There is an alarming media report about an effort by the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) to target civics programs with the help of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. It is only the latest accusation of political bias at the AAUP under President Todd Wolfson. I will be debating Dr. Wolfson on the value of institutional neutrality on June 23.
Trinity College Professor Isaac Kamola, the director of the AAUP’s Center for the Defense of Academic Freedom (CDAF), explains that they want to unleash “naming and shaming and discrediting and undermining the legitimacy” of such civics programs.
As I discuss in my book “The Indispensable Right,” there has been a systematic purging of conservative, libertarian, and contrarian voices in higher education in America. This viewpoint intolerance has been fueled by the AAUP, which was created to foster intellectual exchange and diversity.
There has been a nascent effort to restore not just diversity but classic educational influences in higher education. As the father of four, I was appalled by how my kids could literally find no traditional history courses. Even a course on World War II was a study of identity groups during the war with virtually no discussion of the war itself. American political thought is often addressed from the perspective of colonization or white privilege.
Some schools have responded to the demand for more traditional courses with Civics centers. Notably, these centers are often created under the leadership of university presidents to blunt departmental ideological bias and hostility. Not surprisingly, many academics see the effort as threatening and intolerable.
These centers have been hugely successful and a draw for many students and academics marginalized by faculties that run from the left to the far left. These centers can now be found at universities, including the University of Florida’s Hamilton School for Classical and Civic Education and UT Austin’s School of Civic Leadership.
John Sailer reports that Kamola spoke openly about the desire to target these centers. He is quoted as declaring:
“I would really love to see kind of a robust research project on these right-wing centers and individuals—like, naming and shaming and discrediting and undermining the legitimacy. I would love to strategically map who these f—ers are, and figure out what the weaknesses are, and design a research agenda that just goes through them and tries to knock them out.”
Sailer further acquired emails sent to a CDAF program fellow, including “brainstorming documents, grant records, and meeting audio recordings”:
“In a brainstorming document, Kamola identifies the centers as a key target. “Bring together faculty from different campuses that have dark money-funded, or legislature-imposed, ‘free enterprise,’ ‘civics,’ or other imposed centers,” the document reads.
In a meeting, Kamola expanded on the idea. “If we’re thinking about a five-year research agenda, I think unmasking, naming, and shaming, and just increasing the political costs and decreasing the legitimacy of these centers is going to be really important,” he said.
Kamola specifically calls out a Charles Koch Foundation initiative. His academic bio highlights his writings on the Koch Foundation and other conservative organizations. He has also joined many professors in denying the “so-called free speech crisis”:
“My teaching and research interest focus on the political economy of higher education, African anticolonial theory, and critical globalization studies. My latest book project, Free Speech and Koch Money: Manufacturing a Campus Culture War (with Ralph Wilson, forthcoming 2021), examines the dark money behind the so-called campus free speech crisis.”
CDAF was created through a grant from the Mellon Foundation, which Kamola shows support for his agenda and allegedly stated that “this is not public, so don’t share this anywhere, please—but that they have approved that or they’re in the process of approving it. They’ve gotten a budget that looks like it may be something like $10 million to create a new organization that would do rapid response.”
John Sailer’s research sheds light on the shadowy world of anti-free-speech grants and groups operating in higher education. I have written for years about the system of grants from the Biden Administration and private foundations that establishes and expands the censorship system. Leading institutions like Stanford University played a critical role in that effort as part of a government-corporate-academic coalition.
The system has functioned like a multiheaded hydra, in which cutting off one head only allows two more to grow back. These censors will not simply walk away and become dentists or bartenders. They have a skill set for censorship, and this is now a profitable industry supporting scores of people who market themselves as “disinformation specialists.”
If this account is accurate, the Mellon Foundation is continuing such efforts behind the scenes with groups like the AAUP. Higher education is still dominated by figures such as AAUP’s Kamola, who are eager to target “these f–kers … to knock them out.”
Jonathan Turley is a law professor and the New York Times best-selling author of “Rage and the Republic: The Unfinished Story of the American Revolution.“
A particularly vicious commenter, suffering from Lilliputian delusions of grandeur, keeps peddling this lie:
The AAUP has “no influence whatsoever in American higher education.”
For those interested in the truth, see, for example, the AAUP’s “Redbook” — published for decades as *the* authoritative source for “proper” academic practices (on a wide-range of critical issues). It’s “Redbook” is akin to the AP’s “Stylebook” — and is equally propagandistic.
(The Vicious One’s mania for percentages is a child’s misdirection. Groups with small memberships, but outsized influence, have been a phenomenon for centuries.)
The effort to interfere with Freedom of Speech is as present on the left as it is on the right.
OK.. then show us on the right,
You made the claim, now back it up.
The ADL and the Trump admin seem to like laws regarding antisemitism that tread very close to anti free speech. DeSantis too. Do we have special laws for Christians, muslims, zoroastrians? No, we just lump most of the religions under, wait for it, religion.
The Left, well, just think back to the scamdemic.
mors censoribus
Like Trump ordering the takedown of any historical plaques that aren’t 100% positive coverage of the way slaves and Native Americans were ill treated and killed? Or Trump denying entry into the US of anyone who was noted to be disparaging of Trump?
Got facts?
I’m with Trump on this one. These plaques are just a woke abuse of power to propagandize because these government ‘deep state civil servants’ have a louder voice than a mere citizen. An uneven political advantage with that ‘voice of authority’ bullsh*t
The government should not be the one lecturing it’s citizens with how to think about things, who to build statues of, who to look up to, etc. and this is just leftys pulling their divide by identity crap. We need to keep governance away from politics.
A government shouldn’t need a narrative, only plans for the future with approval from voters.
“Trump denying entry into the US of anyone who was noted to be disparaging of Trump?”
You are close to winning today’s “TDS comment of the day” unless you have some facts to add to this comment??
The grand prize is sadness and a dislike of your whole life because of Trump!
Once again Anonymous makes a claim without a source to back it up.
Sources, sources, the brainwashed don’t need no stinkin sources.
Then tell both sides. Put up bronze plaques of natives scalping the children of settlers, colonials? The ancient Greeks were fair in their sculpted battle scenes. Wars are wars…
Its not a claim, its a universal truth. But your pea brain (or whatever it is) can’t comprehend that truth.
So, great mind, explain it to us lowly minds. Use your words.
universal truth? Quite a declaration. Sincerity is required to enter the daily contest. You win for today as your argument is ‘TDS tight’, insults and all.
Anonymous, there’s one thing you can do to cause us to believe you. Provide a source for your claim other than Mother Jones says so so it must be true. A universal truth? In the universe inside your head that reverses polarity on an hourly basis where the speed of light is fifteen seconds.
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33rpm and the needle is stuck.