8. Authoritarian Administrators

The punishment of faculty by administrators for expressing unpopular ideas has a long history in academia, and academic freedom is still not fully protected from authoritarian presidents, whether they are squelching liberal or conservative ideas.

At Dallas Baptist University, a professor and a dean were fired in 1992 for indefensible reasons. David Ayers, assistant professor of sociology, had criticized feminism, and another professor attacked his positions at a faculty lunch. Ayers then distributed copies of both papers to students, calling his critic's paper the "razor-sharp sword of the assassin." The dean, John Jeffrey, refused to investigate Ayers, saying his actions were protected by academic freedom; Jeffrey was then fired for failing to follow orders. While Ayers certainly deserves criticism for advocating "the universality of patriarchy," neither he nor Jeffrey should have been fired or punished in any way.

It is important to recognize, however, that Ayers was fired from a small Christian college, not a leading secular university. None of this excuses Dallas Baptist University, but it shows that academic freedom is more strongly supported at the elite universities which are said to be the centers of "political correctness." While PC was part of the problem in the firings at Dallas Baptist University, the main reason was simply the administration's desire to control the faculty and get rid of embarrassing "troublemakers," combined with its failure to respect basic principles of academic freedom.

Unfortunately, some on the left try to censor views they dislike instead of refuting them by argument. During the 1980s, conservative speakers were occasionally shouted down by small groups of leftists. While the shouting down of speakers rarely occurs anymore (although the cries against "political correctness" have grown more and more strident), there is still not full openness by some leftists to hear opposing voices. In one deplorable and highly publicized example, former Pennsylvania Governor Robert Casey (who is opposed to abortion) was prevented from speaking at Cooper Union in 1992 by disruptive protestors who chanted, "Racist, sexist, antigay, Governor Casey go away." But sometimes conservatives are intolerant of views they dislike. James Brady, the Reagan Administration press secretary disabled by an assassin's bullet, was booed off stage along with his wife, gun control activist Sarah Brady, when they appeared in 1992 at the University of Nevada. She was heckled and booed throughout her speech, and finally had to cut the lecture short. (New York Times, 2/10/92)

David Brion Davis, a Jewish professor from Yale, was scheduled to give a lecture at Howard University, but administrators there convinced him it would be best for him not to speak after the turmoil on campus following two lectures by the racist and anti-Semitic Khalid Abdul Muhammad. Howard banned an application for a third speech in September 1994, citing safety concerns because of an attempted assassination in California. Howard has also imposed central administration control and stricter guidelines over outside speakers in an effort to prevent further controversies and speakers in an effort to prevent further controversies and improve the university's image. (New York Times, 12/14/94)

Recently, the University of Delaware refused to allow two researchers to accept grants from the Pioneer Fund, those 1937 charter declared that consideration for grants "shall be especially given to children who are deemed to be descended predominantly from white persons who settled in the original 13 states prior to the adoption of the Constitution of the United States." In 1985, the reference to "whites" was deleted. The Pioneer Fund provided $174,000 to education professors Linda Gottfredson and Jan Bilts for research on racial differences in intelligence.

The University of Delaware declared that faculty may not accept funding from organizations that are "incompatible with the University's mission." By banning this funding, the University of Delaware was clearly restricting scholars' ability to do research freely, distasteful and intellectually dubious as that research may be. The idea that research funds are a privilege subject to university approval and not a right, merely because they are channeled through the university, is ridiculous. The University should not restrict professors' sources of funding, so long as that source does not impose impermissible limits on its funding (such as racially discriminatory allocation of grants -- as the Pioneer Fund required until 1985).

Still, in the end free speech was protected. When the two scholars threatened to sue, the University of Delaware agreed to an out-of-court settlement which allowed them to receive grants from the Pioneer Fund, provided a year's paid leave of absence for both professors and assured that a monitor will ensure fairness for one professor's promotion decision. (Science, 5/15/92)

But authoritarian control over colleges and universities is more often exerted by conservative presidents. In 1991, four former Hillsdale College professors, all members of the conservative National Association of Scholars, criticized the small college and its president, George Roche. They wrote: "For years the Hillsdale administration has neglected its academic program to pay for 'outreach' activities designed to promote Dr. Roche, maintained a curriculum that requires no appreciable knowledge of Western culture, and used every possible means including dismissals and threats of lawsuits, to silence dissent of any kind among faculty and students." (Academic Questions, Fall 1991) They noted that in 1986, "the administration began to attack the student newspaper, the Collegian, for its disagreements with college policies, threatening lawsuits and other reprisals against the student staff and any faculty who defended it." The editor of the Collegian was forced by the administration to resign, and the rest of the student staff resigned in protest.

Roche also urged a student, Mike Nehls, not to publish an independent newspaper, the Hillsdale Spectator. When Nehls went ahead with his plans and began criticizing Roche in editorials, Roche banned distribution of the paper on campus and then expelled Nehls. As one editorial in the banned Hillsdale Spectator noted, "Hillsdale is a cult of personality and not of principle. Roche is the divine monarch."

Faculty at Hillsdale have also been victims of Roche's "conservative correctness." When a dean sued a faculty member, accusing him of committing slander in a private conversation with another administrator, assistant history professor Warren Treadgold was one of the 16 faculty who signed a letter to the student newspaper protesting the use of lawsuits. Three months later, Treadgold was dismissed. Hillsdale officials reportedly said that Treadgold did not "fit in" at Hillsdale and called his letter "unwise, unbecoming, and unprofessional." Hillsdale, which has no appeals or grievance procedures, refused to give any reasons for Treadgold's dismissal. Treadgold said: "I am a conservative, and my disagreements weren't with their politics. Basically Hillsdale is a feudal manor run by George Roche."

An AAUP investigation found that Treadgold was one of the top scholars at Hillsdale, with a Ph.D. from Harvard and a book being published by Stanford University Press. A 1987 evaluation of Treadgold at Hillsdale declared that "his scholarship is of the highest quality as well of a superior quantity" and called his teaching "clearly above the average." The AAUP concluded that the letter he signed "was the determining factor in the administration's decision to issue notice of nonreappointment when it did." This is a far cry from the National Review College Guide's description of utopia at Hillsdale where "top-notch" faculty "express a sense of joyful release at their departure from the stifling atmosphere of the official ideologies of their old schools." Yet all of the conservatives who condemn the PC thought police fail to mention Hillsdale, except as a model college in the fight against political correctness.

Another idol of conservatives is Boston University president John Silber, who for two decades has led efforts to remove faculty he dislikes from Boston University. For this, Silber is celebrated by conservatives as a model president and rewarded by his Board of Trustees. In 1980, Silber overruled unanimous decisions by a faculty committee and the English department, and rejected tenure for Julia Prewitt Brown. Silber was eventually voted guilty of sex discrimination, based in part upon his comment that the English department (which was 70% male) was a "damn matriarchy." (Brown v. Trustees of Boston University, 891 F.2d 337, 1st Cir. 1989)

Silber has sought to remove leftist faculty and trouble-makers like Brown, who had openly picketed in front of Silber's office during a 1979 faculty strike. Three women active in union work were also denied tenure in the early 1980s -- Elizabeth Rapaport, Roslyn Feldbert, and Seyla Benhabib -- despite receiving overwhelming support from their departments and from faculty committees. Education theorist Henry Giroux was denied tenure in 1983 because Silber objected to his research.

Silber has a long record of obstructing academic freedom and civil liberties. In 1976, the National Labor Relations Board found that Boston University had "unlawfully discharged" four women at the BU Health Clinic for having a meeting to complain about working conditions; they were rehired and then fired again. In 1978, his administration delayed the publication of the student yearbook and had some objectionable political material removed. In 1979, the Massachusetts chapter of the ACLU reported that it had "never, in memory, received such a large and sustained volume of complaints" about one institution, and concluded that "B.U. has violated fundamental principles of civil liberties and academic freedom." A student newspaper critical of Silber had its student funding vetoed by the Boston University administration, and eventually won an out-of-court settlement. The director of the campus radio station was fired for refusing to delete a joke about Silber from a tape. In 1985, an honors student being interviewed for a university brochure was told she could not refer to Howard Zinn, a Silber critic, one of the school's best professors. In 1986, the Silber Administration threatened to evict a student from a dormitory because he put a sign with the word "Divest" in his window; a judge ruled in the student's favor, criticizing "B.U.'s desire to prevent the exercise of free speech rights." (Ironically, one common PC story is that of Brigit Kerrigan, a student at Harvard who was criticized for putting up a Confederate flag. Although Kerrigan was permitted to keep the flag in her window, this case is often cited by conservatives as censorship while Silber’s actions are ignored.)