Wes Vernon
Thursday October 30, 2003

The “Academic Bill of Rights” is backed by House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Tex., who says too many professors use classrooms “as their own personal soapboxes.”

In a statement e-mailed to NewsMax.com, DeLay said the measure “seeks to create a neutral learning environment on college campuses by highlighting the hiring practices that hamper intellectual diversity.”

Quality education, the majority leader believes, “should not take a back seat to the political agendas of self-serving teachers and administrators.”

Two committee chairmen—Rep. Christopher Cox, R-Calif., (Homeland Security) and Rep. Richard Pombo, R.-Calif. (Resources) have signed on as co-sponsors of the bill, as has Rep. Curt Weldon, R-Pa., Vice Chairman of Armed Services.

The measure urges colleges and universities to seek intellectual diversity,” along with a long list of other kinds of diversity they promote.

In an interview with NewsMax.com, the bill’s author Rep. Jack Kingston, R-Ga., says America’s campuses “ought to look at different philosophies and not discriminate against conservatives in their hiring practices, graduation speakers, funding and student activity clubs.”

Kingston says the lawmakers are “trying to force a national examination.” The congressman hopes academia itself would realize that, for example, “you know, maybe we really are out of whack. We’ve got a Political Science Department with fifteen Democrats and zero Republicans. Maybe there’s a little bias there we should examine.”

As NewsMax has reported, the organization Students for Academic Freedom is leading the national movement for balance in the halls of the nation’s institutions of higher learning. David Horowitz, the former radical leftist who is now a conservative, started the ball rolling on a movement that is gaining support in state legislatures (It has already stirred an uproar in Colorado), as well as in Congress here in Washington.

Having experienced intolerant disruption of his own campus speaking appearances, Horowitz is not optimistic that the self-righteous left will give up its total control of campus life without some rules of fairness.

Kingston, a high-ranking member of the House Appropriations Committee, clearly leaves the door open to using financial pressure on federally-funded universities that refuse to consider intellectual diversity.

“There are those in Congress and other legislative bodies who feel that it should be tied into money, that if universities are going to just flagrantly discriminate against conservatives, maybe there should be a penalty for it,” he told NewsMax.

There is precedent, the Georgia lawmaker notes. “A couple of years ago, there were a number of universities, including Harvard, that would not let armed services have recruiters on campus, or even have ROTC on campus, and we did withhold money until they came to their senses on that.”

At least one GOP lawmaker, speaking to NewsMax not for attribution, supports Kingston’s motivations and intent, but expressed concern that down the road, the measure could be interpreted in such a way as to harass religious institutions of higher learning that do want to hire people of their own faith.

Kingston says the bill contains specific language that has been vetted by some of the religious campuses and universities that were satisfied they are excluded. “We don’t want to mess with that,” he says.

Clara Lovett of the American Association for Higher Education calls the Kingston bill “totally absurd” because students have a wide variety of universities from which to choose and can select their own professors.

Kingston says Lovett should “look at the record” of left-wing groups on campuses compared to conservative groups and how many left-wing graduation speakers are invited compared to those with a conservative perspective.

The lawmaker cited an unnamed colleague whose daughter attends a university where the left-wing culture was so stifling that she would not tell anyone there that her father is a Republican congressman.

Among the bill’s co-sponsors—other than those mentioned above—are Reps. Walter Jones, R-N.C.; Roger Wicker, R-Miss.; Joe Pitts, R-Pa.; Joe Wilson, R-S.C.; John J. Duncan, Jr., R-Tenn.; Howard P.”Buck” McKeon, R-Calif.; Mario Diaz-Balart, R-Fla.; J.D. Hayworth, R-Ariz.; Wally Herger, R-Calif.; Ron Lewis, R-Ky.; Phil Gingrey, R-Ga.; Roscoe Bartlett, R-Md.; and Tom Osborne, R-Neb.; Rep. Ernest Istook, Jr., R-Okla.

“We’re thinking this bill is going to move,” Kingston predicts.