Academic Bill of Rights in Arizona

or: Why we NEED to send more Democrats to the legislature.

From the Tucson Citizen (though it has been all over - it's on the AP wire):

Conservative state lawmakers are targeting what they see as left-leaning university professors, pushing bills designed to ensure that students are not unduly influenced by professors' beliefs.

{snip}

Rep. Russell Pearce, R-Mesa, plans to introduce an "Academic Bill of Rights" next year designed to keep liberal bias out of the classroom.

DailyKos has the story, too.

The "Academic Bill of Rights" or ABOR for short, is the brainchild of uber-conservative David Horowitz. He's been floating this around for a while, as Mr. Horowitz has tried to push it on public university and college administrators with little success. Now, he is taking his attack on free thought to state legislatures (which are always fertile grounds for academic repression.)

Horowitz is very open about his goal with this. ABOR is targeted at silencing all liberals in the academic world. He claims that ABOR would help academia "intellectual diversity and [foster] true intellectual dialogue" but the language of the ABOR proposals that legislators like Pearce are proposing would only stifle the open exchange of ideas.

ABOR has innocuous-sounding parts, like

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

Doesn't sound too bad; he even has a clause that says

Nor shall legislatures impose any such orthodoxy through their control of the university budget.

Sounds good so far, right? Sounds fine, even unexpectedly reasonable, until you listen to the legislators that are leading this alleged 'defense of academic freedom."

From the Citizen:

"University professors lean liberal and not conservative," said Sen. Linda Gray, R-Phoenix, chairwoman of the Senate's Higher Education Committee. "They contribute to society accepting immoral behavior.

From the Republic:

Rep. Laura Knaperek, R-Tempe, who heads two higher-education committees, said the bill to be proposed here next year will be based on Horowitz's version.

"I have heard more and more over the years that there is less and less tolerance for conservative opinions," she said.

ABOR isn't the only legislative attack on academic freedom, only the current one.

Also from the Rep:

[Thayer]Verschoor [R-Gilbert] sponsored a bill that would have allowed university and community college students to refuse any assignment that depicts or describes sexual activity in a "patently offensive way." The Senate defeated it 17-12. Public debate led the Board of Regents to pass its resolution.

Also, the lege introduced "a bill enabling students to refuse assignments they find sexually offensive." The bill failed, but the AZ Board of Regents passed a weakened resolution that was substantially similar.

Add in the lege's bill, signed by into law by Governor Napolitano, that requires all public classrooms in the state to display U.S. flag and Constitution (which sounds harmless, until the rest of their efforts are considered), and you have an all out effort by Republicans to end the tradition of academic freedom in public education and replace it with ideological indoctrination.

Note that I keep using the word "public"; as with many of the proposals forwarded by the Republicans, the private sector, particularly religiously-affiliated institutions, is exempt.

As noted in the stories, Sen. Gray and Rep. Knaperek chair the education committees of their respective chambers. Sen. Verschoor is a member of the Senate Education Committee. Rep. Pearce isn't a member of an education committee.

He's just chair of the House Appropriation$ Committee.

Let's recap -

Gray: "They [liberals] contribute to society accepting immoral behavior."

Knaperek: "I have heard more and more over the years that there is less and less tolerance for conservative opinions."

"State Rep. Russell Pearce...is exploring legislation that would require colleges that received Arizona tax dollars to mandate their students take American history before receiving a diploma." (AZRep)

My responses:

To Senator Gray: What's immoral? Sons of prominent state senators molesting multiple children and and getting the harsh[that's sarcasm folks] sentence of 30 days? Incumbent Congressmen idolizing a rabid anti-Semite? And profiting from it? A U.S. President openly ignoring the Constitution?

I'm a liberal (by AZ standards, anyway) and can definitely say that we think all of the above is immoral and don't accept any of that. When you (all conservatives) act 'morally' (whatever that may mean) at all times, or at least call out your own as quickly and loudly as you call out "liberals", then....who am I trying to kid? It'll never happen.

To Representative Knaperek: What 'less tolerance'? I've been taking classes for a few years at SCC (almost done - whoooo hooooo!) and have never seen or heard of conservative opinions getting suppressed. In fact, the opinions that I have heard in my classes have been respectfully heard, whether they were 'liberal' or 'conservative'. Also, in the case of instructors, I haven't been able to even guess the political leanings of most; of the ones that I could, the split was even. The liberals were in English and Psychology, the conservatives in Physics and Accounting.

Not a shocking breakdown there.

Of those, the only one that tried to push his views on the class was the conservative Physics prof, who ranted about Bill Clinton not funding a particle accelerator. The only problem with that, as I and a couple of other students pointed out, is that we were >4 years into the Bush administration.

To Representative Pearce: After the unfunded U.S. History mandate joins the unfunded flag/Constitution one, what next? A required course on the base criminal nature of immigrants?

The challengers -

Martin Monroe is running against Linda Gray in the LD10 Senate race. No website, but he can be contacted here. He believes that fully funding education is vital to Arizona's future. (From the Clean Elections Candidate guide.) "Arizona should set goals to be among the best public educational systems in the nation." (From his 2006 AZRep candidate questionnaire.)

Edit to add info, per comment:

Glenn Ray (Note: his questionnaire lists www.glennray.com as his website, but upon navigating there I'm redirected to arzray2006.com. I linked his name to that one.) is running against Thayer Verschoor for the LD22 Senate seat. He considers education to be one of the areas that is vital to Arizona's future, one that state government should focus on. (from his AZ Republic candidate questionnaire)

Tammie Pursley is running against Russell Pearce in LD18. She is a career public educator both at the junior high and community college levels.

In LD17, these candidates are running against Laura Knaperek (all info from their websites):

Angie Crouse - is a highly educated, degreed researcher who wants to invest in Arizona education, not destroy it. As someone who worked her way through college, she understand the needs of the majority of students. [These days, most students *have* to work to try to keep their post-college debt to a manageable level.]

Ed Ableser - has taught at ASU and is currently a mental health counselor for the public school system [in Tempe, I think, but I'm not sure.] He also wants to invest in AZ public education, and "eliminate frivolous regulations."

David Schapira - is a former teacher in Tempe whose campaign's focus is on improving education in the state. One of his initiatives will be to reduce the bureaucracy, from both the legislature and Department of Education, weighing down the school systems.

Rhett Wilson - has worked as an advocate for the Maricopa Community College system and is currently working as Coordinator of Undergraduate Internships and Recruitment at the W.P. Carey School of Business, Arizona State University. He strongly advocates more funding for higher education, both to improve the quality of our state universities and colleges, and to help keep tuition affordable.

The professional/education qualifications of the incumbents, Larry, Moe, and Curly....errr...."Senator Gray and Representatives Knaperek and Pearce"?

Gray - lists her occupation as "note-reader Scopist"; the only references to that I could find via Google were in the court reporting field. Based on the bio on her lege webpage, even though she touts herself "as one of the Legislature’s foremost experts on education," she was never a professional educator.

Knaperek - lists her occupation as "Independent Consultant." Again, her bio doesn't have anything that suggests that she was ever a professional educator.

Pearce - no current occupation listed. Former Maricopa County Deputy Sheriff. Nothing in his bio suggests that he was ever in any profession but law enforcement.

To sum up:

The Republican Education Plan: Deceptive Dissembling, Overt Lies, Shameless Fraud, Mindless Indoctrination.

The Democratic Education Plan: Elect serious people with serious solutions, including fully funding and supporting public education, K - College.

Protect Arizona's Future - Elect Democrats.

Note: I was planning a post more specific to LD17, the Democratic candidates, and Laura Knaperek, but when I realized how unqualified these 3 'leaders' (Gray, Knaperek, and Pearce) are, both ideologically (they're dedicated to undermining public education in Arizona) and professionally (not even one was a professional educator), I thought this post was more appropriate to the subject matter.

Thanks for your patience in reading this.

Have a good night!