It began last fall, when flyers started appearing around campus, the letters TBGD emblazoned across them. Take Back Georgetown Day was coming to Georgetown: speakers were announced, registration began and, in the weeks just before the conference, a resolution calling for “Academic Freedom” was introduced in the GUSA. Then, last Saturday, ready to take it back, the conservatives came to campus. In the process, they began a controversy over just what free speech means on campus – and then exacerbated it.
Most students know that Georgetown’s Catholic heritage has left it with a student body that is more conservative than the average major university. We have conservative newspapers, large chapters of College Republicans, Right to Life and the Knights of Columbus. Conservative speakers regularly come to campus, whether they are from the government or, like Patrick Reilly today, simply conservative activists. Condoms aren’t sold on campus, and as recently as 2002 the University refused student requests for a Lesbian Gay Transgender and Questioning Resource Center, though it now has a LGBTQ Resource Director.
These conservatives gathered, in the words of the charismatic founding chairman of TBGD, Alex Bosmoski (COL ‘08), because “conservatives at Georgetown needed an event that would showcase our strength and solidarity and invoke a sense of camaraderie and confidence.” Coordinators estimate that about 250 people showed up over the course of the day, including students from Georgetown, American and George Washington Universities, parents, conservative activists and one young man who drove down from New Jersey with his parents. But, with the conservative movement arguably at its peak in the United States, why are they taking back Georgetown? And from whom?
The “who” is simple: liberals, and more specifically, liberal faculty. Studies since the 1960s show that a majority of faculty at major universities are left-leaning, and last fall The Hoya reported that the overwhelming majority of Georgetown faculty political donations went to Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.), the Democratic candidate for president. Here’s the “why:” according to another poll, students feel these professors inject their own views inappropriately into class, making conservative students uncomfortable. According to the poll, 29 percent of students across the country felt the need to agree with their professor to get a good grade. Even worse, some conservatives allege, is when those perceptions are true and professors assign a student’s grade based on their ideology.
Academic Freedom?
“If someone discriminates against you because of your race, you have to prove that. If you can prove someone discriminated against you because of what you believe, then it becomes an issue of Academic Freedom,” Anthony Bonna (MSB ‘09), one of the Directors of the TBGD Committee, said, explaining why he feels that ideological protection deserves a place in University policy.
Bonna is the freshman GUSA representative who introduced the Academic Freedom Resolution. He argues that the University Bias Reporting system, designed to prevent discrimination based on a variety of factors from race to religion, doesn’t adequately protect political belief—even though the system includes this statement: “The University values freedom of expression and the open exchange of ideas and, in particular, the expression of controversial ideas and differing views is a vital part of the University discourse.” The statement goes on to note that this policy does not protect expressions of bias such as racial discrimination; Bonna’s resolution would ask them to protect it as well as take further steps to create “freedom from ideological intimidation.”
Though I spoke to many attendees at TBGD, no one could cite a specific instance of academic bias, and though there were many anecdotes of Bush-bashing, professorial eye-rolling and the occasional anti-conservative polemic, no one knew of any grade discrimination. Without documented incidents, most of the support behind Academic Freedom comes from polling and a man named David Horowitz.
Horowitz, who spoke on campus last year, began his career as a liberal activist before he underwent an ideological conversion to conservatism. For both sides, Horowitz’s stock in trade was identity politics, the idea that political identity comes from one’s personal identity. When Horowitz worked with the Black Panthers in the ‘70s, their political beliefs were based on their racial identity. Now, as a conservative activist, Horowitz wants to do the same thing: conservative political beliefs aren’t beliefs, they’re an intrinsic part of a person’s identity, and they can’t be discriminated against. Adherents to identity politics portray themselves as persecuted underdogs—though whether certain groups are really persecuted is up for debate.
Horowitz started the Academic Freedom Campaign to further his ideas on college campuses across the country. The organization lobbies state legislatures and private colleges to adopt his “Academic Bill of Rights,” which calls for faculty diversity and protects an environment conducive to the free exchange of all ideas. His ideas seem, at first glance, perfectly reasonable. And they are the ideas that were adopted, word for word, in Bonna’s resolution.
Some Free Speech
TBGD included workshops on politics and policy, an internship fair and a number of big-name speakers. The event was, logistically, perfect: on-schedule and on-message. It was a gathering of mainstream conservatives: people were talking about privatizing, well, everything, remembering Ronald Reagan fondly, chatting by the pro-life booth. The wing-nuts (with the exception of one far-right Catholic group) were kept out of the show. The biggest surprise at the event was the presence of a pro-choice Republican group, whose representatives candidly told me they didn’t expect to have a lot of luck winning anyone over.
The main speakers were Rep. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.), expected to be elected House Majority Leader today; Fred Barnes, a dean of the conservative punditocracy; and young conservative writer Jonah Goldberg. Blunt offered little more than talking points and—like almost everyone I spoke with—shied away from discussing lobbying reform beyond noting a need for deregulation and transparency. Blunt took $8,500 in contributions from disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff.
Goldberg and Barnes had more to say, perhaps because they don’t need to worry about reelection. Barnes was there to talk about his new book, Rebel-in-Chief, a paean to President Bush. He congratulated TBGD attendees by calling their efforts “Reaganesque” and then wandered off on a variety of points, among them that the EU isn’t important, that in the last election the president had 1.5 million volunteers while Kerry had to pay his supporters and that Democrats think that “we don’t need to do anything about terrorists, we haven’t had an attack in five years.” It’s not hard to see that these statements are somewhat inaccurate.
Barnes started off with a story about pro-life Republican Rep. Henry Hyde (R-Il.) debating abortion with pro-choice Republican Rep. Millicent Fenwick (R-N.J.). After a long argument, Fenwick came up to Hyde and asked him to stop bringing up this divisive issue. Hyde replied that he would never stop fighting abortion because, as an adopted child, he was always grateful his mother hadn’t chosen to have an abortion. Fenwick, struck by Hyde’s story, didn’t debate him again. But that’s not the joke. Hyde, Barnes said, was lying—he had not been adopted. The auditorium filled with laughter.
So it was left to Goldberg to make a real point, which, in between jokes, he did. Universities, he said, are liberal because liberals are willing to accept entry-level academic jobs with bad pay and they hope to change the world by telling it the truth. On this liberal campus, he said, conservatives get a better education, simply because their education must be active if they are always challenging their professors. But the main reason that conservatives aren’t found on campus, according to Goldberg, is that it’s impossible for them to get hired.
The Feith Affair
Last semester, after School of Foreign Service Dean Robert Galluci voiced an interest in hiring former Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith for a “Distinguished Professorship,” faculty members protested. Conservatives argued that Feith, himself a prominent conservative, was denied the post because of his involvement in the Bush Administration’s planning for the war in Iraq and his political views.
Gallucci could not be reached for comment because he was out of the country, but Professor Charles King, chair of SFS Faculty, told The Voice that the SFS faculty’s “near unanimous” opposition was based on Dean Galluci’s failure to consult with them before considering the appointment. He noted that political viewpoints in the SFS are varied.
“You can find people who have served in Republican administrations and those who have served in Democratic ones,” King wrote in an e-mail message. “You can find people who support the Iraq war, those who support it but think it was carried out poorly and those who are fundamentally opposed to the entire endeavor … I hope students do feel uncomfortable from time to time in class, either because a view being presented does not accord with their own or because they are being pushed to examine ideas and questions that are difficult to handle. But any effort to stifle speech or thought … runs counter to the aims of a university.”
During TBGD, however, Georgetown Law Professor Viet Dinh, who as a high-level Justice Department official drafted the text of the Patriot Act, argued that Georgetown doesn’t have the necessary diversity, saying, “we need to take back Georgetown to be a university again.”
Is this a case of campus politics that eager hands made national? Or does Georgetown University have a sincere bias?
GUSA Controversy
GUSA, too, became part of the debate with the Academic Freedom Resolution. When it first appeared before the assembly, three weeks ago, it lost by two votes. This week it passed, with a few changes and amendments.
Bonna’s original resolution included a clause commending TBGD and its organizers for their hard work on the issue. Bonna and others blamed this divisive clause for the resolution’s original failure, but it also caused Assembly Chairman Ed Duffy (SFS ‘07) to step in and modify the resolution. He weakened the wording of the commendation and added a procedure that would allow students to note the political environment created by their professors in course evaluations, completed once every semester.
Sophomore Representative Charlie Harrington (COL ‘08) amended the resolution to eliminate the commendation in the resolution; before the bill passed, he had told The Voice that he believes GUSA resolutions need to affect tangible results.
“It’s important for GUSA to address the problems that are facing students,” Harrington said. “But taking political stances on any issues is not something we should be doing.”
Bonna said that while he was glad the resolution had passed, he was disappointed that TBGD’s members had not been commended for their role in bringing the issue further, which he said was “equally important.” He pointed to another resolution passed that day that commended a racial diversity group as an example of a double standard. In an interview last week, Bonna argued again that the issue is not one of politics but of discrimination.
“It’s a bit hypocritical of some members to support diversity on one hand but not the other,” he said.
Who’s the Hypocrite?
Even as I interviewed Bonna about the Academic Freedom Resolution, he wanted to tell me about a protest he was planning against the upcoming performance of the “Vagina Monologues.” Look at Barnes’ exaggerations and story about Rep. Hyde, or Horowitz’s disinterest in attempting to pass Academic Freedom Resolutions at conservative schools. Consider TBGD attendees’ responses when I asked about the Bill O’Reilly show or congressional Democrats being locked out of legislative discussions: Most dodged the questions; Bozmoski told me that the national debate “should be up to the people.” All this points to an effort to politicize their attempts to bring freer debate to Georgetown. Otherwise, why keep the divisive commendation in the resolution? Why refuse suggestions to work with a liberal or nonpartisan group on less divisive resolution?
The answer seems to be identity politics. Indeed, everyone who spoke to me agreed that a fair exchange of ideas should be given great priority at Georgetown, and even liberal students conceded that some professors go too far in pushing their views. But liberals and a few conservatives didn’t see immediate harm to the Georgetown education. After all, there are some (though not many) conservative professors on campus, and many liberal professors do keep politics out of the classroom. Many students noted that political views weren’t as simple as liberal and conservative—many professors who identify as liberals are free marketers, a traditionally conservative issue. But more than their politics, shouldn’t the University be concerned with a Professor’s teaching skills?
“I think we have to think very carefully about what balance means,” King said. “Should biologists teach both evolution and ‘intelligent design’ in order to achieve ‘balance’? Surely, balance cannot mean presenting all imaginable points of view. Rather, the basic issue to me is not what kinds of views are being expressed, but how well a professor creates an open environment for discussion and debate.”
Even conservative faculty members believe that Academic Freedom is not a problem on Georgetown’s campus.
“People might feel uncomfortable at certain times, but I don’t think that’s a problem,” Professor Raymond Tanter said. “I think students can vote with their feet by boycotting such professors. It’s inappropriate behavior but its not unacceptable. I would only proscribe that which is unacceptable and tolerate the inappropriate, hoping that the free marketplace of ideas would be a deciding factor, which is really a conservative position.”
GUSA President Pravin Rajan (SFS ‘07) noted that the Center for Student Programs had released data indicating that only 20 percent of professors believe their students speak enough in class.
“Students are intimidated by professors, but professors think students don’t debate enough in class. Course evaluations [modified by the Academic Freedom Resolution] could help fix that, but I hope it doesn’t lead to political correctness in class. … The net result is we now have [evaluations] that will provide us with more information.”
New information and a new awareness of the issue of political intimidation will provide Georgetown with a continuing discussion of what it means to be a center for intellectual development—and hopefully, an empowered campus conservative movement won’t use political intimidation to affect that discussion.
