As Joe Dumas has correctly pointed out, at the Senate meeting yesterday
some members expressed strong reservations about supporting a bill in the
legislature: "why are we going around our administration, the UT system,
the Board and THEC on this ... we should be working with our
administration, not alienating them."

I respond that, over the years, numerous UTC administrators, citing their
own helplessness in meeting legitimate and recognized academic needs on
this campus, have urged us faculty to contact our legislators to support
funding for higher education.

But the UTC Senate's reasonable reluctance to endorse a resolution on short
notice and without full consideration, stands in sharp contrast with
Republican state legislators who, in ironic juxtaposition, decided
yesterday to go around our administration, the UT system, the Board and
THEC without full consideration to limit the expression of  what they call
"personal views" from our classrooms. As all of you in academe know, this
is a growing and highly charged issue in higher education.

Conservatives think that liberal professors are "indoctrinating" students,
but this is wrong. While we might think of ourselves as omnipotent, most
studies show that "biased" professors are not effective in changing the
values of our students, whose beliefs have been inculcated by eighteen
years of family, community, church, and peer influence.

Here are some of the goals of legislators who endorse the "academic bill of
rights":
    * Hiring, firing, promoting or granting tenure shall be on the basis of
performance - not on the basis of political or religious beliefs. An
absolute must to protect academic freedom!
    * Tenure, search and hiring committee meetings will be recorded and
available to duly authorized authorities empowered to inquire into the
integrity of the process. Once again, political philosophy or religious
beliefs may not enter into the picture.
    * Students will be graded on their work and not their political beliefs
or religion.
    * Course content and reading lists in humanities and social sciences
will reflect diverse concepts and viewpoints - not just the overwhelmingly
leftist content that is being fed to our college students today.
    * Selection of speakers, allocation of funds for speaker activities and
other student activities will observe the principles of academic freedom
and promote intellectual balance. A CSPC review of major university
commencement speakers revealed that 99 percent were self-identified
Democrats or liberals.
    * Academic institutions and professional societies should maintain a
posture of organizational neutrality.
As you will recognize, many of these "safeguards" are already in place, and
we do not need additional Big Brother in the classroom. Has your department
ever advertised and hired someone based on their religion or politics? Do
you ask students what religion they belong to before giving them a grade?
Is your religion or politics on the test? If you answer yes to any of
these, perhaps they have a point.

In fact, if there is an issue here, it is that Young Republican Groups have
flourished across American campuses in recent years. Are conservative
professors indoctrinating our malleable feckless students?

  A July 24, 2003 report in the Economist tells us that College Republicans
tripled their membership from 2000-2003,  increasing their chapters from
409 to 1,148 and recruiting 22,000 new members in 2002 alone. They now have
more than 100,000 members; even at "liberal" and PC Berkeley, there are now
500 Young Republicans and a conservative newspaper, the California Patriot.
Harvard University's Institute of Politics in April 2002 found that
three-quarters of students trusted the armed forces "to do the right thing"
either all or most of the time; in 1975 the figure was about 20%. Another
poll by UCLA found that 45% of freshmen supported an increase in military
spending, more than double the figure in 1992.

I am sure the UT Board will want to discuss this on March 1-2.

Richard Rice