David Horowitz to Speak at Tufts

March 31, 2004
For Immediate Release

Philipp Tsipman, President, 617.627.1898, philtsip@yahoo.com
Nicholas Boyd, Vice President, 203.645.1663, nicholas.boyd@tufts.edu
Kevin Johannsen, Speakers Director, 973.951.8129, kevin.johannsen@tufts.edu

David Horowitz to Speak at Tufts, Students to Introduce Academic Bill of Rights

Tufts Republicans and Tufts Friends of Israel are pleased to announce that activist and author David Horowitz will be speaking at Tufts on Thursday, April 1st at 8:00pm in Barnum Hall, room 008 on the topic of "Academic Bias And Intellectual Diversity: the Problem with America’s Colleges and the Solution".

“You don't have to be at Tufts for too long before you notice one thing: there is not a whole lot of diversity here….  If you look more than skin-deep… you'll notice that this place resembles more closely a political party or an exclusive social club than a hotbed of free and independent inquiry and thought.  Of the hundreds of lecturers at this university every year, David Horowitz… will be one of just a handful who is a conservative,” wrote Philipp Tsipman, Tufts Republicans President in a March 31, 2004 op-ed in the Tufts Daily.

A prominent conservative activist, Horowitz recently helped found Students for Academic Freedom (StudentsForAcademicFreedom.org), an organization dedicated to ending the political abuse of the university and restoring integrity to the academic mission.

The organization promotes the adoption of an Academic Bill of Rights to secure student rights—freedom of speech, non-discrimination, due process, intellectual diversity— essential to creating a climate free of academic bias on college campuses.   As reported in the February issue of The Chronicle of Higher Education, the bill has been introduced in the House of Representatives and at universities and in legislatures across the country, creating a vigorous discussion about the state of the modern American university.

This Sunday, Students for Intellectual Diversity, an affiliate of the Tufts Republicans, will introduce a resolution on the Academic Bill of Rights, to be available at http://ase.tufts.edu/republicans/diversity/, with the Tufts student Senate.  We urge the TCU Senate and the faculty Educational Policy Committee to support this proposal, and for President Larry Bacow to call together a taskforce that will address this issue on a university-wide level.

The Tufts Republicans club is a student organization that works to promote Republican and conservative ideas at Tufts University through education, activism, and political involvement.

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The Tufts Academic Bill of Rights

 Students for Intellectual Diversity: http://ase.tufts.edu/republicans/diversity/

 The central purpose of a university is the pursuit of truth, the discovery of new knowledge through scholarship and research, the study and reasoned criticism of intellectual and cultural traditions, the teaching and general development of students, and the transmission of knowledge and learning to a society at large.  Academic freedom within the university community is indispensable to the achievement of these goals.

 The concept of academic freedom is premised on the idea that human knowledge is the never-ending pursuit of truth, that there is no humanly accessible truth that is not in principle open to challenge, and that no party or intellectual faction has a monopoly on wisdom.  As the freedom to teach is inseparable from the freedom to learn, academic freedom depends upon an environment of intellectual diversity, which protects and fosters the independence of inquiry, thought, and speech.

 A commitment to academic freedom and intellectual diversity reflects the values -- pluralism, diversity, opportunity, critical intelligence, openness and fairness -- that are the cornerstones of American society.  It is our goal to make sure that this commitment is upheld at Tufts University .

 To secure the intellectual independence of faculty and students and to protect the principle of intellectual diversity, the following principles and procedures shall thus be observed:

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

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

  III.      Exposing students to the spectrum of significant scholarly viewpoints on the subjects examined in their courses is a major responsibility of faculty.  Faculty should uphold academic integrity and not use their classrooms to impose their own political, ideological, religious, or anti-religious views on their students.

  IV.      Selection of speakers and allocation of funds for speaker programs and other student activities will observe the principles of academic freedom and promote intellectual diversity.

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

  VI.      The freedoms of speech, religion, and the press will be upheld, and due process of law will be observed in all university judicial processes.

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

 VIII.      Knowledge advances when individual scholars are left free to reach their own conclusions about which methods, facts, and theories have been validated by research. Academic institutions and professional societies formed to advance knowledge within an area of research, maintain the integrity of the research process, and organize the professional lives of related researchers serve as indispensable venues within which scholars circulate research findings and debate their interpretation.

To perform these functions adequately, academic institutions and professional societies should maintain a posture of organizational neutrality with respect to the substantive disagreements that divide researchers on questions within, or outside, their fields of inquiry.

  IX.      The Office of Diversity Education and Development, the Office of Equal Opportunity, the Office of Residential Life and Learning, the Offices and Programs of the Dean of Students, the Offices of the Dean of the School of Arts and Sciences, and Offices of Admissions, among others, will incorporate intellectual diversity into their mission, activities, and outreach programs.  They will establish effective procedures for documenting and resolving incidents of academic abuse and bias.

     X.      The university President will call together a taskforce to evaluate, monitor, and regularly report on the strengths and weaknesses of the curriculum, pedagogy, residential and co-curricular life with regard to intellectual diversity.  Its membership will draw from distinguished Tufts faculty, administrators, alumni, and current students.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Support the Tufts Republicans

The Tufts Republicans work to promote traditional values and conservative ideas at Tufts University, but our resources are limited. To make a donation of any size, please make checks payable to: Tufts Republicans, Mayer Campus Center, 44 Professors Row, Tufts University, Medford MA 02155. The phone number is (617) 627-1898. If you want your contribution to be verified as tax-deductible, remember to include your full name and address. Thank you!

Please also feel free to e-mail your comments to us at tuftsrepublicans@yahoo.com.
You may be interested in Tufts University's Journal of Conservative Thought: The Primary Source.