FEATURED
The American Association of University Professors’ Center for the Defense of Academic Freedom’s scheme to target and take down civics schools that have launched in recent years at public universities is misguided and alarmist, some scholars told The College Fix.
The controversy stems from audio recordings and documents obtained by City Journal in which the center’s Director Isaac Kamola referred to the civics schools using expletives and voiced a desire to use funding for opposition research in an attempt to “knock those f–kers out.”
The centers, established in recent years in states including Arizona, Florida, Texas, North Carolina, and Ohio, focus on classical texts, Western Civilization, American founding principles, constitutionalism and free enterprise.
But the AAUP has argued the centers threaten the academic freedom of state university professors.
In one audio clip, Kamola said he “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.”
“[J]ust increasing the political costs and decreasing the legitimacy of these centers is going to be really important.”
Jeffrey Collins, associate director of academic affairs at the Hamilton School for Classical and Civic Education at the University of Florida, told The College Fix the center respects academic freedom.
“The Hamilton School was founded on the conviction that higher education benefits from intellectual diversity, rigorous inquiry, and civil discourse,” he said via email.
“Rather than focusing on perceived threats, we are focused on creating an environment where students encounter a wide range of perspectives and learn to evaluate arguments on their merits.”
Collins said he is not worried about the AAUP’s threats.
“New initiatives have to prepare for a bit of criticism, fair or unfair,” he said. “Not every lobby group or funding body will have priorities or ideological perspectives that appeal across the board.”
Some supporters of the civics schools say the pushback from groups like the AAUP underscores the very need for these independent programs.
Tal Fortgang, a legal policy fellow at the Manhattan Institute, which publishes City Journal, told The Fix that the alleged threats to academic freedom from the centers are nonexistent.
“They don’t affect professors’ ability to conduct the research they find interesting, or explore topics that interest them in the classroom,” he said.
The public, he said, has a right to demand more of their universities than education around obscure topics.
“Some critics have complained that the new centers will redirect resources from existing departments, limiting their ability to pursue what they had planned,” he said. “But that isn’t really an academic freedom argument, though it is often framed that way.”
Besides, he said, the public “is entitled to say that it considers civics and classics education more worthy of public support than autoethnographies on indigenous epistemology.”
The problem is not with the public controlling the professors, Fortgang said, but with the professors themselves.
“The overwhelming majority of academics are left-wing,” he said, adding that while some give their students all sides of the argument, most don’t.
“This threatens academic freedom in its own way, by chilling students’ willingness to explore and advance dissident ideas,” he said. “But the more important reality we have observed is that many professors today are simply ideologues who use their platform to advance an ideological agenda.”
In his work for the Manhattan Institute, Fortgang has drafted model legislation for holding higher education accountable.
AAUP officials and Kamola have not issued direct public responses, though the organization has previously criticized such centers as examples of political interference.
Kamola has described them in interviews as part of a “political infrastructure.”
“Intellectual diversity is being used as a lever to undermine institutional autonomy and give politicians more levers that they can use to discipline institutions into producing the kinds of knowledge that the politicians would prefer,” he told Truthout.
Kamola did not respond to The College Fix’s requests for comment.
MORE: Knock those ‘f—ers’ out: Report exposes left-wing agenda to bring down civics schools
