Documentation to "My Case"
Sunday, December 31, 2006
Discrimination in Academia: End of 2006 Review
By Tibor Gasparik
My Web blog, “Discrimination in Academia” (http://suny-stonybrook.blogspot.com/) was first posted in June 2005, while I was still listed as Research Associate Professor at the Department of Geosciences, Stony Brook University. In retaliation for posting the blog, my name was removed from the departmental Web site and I was booted out from my office. This escalation in my persecution forced me to file a lawsuit against the Stony Brook University on August 11, 2005. In support of my case, I started posting under “Links” articles relevant to the case. Two articles are from 2003, two from 2004, four from 2005, and four from the first half of 2006. In contrast, I was able to find over 60 useful articles since August 2006. This clearly demonstrates a decisive level of increase in the interest among the general public to finally address the long-neglected issue of discrimination against conservatives in higher education. Following are the summaries of the most relevant articles in support of my case.
“The Campus Blacklist” from 2003 by David Horowitz (Link 1) is one of the first accounts bringing to the attention of the public the discrimination against conservatives on American college campuses, based mainly on his personal experience from visiting “more than a dozen universities” and talking to students. He could not find a single conservative faculty member at Tulane Law School, and only one at Duquesne Law School. Students at U. of Michigan could not identify a single conservative among their faculty. “At Bowling Green, conservative professors were isolated in a research center that has no teaching responsibilities.” This “absurd under representation of conservative viewpoints on university faculties obviously does not happen by random process. It is the result of a systematic repression (and/or discouragement) of conservative thought and scholarship at so-called "liberal" institutions of higher learning.” Horowitz also pointed out that “it is virtually impossible for a vocal conservative to be hired for a tenure-track position on a faculty anywhere, or to receive tenure if so hired.”
A survey of 32 elite colleges and universities conducted in 2003 by the Center for the Study of Popular Culture (Link 2) and based on voter registration records showed that the overall ratio of Democrats to Republicans was more than 10:1. It was 30:1 at Brown, 23:1 at Bowdoin and Wellesley, and 21:1 at Swarthmore. They could not identify a single Republican at 4 elite schools. The same was true for administrators.
Another study by Rothman, Lichter and Nevitte (Link 5), based on 1999 data from the North American Academic Study Survey of 1,643 full-time faculty at 183 four-year schools, showed that 50 percent of the faculty members surveyed identified themselves as Democrats and only 11 percent as Republicans. The disparity was even more pronounced at the most elite schools, where, according to the study, 87 percent of faculty was liberal and 13 percent conservative.
Steven Lubet, a self-admitted liberal, offered these “possible explanations” for the near absence of conservatives in academia (Link 3): “Perhaps fewer conservatives than liberals are willing to endure the many years of poverty-stricken graduate study necessary to qualify for a faculty position. Perhaps conservatives are smarter than liberals, and recognize that graduate school is a poor investment, given the scant job opportunities that await newly minted PhDs. Or perhaps studious conservatives are more attracted to the greater financial rewards of industry and commerce.”
On November 4, 2004, Newsday reported in its centerfold how Long Island voted in 2004 presidential elections (Link 4). In the postal district of Stony Brook University, 2,065 votes went to John Kerry, while only 475 to George Bush. This was extreme even by New York standards.
Klein and Stern (2005) reported the results from a major survey of academic social scientists (Link 7) and confirmed that academic social scientists vote overwhelmingly Democratic. The Democratic to Republican ratio is upwards of 20:1 in anthropology and sociology, and least lopsided, about 3:1 in economy. “The Democratic domination has increased significantly since 1970. Republicans are disappearing from the social sciences.”
Cardiff and Klein (2005) reported the results of a survey of voter registration of tenure-track faculty at 11 California universities (Link 8). Across all departments and institutions, the Democrat to Republican ratio is 5, while in the liberal-arts fields, the ratio is higher than 8. Even in hard sciences and math, the average ratio is 6.3, and it is 9.9 at UC Berkeley, 8.3 at UCLA, 7.7 at UCSD, and 6.5 at Caltech. At UC Berkeley, the ratio is 8.3 for full professors, 30 for Associate Professors and 64 for Assistant Professors, apparently reflecting progressively worsening climate for hiring conservatives with time. Cardiff and Klein ask, “if ideology plays no role in hard and applied sciences, what are we to make of” these ratios.
In “The Pit of Academic Bias,” Art Eckstein summarized in January 2006 the evidence for academic bias and potential discrimination against conservatives in hiring and promotion in academia, based on a debate between two teams of professional social scientists (Link 9). He pointed out the 3 claims made in the Rothman-Lichter-Nevitt article (Link 4): 1. Liberals and leftists outnumber conservatives and rightists on American university campuses by a very wide margin, 2. The higher one goes towards the elite schools within the hierarchy of American universities, the fewer conservatives there are, and 3. This shift has occurred over the last 15 years. Rothman-Lichter-Nevitte did not allege a vast conspiracy against conservatives throughout academia … nevertheless, the implication was that, overall, conservatives who feel discriminated against in hiring and promotion are on good ground.
One response from academia was to accept the findings as true but to offer various explanations for what had occurred. At SUNY-Albany, Ron McClamrock, a tenured professor of Philosophy, argued, “Lefties are overrepresented in academia because on average, we’re just f-ing smarter.” At Duke, the response of Robert Brandon, the Chair of the Department of Philosophy, was similar; he reasoned, “If, as John Stuart Mill said, stupid people are generally conservative, then there are lots of conservatives we will never hire.” At UCLA, John McCumber, yet another tenured philosopher, argued that the statistical disparity was to be explained not by political discrimination at all, but because “a successful career in academia, after all, requires willingness to be critical of yourself and to learn from experience,” qualities he did not believe conservatives, and especially registered Republicans, possessed.
The leaders in denying the significance of the Rothman et al. statistics have been the group from the University of Pittsburgh. They deny that personal politics can be a factor in the hiring of faculty because politics are rarely directly discussed in job interviews. That latter point may often be literally true, but others pointed out, it is equally the case that there has emerged a “faculty culture” of assumed liberalism, especially in the humanities and social sciences, which plays a subtle but crucial role in the hiring process. The team is explicit about their alternative explanation for the dearth of conservatives on American university campuses: it is that the under-representation of conservatives at American institutions of higher education nationwide, and especially at high-quality institutions, is because conservatives simply don't want to teach at high-quality places: “We offer self-selection as the likely culprit.”
Eckstein makes two points in reply to this self-selection theory purporting to explain the current dearth of conservatives in academia: 1. It has always been the case that the world outside the university paid better than faculty positions did. And yet in the period from 1875 to 1960 it was not the case that liberals and leftists ever predominated in university faculties. Indeed, even as late as the 1980s liberals and conservatives were about equal in numbers on faculties. 2. “It’s a great life to be a professor.” It is hard to believe that most people, conservative or liberal, would “self-select” themselves out of such an idyllic existence, in return merely for the much higher pay but also the much higher daily pressures, the ever-demanding and intrusive bosses, and much shorter vacations of the business world.
The team from the U. of Pittsburg offers two explanations for the increasing absence of conservatives at elite institutions of higher learning. They suggest first that conservative academics actually prefer rural and out of the way places where, for one thing, they find a congenial “ideological climate” to the vibrant and cosmopolitan life of the major cities where the most prestigious universities are located. The “conservative academics probably WANT to live in the middle of nowhere with yahoos like themselves.” But even worse is the second fundamental reason: “Many conservatives may deliberately choose not to seek employment at top-tier research institutions because they object, on philosophical grounds, to one of the fundamental tenets under-girding such institutions: the scientific method.” Apparently, conservative academics voluntarily and naturally avoid teaching at top-flight institutions where the dreaded scientific method, and thinking about complex problems, is required.
In “Discounting the Facts” (Link 10), Jacob Laskin comments on the criticism from the left of the book “The Professors: The 101 Most Dangerous Academics in America” by David Horowitz, which is, according to Laskin, “a collective profile of 101 professors designed to show a systemic corruption in the university – promotions without merit, teaching outside a professor’s expertise, conflating political activism with scholarship, and ethnic bigotry.” Included among them is a professor from Stony Brook University, Michael Schwartz, who was singled out for his “Marxist obsession with class conflict and ruling class oppression” and his activism against the war in Iraq.
“How many Ward Churchills?” (Link 11) is a study by the American Council of Trustees and Alumni in reference to one of the professors singled out for criticism by David Horowitz in the book “The Professor.” Ward Churchills deserved this by calling the victims of 9-11 “little Eichmanns.” Not having a PhD, nor scholarly accomplishments, Professor Chirchill was apparently hired on the false claim of being a Native American. The topic of the study is: “Is there really only one Ward Churchill? Or are there many? Do professors in their classrooms ensure a robust exchange of ideas designed to help students to think for themselves? Or do they use their classrooms as platforms for propaganda, sites of sensitivity training, and launching pads for political activism? Do our college and university professors foster intellectual diversity or must students toe the party line?”
Mike Adams in “Professors Condemn Political Activity” (Link 12) offers a testimony on how a conservative professor is treated by their liberal colleagues, stating: “This year, during annual peer evaluations, one of my liberal colleagues has apparently punished me for expressing my belief that liberals punish conservatives for their belief… The backstabbing - by liberals who want to construct an Utopian society, no less – got so bad in my department a few years back that we had to amend the process to force people to justify any negative evaluations of their colleagues… Professors are often judged on the basis of politics rather than competence.”
In “Don’t Think Outside the College Box” (Link 13), Debra Saunders pointed out that while “slightly more than half of the public voted Democratic in the last presidential election, some 80 percent of higher education's social scientists voted Democratic. In that universe, you would expect the left to demand changes in university hiring practices so that academia would nurture greater diversity so as to better represent the American community. In the real world, academia has become a solid bastion of the Left, as demonstrated by two articles in the latest issue of the scholarly journal Critical Review (Links 7 and 8). The Critical Review articles bared two disturbing trends: First, left-leaning academics are more orthodox than right-leaning academics. Second, as Klein succinctly put it, "It's going to become more lopsided in the future." So the future could see state universities morph into today's UC Berkeley, where Cardiff and Klein found 445 Dems to 45 Repubs. Groupthink will further marginalize any free thinkers. If you think outside the box, you work outside the institution. That's where academia is heading.
John Plecnik, a 21-year-old law student at Duke University, testified in “Who's Looking Out for Campus Conservatives?” (Link 14): “The dispute as to whether liberal bias on campus exists has become, pardon the pun, academic. Last year, the Duke Conservative Union crosschecked their school's faculty listings against voter registration rolls and found the ratio of Democrats to Republicans was 32-0 in the History department, 11-0 in Literature, and 18-1 in English.”
In “Diversity Double Standard” (Link 16), George Leef writes: “In education, you would think that diversity of ideas would be at least as, if not more important, than skin color or sexual preferences. But when it has been pointed out that college faculties tend to be very homogeneous when it comes to their beliefs on socio-economic questions, the response from the higher education establishment has mostly been that it’s a threat to academic freedom even to discuss the matter. No need for “all colors of the rainbow” when it comes to points of view on the proper relationship between state and society. Many academic departments are intellectual monocultures, with hiring preferences by those in authority filtering out any new professors whose opinions are much different from the norm. They think that is perfectly fine.” He suggests that, if colleges and universities are really interested in diversity, the academic departments should begin to write their job postings with language like “Libertarians and other intellectually underrepresented minorities are encouraged to apply.”
Walter Williams in “Red Sea of Academe?” (Link 18) addresses “…a puzzling observation, given the leftist bias at most college campuses…” that “…there are actually only a few communists among academics” and suggests that “while academic leftists are not communists, they are anti-anti-communists. In other words, they have contempt for right-wingers, conservatives or libertarians who are anti-communists.”
In “A New Kind of Affirmation Action” (Link 19), Hanna Stearns writes: “In the partisan world of higher education, free speech is fast becoming less a right and more a memory for political and religious groups on campus. In the 1970’s, university administrators became increasingly concerned by the marginalization of certain minority groups on their campuses. Universities across the country took affirmative action to ensure that every point of view had ample opportunity to be heard. In much the same way as in the 70’s, another ideological minority is being shut out today: conservatives. Perhaps it is now time for a different kind of affirmative action, the affirmation of the majority, which has become the minority on college campuses.”
In “UC-Santa Cruz and The Loss of Public Trust” (Link 22), Leila Beckwith writes: “Universities, both public and private, exist for the benefit of society and do not exist in the absence of society’s largesse. These facts form the basis of an important social contract: For its part, the university provides the public with education of its citizens and advances in knowledge, along with assuming responsibility that its scholars will carry out their mission with the utmost academic integrity. In exchange, the public provides the university with many of the resources it needs to survive.” She asks: “But what happens when a university does not uphold its side of the bargain: when its faculty does not adhere to standards of academic integrity; when professors knowingly limit the flow of knowledge because of their own ideological biases; when education becomes political indoctrination? In these cases there is an abuse of public trust, which threatens to diminish the social contract so critical to the university’s existence.” Leila Beckwith documents such an abuse of public trust in three examples from the UC Santa Cruz.
John Gravois starts his article “Academe in a Time of Crisis” (Link 23) with the words: “Five years ago, academe braced itself. In the days and weeks after the terrorist attacks of September 11, when title logos like "America Under Attack" still loomed over newscasts, some scholars said they could already feel the free exchange of ideas constricting… Many professors feared the start of a new McCarthy era.” The question one has to ask is “Why?” At a time, when the general public was still totally in the dark about what had been going on at the American universities and colleges, the professors knew and feared that they had been doing something for which they could potentially face a McCarthy-kind of reprisals.
David Horowitz introduced his series of articles on “Indoctrination” (Link 24) with the words: “Three years ago, I began a national campaign for academic freedom designed to promote the restoration of academic standards, including intellectual diversity, in institutions of higher learning.” By this time, “the refusal to hire conservative academics had led to a vanishing presence of conservative faculty members in many … disciplines. The net effect was to deny students access to alternative - and particularly - conservative ideas… The curriculum was thus transformed into a program of indoctrination.” Since his access, being a university outsider, was limited, the series is based on “research of faculty-provided course descriptions, syllabi and reading lists that are available to the general public.”
Charles Mitchell in his article about a conservative professor Mike Adams, a “Campus Heretic” (Link 26), has this to say about conservative professors: “They’re not just outnumbered. They are also unwelcome. And they know it.” As a consequence, “conservative professors—which are extremely rare in the first place—can seem even scarcer than they are, because many of the few that exist keep their heads down. They hide their beliefs. Why? Because they know that that is much safer than speaking their minds.”
The New York Sun editorial “Merit at Columbia” (Link 29) criticizes Columbia’s Teachers College for deriding merit, favoring instead a kind of left-wing indoctrination. “Teachers are taught that merit is an "ideology" that exists to justify discrimination.” Shibley and Lukianoff (Link 30) write: “At Teachers College, students are required to have a "commitment to social justice" - a requirement so subjective and politically loaded that it can only be enforced in a way that judges students on whether they have "acceptable" political views… Telling students the specific political beliefs they need to have in order to graduate is thought control, not education.”
“A Profile of American College Faculty” (Link 32) is a major study by Gary Tobin and Aryeh Weinberg, published in 2006 by the Institute for Jewish and Community Research, and based on online survey of 1,269 faculty members from 712 different colleges and universities. Major findings include: faculty political ideology is overwhelmingly liberal; faculties are not representative of the American public; faculties are ideologically critical of America and business and supportive of international institutions; faculty political culture is self-perpetuating; dominant faculty culture can lead to censorship. They find that only 16% of faculty identify as Republican versus 46% who identify as Democrat. In 2004, 25% voted for George Bush, while 72% for John Kerry. Recommendations include: universities should work to create an environment with no overwhelming political culture; public grants should not fund political agendas; trustees should take a more active role in tenure decisions; hiring and promotion processes should be free of political ideology; administrations should ensure protection against ideological intimidation and discrimination; the state of high education should be a topic of research and debate.
In “Redeeming the Wayward University” (Link 49), Daniel Pipes addresses the issue: “Should outsiders try to influence the hiring and tenuring of university faculty?” and argues in favor. “Educational institutions may appoint whomever they wish, but they cannot expect immunity from public criticism. Precisely because academe offers unique job security, public evaluation of untenured academics has a potentially vital role. As for tenured faculty, robust public criticism can keep them in line by embarrassing them and hurting their credibility. The ivory tower exists at the sufferance of those who subsidize it. Professors ultimately cannot ignore the parents, alumni, legislators, and government bureaucrats who pay their salaries. And as those stakeholders increasingly become aware of the professors' failings, they can begin to demand improvements. Concerned outsiders should track university developments, including personnel decisions, so as to begin the process of redeeming the university, that grand and noble institution temporarily gone astray.”
In “Higher Education and the Democrats” (Link 63), Don Irvine brings to the attention of the public the latest report from the Center for Responsive Politics covering the 2005-2006 election cycle to prove “that academia is full of leftists or Democrats.” The Center reports that the education industry gave over 12 million dollars to candidates, with 69% of that amount going to Democrats and just 22% to Republicans. Yet that is only the average. At the University of California, for instance, employees gave $406,290 to rank number one on the list, with 87% of the donations going to Democrats. They were followed by Harvard University, where 90% of the $314,917 contributed went to Democrats. Other schools in the top ten in terms of total donations were the University of Pennsylvania, Johns Hopkins University and Columbia University, with donations to Democrats at 94%, 88% and 88% respectively, while at the College of William and Mary there were no donations to the GOP. The American Federation of Teachers representing 1 million teachers, school staff, higher education faculty and other public employees contributed 99% of its donations to Democrats since 1990 (Link 64). Irvine concludes: “By and large the report only confirms just how out of step academia is with the general population. Future students, beware!”
On December 17, 2006, Phil Orenstein published an “Update on NY Academic Bill or Rights” (Link 70). The bill was introduced in the NYS Senate as S6336 early in 2006 sponsored by 10 Senators, which followed by the sponsorship of the same bill in the Assembly as A10098 by 6 Assembly members. The stated purpose of the bill is “to ensure that students enrolled in institutions of higher education receive exposure to a wide range of scholarly viewpoints, and to recognize the academic rights of faculty members.” The bill “…ensures an academic environment for both students and faculty members that allows freedom of political viewpoint, expression and instruction” and it requires that institutions of higher education set up a viable grievance mechanism.
The need for outside legislation has been proven by the fact that university staff and administrators are reluctant to deal with the lack of intellectual diversity and rampant political indoctrination in the classroom and the curriculum. After publicly declaring his intention to strengthen intellectual diversity on State University of New York (SUNY) campuses and give the matter a fair hearing, SUNY Board of Trustees Chairman Thomas Egan failed numerous times to make time for the issue and encourage a fair debate when it was brought to the table by SUNY trustee Dr. Candace deRussy. In March 2006, SUNY trustees once again had had an opportunity to formulate a statewide policy to encourage intellectual diversity and protect the academic rights of students and professors from viewpoint discrimination, but again they rejected all attempts to seriously look into the matter.
The legislative lame-duck session failed to act on the bill in 2006. It is good news that the bill is almost certain to be re-introduced in 2007. The word from Assembly sponsors is reassuring. Assemblyman Seminerio’s Chief of Staff Jody Rickert said that the Assemblyman, the chief sponsor, would certainly reintroduce it. As a conservative Democrat, he is a strong ally of the academic freedom movement having experienced the abuses first hand. With the recent escalation of incidents of campus censorship and bullying of students and speakers with divergent viewpoints, this bill is now even more necessary for safeguarding intellectual diversity and basic constitutional rights on college campuses.
References (Links):
1. Horowitz, D. (4/18/2003) The Campus Blacklist. FrontPageMagazine.com
2. Horowitz, D. and Lehrer, E. (2003?) Political Bias at the Administrations and Facilities of 32 Elite Colleges and Universities. A Report of the Center for the Study of Popular Culture
3. Lubet, S. (12/21/2004) Conservatives Complain About Campus Shut-Outs. Detroit Free Press
4. Huang, P., Neville, L. and Ruzhanskaya, M. (11/4/2004) How Long Island Voted. Newsday
5. Kurtz, H. (3/29/2005) College Faculties A Most Liberal Lot, Study Finds. The Washington Post
7. Klein, D.B. and Stern, C. (2005) Professors and Their Politics: The Policy Views of Social Scientists. Critical Review 17, nos. 3-4
8. Cardiff, C.F. and Klein, D.B. (2005) Faculty Partisan Affiliations in All Disciplines: A Voter-Registration Study. Critical Review 17, nos. 3-4
9. Eckstein, A. (1/12/2006) The Pitt of Academic Bias. FrontPageMagazine.com
10. Laksin, J. (6/15/2006) Discounting the Facts. FrontPageMagazine.com
11. How Many Ward Chirchills? (5/2006) American Council of Trustees and Alumni
12. Adams, M. (6/30/2006) Professors Condemn “Political Activity.” Townhall.com
13. Saunders, D.J. (8/3/2006) Don’t Think Outside the College Box. San Francisco Chronicle
14. Plecnik, J. (8/9/2006) Who’s Looking Out For Campus Conservatives? TheRealityCheck.org
16. Leef, G. (8/18/2006) The Diversity Double Standard. Popecenter.org
18. Williams, W. (8/28/2006) The Red Sea of Academe? Washington Times
19. Stearn, H. (8/30/2006) A New Kind of Affirmation Action. The Cornell Daily Sun
22. Beckwith, L. (9/13/2006) UC-Santa Cruz and the Loss of Public Trust. FrontPageMagazine.com
23. Gravois, J. (9/14/2006) Academe in a Time of Crisis. The Chronicle of Higher Education
24. Horowitz, D. (9/15/2006) Indoctrination U: Colorado. FrontPageMagazine.com
26. Mitchell, C. (9/22/2006) Mike Adams, Campus Heretic. The Family Security Foundation
29. Staff Editorial (10/12/2006) Merit at Columbia. The New York Sun
30. Shibley, R. and Lukianoff, G. (10/16/2006) Thought Control at Columbia. New York Post
32. Tobin, G.A. and Weinberg, A.K. (2006) A Profile of American College Faculty, Vol. 1: Political Beliefs and Behavior. Institute for Jewish & Community Research
49. Pipes, D. (11/29/2006) Redeeming the Wayward University. FrontPageMagazine.com
63. Irvine, D. (12/8/2006) Higher Education and the Democrats. CampusReportOnline.net
70. Orenstein, P. (12/17/2006) Update on NY Academic Bill of Right. Democracy Project
My Web blog, “Discrimination in Academia” (http://suny-stonybrook.blogspot.com/) was first posted in June 2005, while I was still listed as Research Associate Professor at the Department of Geosciences, Stony Brook University. In retaliation for posting the blog, my name was removed from the departmental Web site and I was booted out from my office. This escalation in my persecution forced me to file a lawsuit against the Stony Brook University on August 11, 2005. In support of my case, I started posting under “Links” articles relevant to the case. Two articles are from 2003, two from 2004, four from 2005, and four from the first half of 2006. In contrast, I was able to find over 60 useful articles since August 2006. This clearly demonstrates a decisive level of increase in the interest among the general public to finally address the long-neglected issue of discrimination against conservatives in higher education. Following are the summaries of the most relevant articles in support of my case.
“The Campus Blacklist” from 2003 by David Horowitz (Link 1) is one of the first accounts bringing to the attention of the public the discrimination against conservatives on American college campuses, based mainly on his personal experience from visiting “more than a dozen universities” and talking to students. He could not find a single conservative faculty member at Tulane Law School, and only one at Duquesne Law School. Students at U. of Michigan could not identify a single conservative among their faculty. “At Bowling Green, conservative professors were isolated in a research center that has no teaching responsibilities.” This “absurd under representation of conservative viewpoints on university faculties obviously does not happen by random process. It is the result of a systematic repression (and/or discouragement) of conservative thought and scholarship at so-called "liberal" institutions of higher learning.” Horowitz also pointed out that “it is virtually impossible for a vocal conservative to be hired for a tenure-track position on a faculty anywhere, or to receive tenure if so hired.”
A survey of 32 elite colleges and universities conducted in 2003 by the Center for the Study of Popular Culture (Link 2) and based on voter registration records showed that the overall ratio of Democrats to Republicans was more than 10:1. It was 30:1 at Brown, 23:1 at Bowdoin and Wellesley, and 21:1 at Swarthmore. They could not identify a single Republican at 4 elite schools. The same was true for administrators.
Another study by Rothman, Lichter and Nevitte (Link 5), based on 1999 data from the North American Academic Study Survey of 1,643 full-time faculty at 183 four-year schools, showed that 50 percent of the faculty members surveyed identified themselves as Democrats and only 11 percent as Republicans. The disparity was even more pronounced at the most elite schools, where, according to the study, 87 percent of faculty was liberal and 13 percent conservative.
Steven Lubet, a self-admitted liberal, offered these “possible explanations” for the near absence of conservatives in academia (Link 3): “Perhaps fewer conservatives than liberals are willing to endure the many years of poverty-stricken graduate study necessary to qualify for a faculty position. Perhaps conservatives are smarter than liberals, and recognize that graduate school is a poor investment, given the scant job opportunities that await newly minted PhDs. Or perhaps studious conservatives are more attracted to the greater financial rewards of industry and commerce.”
On November 4, 2004, Newsday reported in its centerfold how Long Island voted in 2004 presidential elections (Link 4). In the postal district of Stony Brook University, 2,065 votes went to John Kerry, while only 475 to George Bush. This was extreme even by New York standards.
Klein and Stern (2005) reported the results from a major survey of academic social scientists (Link 7) and confirmed that academic social scientists vote overwhelmingly Democratic. The Democratic to Republican ratio is upwards of 20:1 in anthropology and sociology, and least lopsided, about 3:1 in economy. “The Democratic domination has increased significantly since 1970. Republicans are disappearing from the social sciences.”
Cardiff and Klein (2005) reported the results of a survey of voter registration of tenure-track faculty at 11 California universities (Link 8). Across all departments and institutions, the Democrat to Republican ratio is 5, while in the liberal-arts fields, the ratio is higher than 8. Even in hard sciences and math, the average ratio is 6.3, and it is 9.9 at UC Berkeley, 8.3 at UCLA, 7.7 at UCSD, and 6.5 at Caltech. At UC Berkeley, the ratio is 8.3 for full professors, 30 for Associate Professors and 64 for Assistant Professors, apparently reflecting progressively worsening climate for hiring conservatives with time. Cardiff and Klein ask, “if ideology plays no role in hard and applied sciences, what are we to make of” these ratios.
In “The Pit of Academic Bias,” Art Eckstein summarized in January 2006 the evidence for academic bias and potential discrimination against conservatives in hiring and promotion in academia, based on a debate between two teams of professional social scientists (Link 9). He pointed out the 3 claims made in the Rothman-Lichter-Nevitt article (Link 4): 1. Liberals and leftists outnumber conservatives and rightists on American university campuses by a very wide margin, 2. The higher one goes towards the elite schools within the hierarchy of American universities, the fewer conservatives there are, and 3. This shift has occurred over the last 15 years. Rothman-Lichter-Nevitte did not allege a vast conspiracy against conservatives throughout academia … nevertheless, the implication was that, overall, conservatives who feel discriminated against in hiring and promotion are on good ground.
One response from academia was to accept the findings as true but to offer various explanations for what had occurred. At SUNY-Albany, Ron McClamrock, a tenured professor of Philosophy, argued, “Lefties are overrepresented in academia because on average, we’re just f-ing smarter.” At Duke, the response of Robert Brandon, the Chair of the Department of Philosophy, was similar; he reasoned, “If, as John Stuart Mill said, stupid people are generally conservative, then there are lots of conservatives we will never hire.” At UCLA, John McCumber, yet another tenured philosopher, argued that the statistical disparity was to be explained not by political discrimination at all, but because “a successful career in academia, after all, requires willingness to be critical of yourself and to learn from experience,” qualities he did not believe conservatives, and especially registered Republicans, possessed.
The leaders in denying the significance of the Rothman et al. statistics have been the group from the University of Pittsburgh. They deny that personal politics can be a factor in the hiring of faculty because politics are rarely directly discussed in job interviews. That latter point may often be literally true, but others pointed out, it is equally the case that there has emerged a “faculty culture” of assumed liberalism, especially in the humanities and social sciences, which plays a subtle but crucial role in the hiring process. The team is explicit about their alternative explanation for the dearth of conservatives on American university campuses: it is that the under-representation of conservatives at American institutions of higher education nationwide, and especially at high-quality institutions, is because conservatives simply don't want to teach at high-quality places: “We offer self-selection as the likely culprit.”
Eckstein makes two points in reply to this self-selection theory purporting to explain the current dearth of conservatives in academia: 1. It has always been the case that the world outside the university paid better than faculty positions did. And yet in the period from 1875 to 1960 it was not the case that liberals and leftists ever predominated in university faculties. Indeed, even as late as the 1980s liberals and conservatives were about equal in numbers on faculties. 2. “It’s a great life to be a professor.” It is hard to believe that most people, conservative or liberal, would “self-select” themselves out of such an idyllic existence, in return merely for the much higher pay but also the much higher daily pressures, the ever-demanding and intrusive bosses, and much shorter vacations of the business world.
The team from the U. of Pittsburg offers two explanations for the increasing absence of conservatives at elite institutions of higher learning. They suggest first that conservative academics actually prefer rural and out of the way places where, for one thing, they find a congenial “ideological climate” to the vibrant and cosmopolitan life of the major cities where the most prestigious universities are located. The “conservative academics probably WANT to live in the middle of nowhere with yahoos like themselves.” But even worse is the second fundamental reason: “Many conservatives may deliberately choose not to seek employment at top-tier research institutions because they object, on philosophical grounds, to one of the fundamental tenets under-girding such institutions: the scientific method.” Apparently, conservative academics voluntarily and naturally avoid teaching at top-flight institutions where the dreaded scientific method, and thinking about complex problems, is required.
In “Discounting the Facts” (Link 10), Jacob Laskin comments on the criticism from the left of the book “The Professors: The 101 Most Dangerous Academics in America” by David Horowitz, which is, according to Laskin, “a collective profile of 101 professors designed to show a systemic corruption in the university – promotions without merit, teaching outside a professor’s expertise, conflating political activism with scholarship, and ethnic bigotry.” Included among them is a professor from Stony Brook University, Michael Schwartz, who was singled out for his “Marxist obsession with class conflict and ruling class oppression” and his activism against the war in Iraq.
“How many Ward Churchills?” (Link 11) is a study by the American Council of Trustees and Alumni in reference to one of the professors singled out for criticism by David Horowitz in the book “The Professor.” Ward Churchills deserved this by calling the victims of 9-11 “little Eichmanns.” Not having a PhD, nor scholarly accomplishments, Professor Chirchill was apparently hired on the false claim of being a Native American. The topic of the study is: “Is there really only one Ward Churchill? Or are there many? Do professors in their classrooms ensure a robust exchange of ideas designed to help students to think for themselves? Or do they use their classrooms as platforms for propaganda, sites of sensitivity training, and launching pads for political activism? Do our college and university professors foster intellectual diversity or must students toe the party line?”
Mike Adams in “Professors Condemn Political Activity” (Link 12) offers a testimony on how a conservative professor is treated by their liberal colleagues, stating: “This year, during annual peer evaluations, one of my liberal colleagues has apparently punished me for expressing my belief that liberals punish conservatives for their belief… The backstabbing - by liberals who want to construct an Utopian society, no less – got so bad in my department a few years back that we had to amend the process to force people to justify any negative evaluations of their colleagues… Professors are often judged on the basis of politics rather than competence.”
In “Don’t Think Outside the College Box” (Link 13), Debra Saunders pointed out that while “slightly more than half of the public voted Democratic in the last presidential election, some 80 percent of higher education's social scientists voted Democratic. In that universe, you would expect the left to demand changes in university hiring practices so that academia would nurture greater diversity so as to better represent the American community. In the real world, academia has become a solid bastion of the Left, as demonstrated by two articles in the latest issue of the scholarly journal Critical Review (Links 7 and 8). The Critical Review articles bared two disturbing trends: First, left-leaning academics are more orthodox than right-leaning academics. Second, as Klein succinctly put it, "It's going to become more lopsided in the future." So the future could see state universities morph into today's UC Berkeley, where Cardiff and Klein found 445 Dems to 45 Repubs. Groupthink will further marginalize any free thinkers. If you think outside the box, you work outside the institution. That's where academia is heading.
John Plecnik, a 21-year-old law student at Duke University, testified in “Who's Looking Out for Campus Conservatives?” (Link 14): “The dispute as to whether liberal bias on campus exists has become, pardon the pun, academic. Last year, the Duke Conservative Union crosschecked their school's faculty listings against voter registration rolls and found the ratio of Democrats to Republicans was 32-0 in the History department, 11-0 in Literature, and 18-1 in English.”
In “Diversity Double Standard” (Link 16), George Leef writes: “In education, you would think that diversity of ideas would be at least as, if not more important, than skin color or sexual preferences. But when it has been pointed out that college faculties tend to be very homogeneous when it comes to their beliefs on socio-economic questions, the response from the higher education establishment has mostly been that it’s a threat to academic freedom even to discuss the matter. No need for “all colors of the rainbow” when it comes to points of view on the proper relationship between state and society. Many academic departments are intellectual monocultures, with hiring preferences by those in authority filtering out any new professors whose opinions are much different from the norm. They think that is perfectly fine.” He suggests that, if colleges and universities are really interested in diversity, the academic departments should begin to write their job postings with language like “Libertarians and other intellectually underrepresented minorities are encouraged to apply.”
Walter Williams in “Red Sea of Academe?” (Link 18) addresses “…a puzzling observation, given the leftist bias at most college campuses…” that “…there are actually only a few communists among academics” and suggests that “while academic leftists are not communists, they are anti-anti-communists. In other words, they have contempt for right-wingers, conservatives or libertarians who are anti-communists.”
In “A New Kind of Affirmation Action” (Link 19), Hanna Stearns writes: “In the partisan world of higher education, free speech is fast becoming less a right and more a memory for political and religious groups on campus. In the 1970’s, university administrators became increasingly concerned by the marginalization of certain minority groups on their campuses. Universities across the country took affirmative action to ensure that every point of view had ample opportunity to be heard. In much the same way as in the 70’s, another ideological minority is being shut out today: conservatives. Perhaps it is now time for a different kind of affirmative action, the affirmation of the majority, which has become the minority on college campuses.”
In “UC-Santa Cruz and The Loss of Public Trust” (Link 22), Leila Beckwith writes: “Universities, both public and private, exist for the benefit of society and do not exist in the absence of society’s largesse. These facts form the basis of an important social contract: For its part, the university provides the public with education of its citizens and advances in knowledge, along with assuming responsibility that its scholars will carry out their mission with the utmost academic integrity. In exchange, the public provides the university with many of the resources it needs to survive.” She asks: “But what happens when a university does not uphold its side of the bargain: when its faculty does not adhere to standards of academic integrity; when professors knowingly limit the flow of knowledge because of their own ideological biases; when education becomes political indoctrination? In these cases there is an abuse of public trust, which threatens to diminish the social contract so critical to the university’s existence.” Leila Beckwith documents such an abuse of public trust in three examples from the UC Santa Cruz.
John Gravois starts his article “Academe in a Time of Crisis” (Link 23) with the words: “Five years ago, academe braced itself. In the days and weeks after the terrorist attacks of September 11, when title logos like "America Under Attack" still loomed over newscasts, some scholars said they could already feel the free exchange of ideas constricting… Many professors feared the start of a new McCarthy era.” The question one has to ask is “Why?” At a time, when the general public was still totally in the dark about what had been going on at the American universities and colleges, the professors knew and feared that they had been doing something for which they could potentially face a McCarthy-kind of reprisals.
David Horowitz introduced his series of articles on “Indoctrination” (Link 24) with the words: “Three years ago, I began a national campaign for academic freedom designed to promote the restoration of academic standards, including intellectual diversity, in institutions of higher learning.” By this time, “the refusal to hire conservative academics had led to a vanishing presence of conservative faculty members in many … disciplines. The net effect was to deny students access to alternative - and particularly - conservative ideas… The curriculum was thus transformed into a program of indoctrination.” Since his access, being a university outsider, was limited, the series is based on “research of faculty-provided course descriptions, syllabi and reading lists that are available to the general public.”
Charles Mitchell in his article about a conservative professor Mike Adams, a “Campus Heretic” (Link 26), has this to say about conservative professors: “They’re not just outnumbered. They are also unwelcome. And they know it.” As a consequence, “conservative professors—which are extremely rare in the first place—can seem even scarcer than they are, because many of the few that exist keep their heads down. They hide their beliefs. Why? Because they know that that is much safer than speaking their minds.”
The New York Sun editorial “Merit at Columbia” (Link 29) criticizes Columbia’s Teachers College for deriding merit, favoring instead a kind of left-wing indoctrination. “Teachers are taught that merit is an "ideology" that exists to justify discrimination.” Shibley and Lukianoff (Link 30) write: “At Teachers College, students are required to have a "commitment to social justice" - a requirement so subjective and politically loaded that it can only be enforced in a way that judges students on whether they have "acceptable" political views… Telling students the specific political beliefs they need to have in order to graduate is thought control, not education.”
“A Profile of American College Faculty” (Link 32) is a major study by Gary Tobin and Aryeh Weinberg, published in 2006 by the Institute for Jewish and Community Research, and based on online survey of 1,269 faculty members from 712 different colleges and universities. Major findings include: faculty political ideology is overwhelmingly liberal; faculties are not representative of the American public; faculties are ideologically critical of America and business and supportive of international institutions; faculty political culture is self-perpetuating; dominant faculty culture can lead to censorship. They find that only 16% of faculty identify as Republican versus 46% who identify as Democrat. In 2004, 25% voted for George Bush, while 72% for John Kerry. Recommendations include: universities should work to create an environment with no overwhelming political culture; public grants should not fund political agendas; trustees should take a more active role in tenure decisions; hiring and promotion processes should be free of political ideology; administrations should ensure protection against ideological intimidation and discrimination; the state of high education should be a topic of research and debate.
In “Redeeming the Wayward University” (Link 49), Daniel Pipes addresses the issue: “Should outsiders try to influence the hiring and tenuring of university faculty?” and argues in favor. “Educational institutions may appoint whomever they wish, but they cannot expect immunity from public criticism. Precisely because academe offers unique job security, public evaluation of untenured academics has a potentially vital role. As for tenured faculty, robust public criticism can keep them in line by embarrassing them and hurting their credibility. The ivory tower exists at the sufferance of those who subsidize it. Professors ultimately cannot ignore the parents, alumni, legislators, and government bureaucrats who pay their salaries. And as those stakeholders increasingly become aware of the professors' failings, they can begin to demand improvements. Concerned outsiders should track university developments, including personnel decisions, so as to begin the process of redeeming the university, that grand and noble institution temporarily gone astray.”
In “Higher Education and the Democrats” (Link 63), Don Irvine brings to the attention of the public the latest report from the Center for Responsive Politics covering the 2005-2006 election cycle to prove “that academia is full of leftists or Democrats.” The Center reports that the education industry gave over 12 million dollars to candidates, with 69% of that amount going to Democrats and just 22% to Republicans. Yet that is only the average. At the University of California, for instance, employees gave $406,290 to rank number one on the list, with 87% of the donations going to Democrats. They were followed by Harvard University, where 90% of the $314,917 contributed went to Democrats. Other schools in the top ten in terms of total donations were the University of Pennsylvania, Johns Hopkins University and Columbia University, with donations to Democrats at 94%, 88% and 88% respectively, while at the College of William and Mary there were no donations to the GOP. The American Federation of Teachers representing 1 million teachers, school staff, higher education faculty and other public employees contributed 99% of its donations to Democrats since 1990 (Link 64). Irvine concludes: “By and large the report only confirms just how out of step academia is with the general population. Future students, beware!”
On December 17, 2006, Phil Orenstein published an “Update on NY Academic Bill or Rights” (Link 70). The bill was introduced in the NYS Senate as S6336 early in 2006 sponsored by 10 Senators, which followed by the sponsorship of the same bill in the Assembly as A10098 by 6 Assembly members. The stated purpose of the bill is “to ensure that students enrolled in institutions of higher education receive exposure to a wide range of scholarly viewpoints, and to recognize the academic rights of faculty members.” The bill “…ensures an academic environment for both students and faculty members that allows freedom of political viewpoint, expression and instruction” and it requires that institutions of higher education set up a viable grievance mechanism.
The need for outside legislation has been proven by the fact that university staff and administrators are reluctant to deal with the lack of intellectual diversity and rampant political indoctrination in the classroom and the curriculum. After publicly declaring his intention to strengthen intellectual diversity on State University of New York (SUNY) campuses and give the matter a fair hearing, SUNY Board of Trustees Chairman Thomas Egan failed numerous times to make time for the issue and encourage a fair debate when it was brought to the table by SUNY trustee Dr. Candace deRussy. In March 2006, SUNY trustees once again had had an opportunity to formulate a statewide policy to encourage intellectual diversity and protect the academic rights of students and professors from viewpoint discrimination, but again they rejected all attempts to seriously look into the matter.
The legislative lame-duck session failed to act on the bill in 2006. It is good news that the bill is almost certain to be re-introduced in 2007. The word from Assembly sponsors is reassuring. Assemblyman Seminerio’s Chief of Staff Jody Rickert said that the Assemblyman, the chief sponsor, would certainly reintroduce it. As a conservative Democrat, he is a strong ally of the academic freedom movement having experienced the abuses first hand. With the recent escalation of incidents of campus censorship and bullying of students and speakers with divergent viewpoints, this bill is now even more necessary for safeguarding intellectual diversity and basic constitutional rights on college campuses.
References (Links):
1. Horowitz, D. (4/18/2003) The Campus Blacklist. FrontPageMagazine.com
2. Horowitz, D. and Lehrer, E. (2003?) Political Bias at the Administrations and Facilities of 32 Elite Colleges and Universities. A Report of the Center for the Study of Popular Culture
3. Lubet, S. (12/21/2004) Conservatives Complain About Campus Shut-Outs. Detroit Free Press
4. Huang, P., Neville, L. and Ruzhanskaya, M. (11/4/2004) How Long Island Voted. Newsday
5. Kurtz, H. (3/29/2005) College Faculties A Most Liberal Lot, Study Finds. The Washington Post
7. Klein, D.B. and Stern, C. (2005) Professors and Their Politics: The Policy Views of Social Scientists. Critical Review 17, nos. 3-4
8. Cardiff, C.F. and Klein, D.B. (2005) Faculty Partisan Affiliations in All Disciplines: A Voter-Registration Study. Critical Review 17, nos. 3-4
9. Eckstein, A. (1/12/2006) The Pitt of Academic Bias. FrontPageMagazine.com
10. Laksin, J. (6/15/2006) Discounting the Facts. FrontPageMagazine.com
11. How Many Ward Chirchills? (5/2006) American Council of Trustees and Alumni
12. Adams, M. (6/30/2006) Professors Condemn “Political Activity.” Townhall.com
13. Saunders, D.J. (8/3/2006) Don’t Think Outside the College Box. San Francisco Chronicle
14. Plecnik, J. (8/9/2006) Who’s Looking Out For Campus Conservatives? TheRealityCheck.org
16. Leef, G. (8/18/2006) The Diversity Double Standard. Popecenter.org
18. Williams, W. (8/28/2006) The Red Sea of Academe? Washington Times
19. Stearn, H. (8/30/2006) A New Kind of Affirmation Action. The Cornell Daily Sun
22. Beckwith, L. (9/13/2006) UC-Santa Cruz and the Loss of Public Trust. FrontPageMagazine.com
23. Gravois, J. (9/14/2006) Academe in a Time of Crisis. The Chronicle of Higher Education
24. Horowitz, D. (9/15/2006) Indoctrination U: Colorado. FrontPageMagazine.com
26. Mitchell, C. (9/22/2006) Mike Adams, Campus Heretic. The Family Security Foundation
29. Staff Editorial (10/12/2006) Merit at Columbia. The New York Sun
30. Shibley, R. and Lukianoff, G. (10/16/2006) Thought Control at Columbia. New York Post
32. Tobin, G.A. and Weinberg, A.K. (2006) A Profile of American College Faculty, Vol. 1: Political Beliefs and Behavior. Institute for Jewish & Community Research
49. Pipes, D. (11/29/2006) Redeeming the Wayward University. FrontPageMagazine.com
63. Irvine, D. (12/8/2006) Higher Education and the Democrats. CampusReportOnline.net
70. Orenstein, P. (12/17/2006) Update on NY Academic Bill of Right. Democracy Project
Saturday, December 23, 2006
Orwellian Dystopia at Michigan State
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(No, I’m Not Joking, It’s Actually Orwellian)
By Luke Sheahan
12/18/06
The Family Security Matters Foundation
"If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein.” -Justice Robert H. Jackson, West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette (1943)
The adage that universities are integral to our national health has been said so many times in so many venues it hardly needs repeating. Our young people file through the doors of the university and emerge citizens of our nation and productive components of our economy; at least that’s what we collectively hope for, the reality is quite different. But the hope is that healthy universities that teach a liberal education, properly understood, will be safe havens of healthy discussion and free inquiry. Some universities do act as a true marketplace of ideas, sporting prominent scholars and intellectuals from across the political and ideological spectrum. Students’ deepest assumptions are challenged and in turn they are welcomed to challenge the prevailing orthodoxy. Then there are institutions like Michigan State University which have actual reeducation programs for dissenting students. No, I’m not joking.
Michigan State has a Student Accountability in Community (SAC) seminar described as “an early intervention for abusive students.” The program targets individuals who use “power-and-control tactics” defined among other things as “male/white privilege, using others, (and) obfuscation.” The goal is to make the student identify how they use their “privilege” to coerce or harm other students and confess their faith in the prevailing orthodoxy. No I’m not joking.
This begs the obvious questions: how early of an intervention; what type of intervention; what is considered “abusive;” and what is obfuscation? The definitions are broader than you might think.
Students who are identified as “having an anger problem,” caught “making sexist, homophobic, or racist remarks,” “humiliating a boyfriend or girlfriend,” or “bullying roommates or suitemates” can be forced by Michigan State, a state institution bound by the bill of rights, to attend a SAC session. According to a 2002 lecture hosted by the originators of the SAC program one girl was sent to such a session because she slammed a door during a fight with her boyfriend; if you examine the materials, it’s clear that even a practical jokester could be considered fair game for a mandatory SAC seminar. The university considers practical jokes and outbursts of anger, such as slamming a door, on a sliding scale with violent crimes such as rape; they are considered a prelude to such brutal behavior. No, I’m not joking.
At such a session the accused student is asked to write down what he believes to have done wrong. Then the state employee running the session corrects the student and makes him rewrite what he thinks he did wrong until he writes a confession specific and humiliating enough to be acceptable to said government employee. No, I’m not joking.
The student must then fill out a worksheet describing what “power and control” tactics the student used to exert influence over other students. Such tactics include “privilege” and “racial violence.” An example of racial violence given in the SAC materials is toilet papering someone else’s door, apparently if they’re of a different race. No, I’m not joking.
A heavy emphasis is put on refusing to allow the student to “obfuscate” the issue. Obfuscation is defined as a student who “lies or denies what they did.” In other words, there will be no pleading innocent. Such examples of obfuscation are claiming the behavior or action was “just a joke” or otherwise denying that one intentionally committed the action out of spite or out of one’s own sense of superiority. The students are forced to incriminate themselves and the document of self incrimination can then be given to the student judiciary committee and used as evidence against the student. No, I’m not joking.
Given Michigan State’s definition of obfuscation, religion could be an obfuscation tactic. For instance, a religious conservative’s view on sexual mores would be categorically “sexist” and “homophobic” and any student who expressed publicly that he held such views would be ordered to participate in a SAC seminar. No, I’m not joking.
After the student has adequately debased himself and confessed to whatever actions the state employees deemed unconscionable, the student must fill out a worksheet describing alternative behavior that he should have done. The student must identify alternative tactics such as “respect,” “negotiation and fairness,” and “trust and support.” Again, the student must be specific in how he should have acted, if he isn’t, he will be forced to start the worksheet over until he gets it right. No, I’m not joking.
If a student is ordered by the government to attend a SAC seminar and the student says, “Damn the man, I’m an American, I don’t have to put with this,” the university, a state institution, puts a hold on the student’s account, barring him from registering for classes and effectively expelling him from school until he submits himself to the government’s demands to confess. No, I’m not joking.
This policy may sound eerily familiar to many of you. That’s probably because many of you read George Orwell’s classic, 1984, in high school. Michigan State’s SAC program is similar enough to Big Brother’s tactics that one could almost be convinced that the administrators at Michigan State thought Orwell’s masterpiece was a how-to book on creating a tolerant utopia rather than a work of fiction describing a dystopian nightmare. Then again, there isn’t much difference between the two; an administrator’s utopia is often a student’s hell.
Michigan State’s SAC program is being challenged by the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education. Such blatant disregard for constitutional and moral rights that govern our country will not fare well in the courts of public opinion or the court of law. Michigan has said it will consider reviewing the policies, but from a constitutional perspective, there really isn’t much to salvage and unless they scrap the program altogether, they will be in violation of the basic tenets of a free and decent society.
All documents pertaining to Michigan State’s SAC policy can be found here and here.
FamilySecurityMatters.org Contributing Editor Luke Sheahan is a writer living in Philadelphia, PA.
(No, I’m Not Joking, It’s Actually Orwellian)
By Luke Sheahan
12/18/06
The Family Security Matters Foundation
"If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein.” -Justice Robert H. Jackson, West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette (1943)
The adage that universities are integral to our national health has been said so many times in so many venues it hardly needs repeating. Our young people file through the doors of the university and emerge citizens of our nation and productive components of our economy; at least that’s what we collectively hope for, the reality is quite different. But the hope is that healthy universities that teach a liberal education, properly understood, will be safe havens of healthy discussion and free inquiry. Some universities do act as a true marketplace of ideas, sporting prominent scholars and intellectuals from across the political and ideological spectrum. Students’ deepest assumptions are challenged and in turn they are welcomed to challenge the prevailing orthodoxy. Then there are institutions like Michigan State University which have actual reeducation programs for dissenting students. No, I’m not joking.
Michigan State has a Student Accountability in Community (SAC) seminar described as “an early intervention for abusive students.” The program targets individuals who use “power-and-control tactics” defined among other things as “male/white privilege, using others, (and) obfuscation.” The goal is to make the student identify how they use their “privilege” to coerce or harm other students and confess their faith in the prevailing orthodoxy. No I’m not joking.
This begs the obvious questions: how early of an intervention; what type of intervention; what is considered “abusive;” and what is obfuscation? The definitions are broader than you might think.
Students who are identified as “having an anger problem,” caught “making sexist, homophobic, or racist remarks,” “humiliating a boyfriend or girlfriend,” or “bullying roommates or suitemates” can be forced by Michigan State, a state institution bound by the bill of rights, to attend a SAC session. According to a 2002 lecture hosted by the originators of the SAC program one girl was sent to such a session because she slammed a door during a fight with her boyfriend; if you examine the materials, it’s clear that even a practical jokester could be considered fair game for a mandatory SAC seminar. The university considers practical jokes and outbursts of anger, such as slamming a door, on a sliding scale with violent crimes such as rape; they are considered a prelude to such brutal behavior. No, I’m not joking.
At such a session the accused student is asked to write down what he believes to have done wrong. Then the state employee running the session corrects the student and makes him rewrite what he thinks he did wrong until he writes a confession specific and humiliating enough to be acceptable to said government employee. No, I’m not joking.
The student must then fill out a worksheet describing what “power and control” tactics the student used to exert influence over other students. Such tactics include “privilege” and “racial violence.” An example of racial violence given in the SAC materials is toilet papering someone else’s door, apparently if they’re of a different race. No, I’m not joking.
A heavy emphasis is put on refusing to allow the student to “obfuscate” the issue. Obfuscation is defined as a student who “lies or denies what they did.” In other words, there will be no pleading innocent. Such examples of obfuscation are claiming the behavior or action was “just a joke” or otherwise denying that one intentionally committed the action out of spite or out of one’s own sense of superiority. The students are forced to incriminate themselves and the document of self incrimination can then be given to the student judiciary committee and used as evidence against the student. No, I’m not joking.
Given Michigan State’s definition of obfuscation, religion could be an obfuscation tactic. For instance, a religious conservative’s view on sexual mores would be categorically “sexist” and “homophobic” and any student who expressed publicly that he held such views would be ordered to participate in a SAC seminar. No, I’m not joking.
After the student has adequately debased himself and confessed to whatever actions the state employees deemed unconscionable, the student must fill out a worksheet describing alternative behavior that he should have done. The student must identify alternative tactics such as “respect,” “negotiation and fairness,” and “trust and support.” Again, the student must be specific in how he should have acted, if he isn’t, he will be forced to start the worksheet over until he gets it right. No, I’m not joking.
If a student is ordered by the government to attend a SAC seminar and the student says, “Damn the man, I’m an American, I don’t have to put with this,” the university, a state institution, puts a hold on the student’s account, barring him from registering for classes and effectively expelling him from school until he submits himself to the government’s demands to confess. No, I’m not joking.
This policy may sound eerily familiar to many of you. That’s probably because many of you read George Orwell’s classic, 1984, in high school. Michigan State’s SAC program is similar enough to Big Brother’s tactics that one could almost be convinced that the administrators at Michigan State thought Orwell’s masterpiece was a how-to book on creating a tolerant utopia rather than a work of fiction describing a dystopian nightmare. Then again, there isn’t much difference between the two; an administrator’s utopia is often a student’s hell.
Michigan State’s SAC program is being challenged by the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education. Such blatant disregard for constitutional and moral rights that govern our country will not fare well in the courts of public opinion or the court of law. Michigan has said it will consider reviewing the policies, but from a constitutional perspective, there really isn’t much to salvage and unless they scrap the program altogether, they will be in violation of the basic tenets of a free and decent society.
All documents pertaining to Michigan State’s SAC policy can be found here and here.
FamilySecurityMatters.org Contributing Editor Luke Sheahan is a writer living in Philadelphia, PA.
Friday, December 22, 2006
Wednesday, December 20, 2006
Update on NY Academic Bill of Rights
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By Phil Orenstein
12/17/06
Democracy Project
It is good news that the New York State Academic Bill of Rights (ABOR) legislation is almost certain be re-introduced in next year’s legislative session. With the recent escalation of incidents of campus censorship and bullying of students and speakers with divergent viewpoints, this bill is now even more necessary for safeguarding intellectual diversity and basic constitutional rights on college campuses. The original brainchild of David Horowitz, ABOR was introduced in the NYS Senate as S6336 early in the year sponsored by 10 Senators followed by the sponsorship of the same bill in the Assembly as A10098 by 6 Assemblymembers due to the lobbying efforts of several supporters of ABOR and I.
The stated purpose of the bill is “to ensure that students enrolled in institutions of higher education receive exposure to a wide range of scholarly viewpoints, and to recognize the academic rights of faculty members.” The bill “…ensures an academic environment for both students and faculty members that allows freedom of political viewpoint, expression and instruction” and it requires that institutions of higher education set up a viable grievance mechanism.
The bill’s prospects look promising in the NYS Senate thanks to the continuous efforts of a number of concerned colleagues and students over the past year calling state representatives and sending letters and faxes to Higher Education Committee members. In recent conversations with John Googas, the Chief of Staff of Senator Padavan, one of the co-sponsors, he assured me that the bill would be reintroduced in 2007. He said he doubts that anything will be done with the bill in the current state legislative session. This is a lame duck session that has accomplished absolutely nothing, failing to raise the cap on charter schools as well as a number of other vital measures. He mentioned that the position of the Higher Education Committee, where the bill now sits, is well staked out and its prospects for passage look good once it gets to the floor.
In answer to the dire warnings of the NYSUT and faculty unions, that this bill would bring government intrusion into the classroom, Googas assured me that policing the colleges and classrooms is the furthest thing from the legislator’s busy agendas. He said that it’s not up to the legislators to get involved in the minutia of academic details. That’s for the faculty and staff to worry about. No government bodies are going to interfere. The purpose of ABOR is to make the faculty and staff face their responsibilities to live up to their own professional standards and depose the ‘rotten apples’ who are abusing the institution for political or other biased agendas. Susan Aron, Chief of Staff of Senator Maltese, another co-sponsor, expressed concern that the bill would face an uphill battle in the Assembly and we should concentrate our efforts there.
Nonetheless, the word from Assembly sponsors is just as reassuring, as far as reintroduction of the bill is concerned. Assemblyman Seminerio’s Chief of Staff Jody Rickert said that the Assemblyman, the chief sponsor, would certainly reintroduce it next year. As a conservative Democrat, he is a strong ally of the academic freedom movement having experienced the abuses first hand. When he was a college student, he was penalized for having a different viewpoint from his professors. In a recent Frontpage interview he expressed his strong support for the bill:
If a professor is there to shape your mind and teach reasoning and thinking, you’re not going to get that from always hearing a one–sided view. The overall reports that I get are from students who have professors that hate America. A student who protests an anti–American professor should not find their marks or their grades in jeopardy. Once we pass it they will have to accept it.
This past year I have reached out to other Assemblymembers conducting several phone sessions with Assemblywoman Barbara Clark, Assemblyman Kirwan, and I have future plans to do so with Mark Weprin, my own Assemblyman. John Delessio, one of Kirwan’s aides, a recent graduate spoke to me about the problems he encountered with his own “leftist Marxist professors”. He said that ABOR would be difficult to enforce in such a classroom setting under the dominion of leftist professors. The biggest problem in his opinion is the hostile academic environment that is not conducive to learning and reasoning. Rather students learn to shut up and agree with their professors in order to get good grades.
In all cases I discussed some of the incidents and experiences I have heard from students on local NY campuses or read about. When I mentioned testimonies of student’s failing grades for disagreeing with their professors, 9/11 conspiracy theory courses presented by professors at Pace University and BMCC, the mob violence at Columbia and censorship at Pace to silence certain viewpoints, they were stunned that such abuses and anti-American indoctrination are such a growing phenomenon right here in their own legislative backyards and vowed to fight for the current ABOR legislation as a key step to a solution.
The need for outside legislation has been proven by the fact that university staff and administrators are reluctant to deal with the lack of intellectual diversity and rampant political indoctrination in the classroom and the curriculum. After publicly declaring his intention to strengthen intellectual diversity on State University of New York (SUNY) campuses and give the matter a fair hearing, SUNY Board of Trustees Chairman Thomas Egan failed numerous times to make time for the issue and encourage a fair debate when it was brought to the table by SUNY trustee Dr. Candace deRussy. In March SUNY trustees once again had had an opportunity to formulate a statewide policy to encourage intellectual diversity and protect the academic rights of students and professors from viewpoint discrimination, but again they rejected all attempts to seriously look into the matter.
As a result of the apparent fact that an Academic Bill of Rights or any other version such as the ACE Statement, could not get a fair hearing on college campuses in New York and no such safeguards presently exist, various supporters of ABOR and I initiated the phone and letterwritting campaign to let our legislators know that we are concerned about the bias on campus. Once the bill is introduced in the new legislative sessions in 2007, we will undoubtedly need to commence our campaign once again and contact our state Assemblymembers and Senators to express our concerns.
By Phil Orenstein
12/17/06
Democracy Project
It is good news that the New York State Academic Bill of Rights (ABOR) legislation is almost certain be re-introduced in next year’s legislative session. With the recent escalation of incidents of campus censorship and bullying of students and speakers with divergent viewpoints, this bill is now even more necessary for safeguarding intellectual diversity and basic constitutional rights on college campuses. The original brainchild of David Horowitz, ABOR was introduced in the NYS Senate as S6336 early in the year sponsored by 10 Senators followed by the sponsorship of the same bill in the Assembly as A10098 by 6 Assemblymembers due to the lobbying efforts of several supporters of ABOR and I.
The stated purpose of the bill is “to ensure that students enrolled in institutions of higher education receive exposure to a wide range of scholarly viewpoints, and to recognize the academic rights of faculty members.” The bill “…ensures an academic environment for both students and faculty members that allows freedom of political viewpoint, expression and instruction” and it requires that institutions of higher education set up a viable grievance mechanism.
The bill’s prospects look promising in the NYS Senate thanks to the continuous efforts of a number of concerned colleagues and students over the past year calling state representatives and sending letters and faxes to Higher Education Committee members. In recent conversations with John Googas, the Chief of Staff of Senator Padavan, one of the co-sponsors, he assured me that the bill would be reintroduced in 2007. He said he doubts that anything will be done with the bill in the current state legislative session. This is a lame duck session that has accomplished absolutely nothing, failing to raise the cap on charter schools as well as a number of other vital measures. He mentioned that the position of the Higher Education Committee, where the bill now sits, is well staked out and its prospects for passage look good once it gets to the floor.
In answer to the dire warnings of the NYSUT and faculty unions, that this bill would bring government intrusion into the classroom, Googas assured me that policing the colleges and classrooms is the furthest thing from the legislator’s busy agendas. He said that it’s not up to the legislators to get involved in the minutia of academic details. That’s for the faculty and staff to worry about. No government bodies are going to interfere. The purpose of ABOR is to make the faculty and staff face their responsibilities to live up to their own professional standards and depose the ‘rotten apples’ who are abusing the institution for political or other biased agendas. Susan Aron, Chief of Staff of Senator Maltese, another co-sponsor, expressed concern that the bill would face an uphill battle in the Assembly and we should concentrate our efforts there.
Nonetheless, the word from Assembly sponsors is just as reassuring, as far as reintroduction of the bill is concerned. Assemblyman Seminerio’s Chief of Staff Jody Rickert said that the Assemblyman, the chief sponsor, would certainly reintroduce it next year. As a conservative Democrat, he is a strong ally of the academic freedom movement having experienced the abuses first hand. When he was a college student, he was penalized for having a different viewpoint from his professors. In a recent Frontpage interview he expressed his strong support for the bill:
If a professor is there to shape your mind and teach reasoning and thinking, you’re not going to get that from always hearing a one–sided view. The overall reports that I get are from students who have professors that hate America. A student who protests an anti–American professor should not find their marks or their grades in jeopardy. Once we pass it they will have to accept it.
This past year I have reached out to other Assemblymembers conducting several phone sessions with Assemblywoman Barbara Clark, Assemblyman Kirwan, and I have future plans to do so with Mark Weprin, my own Assemblyman. John Delessio, one of Kirwan’s aides, a recent graduate spoke to me about the problems he encountered with his own “leftist Marxist professors”. He said that ABOR would be difficult to enforce in such a classroom setting under the dominion of leftist professors. The biggest problem in his opinion is the hostile academic environment that is not conducive to learning and reasoning. Rather students learn to shut up and agree with their professors in order to get good grades.
In all cases I discussed some of the incidents and experiences I have heard from students on local NY campuses or read about. When I mentioned testimonies of student’s failing grades for disagreeing with their professors, 9/11 conspiracy theory courses presented by professors at Pace University and BMCC, the mob violence at Columbia and censorship at Pace to silence certain viewpoints, they were stunned that such abuses and anti-American indoctrination are such a growing phenomenon right here in their own legislative backyards and vowed to fight for the current ABOR legislation as a key step to a solution.
The need for outside legislation has been proven by the fact that university staff and administrators are reluctant to deal with the lack of intellectual diversity and rampant political indoctrination in the classroom and the curriculum. After publicly declaring his intention to strengthen intellectual diversity on State University of New York (SUNY) campuses and give the matter a fair hearing, SUNY Board of Trustees Chairman Thomas Egan failed numerous times to make time for the issue and encourage a fair debate when it was brought to the table by SUNY trustee Dr. Candace deRussy. In March SUNY trustees once again had had an opportunity to formulate a statewide policy to encourage intellectual diversity and protect the academic rights of students and professors from viewpoint discrimination, but again they rejected all attempts to seriously look into the matter.
As a result of the apparent fact that an Academic Bill of Rights or any other version such as the ACE Statement, could not get a fair hearing on college campuses in New York and no such safeguards presently exist, various supporters of ABOR and I initiated the phone and letterwritting campaign to let our legislators know that we are concerned about the bias on campus. Once the bill is introduced in the new legislative sessions in 2007, we will undoubtedly need to commence our campaign once again and contact our state Assemblymembers and Senators to express our concerns.
Thursday, December 14, 2006
Application
-
john.parise@stonybrook.edu, 03:00 PM 12/14/2006, Application
____________________________________________________________________________________
To: john.parise@stonybrook.edu
Subject: Application
X-Attachments: C:\Documents and Settings\Tibor Gasparik\My Documents\Parise.doc;
Dear Professor Parise:
I am resubmitting my application for the advertised faculty position, since I have not received a confirmation that my original application from November 6 was received. It is a standard practice and common courtesy to acknowledge the receipt of a job application, especially if the job announcement specifies an exact date and time by which applications must be submitted. Please, confirm that my application is being considered.
Yours truly,
Tibor Gasparik
Research Associate Professor
____________________________________________________________________________________
Professor John B. Parise, Chair
Faculty Search Committee
Department of Geosciences
Stony Brook University
Stony Brook, NY 11794-2100
Attached please find my application for the advertised faculty position. A signed copy is in the mail.
Tibor Gasparik
Tibor Gasparik
352 Plad Blvd
Holtsville, NY 11742
Phone: (631) 447-2168
john.parise@stonybrook.edu, 03:00 PM 12/14/2006, Application
____________________________________________________________________________________
To: john.parise@stonybrook.edu
Subject: Application
X-Attachments: C:\Documents and Settings\Tibor Gasparik\My Documents\Parise.doc;
Dear Professor Parise:
I am resubmitting my application for the advertised faculty position, since I have not received a confirmation that my original application from November 6 was received. It is a standard practice and common courtesy to acknowledge the receipt of a job application, especially if the job announcement specifies an exact date and time by which applications must be submitted. Please, confirm that my application is being considered.
Yours truly,
Tibor Gasparik
Research Associate Professor
____________________________________________________________________________________
Professor John B. Parise, Chair
Faculty Search Committee
Department of Geosciences
Stony Brook University
Stony Brook, NY 11794-2100
Attached please find my application for the advertised faculty position. A signed copy is in the mail.
Tibor Gasparik
Tibor Gasparik
352 Plad Blvd
Holtsville, NY 11742
Phone: (631) 447-2168
Friday, December 08, 2006
Higher Education and the Democrats
-
By Don Irvine CampusReportOnline.net
December 8, 2006
If anyone ever doubted that academia is full of leftists or Democrats, the latest report from the Center for Responsive Politics, covering the 2005-2006 election cycle, should put all arguments on the matter to rest.
In their just released study based on FEC data, the Center reports that the education industry gave over 12 million dollars to candidates, with 69% of that amount going to Democrats and just 22% to Republicans. Yet that is only the average. At the University of California, for instance, employees gave $406,290 to rank number one on the list, with 87% of the donations going to Democrats. They were followed by Harvard University, where 90% of the $314,917 contributed went to Democrats.
Other schools in the top ten in terms of total donations were the University of Pennsylvania, Johns Hopkins University and Columbia University, with donations to Democrats at 94%, 88% and 88% respectively. Out of the top twenty schools in the report, my own alma mater, the University of Maryland, finished seventeenth in dollar terms, but placed first with the highest percentage of donations to Democrats at 97%, which even beat out the University of Wisconsin known for its liberalism with a mere 95% support of Democratic candidates.
While this may look bad, at least there was some money going to Republicans, except at the venerable College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, VA, a red state where there were no donations to the GOP. Zip, nada, nothing.
Even though the report is largely focused on higher education, it did list the New York City Board of Education at number thirteen with 91% of their donations going to the Democrats. Probably not a big surprise, but yet another example of the problems plaguing public education.
By and large the report only confirms just how out of step academia is with the general population.
Future students, beware!
Click Here to support Frontpagemag.com.
By Don Irvine CampusReportOnline.net
December 8, 2006
If anyone ever doubted that academia is full of leftists or Democrats, the latest report from the Center for Responsive Politics, covering the 2005-2006 election cycle, should put all arguments on the matter to rest.
In their just released study based on FEC data, the Center reports that the education industry gave over 12 million dollars to candidates, with 69% of that amount going to Democrats and just 22% to Republicans. Yet that is only the average. At the University of California, for instance, employees gave $406,290 to rank number one on the list, with 87% of the donations going to Democrats. They were followed by Harvard University, where 90% of the $314,917 contributed went to Democrats.
Other schools in the top ten in terms of total donations were the University of Pennsylvania, Johns Hopkins University and Columbia University, with donations to Democrats at 94%, 88% and 88% respectively. Out of the top twenty schools in the report, my own alma mater, the University of Maryland, finished seventeenth in dollar terms, but placed first with the highest percentage of donations to Democrats at 97%, which even beat out the University of Wisconsin known for its liberalism with a mere 95% support of Democratic candidates.
While this may look bad, at least there was some money going to Republicans, except at the venerable College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, VA, a red state where there were no donations to the GOP. Zip, nada, nothing.
Even though the report is largely focused on higher education, it did list the New York City Board of Education at number thirteen with 91% of their donations going to the Democrats. Probably not a big surprise, but yet another example of the problems plaguing public education.
By and large the report only confirms just how out of step academia is with the general population.
Future students, beware!
Click Here to support Frontpagemag.com.
Saturday, December 02, 2006
Preventing Another Ice Age
-
JOSEPH STERNBERG, Emeritus, Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, California.
Eos, Vol. 87, No. 48, 28 November 2006
Current concern is focused on the consequences of global warming as the atmospheric level of carbon dioxide (CO2) increases. But adding CO2 to the atmosphere has some potential benefits. As considered in this paper, published research supports the view that a moderate increase in the atmospheric CO2 level could prevent the initiation of another ice age. The amount of CO2 resulting from the use of the world’s fossil fuel reserves should be sufficient to provide this protection for thousands of years.
According to geochemical [Berner, 1991] and other studies, atmospheric levels of CO2 100 million years ago were several times as large as the pre-industrial level of 280 parts per million by volume (ppmv). The primary mechanism for removing CO2 from the atmosphere-ocean system has been the weathering of silicate rocks. Thus, calcium silicate reacts with water and CO2 to produce calcium and bicarbonate ions, which then flow into the sea. Sedimentation in the sea, forming calcium carbonate (CaCO3) from these ions, releases only half of the CO2 that was consumed by the weatherization, thus reducing the CO2 in the atmosphere-ocean system. CO2 is returned to the atmosphere-ocean system from volcanic outgassing and at mid-ocean ridges where tectonic plate spreading occurs. The net result of these mechanisms has been a falling level of CO2 and a cooling of the Earth.
Over geologic time, the land-sea distribution and changing solar luminosity are also believed to have been important in the evolution of the Earth’s climate. But the low level of CO2 is considered by many to be the key factor in the onset of ice ages about 2.5 million years ago [Crowley and Berner, 2001].
Computer modeling studies of the variation of the Northern Hemisphere ice sheet volume during the most recent ice age support the key role of CO2. Two forcing functions were used in these studies: the orbital induced insolation variations and the CO2 levels [Loutre and Berger, 2000]. They found that an increase in the CO2 level would prevent the initiation of an ice age from an interglacial period, with the required level depending on the amplitude of the insolation variations.
It is believed that between 2.5 and 10 million years ago, there was extensive ice cover over Antarctica and other polar regions but not the massive hemispheric ice sheets that have characterized the ice ages. But what CO2 levels existed during this period? A detailed evaluation of methods for estimating paleoatmospheric CO2 levels [Royer et al., 2001], including the geochemical model and four proxies for the pressure of atmospheric CO2, concluded that the highest precision for this period is provided by the measurement of the stomatal index of fossil deciduous oak leaves. The stomata are the tiny pores in leaves that permit the passage of atmospheric CO2.
The data showed CO2 levels for this period varying between 280 and 370 ppmv. This suggests that a CO2 level of around 400 ppmv or higher could provide enough greenhouse effect to preclude the initiation of another ice age.
This level is much lower than the atmospheric levels of CO2 in current forecasts for the next several hundred years. For example, in only six years, the atmospheric level of CO2 is expected to reach 400 ppmv.
Land use changes involving deforestation in the equatorial regions have been a measurable factor in accounting for the growth of atmospheric CO2. However, this should not be of long range significance compared with the use of fossil fuels. Fossil fuel reserves are estimated to reach at least 5000 gigatons of carbon. An extensive model to simulate the long-term response of the ocean-atmosphere system to fossil fuel CO2 emissions [Archer et al., 1998] was applied to the case where fossil fuel reserves are fully exploited in the next few hundred years, as currently forecasted. The atmospheric level of CO2 may reach many times the preindustrial level before absorption of a major portion of the emissions in the sea.
A large addition of CO2 to the ocean reduces the concentration of the carbonate ion decreasing the depth of the lysocline, the line below which the water is undersaturated with CaCO3. As a result, large bottom areas containing CaCO3 sediments previously deposited are subject to dissolution. The dissolution of these deposits by combining with CO2 slowly neutralizes CO2 in the ocean, and CO2 flows from the atmosphere into the ocean to restore equilibrium between the atmosphere and the ocean.
Archer et al. [1998] found that close to all of the available CaCO3 sediment inventory (estimated at 1570 gigatons C) would be effective in neutralizing atmospheric CO2 if fossil reserves of as much as 4550 gigatons C were used. More of the CO2 is neutralized during the slow process of balancing the flux to the sea from the terrestrial weathering of CaCO3 rocks and the burial rate of CaCO3 in the sea, a process that could take up to 50,000 years. Nevertheless, the final equilibrium CO2 levels in the atmosphere were found to be close to 500 ppmv above the 400 ppmv level that should preclude the inception of another ice age. Comparable results for CO2 levels after exhausting fossil fuel reserves were obtained in an earlier work [Sundquist, 1990].
Two factors are not included in the above model. Changes in the phytoplankton in the surface mixed layer brought about by global warming and ocean acidification could affect the level of CO2 in the atmosphere. Phytoplankton photosynthesis promotes the transfer of atmospheric CO2 to the sea by lowering the partial pressure of CO2 in the upper ocean. It has been estimated that the atmospheric concentration of CO2 is 150–200 ppmv lower than it would be if all of the phytoplankton in the ocean were to die [Falkowski et al., 2000]. At the present state of knowledge, though, possible changes in the phytoplankton are not predictable.
Second, the eventual removal of the pulse of CO2 in the ocean-atmosphere system by the slow weatherization of silicate rocks is not part of the simulation. Using the estimate for the magnitude of silicate rock weathering from the geochemical analysis [Berner, 1991], it would take some 80,000 years to reduce the atmospheric level of CO2 from 500 to 400 ppmv. So, enhanced CO2 levels could well be expected to persist in the atmosphere for a long time.
Another point that bears consideration is that it may be possible to maintain a CO2 level above 400 ppmv for much longer periods by using the combustion of methane to add CO2 to the atmosphere. According to the analysis of weatherization [Berner, 1991], the rate of weatherization increases as the CO2 level rises above the preindustrial equilibrium level of 280 ppmv. This increase in the loss of CO2 by silicate rock weathering could be compensated for by the addition to the atmosphere of 1.2 × 10-2 gigatons of carbon per year, about 0.002 of the current CO2 emission rate. Recently, it has been recognized that methane in the form of a hydrate occurs in the deep permafrost in Arctic environments and in the uppermost few hundred meters of sediments in continental margins, possibly exceeding the total of all other known hydrocarbon sources. If the estimate of the magnitude of this resource proves correct, the use of this fuel could maintain CO2 levels above 400 ppmv in the atmosphere for as long as 400,000 years.
In the near term (hundreds of years), a major reduction in the forecast rate of CO2 emissions into the atmosphere would be required to avoid exceeding the preindustrial level of CO2 (280 ppmv) by many times more than a factor of two. There are two possible near-term alternatives for substantial reductions in the rate of atmospheric CO2 emissions. One alternative would be an early shift to the increased world use of nuclear power. The other alternative is the capture of CO2 at large point sources such as power plants and industrial facilities [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 2005]. Until now, CO2 capture from process streams has only been used for specialized purposes. Increased technological development is needed in this area to reduce cost and the overall environmental impact. In the United States, large point sources represent over 50% of CO2 emissions. That leaves the question of what to do with the CO2 that has been captured.
A number of programs are looking at the possibilities for geological sequestration of captured CO2, but that would remove the CO2 from the ocean-atmosphere system, reducing the long-term level of CO2 in the atmosphere. Various studies have indicated that deep-sea injection of CO2 could keep the CO2 in the sea long enough to reduce the near-term peak in atmospheric CO2. Much more experimentation is needed to answer important questions about the local effects of deep-sea injections of CO2 in different forms. CO2 capture and injection in the deep sea may make it possible to limit the near-term rise in the atmospheric CO2 level while still increasing worldwide energy use.
Urgent steps are needed to limit the rapid growth of CO2 in the atmosphere, which can be expected to have serious consequences such as an increase in the seal level. But preventing another ice age is also an important objective. It may well be that the intense worldwide exploitation of fossil fuel resources came just in time to provide a way to warm the Earth enough to delay, for a long time, the occurrence of another ice age.
References
Archer, D., H. Kheshgi, and E. Maier-Reimer (1998), Dynamics of fossil fuel CO2 neutralization by marine CaCO3, Global Biogeochem. Cycles, 12(2), 259–276.
Berner, R. A. (1991), A model for atmospheric CO2 over Phanerozoic time, Am. J. Sci., 291, 339–376.
Crowley, T. J., and R. A. Berner (2001), CO2 and climate change, Science, 292, 870–872.
Falkowski, P., et al. (2000), The global carbon cycle: A test of our knowledge of Earth as a system, Science, 290, 291–296.
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (2005), IPCC Special Report on Carbon Dioxide Capture and Storage, edited by B. Metz et al., Cambridge Univ. Press, New York. (Available at www.ipcc.ch)
Loutre, M. F., and A. Berger (2000), Future climate changes: Are we entering an exceptionally long interglacial?, Clim. Change, 46, 61–90.
Royer, D. L., R. A. Berner, and D. J. Beerling (2001), Phanerozoic atmospheric CO2 change: Evaluating geochemical and paleobiological approaches, Earth Sci. Rev., 54, 349–392.
Sundquist, E. T. (1990), Long-term aspects of future atmospheric CO2 and sea-level changes, in Sea- Level Change, edited by R. Revelle, pp. 193–207, Natl. Acad. Press, Washington, D. C.
JOSEPH STERNBERG, Emeritus, Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, California.
Eos, Vol. 87, No. 48, 28 November 2006
Current concern is focused on the consequences of global warming as the atmospheric level of carbon dioxide (CO2) increases. But adding CO2 to the atmosphere has some potential benefits. As considered in this paper, published research supports the view that a moderate increase in the atmospheric CO2 level could prevent the initiation of another ice age. The amount of CO2 resulting from the use of the world’s fossil fuel reserves should be sufficient to provide this protection for thousands of years.
According to geochemical [Berner, 1991] and other studies, atmospheric levels of CO2 100 million years ago were several times as large as the pre-industrial level of 280 parts per million by volume (ppmv). The primary mechanism for removing CO2 from the atmosphere-ocean system has been the weathering of silicate rocks. Thus, calcium silicate reacts with water and CO2 to produce calcium and bicarbonate ions, which then flow into the sea. Sedimentation in the sea, forming calcium carbonate (CaCO3) from these ions, releases only half of the CO2 that was consumed by the weatherization, thus reducing the CO2 in the atmosphere-ocean system. CO2 is returned to the atmosphere-ocean system from volcanic outgassing and at mid-ocean ridges where tectonic plate spreading occurs. The net result of these mechanisms has been a falling level of CO2 and a cooling of the Earth.
Over geologic time, the land-sea distribution and changing solar luminosity are also believed to have been important in the evolution of the Earth’s climate. But the low level of CO2 is considered by many to be the key factor in the onset of ice ages about 2.5 million years ago [Crowley and Berner, 2001].
Computer modeling studies of the variation of the Northern Hemisphere ice sheet volume during the most recent ice age support the key role of CO2. Two forcing functions were used in these studies: the orbital induced insolation variations and the CO2 levels [Loutre and Berger, 2000]. They found that an increase in the CO2 level would prevent the initiation of an ice age from an interglacial period, with the required level depending on the amplitude of the insolation variations.
It is believed that between 2.5 and 10 million years ago, there was extensive ice cover over Antarctica and other polar regions but not the massive hemispheric ice sheets that have characterized the ice ages. But what CO2 levels existed during this period? A detailed evaluation of methods for estimating paleoatmospheric CO2 levels [Royer et al., 2001], including the geochemical model and four proxies for the pressure of atmospheric CO2, concluded that the highest precision for this period is provided by the measurement of the stomatal index of fossil deciduous oak leaves. The stomata are the tiny pores in leaves that permit the passage of atmospheric CO2.
The data showed CO2 levels for this period varying between 280 and 370 ppmv. This suggests that a CO2 level of around 400 ppmv or higher could provide enough greenhouse effect to preclude the initiation of another ice age.
This level is much lower than the atmospheric levels of CO2 in current forecasts for the next several hundred years. For example, in only six years, the atmospheric level of CO2 is expected to reach 400 ppmv.
Land use changes involving deforestation in the equatorial regions have been a measurable factor in accounting for the growth of atmospheric CO2. However, this should not be of long range significance compared with the use of fossil fuels. Fossil fuel reserves are estimated to reach at least 5000 gigatons of carbon. An extensive model to simulate the long-term response of the ocean-atmosphere system to fossil fuel CO2 emissions [Archer et al., 1998] was applied to the case where fossil fuel reserves are fully exploited in the next few hundred years, as currently forecasted. The atmospheric level of CO2 may reach many times the preindustrial level before absorption of a major portion of the emissions in the sea.
A large addition of CO2 to the ocean reduces the concentration of the carbonate ion decreasing the depth of the lysocline, the line below which the water is undersaturated with CaCO3. As a result, large bottom areas containing CaCO3 sediments previously deposited are subject to dissolution. The dissolution of these deposits by combining with CO2 slowly neutralizes CO2 in the ocean, and CO2 flows from the atmosphere into the ocean to restore equilibrium between the atmosphere and the ocean.
Archer et al. [1998] found that close to all of the available CaCO3 sediment inventory (estimated at 1570 gigatons C) would be effective in neutralizing atmospheric CO2 if fossil reserves of as much as 4550 gigatons C were used. More of the CO2 is neutralized during the slow process of balancing the flux to the sea from the terrestrial weathering of CaCO3 rocks and the burial rate of CaCO3 in the sea, a process that could take up to 50,000 years. Nevertheless, the final equilibrium CO2 levels in the atmosphere were found to be close to 500 ppmv above the 400 ppmv level that should preclude the inception of another ice age. Comparable results for CO2 levels after exhausting fossil fuel reserves were obtained in an earlier work [Sundquist, 1990].
Two factors are not included in the above model. Changes in the phytoplankton in the surface mixed layer brought about by global warming and ocean acidification could affect the level of CO2 in the atmosphere. Phytoplankton photosynthesis promotes the transfer of atmospheric CO2 to the sea by lowering the partial pressure of CO2 in the upper ocean. It has been estimated that the atmospheric concentration of CO2 is 150–200 ppmv lower than it would be if all of the phytoplankton in the ocean were to die [Falkowski et al., 2000]. At the present state of knowledge, though, possible changes in the phytoplankton are not predictable.
Second, the eventual removal of the pulse of CO2 in the ocean-atmosphere system by the slow weatherization of silicate rocks is not part of the simulation. Using the estimate for the magnitude of silicate rock weathering from the geochemical analysis [Berner, 1991], it would take some 80,000 years to reduce the atmospheric level of CO2 from 500 to 400 ppmv. So, enhanced CO2 levels could well be expected to persist in the atmosphere for a long time.
Another point that bears consideration is that it may be possible to maintain a CO2 level above 400 ppmv for much longer periods by using the combustion of methane to add CO2 to the atmosphere. According to the analysis of weatherization [Berner, 1991], the rate of weatherization increases as the CO2 level rises above the preindustrial equilibrium level of 280 ppmv. This increase in the loss of CO2 by silicate rock weathering could be compensated for by the addition to the atmosphere of 1.2 × 10-2 gigatons of carbon per year, about 0.002 of the current CO2 emission rate. Recently, it has been recognized that methane in the form of a hydrate occurs in the deep permafrost in Arctic environments and in the uppermost few hundred meters of sediments in continental margins, possibly exceeding the total of all other known hydrocarbon sources. If the estimate of the magnitude of this resource proves correct, the use of this fuel could maintain CO2 levels above 400 ppmv in the atmosphere for as long as 400,000 years.
In the near term (hundreds of years), a major reduction in the forecast rate of CO2 emissions into the atmosphere would be required to avoid exceeding the preindustrial level of CO2 (280 ppmv) by many times more than a factor of two. There are two possible near-term alternatives for substantial reductions in the rate of atmospheric CO2 emissions. One alternative would be an early shift to the increased world use of nuclear power. The other alternative is the capture of CO2 at large point sources such as power plants and industrial facilities [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 2005]. Until now, CO2 capture from process streams has only been used for specialized purposes. Increased technological development is needed in this area to reduce cost and the overall environmental impact. In the United States, large point sources represent over 50% of CO2 emissions. That leaves the question of what to do with the CO2 that has been captured.
A number of programs are looking at the possibilities for geological sequestration of captured CO2, but that would remove the CO2 from the ocean-atmosphere system, reducing the long-term level of CO2 in the atmosphere. Various studies have indicated that deep-sea injection of CO2 could keep the CO2 in the sea long enough to reduce the near-term peak in atmospheric CO2. Much more experimentation is needed to answer important questions about the local effects of deep-sea injections of CO2 in different forms. CO2 capture and injection in the deep sea may make it possible to limit the near-term rise in the atmospheric CO2 level while still increasing worldwide energy use.
Urgent steps are needed to limit the rapid growth of CO2 in the atmosphere, which can be expected to have serious consequences such as an increase in the seal level. But preventing another ice age is also an important objective. It may well be that the intense worldwide exploitation of fossil fuel resources came just in time to provide a way to warm the Earth enough to delay, for a long time, the occurrence of another ice age.
References
Archer, D., H. Kheshgi, and E. Maier-Reimer (1998), Dynamics of fossil fuel CO2 neutralization by marine CaCO3, Global Biogeochem. Cycles, 12(2), 259–276.
Berner, R. A. (1991), A model for atmospheric CO2 over Phanerozoic time, Am. J. Sci., 291, 339–376.
Crowley, T. J., and R. A. Berner (2001), CO2 and climate change, Science, 292, 870–872.
Falkowski, P., et al. (2000), The global carbon cycle: A test of our knowledge of Earth as a system, Science, 290, 291–296.
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (2005), IPCC Special Report on Carbon Dioxide Capture and Storage, edited by B. Metz et al., Cambridge Univ. Press, New York. (Available at www.ipcc.ch)
Loutre, M. F., and A. Berger (2000), Future climate changes: Are we entering an exceptionally long interglacial?, Clim. Change, 46, 61–90.
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