So now that Pennsylvania has rejected David Horowtitz's campaign for the so-called "academic bill of rights," who will move up on his dance card?  Remember his claim: "In any red state controlled by Republicans, I can get hearings."  And apparently that is how it worked in Pennsylvania where, according to Horowitz, he and Rep. Gib Armstrong, "set about changing the educational face of Pennsylvania. Gib got legislation passed to create an Academic Freedom Committee of the Pennsylvania House and we proceeded from there."

I have no doubt that Armstrong and Horowitz worked closely together.  In fact, my real concern during the hearings was that they were working too closely together and that Horowitz was going to have enough influence to twist the hearing process into something it shouldn't be. That didn't happen and again, let me commend the Committee for not allowing this to happen and for reporting accurately on the hearings.

But what had me so concerned you ask?

Well, since the Summary of Testimony included in the November 14^th draft of the report was not part of the final report voted on today, I wasn't going to say anything.  But then came the latest Horowitz tirade in which he promised to post both the actual report and the earlier draft to back up his accusation that the:

union lobby not only rewrote the findings and recommendations of the Academic Freedom Report, they eviscerated the report itself eliminating the summary of what the report found. They did this so that the actual report would not contradict the conclusions that they wanted the report to have: there is no problem, nothing really needs to be done. If you want to see the breathtaking audacity of this theft of the report by the Democrats and the unions, compare the draft version which was intact until the day before the vote with the final report and see how they took out the whole "Summary of Testimony" deleting the actual report of what went on in the hearings so they could put in their own conclusions.

Okay, first, we can't ignore the flat-out insult he is throwing here at, well, everyone.  Apparently no one on the Committee has the ability to think or operate independently. Horowitz suggests this is particularly true of the Republicans who, while in the majority, were willing to let the Democrats do whatever they want.  Could it be that the people who actually listened to the testimony and didn't come to the table with a preset ideological bent came to logical conclusions based on the evidence presented? 

No, what is most disturbing about this accusation is this: If there is any evidence of undue influence, it is in the now removed Summary of Testimony.  This section of the November 14^th report was so completely biased toward Armstrong's viewpoint, it proved to be unacceptable to the full Committee.  For example, the only students cited in the draft were those alleging problems with academic freedom, but remember, as we showed in our analysis of the hearings, virtually all of the students who testified or provided public comment said just the opposite.  Such misrepresentations plagued the now deleted Summary. 

More troubling is that it read like a sloppy David Horowitz piece.  For example, when the Summary tries to capture an exchange between Gib Armstrong and Professor Kurt Smith, the report runs two quotes from Armstrong, which are actually three pages apart in the testimony, together as if it were part of one train of thought followed by a question-hmm, where have we seen that before?

But the part that really gave me pause was this passage in the Summary where the question of how many professors were persecuted during the McCarthy era is being discussed in a convoluted attempt to show how dire the current situation is. These words are not attributed to anyone, but rather are simply part of the report discussion. Here is the passage:

Historian Lionel Lewis has written an academic study of the era, which focuses on its impact on university professors. It is titled Cold War on Campus.

During the nine-year period from 1947-1954, Lewis was able to identify only 126 cases at 58 institutions nationally, where a professor's appointment was threatened because of his beliefs. These cases led to 69 terminations. Of these, 31 were at a single institution, the University of California, which had instituted its own loyalty oath. The California terminations took place in the years 1949 and 1950.

In other words, during the nine years of the McCarthy era, there were exactly 38 politically motivated terminations of professors in all 48 states and out of a total professoriate of several hundred thousand. This is far smaller than 13 cases at a single university.  Yet, small as this number may appear, the author concludes, "the chilling effect on the expression of all ideas by both faculty and students was significant, although in fact there is no way to measure adequately their full impact."

I read this passage and I thought, "man, that sounds really familiar."  Then it struck me.  Only days before I had read Horowitz's commentary piece (subscription) in the November 10^th edition of the Chronicle of Higher Education where he said this:

A study by the historian Lionel Lewis of academic persecutions during the McCarthy era (which, according to Lewis, lasted nine years) found only 126 faculty members involved in academic-freedom cases at 58 institutions nationally. Those cases led to an estimated 69 terminations, of which 31 were resignations at a single institution after it established a loyalty oath. Yet small as that number may appear among the thousands of universities and hundreds of thousands of professors, the author concluded, "It is apparent that their chilling effect on the expression of all ideas by both faculty and students was significant, although in fact there is no way to measure adequately their full impact."

Coincidence?  Hard to imagine.  If I were a betting person, I would bet that the first drafts of this report had a little more David Horowitz in them than was called for.  Who knows what Horowitz wrote, or what was copied, or if a couple folks just talked and happened to write really similar passages right down to a verbatim sentence.  Had that section stayed in the report, we would certainly be asking.  However, I say kudos to the Committee for purging the report of that taint.  For Horowitz to scream that the final report has been hijacked because now it doesn't include a Summary that reads more like one of his screeds against higher education than a reflection of the well-run hearings this committee conducted is just pure Horowitzian hypocrisy.

If I were a legislator in another state and David Horowitz came knocking on my door, I would be very careful about hitching my wagon to that train.  I think more sound advice for other states would be to not copy Horowitz's "Pennsylvania model" . . oh, and don't copy David Horowitz, either.