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UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA RESCINDS INVITATION TO WILLIAM AYERS

The University of Nebraska, at the request of Gov. Dave Heineman wisely rescinded their invitation for William Ayers to speak on campus. Of course UN falsely cited security issues as the reason for the action.

UNL guest speaker William Ayers will not be speaking at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln campus tonight. Ayers, a 1960s radical-turned-professor at the University of Illinois, was scheduled to talk during a campus event.

Just 11 days after next month’s election, the University of Illinois-Chicago professor, William Ayers, is scheduled to speak at a student research conference held by the UNL College of Education and Human Science.
University officials said in a news release Friday evening that "the university’s threat assessment group monitored e-mails and other information UNL received regarding Ayers’ scheduled Nov. 15 visit and identified safety concerns which resulted in the university canceling the event."

(details to follow)

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Alert: The University of Nebraska-Lincoln should uninvite William Ayers to speak on campus, Nebraska's governor said today.

Gov. Dave Heineman released a statement saying that UNL leaders should not allow Ayers, a 1960s radical-turned-professor at the University of Illinois, to talk during a campus event on Nov. 15.

"Chairman of the Board of Regents Chuck Hassebrook and President of the University J.B. Milliken should immediately rescind the invitation extended to Bill Ayers to speak at the University," the governor said. "This is an embarrassment to the University of Nebraska and the State of Nebraska. Bill Ayers is a well known radical who should never have been invited to the University of Nebraska."

Meanwhile, Sen. Ben Nelson, D-Nebraska, today said in a statement that he is disappointed that UNL invited William Ayers to speak on campus Nov. 15.

"His past involvement in a violent protest group and incendiary comments are not consistent with the agenda of unity that we need in America today," Nelson said. "I encourage the university to reconsider this decision."

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Previous story

Invitation to Ayers likely to cost UNL

It appears a speaking invitation to a 1960s radical-turned-educator could prove costly to the University of Nebraska-Lincoln — either in terms of its academic reputation or donor dollars.

The Gilbert M. and Martha H. Hitchcock Foundation in Omaha informed the university today that it will halt all future contributions to the university unless the UNL education faculty un-invites William Ayers from his Nov. 15 speaking engagement on campus.

While other donors he's talked to haven't been so explicit, Clarence Castner, who leads the University of Nebraska Foundation, said it's become clear that other future contributions "are in jeopardy."

At the same time, a decision to pull an invitation to Ayers, who has a national reputation as an expert in education reform, would be seen as a snub and school-sponsored curb on academic freedom by educators nationally.

ACADEMIC FREEDOM

Many of us realized years ago that the American University was rapidly becoming a closed, radical, left wing institution, bent on preserving a fundamentalist atmosphere that stifles the very freedom it professes to embrace. Thus prompting Students for Academic Freedom to create an academic bill of rights. I posted the whole bill here and highlighted a few principal ideas espoused in the document:

I. The Mission of the University.

The central purposes of a University are the pursuit of truth, the discovery of new knowledge through scholarship and research, the study and reasoned criticism of intellectual and cultural traditions, the teaching and general development of students to help them become creative individuals and productive citizens of a pluralistic democracy, and the transmission of knowledge and learning to a society at large. Free inquiry and free speech within the academic community are indispensable to the achievement of these goals. The freedom to teach and to learn depend upon the creation of appropriate conditions and opportunities on the campus as a whole as well as in the classrooms and lecture halls. These purposes reflect the values -- pluralism, diversity, opportunity, critical intelligence, openness and fairness -- that are the cornerstones of American society.

II. Academic Freedom

1. The Concept . Academic freedom and intellectual diversity are values indispensable to the American university. From its first formulation in the General Report of the Committee on Academic Freedom and Tenure of the American Association of University Professors, the concept of academic freedom has been premised on the idea that human knowledge is a never-ending pursuit of the truth, that there is no humanly accessible truth that is not in principle open to challenge, and that no party or intellectual faction has a monopoly on wisdom. Therefore, academic freedom is most likely to thrive in an environment of intellectual diversity that protects and fosters independence of thought and speech. In the words of the General Report, it is vital to protect "as the first condition of progress, [a] complete and unlimited freedom to pursue inquiry and publish its results."

Because free inquiry and its fruits are crucial to the democratic enterprise itself, academic freedom is a national value as well. In a historic 1967 decision ( Keyishian v. Board of Regents of the University of the State of New York ) the Supreme Court of the United States overturned a New York State loyalty provision for teachers with these words: "Our Nation is deeply committed to safeguarding academic freedom, [a] transcendent value to all of us and not merely to the teachers concerned." In Sweezy v. New Hampshire, (1957) the Court observed that the "essentiality of freedom in the community of American universities [was] almost self-evident."

2. The Practice . Academic freedom consists in protecting the intellectual independence of professors, researchers and students in the pursuit of knowledge and the expression of ideas from interference by legislators or authorities within the institution itself. This means that no political, ideological or religious orthodoxy will be imposed on professors and researchers through the hiring or tenure or termination process, or through any other administrative means by the academic institution. Nor shall legislatures impose any such orthodoxy through their control of the university budget.

This protection includes students. From the first statement on academic freedom, it has been recognized that intellectual independence means the protection of students - as well as faculty - from the imposition of any orthodoxy of a political, religious or ideological nature. The 1915 General Report admonished faculty to avoid "taking unfair advantage of the student's immaturity by indoctrinating him with the teacher's own opinions before the student has had an opportunity fairly to examine other opinions upon the matters in question, and before he has sufficient knowledge and ripeness of judgment to be entitled to form any definitive opinion of his own." In 1967, the AAUP's Joint Statement on Rights and Freedoms of Students reinforced and amplified this injunction by affirming the inseparability of "the freedom to teach and freedom to learn." In the words of the report, "Students should be free to take reasoned exception to the data or views offered in any course of study and to reserve judgment about matters of opinion."

Therefore, to secure the intellectual independence of faculty and students and to protect the principle of intellectual diversity, the following principles and procedures shall be observed.

These principles fully apply only to public universities and to private universities that present themselves as bound by the canons of academic freedom. Private institutions choosing to restrict academic freedom on the basis of creed have an obligation to be as explicit as is possible about the scope and nature of these restrictions.

1. All faculty shall be hired, fired, promoted and granted tenure on the basis of their competence and appropriate knowledge in the field of their expertise and, in the humanities, the social sciences, and the arts, with a view toward fostering a plurality of methodologies and perspectives. No faculty shall be hired or fired or denied promotion or tenure on the basis of his or her political or religious beliefs.

2. No faculty member will be excluded from tenure, search and hiring committees on the basis of their political or religious beliefs.

3. Students will be graded solely on the basis of their reasoned answers and appropriate knowledge of the subjects and disciplines they study, not on the basis of their political or religious beliefs.

4. Curricula and reading lists in the humanities and social sciences should reflect the uncertainty and unsettled character of all human knowledge in these areas by providing students with dissenting sources and viewpoints where appropriate. While teachers are and should be free to pursue their own findings and perspectives in presenting their views, they should consider and make their students aware of other viewpoints. Academic disciplines should welcome a diversity of approaches to unsettled questions.

5. Exposing students to the spectrum of significant scholarly viewpoints on the subjects examined in their courses is a major responsibility of faculty. Faculty will not use their courses for the purpose of political, ideological, religious or anti-religious indoctrination.

6. Selection of speakers, allocation of funds for speakers programs and other student activities will observe the principles of academic freedom and promote intellectual pluralism.

7. An environment conducive to the civil exchange of ideas being an essential component of a free university, the obstruction of invited campus speakers, destruction of campus literature or other effort to obstruct this exchange will not be tolerated.

8. Knowledge advances when individual scholars are left free to reach their own conclusions about which methods, facts, and theories have been validated by research. Academic institutions and professional societies formed to advance knowledge within an area of research, maintain the integrity of the research process, and organize the professional lives of related researchers serve as indispensable venues within which scholars circulate research findings and debate their interpretation. To perform these functions adequately, academic institutions and professional societies should maintain a posture of organizational neutrality with respect to the substantive disagreements that divide researchers on questions within, or outside, their fields of inquiry.

Essentially leftist academicians engage in some of the lowest forms of behavior by indoctrinating young, impressionable student who do not yet possess the tools to process the information thrown at them. The whole affair points to the necessity of parents laying a good educational/philosophical foundation at home.

PRINCETON REVIEW LIKES TEXAS TECH UNIVERSITY

Texas Tech University in Lubbock, Texas (home of Buddy Holly) is one of the outstanding Universities in the US. This according to the Princeton Review via The Daily Toreadore:

One company took a look at Texas Tech and made a decision: The university's 30,000 students could've done worse.

The Princeton Review, a New York-based educational services company, chose Texas Tech as one of the best colleges in the western United States for 2009.

"We are, in my opinion, and have been for some time one of the very best (universities) in the nation," said Tech Chancellor Kent Hance, "and it thrilled me that The Princeton Review recognized what I have known for quite some time. It ties in with my motto for Texas Tech: 'It's more than a great education.'"

Every year, The Princeton Review identifies schools that it considers to be the best in the country, said Jeanne Krier, a spokesperson for the company. There are 632 colleges that received regional designations like Tech's, including 120 in the West.

Krier said it is special for a school to be chosen by The Princeton Review because there are about 2,500 four-year colleges in the United States, which means one out of every five schools receives an honorary title from the company.

The Princeton Review's college evaluation process has many steps, and, before it is chosen, a school must first be seen as academically outstanding to the National College Advisory Board, she said, which is 25 college advisers across the country who make suggestions about the schools. Also, a representative of the company visits and evaluates about 50 campuses per year.

"The third thing they do is they try a real balance of schools from different states - large schools and small ones, men's colleges, women's colleges and so forth - so it gives a prospective applicant a nice variety of great schools to consider," Krier said.

GOOD NEWS FROM THE UNIVERSITY SCENE

In light of the controversial news surrounding recent events at Columbia University, we read this good news coming out of Harvard:

For my book about faith among the nation’s elite, I interviewed dozens of leaders who went to Harvard as undergraduate or graduate students. Those who were on campus during the 1960s and 1970s talk about how little “God talk” could be heard on campus. One leader told me the evangelicals on campus were “running scared intellectually.” Campus ministry groups were small, and evangelicals rarely sponsored campus-wide events. Sure, there were evangelical students, but they were not prominent as a group. And evangelicals everywhere had a reputation for being anti-intellectual.

Times have changed. The Reverend Peter Gomes, Minister of Harvard’s Memorial Church, says, “There are probably more evangelicals [on Harvard’s campus today] than at any time since the seventeenth century.” The Ivy League’s desire for diversity opened new doors for religious students. Evangelical groups today sponsor campus-wide forums, Bible studies, and debates about the relevance of faith to everything from science to international affairs.

In part, this can be attributed to the growing number of Asian-American students. On many Ivy League campuses, they have come to dominate evangelical groups. At Yale, 90 percent of the Campus Crusade for Christ members are Asian American; in the 1980s, the same chapter was 100 percent white. In fact, the growing presence of Asian-Americans on elite campuses may be the single largest demographic factor in evangelicalism’s ascent at places like Yale and Harvard.

Regional diversity has also been important. Harvard made a concerted push to recruit talented students from all over the country, and it now draws students from parts of the country where evangelicalism is vibrant—the South and Midwest. This, coupled with the fact that evangelicals are less likely than other religious groups to abandon their faith when they head off to college, has created an upsurge of evangelicals on campus.

But the story is not all explained by demographic change. Evangelicals have launched a series of initiatives aimed at creating more evangelical influence at Harvard. These have included special scholarship programs for students, support for evangelical ministries, and even an endowed chair in evangelical theological studies at the Harvard Divinity School. I talked with one evangelical philanthropist who has supported initiatives like these, programs that have led to what Alan Wolfe has termed “the opening of the evangelical mind.” I asked what she would do, if she had her wish, to make the evangelical community more thoughtful and intellectually respectable. She replied directly: “what we’re doing.”

This sort of revival on University campuses represents a trend going on among many evangelical young people that declares one need not commit intellectual suicide to embrace Christian faith. Hopefully these young faithful will enter academia bring renewal to that particular culture. The process may take years before the fruit of evangelical laborers appears.

(Hat tip: Andrew Sullivan)

COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESIDENT SPEAKS

On the eve of Iranian President Ahmadinejad's polemical visit to Columbia University, the school's president
Lee Bollinger makes a few pertinent points. Fox News reports:

President Lee Bollinger issued a lengthy statement defending the school's decision to host Ahmadinejad and said that during his introduction to the event, he would challenge the Iranian president on the following:

—the Iranian president's denial of the Holocaust;

—his public call for the destruction of Israel;

—his reported support for international terrorism that targets innocent civilians and American troops;

—Iran's pursuit of nuclear ambitions in opposition to international sanctions;

—his government's widely documented suppression of civil society and particularly women's rights;

—his government's imprisoning of journalists and scholars, including one of Columbia's own alumni, Dr. Kian Tajbakhsh.

"Columbia, as a community dedicated to learning and scholarship, is committed to confronting ideas," Bollinger said in his statement. "On occasion this will bring us into contact with beliefs many, most or even all of us will find offensive and even odious. ...

"It should never be thought that merely to listen to ideas we deplore in any way implies our endorsement of those ideas, or the weakness of our resolve to resist those ideas or our naiveté about the very dangers in such ideas."

Bollinger said that the "faith in freedom" is "our nation's most potent weapon against repressive regimes everywhere in the world. This is America at its best."

Meanwhile, Columbia's cancelled Minuteman founder and president Jim Gilchrist offers some enlightenment on the whole affair. Again Fox News reports:

Gilchrist, for his part, praised Columbia's administrators and faculty but expressed disdain for students who have been able to sway the school not to invite certain visitors of whom they don't approve. "The administration is very much for free speech. I have to commend the administration," Gilchrist said. "It's the caveman mentalities on campus that have seized control about what will be tolerated and what will not be tolerated. ... I'm ashamed of the student body there. They're showing very poor leadership."

Traditionally universities, which pride themselves on the virtue of intellectual challenge often shrink like Casper milk toast in the face of any sort of intimidating student groups. We witnessed this bullyism unfold during the Vietnam war. Some may recall those vivid images on the nightly news of student demonstrators, and the national guard gunning down students at Kent State. The archives of Northwestern University remind us of another historical event from the era:

Several events of the strike merit special mention. First, for several days student activists managed to erect a barricade at Sheridan Road and Chicago Avenue, even as Evanston Police re- routed traffic around areas of student congregation. The Sheridan barricade proved to be a point of contention between the students and the Evanston community, as many community members expressed frustration at the inconvenience. Second, although the University Senate initially resolved that the strike would last only through Friday, May 8, students voted on that Friday to extend the strike through the following Wednesday. That evening, a rally at Dyche Stadium (now Ryan Field) attracted about 5,000 students and community members. Evanston city officials, fearing violence, requested that the National Guard be called in. However, the Guard was diverted from the stadium at the last minute and conflict was avoided. Third, on Wednesday, May 13, the day the strike was to end and classes resume as normal, a group of about 40 students and other young activists broke into the Northwestern NROTC headquarters in Lunt Hall, where they broke furniture and destroyed files and other organizational material. There were only minor injuries, but despite student protests the administration decided to press charges against the 33 Northwestern students arrested at the site. This incident proved to be the only violent episode of the strike. One significant product of the strike was the creation of a short-lived “New University” to educate the community about the war in Vietnam as well as other social and political issues of concern during the course of the strike and beyond. The New University involved faculty as well as students, who were successful at designing and implementing courses, art projects, performances and demonstrations. They also produced their own daily newspaper, On Strike! The Official Newspaper of the New University (May 6-17, 1970; see the University Archives’ Serials Collection, call number 31/00/99). On Tuesday, May 12, students voted to return to class on May 13 under a provisional plan which provided that they could attend their regular classes or go to alternative New University classes designed to further the aims of the strike. Negotiations of various student demands continued over the remaining weeks of the semester; trustees agreed to open the stock portfolio to public scrutiny but administrators declined to disarm University security personnel. The nation-wide campus protests of May 1970 brought a new level of attention to the anti-war sentiment of the American public; in this way, they were responsible in some part for the eventual withdrawal of American forces from Vietnam in 1973.

One must ask about adult leadership during times like these. Non seems to exist. A university which allows the students to bamboozle them by giving our military the boot and opening their arms to a two bit dictator, all in the name of academic freedom, ought to lose credibility with all future prospective students. They've demonstrated their academic ineffectiveness through their leadership vacuum. True intellectual parity and honesty can only come about when adult leaders grow up and actually lead.

Front Page Magazine describes the event:

Beginning on October 22, student groups across the nation will hold Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week on their campuses. These protest weeks will feature a series of events designed to bring a message to these academic communities that challenges most of what students are taught about the so-called War on Terror both in the classroom and on the quad.

The Week’s events will include speeches about Islamo-Fascism by prominent figures, including former Senator Rick Santorum (Penn State, Temple and UPenn), Sean Hannity (Columbia), Ann Coulter (Tulane and USC), Dennis Prager (UC Santa Barbara), Robert Spencer (Brown, Dartmouth, University of Rhode Island, and DePaul), Daniel Pipes (Northeastern and UPenn), David Horowitz (Columbia, Emory, Ohio State, Michigan and Wisconsin), Michael Ledeen (Maryland), Nonie Darwish (UCLA and Berkeley), Wafa Sultan (Stanford) and radio talk show hosts Melanie Morgan (San Francisco State), Michael Medved (University of Washington), Martha Zoeller (Georgia Tech), Alan Nathan (George Mason), Mark Larson (to be named) and many others.

A major theme of the Week will be the oppression of women in Islam. The photo accompanying this article, which shows a teenage girl buried before being stoned to death for alleged sexual offenses, will serve as the poster for the protest Week. The stoning took place in Iran.

THE PERSIAN HITLER

Jewish scholar and author David Horowitz has a few discriminating thoughts to offer regarding the one he calls "Persian Hitler." Read more here.
(Hat Tip: Atlas Shrugs)

THE DUKE'S SPIRIT LIVES ON

This one's sure to make liberal white flag types nervous:

College students are pushing for their schools to allow them to carry guns on campus, saying they should have the right to protect themselves in a situation like the one in which 32 Virginia Tech students and faculty were fatally shot. Andrew Dysart, a George Mason University senior, organized a chapter of Students for Concealed Carry on Campus, which hopes to persuade legislators to overturn a Virginia law that allows universities to prohibit students, faculty and staff members with gun permits from carrying their weapons onto campus. "There's no way to know what could have happened, but the students at Tech, they really should have had a chance," Mr. Dysart said of the April 16 shootings in which gunman Seung-hui Cho killed 32 persons, then fatally shot himself. "They should have had the chance to defend themselves if it came down to that." Virginia law lets schools decide whether to allow students with concealed-weapons permits to carry their guns on campus. One state school, Blue Ridge Community College, gave permission. Schools cannot prohibit nonstudents or other outsiders from carrying weapons onto campuses if they have legal permits.

John Wayne, where were you when we needed you? Read more here.

UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO PRESIDENT TALKS ABOUT FIRING PROFESSOR CHURCHILL

It's about accountability stupid, or so Mr. Brown claims. In a W$J op.ed. piece today Mr. Brown states:

But his case is about far more than academic misconduct. It is about the accountability that public universities must demonstrate. Mr. Churchill's difficulties in facing up to his academic responsibilities are in many ways emblematic of higher education's trouble with accountability. Too often, colleges and universities tend to insulate themselves in ivy-covered buildings and have not been as diligent as necessary to ensure that the academic enterprise is conducted rigorously and honestly. This elitist attitude is simply outdated, and our university has made tenure reforms -- precipitated by the Churchill case -- that will ensure academic integrity.

Universities, particularly public research universities, are accountable to those who have a stake in their success and efficient operation. At the University of Colorado, this includes the people of Colorado who contribute $200 million in taxes annually, the federal agencies that provide some $640 million annually in research funding, the alumni who want to maintain the value of their degrees, the faculty who expect their colleagues to act with integrity and the students who trust that faculty who teach them meet high professional standards.

Controversy -- especially self-sought controversy -- doesn't immunize a faculty member from adhering to professional standards. If you are a responsible faculty member, you don't falsify research, you don't plagiarize the work of others, you don't fabricate historical events and you don't thumb your nose at the standards of the profession. More than 20 of Mr. Churchill's faculty peers from Colorado and other universities found that he committed those acts. That's what got him fired.

To be sure, Churchill's debacle raises an accountability issue. And Mr. Brown clearly suggests the problem exists within the university. But he fails to address the exact nature of the issue. Why did the University hire this man in the first place? Forget his radical views. Universities hire a legion of credentialed radicals. The Free Republic touched on this concern as it relates to Churchill's initial employment with the UC:

Of course two administrators went around the normal procedures in hiring the University of Colorado professor who went on to compare September 11 victims to "little Eichmanns." Although Churchill's scholarship is under fire now for alleged sloppiness and fabrication, CU officials in 1990 considered him an expert in American Indian studies who might be lost to another school. "Ward is certainly being courted by other universities as a significant Indian scholar and teacher. It would be a shame to lose him because of a standard which may be irrelevant in this case," Howe wrote Middleton in an e-mail, referring to Churchill's lack of a doctorate. The correspondence between Howe and Middleton was among documents released to KHOW radio talk show host Dan Caplis, who shared them with the Rocky Mountain News. Churchill had worked as an administrtor and lecturer at Colorado University since the late 1970s. His salary is now $94,000. His income as a lecturer will likely rise as a result of his notoriety. The e-mails between Howe and Middleton were exchanged between May 16 and May 18, 1990. Churchill was informed in a letter dated June 5, 1990, that he had been selected to teach two courses in American Indian studies the following spring. Then-Chancellor James Corbridge recommended tenure for Churchill in April 1991. It was approved by the CU regents that month. Such short-cuts to tenure may be appropriate for senior faculty tenured at another institution but not for someone of Churchill's standing. Here is the speculative Alger Hiss connection: His honorary doctorate from Alfred University in 1992 may have been an attempt to shore up his scholarly standing. He had ties with Alfred's Human Studies Division, which had earlier attempted to get the Cold War traitor Alger Hiss hired full-time, according to a long-time Alfred University faculty member, in a phone interview with me today. Fierce opposition blocked the Hiss appointment. What must be emphasized here is not the fate of one crackpot professor who happened to be caught in the public spotlight but rather the collapse of academic standards his hiring signifies. Why did the trustees rubber stamp his appointment? Insofar as these are political appointments to a public university, why shouldn't political responsibility be assessed? Who assumes responsibility-- whether for Churchill or Hiss? (About the author of this piece: Ken Masugi is the Director of the Center for Local Government. Its purpose is to apply the principles of the American Founding to the theory and practice of local government, the cradle of American self-government. Dr. Masugi has extensive experience in government and academia. Following his initial appointment at the Claremont Institute (1982-86), he was a special assistant to then-Chairman Clarence Thomas of the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. After his years in Washington, he held visiting university appointments including Olin Distinguished Visiting Professor at the U.S. Air Force Academy. Dr. Masugi is co-author with Brian Janiskee of Democracy in California: Politics and Government in the Golden State (Rowman & Littlefield, 2002). He is co-editor of six books on political thought, including The Supreme Court and American Constitutionalism with Branford P. Wilson, (Ashbrook Series, 1997); The Ambiguous Legacy of the Enlightenment with William Rusher, (University Press, 1995); The American Founding with J. Jackson Barlow and Leonard W. Levy, (Greenwood Press, 1988). He is the editor of Interpreting Tocqueville's Democracy in America, (Rowman & Littlefield, 1991). He is author of numerous essays and reviews of works on political theory, constitutional law, public policy, and films. Dr. Masugi has also published in the popular press, including the Los Angeles Times, Orange County Register, Washington Post, Washington Times, National Review, and the Weekly Standard.)

In addition Discover The Network implicitly raises the accountability issue placing the UC's administration in a disparaging light:

Ward Churchill holds a BA and MA in Communications from Sangamon State, an “experimental” school for student radicals in Illinois. His academic expertise is as an artist. Yet on the basis of his claim to be a member of the Ketoowah Cherokee tribe (it has since been revealed that the membership was “honorary” and has been revoked and that Churchill is not an Indian), Churchill was made a tenured Professor of Ethnic Studies at the University of Colorado Boulder and head of the Department (though he does not possess a Ph.D.). As a tenured professor in the field of American Indian studies at the University of Colorado, a position for which he has no evident qualifications, Churchill takes home a $115,000 annual salary (for teaching three hours a week), not counting benefits and speaking fees.

The UC controversy is indicative of a universal underlying philosophical flaw within the American secular university. At the turn of the last century, progressives educated in Europe and enamored with Enlightenment philosophy and Soviet collectivism, introduced this new philosophical-ideological bent to American universities. Tenure insured the institutionalization of this vogue ideology. Over the years collectivist and enlightenment ideology (although the Enlightenment movement died years ago) evolved into the dominate thought among academic elites. Academic freedom no longer suggests a platform for healthy spirited debate. Instead it has become a buzz word whereby the prof. grants a student the right to agree with him.

Mr. Churchill personifies the sad state of our American university system of which the UC illustrates. He is indeed the victim of a plague sure to continue indefinitely. The answer perhaps lies within families carefully researching together alternative universities whose mission clearly addresses the needs of the prospective student. In addition, a student who chooses a radical leftist university must understand the character of the school and shore up their own beliefs by associating with like minded individuals. Until the character of the university in general undergoes a philosophical metamorphosis we may continue to witness other Ward Churchills emerging from the mire.