The True Story of the Academic Bill of Rights
Regnery has just published Reforming Our Universities: The Campaign for an Academic Bill of Rights (August 2010), in which David Horowitz describes the resistance he met when he promoted a few basic principles of academic responsibility. How bad is it to require that instructors “provide students with materials reflecting both [i.e., all academically reasonable] sides of controversial issues,” rather than pretend that only one side is reasonable? How bad to require that instructors “not present opinions as facts,” and that they “allow students to think for themselves” by not rewarding agreement with the instructor or punishing dissent? Very bad, if you ask the critics.
Aren’t these sine qua non principles of good teaching, with both an ancient history (including such disparate results as the educated Plato and the educated Aquinas) and
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