The Sandspur

Issue date: 11/4/05 Section: News

Media Credit: Brett Heiney LECTURER DAVID HOROWITZ: This impassioned speaker talks about academic freedom on college campuses that has stirred debate among members of the Rollins College community.

Controversial conservative activist David Horowitz spoke at Rollins on November 1 to an audience of locals, students, faculty, and administrative staff. Horowitz spoke on the current state of academic freedom on college campuses. Horowitz said that universities are "the most intellectually un-free places in America" and that they have been "intellectually cleansed of conservatives."

Horowitz defends strict political neutrality of professors and claims it is their "professional obligation" to teach a student "how to think and not what to think."

Throughout his address he listed examples in which he felt Rollins faculty had overstepped the bounds of academic freedom. He mentioned: A chemistry professor calling on students to write their congressmen to approve the Kyoto Protocol, an Art History professor telling students to avoid the draft and move to Canada, blatantly bias RCC required readings, and a Dean who posted political campaign signs on campus. Horowitz also said that professors should not require students to go to political lectures on campus.

Horowitz concluded his address by commenting on the War in Iraq saying that WMDs were not the central rationale for the war, and that the spread of democracy was an important security interest of the United States.

President Lewis Duncan, who attended the lecture, an effort lauded by Horowitz, when asked if Rollins supports freedom of speech within the educational framework he said, "Personally I support freedom of speech within limits discussed tonight" and that "based on everything I've heard the vast majority of faculty are extremely sensitive to this issue."

Professor of Anthropology Robert Moore when asked to comment on Horowitz's lecture said that he agreed that students and faculty should not have an antagonist relationship, but that Horowitz was wrong about prejudice against conservative professors. Moore feels that there are more liberal faculty members because of the nature of academia. Moore asserted that conservatives are judged on merit just like liberals.

Kathryn Norsworthy, a faculty member who works for graduate studies in counseling said she was "disturbed" by the presentation for Horowitz has placed all of the ailments of society on liberals and progressives. She believed that many of the comments were "polarizing, provocative, and inflammatory." She believes the present argument about academic freedom is occurring because people are now questioning the "dominant paradigm" of society, and that many are threatened by that.

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