7. Power of the Purse: Alumni Demands Vs. Academic Freedom
As institutions like the NEA and NEH are eliminated, and universities find themselves subject to severe budget cuts, conservatives hope that financial pressures will lead colleges to give in to the ideological demands of alumni donors, foundations, and corporations. Lynne Cheney herself led the formation in 1995 of the National Alumni Forum (NAF), along with former Colorado Gov. Dick Lamm, Sen. Joseph Lieberman (D-Conn.), Sen. Hank Brown (R-Col), Jerry Martin, Irving Kristol, Martin Peretz, and Judge Laurence Silberman. The Washington Times reported that NAF's goal is "to organize the alumni for the purpose of exerting pressure on the colleges to curtail Political Correctness." As Cheney put it, "It comes down to a question of who owns the university." According to newt Gingrich in To Renew America, "What is amazing in the overwhelming meekness of the alumni in accepting this hijacking of their alma mater," where their money is "used to subsidize bizarre and destructive visions of reality." Believing that alumni and trustees (with their more conservative values) should control universities, Cheney and friends want to use their economic and political power over universities to enforce a new dogmatism in the name of "preserving academic values." Senators Hank Brown and Joseph Lieberman, while claiming that the NAF is "dedicated to academic freedom and excellence," complain that "the rules protecting academic freedom insulate the academy from outside pressures." These outside pressures, from alumni, trustees, and legislators, are precisely what conservatives want to create.
NAF president Jerry Martin (Chronicle of Higher Education, 10/13/95) claims that "professors reign as absolute sovereigns over academic issues," and he urges alumni to help de-throne them. But alumni are hardly powerless, and in fact pose a major threat to academic freedom when they are organized to force colleges to follow a particular ideology.
In 1993 at Converse College in South Carolina, conservative alumnae and trustees helped force out President Ellen Wood Hall who was deemed to be too liberal. The Intercollegiate Studies Institute newspaper, Campus reported, "Hall's radical feminist agenda has included a watering down of the curriculum, the formation of a lesbian support group, and inviting Molly Yard to campus." Homophobia was behind much of the criticism, as alumnae complained of a "lesbian problem" because two years earlier some students had met with counselors to talk about lesbianism; Hall's dean of students was dismissed for being "intemperate" when arguing with an alumna who wanted to ban lesbians from the schools.
According to Hall, "I was attacked for no reason other than being female. I was criticized about my clothes and lack of personal beauty." However, her opponents maintain that they pushed to have her fired because of her liberalism, not just her personal appearance. Hall recognized Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday as a holiday, supported efforts to add Latin American and African studies to the curriculum, and allowed men on campus four days a week instead of three. Alumnae cited a student trip to New York City to work in Harlem soup kitchens, and worried that Hall and her husband, who teachers at a college 35 miles away, only spent weekends together. If this is how the National Alumni Forum wants to influence colleges, by having "liberal" presidents fired under alumni pressure, it shows a serious threat to academic freedom.
Political pressure of this kind is exactly what the National Alumni Forum wants. As Lynne Cheney observes, "It comes down to the question of who owns the university. (Memphis Commercial-Appeal, 3/18/95) Believing that the soul of a university is something that wealthy alumni can purchase by their donations, the National Alumni Forum and similar alumni pressure groups formed by conservative organizations (in 1993, the Intercollegiate Studies Institute started its "Winds of Freedom" movement to oppose speech codes, multiculturalism, and gay student groups) directly threaten academic freedom even while they claim to be protecting it.
It is not hard to reach the conclusion that the National Alumni Forum wants greater alumni control over higher education primarily because Cheney and her allies believe that wealthy alumni will have more conservative goals than most faculty. But should a few rich alumni (or a political organization purporting to represent alumni interests) be allowed to impose their vision of education on American colleges and universities without criticism?
In fact, many alumni object to the lack of diversity among students, faculty, and administrators, want to see more multiculturalism in the curriculum, and deplore the failure of many colleges to confront harassment and discrimination on campus. Most alumni want to see academic values improved and academic freedom protected without approving of the National Alumni Forum's conservative agenda.
Certainly, alumni have a role to play in critiquing their colleges and in shaping academic programs by their donations. But they should not try to be puppeteers who manipulate college policies with demands for ideological control while they dangle donations in front of administrators too timid to resist them. The ideas of alumni should be welcomed and taken seriously. But when these ideas are imposed by financial threats, they represent a danger to academic freedom rather than a defense of it.
What Really Happened to the $20 Million Bass Gift at Yale
The formation of NAF coincided with a national controversy at Yale University. The story, as Newt Gingrich tells it, is this: "Yale University recently had to return $20 million to oil tycoon Lee Bass because after several years the university could not get the faculty to agree to teach Western Civilization." In fact, nothing like this PC fantasy ever happened.
According to the National Alumni Forum, Lee Bass withdrew his $20 million gift to Yale University "after it became clear that his wishes would not be followed." In fact, the gift was returned only after Bass demanded a right to veto faculty appointed to the program whose views he opposed. Rather than criticizing this appalling abuse of the donation process, the National Alumni Forum presents Bass a victim of political correctness, quoting Camille Paglia's claim that "they were dragging their feet because of the content" and New York Post columnist Hilton Kramer's declaration that "tenured left-wing advocates of a multiculturalist anti-Western political agenda" were in "open warfare against the creation of the course>" (National Alumni Forum newsletter, Fall 1995)
However, this was not a case of "Political Correctness 1, Education 0," as the national Alumni Forum claimed, nor did Camille Paglia or Hilton Kramer known what they were talking about. As David Karp noted in the Washington Post (6/4/95), the delays in implementing the Western Culture course had nothing to do with leftist faculty opposing the proposal.
Yale's efforts to start a Western Civilization course were delayed by the administrators' efforts to use the money to offset faculty cuts in the budget. But Light and Truth, a conservative student publication funded by the right-wing Intercollegiate Studies Institute (ISI), ran a story by Pat Collins accusing left-wing professors of sabotaging the project. According to Collins, "President Levin obviously made the determination that it was better to be loved by the left wing of his faculty than by his alumni donors."
T. Kenneth Cribb, Jr., president of ISI, flew to Texas in an effort to convince Bass to withdraw his donation in order to punish Yale. Although Yale promised to implement the program as Bass originally conceived it, Cribb convinced Bass to demand the right to veto any professors hired for the program. Faced with a donor insisting on ideological control over the Western Civilization program, Yale chose to return the money rather than allow academic freedom to be jeopardized. Other alumni donors were inspired to withdraw their gifts, according to Cribb, "The cost of Yale's behavior is now estimated to be several times the original Bass gift of $20 million." (National Review, 9/25/95) Yale and other universities now know that they will be punished, and harmed financially, if they fail to implement a conservative agenda.
Lynne Cheney declared about the Bass donation, "It is sad to see politics play any role in deciding what educational opportunities will be available to students." It is indeed sad to see politics playing a major role in the attempts to intimidate and malign Yale University. It is sad to see that conservatives would kill a Western Culture program -- blaming its death on the left -- and deprive students of the chance to study the West for the sake of gaining more fodder in a propaganda culture war.