And this column is probably a good example as to why.
A Cartoon Version of Academia – Froma Harrop
If you need a good laugh this morning, click that link and you’ll read Ms. Harrop’s opinion of David Horowitz’s ‘Academic Bill of Rights’.
First, she tries to compare the right’s disgust with the overwhelming left-wing slant of America’s colleges and universities to the Muslim reaction to the Mohammed cartoons.
What the cultural warriors do is scour this big country for the odd professor who says profoundly stupid anti-American things and turn him into a caricature of liberal academia. They distribute their comic-strip story of a professoriate in full sedition, then implore lawmakers to micro-manage the hiring at colleges.
Unfortunately for Ms. Harrop, that is not actually the Academic BoR at all. One has to wonder if she has even read the thing and how it enables a student to file a complaint against a professor, of any political stripe, who harangues his students in pointless political discussionsand then gives them a lower grade than their classmates who agree with said instructor, without fear of retribution from the instructor.
But I guess actually reading the Acedemic BoR would ruin her point.
Seeing that she couldn’t come up with the required number of words for her column on that single point, she switches up and compares the left-wing slant at universities with the right-wing slant of the upper management at America’s defense contracting companies.
Speaking of corporations: If, as some cultural conservatives insist, politicians should monitor political leanings at universities because they receive government support, why not extend that supervision to all companies accepting taxpayer dollars?
In 2005, Harvard received $500 million in federal research grants, plus a few million more through student aid. But defense contractor Lockheed Martin obtained $6 billion in federal contracts. I want to know how many liberals populate Lockheed’s executive suite.
Yeah, I know; I’d like to get a swig of what this woman keeps in her liquor cabinet too.
Nevermind that students are paying to be instructed, not lectured and indoctrinated politically, while corporate execs, in companies creating any product, are being paid to get a job done (the apple to Ms. Harrop’s orange), she needs to make an equation, no matter how insipid, that will rile liberals into fenzy, and “War Machine” building companies do that job like no other.
So if Horowitz gets his wish to unburden students of Republican / Libertarian persuasions, Ms. Harrop wants liberals appointed to the executive boards of the companies that build ICBMs.
The sixties were not very kind to her, in this fellow’s opinion.