Proflie: "Campus Watch"</a>, Spinwatch, April 5, 2005.</li>

<li>Martin Kramer, "<a href="http://www.martinkramer.org/pages/899528/index.htm" class="external text" title="http://www.martinkramer.org/pages/899528/index.htm" rel="nofollow">Said's Splash</a>" (Chapter Two of Ivory Towers on Sand).</li>

<li>Martin Kramer, "<a href="http://www.martinkramer.org/pages/899528/index.htm" class="external text" title="http://www.martinkramer.org/pages/899528/index.htm" rel="nofollow">Islam Obscured</a>" (Chapter Three of Ivory Towers on Sand).</li>

<li>Sarah Meyer, "<a href="http://www.williambowles.info/media/2006/0606/media_dissemblers.html" class="external text" title="http://www.williambowles.info/media/2006/0606/media_dissemblers.html" rel="nofollow">The Haditha Doctor and The Media Dissemblers</a>", Media Files, June 19, 2006.</li>

</ul>

<h1 class="title"></h1><div>http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/accuracy-in-academia</div>

<h1 class="title">Accuracy in Academia</h1>

</div>

4455 Connecticut Ave., NW, Suite 330

Washington, DC 20008

<a target="_blank" href="http://www.academia.org">www.academia.org</a>

Founded: by Reed Irvine in 1985

Executive Director: Malcolm "Mal" Kline

Finances: $285, 643 (2002 budget)

Publications: Campus Report, a monthly newspaper

Affiliated with: Accuracy in Media

<ul>

<li><a href="http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/accuracy-in-academia#accuracyin_issues">AIA's Principal Issues:</a></li>

<li><a href="http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/accuracy-in-academia#accuracyin_activities">AIA's Activities:</a></li>

<li><a href="http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/accuracy-in-academia#accuracyin_history">AIA's History:</a></li>

<li><a href="http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/accuracy-in-academia#accuracyin_quotes">Quotes about AIA:</a></li>

</ul>

<ul>

<li>Main issues: combating Title IX, multicultural education, and abortion, and fighting "liberal" ideas that are offensive to right-wing students. Asserts that many colleges and universities are openly dedicated to "indoctrinating" students with liberal or communist philosophy.</li>

<li>AIA seeks to expose "the exploitation of the classroom or university resources to indoctrinate students; discrimination against students, faculty or administrators based on political or academic beliefs; and campus violations of free speech."</li>

</ul>

<ul>

<li>AIA monitors and documents "[t]he use of classroom and/or university resources to indoctrinate students." AIA's monthly publication Campus Report focuses on "three issues: the exploitation of the classroom or university resources to indoctrinate students; discrimination against students, faculty or administrators based on political or academic beliefs; and campus violations of free speech."</li>

<li>Sponsors an annual "Conservative University" conference. Recent speakers include: John Lott, author of More Guns, Less Crime, Joseph Farah of WorldNetDaily, Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-Colo.), Lori Waters of Eagle Forum and Conservative Caucus chairman Howard Phillips.</li></ul><div>
</div><ul>

<li>Sells books such as Ann Coulter's Treason,Why the Left Hates America by Daniel Flynn and Preachers of Hate: Islam and the War on America by Kenneth Timmerman.</li>

<li>AIA has characterized the NAACP's founder, W.E.B. Du Bois, as the "Father of Bad Multiculturalism." According to AIA, "W.E.B. Du Bois is the father of the multiculturalism that is currently pervasive on American campuses. This is a multiculturalism that is…preoccupied with the negative aspects, both real and imagined, of our own culture."</li>

</ul>

<ul>

<li>Founded by Reed Irvine to monitor college and university professors for teaching "disinformation" and "liberal" bias. The group claimed that 10,000 known Marxists teach on university campuses nationwide.</li>

<li>Accuracy, Fairness and Balance in Higher Education" published in 1985. According to AIA "youth are being indoctrinated" on liberal arts campuses.

<ul>

<li>AIA will investigate reports from students of seriously inaccurate information being imparted by classroom instructors—either through lectures or required reading material.</li>

<li>AIA will try to discuss the matter with the teacher to determine whether or not the complaint is valid and to see if the teacher would be willing to make a correction.</li>

<li>In cases where the professor declines this opportunity, AIA will employ other means to call the error to the attention of students and others who may be interested, including AIA supporters throughout the country.</li>

</ul>

</blockquote>

</li>

<li>In the eighties the group's monitoring campaign caused widespread controversy on higher education campuses, eliciting fear and anger among academics and students.</li>

<li>President Reagan's Secretary of Education, William Bennett, called Irvine's academic watchdog group "a bad idea."</li>

<li>Malcolm Kline was named AIA's new executive director in fall 2003. He worked at the National Journalism Center for twenty years. Kline has written for: Newsmax.com, National Catholic Register, Catholic News Service, and Washington Times's Insight magazine.

</li>

<li>AIA's former Executive Director was Daniel Flynn, author of Why the Left Hates America.</li>

</ul>

"Accuracy in Academia plays an indispensable role in fighting the political distortions and biases that pass for knowledge on today's college campuses. I am looking forward to being part of a campaign to challenge students to think more accurately and broad-mindedly about the fundamental issues that affect their lives." — Dinesh D'Souza, author and right-wing speaker

"Accuracy in Academia is reaching the leaders of tomorrow with the truth about the sexual revolution ignited in the 60s and raging today all about them. This awareness is critical to properly equipping the leaders of tomorrow. Accuracy in Academia is a lone voice carrying the message of truth and hope to a generation that seldom, if ever, is able to access the truth about America's crucial and fragile social constructs that have made us free. I am proud to stand with AIA as they relentlessly seek to provide to America's college student America's measured and true standard for a free society's smallest building block, marriage and family." — Judith A. Reisman, a right-wing speaker and author, published Crafting "Gay" Children: An Inquiry into the Abuse of Vulnerable Youth via Government Schooling & Mainstream Media in 2001.

"If sanity ever returns to the academic world, part of the credit will go to a small newspaper called Campus Report, which has exposed innumerable incidents of brainwashing replacing education on college campuses, storm trooper tactics being accepted and rewarded by 'responsible' college administrators, and academic and behavioral double standards being applied to the group to which one belongs, rather than one's own behavior or performance." — Thomas Sowell, author and syndicated

</div>

===

srchwatch

<h1 id="firstHeading" class="firstHeading">Accuracy in Academia</h1>

Accuracy in Academia (AIA) is a Washington DC-based <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Conservative&action=edit&redlink=1" class="new" title="Conservative (page does not exist)">conservative</a> <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Think_tank" title="Think tank" class="mw-redirect">think tank</a> focused on American universities. It researches and attacks <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Left-wing&action=edit&redlink=1" class="new" title="Left-wing (page does not exist)">left-wing</a> activities on campuses and promotes <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Right-wing" title="Right-wing">right-wing</a> activities on campuses. AIA was founded in 1985 by <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Reed_Irvine" title="Reed Irvine">Reed Irvine</a> as an outgrowth of <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Accuracy_in_Media" title="Accuracy in Media">Accuracy in Media</a>.

Among its primary areas of concern are: "the use of classroom and/or university resources to indoctrinate students, discrimination against students, faculty or administrators based on political or academic beliefs, and campus violations of free speech." All of these translate to means of attacking supposedly "Leftist" professors and campus organizations. Accuracy in Academia is closely affiliated with the campaign for <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Intellectual_diversity" title="Intellectual diversity">intellectual diversity</a> and academic freedom.

AIA operates a sister website, <a href="http://www.campusreportonline.net" class="external text" title="http://www.campusreportonline.net" rel="nofollow">Campus Report Online</a>, which acts as AIA's "online news service in which we document and publicize political bias in education."<a href="http://www.campusreportonline.net/main/about_cro.php" class="external autonumber" title="http://www.campusreportonline.net/main/about_cro.php" rel="nofollow">[1]</a>

Malcolm A. Kline is executive director. <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Daniel_J._Flynn&action=edit&redlink=1" class="new" title="Daniel J. Flynn (page does not exist)">Daniel J. Flynn</a> was executive director from 1997 to 2003.<a href="http://www.flynnfiles.com/bio.php" class="external autonumber" title="http://www.flynnfiles.com/bio.php" rel="nofollow">[2]</a>

<ul>

<li class="toclevel-1"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Accuracy_in_Academia#Personnel">1 Personnel</a></li>

<li class="toclevel-1"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Accuracy_in_Academia#Contact_details">2 Contact details</a></li>

<li class="toclevel-1"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Accuracy_in_Academia#Funders.5B3.5D">3 Funders[3]</a></li>

<li class="toclevel-1"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Accuracy_in_Academia#Related_SourceWatch_articles">4 Related SourceWatch articles</a></li>

<li class="toclevel-1"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Accuracy_in_Academia#External_links">5 External links</a></li>

</ul>

</td></tr></tbody></table>

<h2>Personnel</h2>

<ul>

<li><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Malcolm_Kline&action=edit&redlink=1" class="new" title="Malcolm Kline (page does not exist)">Malcolm Kline</a> - Executive Director</li>

</ul>

<h2>Contact details</h2>

4455 Connecticut Avenue, NW

Suite 330

Washington, DC 20008

Phone: (202) 364-3085

Fax: (202) 364-4098

Web: <a href="http://www.academia.org" class="external free" title="http://www.academia.org" rel="nofollow">http://www.academia.org</a>

<h2>Funders<a href="http://www.mediatransparency.org/recipientgrants.php?recipientID=1095" class="external autonumber" title="http://www.mediatransparency.org/recipientgrants.php?recipientID=1095" rel="nofollow">[3]</a></h2>

<ul>

<li><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=John_M._Olin_Foundation" title="John M. Olin Foundation">John M. Olin Foundation</a></li>

<li><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=F.M.Kirby_Foundation" title="F. M. Kirby Foundation" class="mw-redirect">F. M. Kirby Foundation</a></li>

</ul>

<h2>Related SourceWatch articles</h2>

<ul>

<li><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Accuracy_in_Media" title="Accuracy in Media">Accuracy in Media</a></li>

<li><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Free_Expression_Project" title="Free Expression Project">Free Expression Project</a></li>

</ul>

ACADEMIA

2-10-03

Who's Behind the Attack on Liberal Professors?

By Dave Johnson

Mr. Johnson is a fellow at the Commonweal Institute.

HNN INDEX: Are Historians Biased?

In a recent article on HNN Professors Eric Foner and Glenda Gilmore worry that academic freedom is being eroded. While they address the McCarthyite tactics of the right, I think there may also be another interesting story here.

I work with the Commonweal Institute, a moderate/progressive think tank. My work with Commonweal involves research into right-wing organizations. This research entails checking the affiliations of conservatives cited in news stories, articles, op-ed pieces, books and articles. The people and organizations Foner and Gilmore mention share interesting connections.

The piece mentions Campus Watch, which is part of the Middle East Forum. If you visit the website of Cursor's Media Transparency, an organization that investigates right-wing foundations, you will discover that the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation fund the Middle East Forum.

Next the piece mentions William J. Bennett. Many of Bennett's activities are funded by the far-right Heritage Foundation, which in turn is funded by the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, Richard Mellon Scaife, Joseph Coors's Castle Rock Foundation and the Olin Foundation, among others.

Next mentioned is the American Council of Trustees and Alumni. Turns out this group is funded by ... wait for it ... the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, Scaife, Coors, Olin and a few others.

Lynne Cheney, wife of Vice President Dick Cheney, mentioned next, is a Senior Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, which is funded by the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, Olin, Coors and the Smith Richardson Foundation. Mrs. Cheney was also chair of the National Endowment for the Humanities, which received funds at the time by the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation and Olin.

Every One of Them?

So it turns out that every single right-wing source mentioned in their article owes some portion (if not all) of their livelihood to a very small core group of funders. In my experience, this is not atypical among conservative opinion-makers. It appears that the majority of the conservative experts and scholars writing newspaper op-ed pieces, books and magazine articles, and even the organizations that generate the "talking points" and position papers used by TV pundits and radio talk show hosts, are directly funded by, or work for organizations supported by this core group of funders.

This pattern of concentrated, interlinking financial backing is not found when you look into who is funding people and organizations that would not describe themselves as "conservatives".

So What?

Foner and Gilmore cite several apparently unconnected people and organizations as being part of "a broader trend among conservative commentators, who since September 11 have increasingly equated criticism of the Bush administration with lack of patriotism." Readers of the article might come away with the impression of a number of independent conservative "voices" concerned with what is being said on campus.

But is this true? All the voices cited originate from organizations funded and coordinated by a core group of wealthy individuals and organizations. Any scholar finding what appears to be a broad trend should be aware that the deliberate creation of an illusion of broad trends is a tactic used to influence the public by the conservative movement that is funded by this core group.

Some History of the Conservative Movement

In 1971 the National Chamber of Commerce circulated a memo by future Supreme Court Justice Lewis Powell among business leaders which claimed that "the American economic system" of business and free markets was "under broad attack" by "Communists, New Leftists and other revolutionaries who would destroy the entire system, both political and economic." Powell argued that those engaged in this attack come from "the college campus, the pulpit, the media, the intellectual and literary journals, the arts and sciences, and from politicians."

According to the Powell memo, the key to solving this problem was to get business people to "confront this problem as a primary responsibility of corporate management" by building organizations that will use "careful long-range planning and implementation, in consistency of action over an indefinite period of years, in the scale of financing only available in joint effort, and in the political power available only through united action and national organizations." It helped immeasurably, Powell noted, that the boards of trustees of universities "overwhelmingly are composed of men and women who are leaders in the system," and that most of the media "are owned and theoretically controlled by corporations which depend upon profits, and the free enterprise system to survive."

Powell wrote that these organizations should employ a "faculty of scholars" to publish in journals, write "books, paperbacks and pamphlets," with speakers and a speaker's bureau, as well as develop organizations to evaluate textbooks, and engage in a "long range effort" to correct the purported imbalances in campus faculties. "The television networks should be monitored in the same way that textbooks should be kept under constant surveillance." Powell said that this effort must also target the judicial system.

The "Four Sisters"...

Creating "Conventional Wisdom"

Now, after 30 years of effort, this core FSFG [4 SIS FAMILY FDN? ACRONYM?] has built a comprehensive ideological infrastructure. There are now over 500 organizations, with the Heritage Foundation at the hub, all funded by this core group. David Callahan's 1999 study, $1 Billion for Ideas: Conservative Think Tanks in the 1990s, found that just the top 20 of the organizations spent over $1 billion on this ideological effort in the 1990s.

The right-wing movement's messages are orchestrated and amplified to sound like a mass "movement" consisting of many "voices." Using "messaging"--communication techniques from the fields of marketing, public relations, and corporate image-management--the movement appeals to people's deeper feelings and values. Messages are repeated until they become "conventional wisdom." Examples include lines like "Social Security is going broke" and "public schools are failing." Both statements are questionable, yet both have been firmly embedded in the "public mind" by purposeful repetition through multiple channels. This orchestration has been referred to as a "Mighty Wurlitzer, " a CIA term that refers to propaganda that is repeated over and over again in numerous places until the public believes what it's hearing must be true.

As a study by the People for the American Way, has put it: "The result of this comprehensive and yet largely invisible funding strategy is an extraordinary amplification of the far right's views on a range of issues. The various funding recipients do not march in ideological lock-step, but they do promote many of the same issues to their respective audiences. They have thus been able to keep alive in the public debate a variety of policy ideas long ago discredited or discarded by the mainstream. That, in turn, has been of enormous value in the right's ongoing effort to reshape American society. The success of the right-wing efforts are seen at every level of government, as a vast armada of foundation-funded right-wing organizations has both fed and capitalized on the current swing to the right in Congress and in the state legislatures."

The Money Comes With Strings

The FSFG money comes with ideological strings attached. Their think tanks are not independent; their organizations must espouse their ideology. "Cato, for example," as Gregg Easterbrook pointed out in an article in the Atlantic in 1986, "flatly states that it will not release any study that calls for a government program. The institute's president, Edward Crane, says that he receives one or two commissioned reports each year that are 'inconsistent,' and he does not publish them. The analyst Jonathan Stein lost his job at [the Center For Strategic & International Studies] CSIS several months after he published a book highly critical of Star Wars, the study of which is worth millions to think tanks that toe the line. (CSIS denies there was any connection.) "

The core group that controls this movement is now attacking even Republicans who would previously have been considered "conservatives" for inadequate ideological purity. Members of the moderate wing of the Republican Party are derided by the radical right as nothing more than RINO's -- Republicans In Name Only. The FSFG is funding efforts to drive these moderates out of office and out of the party.(2)

The Movement is Coordinated

Currently the core of the "conservative movement" meets weekly with representatives of the FSFG. As Eric Alterman has revealed:

Their weekly agenda was hammered out every Wednesday at a meeting chaired by Grover Norquist, a rightwing Leninist who believes in an ever-shifting tactical alliance.… Among those who attend the invitation-only meetings are spokespeople and representatives of NRA, the Christian Coalition, the Heritage Foundation; corporate lobbyists, the top people from the Republican party and the Congressional Republican leadership, and chief White House aides. Trusted rightwing journalists and editors also attend, though the meetings are off the record.

    While the ostensible purpose of the meeting is to share information and coordinate strategy, they also give Norquist the opportunity to act as an ideological enforcer. When one member of the Bush administration worried to a New York Times reporter that the administration's plan to repeal the estate tax would cripple charitable giving, he was publicly warned by Norquist that this was "the first betrayal of Bush", and was gone not long afterward. When a conservative pundit named Laura Ingraham criticised a fellow conservative in the House of Representatives for overzealousness, she was immediately informed by Norquist to decide "whether to be with us or against us". She was no longer welcome at the meetings.

David Brock, in his book Blinded By the Right, described from inside this "movement" how different parts of the right-wing web and their funders interacted during the attempt to remove President Clinton from office. Brock writes that funding was supplied by Richard Mellon Scaife, Federalist Society (funded by Scaife) lawyers and judges working behind the scenes assisting Special Prosecutor Ken Starr and supplying information to (Scaife-funded) American Spectator magazine.

A Case Study

Often it is possible to discern how the timing of a "Mighty Wurlitzer" chorus relates to a planned conservative policy initiative. A recent example is the flurry of articles that hit the press starting in late November, originating from the Heritage Foundation, Americans for Tax Reform and the Tax Foundation, which claimed that the poor do not pay enough income taxes. The Wall Street Journal even referred to the poor as "lucky duckies." The paper did not mention that poor people do pay Social Security taxes. The publicity appears to have been timed to the release of the president's latest tax-cutting program.(3)

The Effect on Society

The core right-wing web of organizations funded by the FSFG has increasingly been able to set the public agenda, shifting national and local politics consistently to the right and away from the mainstream public interest. As a result, right-wing ideological premises and arguments dominate public-issue debate, with big money using this communications infrastructure to drown out other voices, virtually creating a one-dollar-one-vote society. "As one investigative journalist stated years ago in a pioneering investigation of the conservative philanthropy of Richard Scaife," wrote Sally Covington in a 1997 study, "layer upon layer of seminars, studies, conferences, and interviews [can] do much to push along if not create, the issues, which then become the national agenda of debate.... By multiplying the authorities to whom the media are prepared to give a friendly hearing, [conservative donations] have helped to create an illusion of diversity where none exists. The result could be an increasing number of one-sided debates in which the challengers are far outnumbered, if indeed they are heard from at all."

The Right's Attack on Academia

So how does all this relate to the attack on academic freedom which Foner and Gilmore complained about?

It turns out that many of the most important attacks are part of a campaign organized by conservative foundations, as a study by report by the National Committee on Responsive Philanthropy (NCRP) found. In a section entitled, "Targeting the Academy" the report discusses right-wing attacks on academia, including "political correctness" campaigns, efforts to use alumni contributions to advance a conservative agenda, efforts to take over or de-fund the National Endowment for the Humanities and to de-fund the National Endowment for the Arts. These attacks follow the pattern outlined in the Powell memo -- attack the patriotism of liberals and attempt to convince trustees of colleges and universities to remove them, replacing them with ideological "conservatives."(4)

The FSFG supports organizations like Accuracy in Academia, the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, the National Association of Scholars, the Madison Center for Educational Affairs (their "Collegiate Network" links over 70 student newspapers), the Institute for Educational Affairs and others. These organizations work to transform academia toward the right's ideological agenda.

Why Do They Hate America?

Daniel Pipes has accused scholars like Foner and Gilmore of hating America. His attacks follow the plan laid out in the Powell memo and in William Simons's book, A Time For Truth. Like Powell and Simon, Pipes accuses liberal faculty of anti-American bias and wants trustees to remove or silence them. "Why do they hate America"? Because, the phrase implies, they are like the terrorists, who also hate America. A search on Google for the term "they hate America" turns up over a million uses. So what Foner and Gilmore encountered is a well-funded campaign to pursue an ideological agenda.

Conclusion

By looking at the backgrounds of the conservative sources cited in Foner and Gilmore's article on freedom of speech on campus, we have discovered another story. What Foner and Gillmore took to be a number of voices signifying, in their words, "a broader trend among conservative commentators, who since September 11 have increasingly equated criticism of the Bush administration with lack of patriotism," is really only the tip of an iceberg of organizations, funded by a core group coordinating a right-wing agenda to put a chill on more than just academic speech. Academics should be on guard because the activities of these organizations follow a pattern designed to mislead the casual reviewer.

1.See Jerry Landray, From The Powell Manifesto: How A Prominent Lawyer's Attack Memo Changed America.

See http://www.commonwealinstitute.org/information.html#moderates.

See:

Heritage Foundation, May 8, 2001 http://www.heritage.org/Research/PoliticalPhilosophy/loader.cfm?url=/commonspot/security/getfile.cfm&PageID=4327

Americans for Tax Reform, May 7, 2002 http://www.atr.org/caucus/article050702.html

Tax Foundation, November, 2002 http://www.taxfoundation.org/prtopincome.html

The Wurlitzer:

Nov. 20, 2002 http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110002937

Nov. 26, 2002 http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&node=&contentId=A39211-2002Nov25¬Found=true

Nov. 26, 2002 http://slate.msn.com/id/2074666/

Dec. 3, 2002 http://www.washtimes.com/commentary/20021203-415124.htm

Dec. 4, 2002 http://www.naplesnews.com/02/12/perspective/d856951a.htm

Dec. 10, 2002 http://www.whitehouse.gov/cea/taxnotes30th_anniversaryspeech_dec10_2002.pdf

Dec. 15, 2002 http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&node=&contentId=A59577-2002Dec15¬Found=true

Dec. 16, 2002 http://slate.msn.com/id/2075483/

Dec. 21, 2002 http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2002/12/21/duckies/

Jan. 7, 2003 White House proposes tax changes: http://www.treas.gov/press/releases/kd3739.htm

Jan. 9, 2003 http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2003/01/09/ED210726.DTL

Jan. 14, 2003 http://slate.msn.com/id/2076725/

Jan. 16, 2002 http://slate.msn.com/id/2077089/

Jan. 20, 2003 http://opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110002938

Jan. 20, 2003 http://slate.msn.com/id/2077201/

See: People for the American Way's report, Buying a Movement, including a case study of the Yale Endowment and a case study of the right-wing movement's efforts to influence university undergraduates.

http://hnn.us/articles/1244.html

---

Academic Bashing [20], Bill Berkowitz, Z Magazine, February 1, 2002

<a href="https://zcomm.org/zmagazine/academic-bashing-by-bill-berkowitz/">https://zcomm.org/zmagazine/academic-bashing-by-bill-berkowitz/</a>Berkowitz<p align="left" style="font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 12px 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
When the American
Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA) published its recent report claiming
college and university faculty were “the weak link in America’s response to the
attack” of September 11, it brought that conservative organization into the
public spotlight for the first time. Many newspaper editorials quickly condemned
the report’s overheated rhetoric and overstated conclusions. Some commentators
branded it an incredibly shoddy piece of scholarship. According to the New
York Times, Hugh Gusterson, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology and a target of the report, suggested that it had “a little of the
whiff of McCarthyism” to it.<p style="font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 12px 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><multicol cols="3" gutter="21" /><p align="left" style="font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 12px 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">ACTA’s report
documented the statements made by a handful of academics that questioned the
bombing of Afghanistan and the president’s war on terrorism at teach-ins and
campus protests across the country. These academics bothered the heck out of the
Washington DC-based group founded by Lynne Cheney and Connecticut Senator Joseph
Lieberman as the National Alumni Forum in 1995. However overzealous ACTA’s
report may have been, it accurately reflects several aspects of the
organization’s mission, especially its fevered opposition to “political
correctness” and its desire to keep an eye on campus “radicals.”<p align="left" style="font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 12px 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">However, the key
aspect of ACTA’s agenda is its ongoing attempts to influence the way
universities throughout the country are organized and governed.<p align="left" style="font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 12px 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Shoddy
Scholarship<p align="left" style="font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 12px 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
According to the
Chronicle of Higher Education, ACTA’s report documented 117 incidents since
September 11 that reflected “a shocking divide between academe and the public at
large.” Although the report, titled “Defending Civilization: How Our
Universities Are Failing America, and What Can Be Done About It,” affirmed the
right of professors to academic freedom, it also maintained that this freedom
does not make academics immune from criticism. “We learn from history that when
a nation’s intellectuals are unwilling to defend its civilization, they give
comfort to its adversaries,” the report declares. It names more than 40
academics out of line with American public opinion on the war on terrorism (see
www.goacta.org/Reports/defciv. pdf).<p align="left" style="font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 12px 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">The subtext of
the report is ACTA’s longtime assertion that when universities stopped requiring
students to take American History and Western Civilization courses, these
institutions fell victim to the twin evils of moral relativism and
multiculturalism. “Expressions of pervasive moral relativism are a staple of
academic life in this country and an apparent symptom of an educational system
that has increasingly suggested that Western civilization is the primary source
of the world’s ills—even though it gave us the ideals of democracy, human
rights, individual liberty, and mutual tolerance,” the report says. These are
themes that Lynn Cheney has been promoting for years.<p align="left" style="font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 12px 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Many of the
incidents cited in the report, as reported by the Chronicle of Higher
Education and the New York Times, seemed on the face of it downright
innocuous:<ul style="font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 12px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 18px; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><li style="font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 18px; margin: 0px 0px 6px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">At a campus teach-in on the
evening of the attacks Michael Rothschild, dean of the Woodrow Wilson School
of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University, commented that
there is a “terrible and understandable desire to find and punish” the
perpetrators. He also warned “It’s very important for Americans to think about
our own history, what we did in World War II to Japanese citizens by interning
them.”</li><li style="font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 18px; margin: 0px 0px 6px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Walter Daum, a professor of
mathematics at the City University of New York’s City College, was surprised
that the report used a quote from him as an example of academe’s response.
According to the Chronicle of Higher Education, “most of his colleagues
in academe, he notes, disagree with his emphatic critiques of U.S. policy.”
The report cites a comment originally quoted in the New York Post, “the
ultimate responsibility lies with the rulers of this country, the capitalist
ruling class of this country.” He has since repeatedly clarified his
statements saying he wasn’t trying to justify the attacks but to explain them.
</li><li style="font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 18px; margin: 0px 0px 6px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">At a September 20 teach-in,
Hugh Gusterson of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology said, “At this
particular moment in time, it seems there is a crying need to understand the
culture and history of the people who attacked us.” The report also cites a
quote by him from a September 20 campus peace rally: “Imagine the real
suffering and grief of people in other countries. The best way to begin a war
on terrorism might be to look in the mirror.” A professor of anthropology and
science-and-technology studies, Mr. Guster- son said it is not anti-American
to know about the rest of the world. “What anthropology is supposed to do is
try to get people to get out of their own skins.”</li><li style="font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 18px; margin: 0px 0px 6px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Joel Beinin, a professor of
Middle Eastern history at Stanford University said: “If Osama bin Laden is
confirmed to be behind the attacks, the United States should bring him before
an international tribunal on crimes against humanity.”</li></ul><p align="left" style="font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 12px 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Although Cheney
was not responsible for writing the report, it contained many of her comments.
For example, in 1995 Cheney said, “The main threat to academic freedom today is
from political intolerance on campus. Alumni and trustees must make sure our
colleges and universities remain forums for open debate. They want to support
their colleges, but they are often shut out of the discussion. This organization
will serve as a voice for interested and concerned alums.”<p style="font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 12px 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
<multicol cols="3" gutter="21" /><p align="left" style="font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 12px 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">According to
Patrick Healy, reporting for the Boston Globe, Anne Neal, a co-author of
the report and an ACTA official, said that many professors and students that
support the U.S. government were afraid that if they speak out liberal
colleagues might shout them down. “For the most part, public comments in
academia were equivocal and often pointing the finger at America rather than the
terrorists,” Neal said. “It’s hard for non-tenured professors [who support
current policies] to speak up when there’s such a chorus on the other side.”
<p align="left" style="font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 12px 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Despite ACTA’s
claims that its objective is to expand dialogue on campus, the report criticized
anyone who dared speak out against the president’s war on terrorism.<p align="left" style="font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 12px 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Money Talks
<p align="left" style="font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 12px 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
According to its
web site, members of the American Council of Trustees and Alumni contributed
$3.4 billion to colleges and universities last year, making the organization
“the largest private source of support for higher education.” Large donors are
frequently advised by ACTA staff as to what kind of influence their money can
buy over courses and departments at colleges and universities.<p align="left" style="font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 12px 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">The Right
Guide, published by the Ann Arbor, Michigan-based Economics America,
documents that 99 percent of ACTA’s nearly $500,000 in operating revenue came
from contributions and grants from conservative foundations in 1997. Included
were grants of $100,000 from the John M. Olin Foundation, $50,000 from the Lynde
and Harry Bradley Foundation, and $10,000 from the Earhart Foundation. Since
1998, according to mediatransparency. org, a web site tracking the money behind
right wing politics, ACTA has received an additional $600,000 from the Bradley,
Olin, Sarah Scaife, and Earhart foundations.<p align="left" style="font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 12px 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">ACTA’s mission
statement reads: “…help meet the challenges facing higher education—from
political intolerance and speech codes to declining academic standards and
soaring tuitions—the Council is working to elevate public awareness of the
status of higher education and to implement positive ways to reform it through
several channels.” ACTA also aims to “challeng[e] policies and practices that
threaten academic freedom and excellence”; develop “networks to help alumni have
an impact on campus issues at their alma maters”; and offer assistance to alumni
on how to target their donations.<p align="left" style="font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 12px 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">What are ACTA’s
academic objectives? On the surface one of the things it wants is for students
to be better informed about their history. But ACTA wants its sanitized version
of history to be taught.<p align="left" style="font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 12px 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Conservative
Makeovers<p align="left" style="font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 12px 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
ACTA is
fundamentally interested in having conservative trustees and alumni exercise a
greater say over the entire university governance process. An October 5, 1998
article written for the Nation by Annette Fuentes spells out ACTA’s
goals. Titled “Trustees of the Right’s Agenda—Conservative Appointees Hold
Increasing Sway Over Public Higher Education,” Fuentes writes: “With the
authority to hire and fire chancellors and college presidents, as well as to set
educational policy, the boards [of trustees] wield enormous power. Across the
country, conservative Republican governors have appointed trustees who are their
political allies rather than independent advocates for the university system.
These political proxies—often backed by the National Association of Scholars and
the American Council of Trustees and Alumni, groups that oppose affirmative
action and multicultural studies—are enacting sweeping changes in the mission of
public higher education to provide wide access.”<p style="font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 12px 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
<multicol cols="3" gutter="21" /><p align="left" style="font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 12px 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">In Florida this
past summer, ACTA worked with Governor Jeb Bush as he initiated a series of
sweeping changes in the way the state’s university system is organized. The
governor’s extensive restructuring initiative, a plan that many academic
observers and Florida politicians, including Senator Graham, have termed both
unnecessary and unwarranted, abolished the Board of Regents, which had governed
the system and replaced it with 12-member boards of trustees for each of the
colleges in the state university system.<p align="left" style="font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 12px 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">According to the
Naples Daily News, the orientation sessions for the new trustees was
organized by the American Council of Trustees. One of the key speakers was Anne
Neal, a vice president and lawyer for ACTA and co-author with Jerry L. Martin,
the president of ACTA, of the “Defending Civilization” report.<p align="left" style="font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 12px 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Neal informed the
incoming trustees that they now had the power over their schools’ budgets and
academic standards and would also be able to select their schools’ presidents.
“That’s the easy part,” she said. She also pointed out that the more difficult
task would be revising their schools’ policies and examining their personal and
business relationships to assure there isn’t even the appearance of impropriety.
Given all that’s happened in Florida over the past year, it’s hard to imagine
she said all this with a straight face.<p align="left" style="font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 12px 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">While the
ramifications of the switch over has not yet been felt, it certainly will be a
major issue when the contracts between the state’s university employees and the
now-defunct Board of Regents expire in the next year or so. The system, as
designed by Governor Bush, forces the unions to bargain separately with each of
the autonomous Boards of Trustees. As one professor, who preferred anonymity
told me, “Putting such issues as tenure, pension plans, seniority, health care,
and other benefits on the bargaining table could severely erode both the unions
bargaining and political power.”<p align="left" style="font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 12px 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Opposing
affirmative action and multiculturalism and countering “political correctness”
on campus have been long-time core activities of ACTA. While its high profile
and widely criticized report added bashing academics to its list of priorities,
it appears that ACTA’s biggest prize will come when other college and university
systems across the country begin adopting the full scope of the Florida model.
                     Z
<hr size="2" style="border: none; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" /><p align="left" style="font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 12px 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
Bill Berkowitz is a freelance writer covering conservative movements.

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exxon secrets

4455 Connecticut Ave NW.Suite 330.Washington, DC 20008

Phone: (202) 364-3085

Accuracy in Academia is an educational watchdog group that promotes conservatism on college and university campuses.

As a conservative educational watchdog, Accuracy in Academia states it wants colleges and universities to "return to its traditional mission-the quest for truth" and aims "to provide an antidote to political correctness on campuses." Accuracy in Academia is affiliated with Accuracy in Media and the Council for the Defense of Freedom at the same address. Accuracy in Academia was a sponsor of the first national "wise use" meeting in Reno, Nevada in 1988.

<h3>FUNDING</h3>

Accuracy in Academia has received $0 from ExxonMobil since 1998.

1990?

$unknown Exxon Corporation

Source: <a href="http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/orgfactsheet.php?id=3#src0">Greenpeace Magazine, Jan/Feb/March 1991</a>

<h3>SOURCES</h3>

<a id="src" name="src"> </a><a id="src0" name="src0"> </a>Greenpeace Magazine, Jan/Feb/March 1991

Greenpeace Magazine, Jan/Feb/March 1991

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