Rusty Benson
AFA Journal associate editor
April 2007 – The incongruity is disturbing. The institution whose mission traditionally has been to nurture a balanced exposure to all areas of knowledge, foster a robust exchange of ideas and transmit the nation’s unique history has devolved into a narrow, politicized, one-party state, says the president of the American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA).
“America’s colleges and universities are not diverse places,” says Anne Neal. “They are ideological monopolies.” ACTA, founded in 1995 and based in Washington, D.C., is working to reverse that trend by mobilizing university boards of trustees to fulfill their fiduciary responsibilities on behalf of academic freedom, academic excellence and accountability.
For additional information visit www.goacta.org. The “Publications” section offers numerous papers, speeches and transcripts of testimony before legislative and educational bodies. These detail ACTA proposals aimed at restoring intellectual pluralism to America’s colleges and universities.
In an interview with AFA Journal, Neal describes the one-sided academic environment on many of America’s universities.
AFA Journal: Describe the state of politicalization on university campuses.
Anne D. Neal: Moral relativism has become a staple of academic life. Western civilization and America are seen not as sources of liberty, freedom and good, but as the foundation of the world’s ills – something to be avoided, rather than transmitted.
Among the academic casualties of the last 30 years has been the study of free institutions, free enterprise, market economics, and more generally, the events, personalities and principles of the American Revolution.
Speech codes trammel the free speech of students and the exchange of ideas. Sometimes they come in the guise of sexual harassment regulations, sometimes in the guise of civility guidelines.
A survey conducted by my organization along with the University of Connecticut Center for Survey Research and Analysis indicates that:
• 49% of the students at the top 50 colleges and universities say professors frequently inject political comments into their courses, even if they have nothing to do with the subject.
• 29% of students feel they have to agree with the professor’s political views to get a good grade.
• 48% report campus presentations on political issues that “seem totally one-sided.”
• 42% of students fault reading assignments for presenting only one side of a controversial issue.
AFAJ: Summarize how our universities got to this condition?
Neal: Over the last 30 years, many trends have been at play. Often institutions interested in keeping warm bodies in seats designed the curriculum to appeal to the student, rather than insisting on a larger vision of what every educated graduate should know.
More fundamentally, since the late ’60s, higher education has been a captive of postmodernism, a school of thought that rejects the notion of the search for truth and views life from the prism of race, class and gender. But there is more than enough blame to go around including university trustees, donors and alumni.
AFAJ: You have said that our Founders valued public education as a common place where citizens are prepared for participation in our democracy. If universities continue to indoctrinate rather than educate, how will this change the face of our nation?
Neal: At one time, most college students received a broad and rigorous education that pushed their knowledge and thinking ability well past those who had only a high school education. Today, however, many students graduate from college with less knowledge about the world, our nation, and our culture than would have been expected of high school students 50 years ago.
The problem is that formerly most institutions insisted on a cohesive curriculum that ensured students a strong general education in addition to the specialization of their major. Nowadays, however, virtually unlimited choice has supplanted the concept of a rigorous general education.
A troubling consequence is student ignorance of their own history and heritage. Citizens who fail to know basic landmarks of history and civics are unable to reflect on their meaning. They lack an understanding of the very principles that bind our society – namely, liberty, justice, government by the consent of the governed and equality under the law. In a time of global competition and conflict, this serious ignorance has wholesale implications for our ability to be informed and thoughtful citizens and to sustain our civilization.
AFAJ: With political correctness so ingrained in the university system, is there any hope of reversing the trend in the foreseeable future?
Neal: Public awareness of the follies and foibles of higher education is at a new high. On issues of core curricula, engaged trusteeship, intellectual diversity, and historical literacy, higher education is on the defensive.
More and more, taxpayers, elected officials and education leaders across the country are demanding that higher education return to its mission – transmitting the history and heritage of our great nation and providing a broad liberal education that will produce educated citizens needed in a democratic republic. 
