Academic Freedom Under Attack

Does anyone here know anything about the recent rash of bills floating around the country regarding academic freedom?
If your not aware, David Horowitz Conservative nut case drafted a "bill of Rights" for students to allow them to stop being persecuted for religious and or political beliefs. The very ambiguous bill contains such language as " professors will not engage in controversial or offensive material" Sound crazy? Well it's picking up steam all over the country.
At my university a handful of college republicans passed a resolution to put this into law at our school. It's currently waiting in the wings, but I have high hopes that it will fail.
Check out the website and see for yourselves:
http://www.studentsforacademicfreedom.org/

This is a serious problem folks. The Republicans perceive that the Academy is the last liberal frontier and they are attacking with a vengeance. I already started a counter group called the AFA Academic Freedom Alliance which is open to students, grad students (me) and professors alike. We already have quite a few profs. join including the chair of our English department.

As a born again Christian I can honestly say that in the 4 institutions I have attended (AS, BA, MA and now PhD) I have never been belittled or mocked for my beliefs. This is an imaginary problem that is blown way out of proportion by the right to get a foothold on the youth.
Michael

We give them some prominent professors in big-name universities if they put liberals on the board of directors for all major corporations.

Seems fair to me!

Where can I sign up to be a CEO, show me where! I want my $260,000,000 a year salary now dammit :)

If they are "persecuted" as they claim, why attend a college? Why not attend Bob Jones or something? If they really are being persecuted, wouldn't they fail their courses or not be allowed to even attend? I had professors make weird remarks but they never held any of us to it.

I don't think they are being persecuted, at least not in the large number they claim. Sure there will be an occasional prof. that pushed his/her beliefs too far (whatever that may be), but there are already avenues that students can take for this.
In my class, I show Fahrenheit 911, Bowling for Columbine, and the Corporation. I also give right wing students plenty of voice and time to state their opinions.
But yeah, your right, part of college is confronting controversy and learning to think for yourselves. If these guys win, we will be doing exactly what high schools do: making better patriotic citizens.
High schools are a lost cause.
Michael

I went to an independent liberal arts college. Our college promoted being exposed to conflicting view points. College isn't supposed to be about indoctorination, it is about better learning how to think. Being exposed to different view points helps one learn how to think.
For those who do not want that experience, as someone else mentioned, there are several institutions that will not challenge a religious right student's view points.
For such students attending state universities for price reasons, I am sure that the campus religious right organization could organize a professor list on their own for sensitive students.

Conservatism tends to see things in simple terms good/evil, black/white, with me/against me and as a movement it has an extremely low tolerance for ambiguity. The existance of competing ideas is denied as much as possible, if one slips thru it becomes a problem to solve through authoritarianism.

Education broadens (hence liberalizes) the owner's perspective. Knowledge tends to increase rather than decrease categories and challenges traditional boundaries of sterotyped categories. So education creates category crisis, uncertainty and grayness, the very ambiguity that conservatives hate.

Conservatives go absolutely crazy over things like cultural relativism. They see liberal relativism as a product of education and view it as the liberals' great ally in brainwashing society.

Conservatives really do see ambiguity in the way that they use it. As a tool to challenge knock down opponents'ideas (think about the way they use Intelligent Design).

Consequently, they feel all their simplistic but cherished beliefs are attacked by erudition and the nuanced understanding it generates in the same way.

If youlook up the term liberalism in the OED it means "the study of arts and sciences"
I love how the right co-opted the term and made it mean "relitive" and "evil"
Michael

Basically, to be conservative is to "be close-minded" and somewhat nostalgic for a time that may or may not have existed. To be Liberal is to be "open-minded" and always exploring our world to find new and interesting ways to solve the new problems we face. Conservatism basically ignores these problems and sees them as problems caused by "liberals", aka educated and open-minded people who thoroughly understand the problems facing the world today. Glad I'm on the right side. :)

know that our job is to teach kids how to think, not tell them what to believe.

This is just plain ole horseshit. Horowitz's latest cause.