While conservatives are fighting an uphill battle on most liberal American campuses these days, their beleaguered minority status is still a threat to some well entrenched interest groups.
One project, launched by Peter Dreier, a distinguished professor of politics at Occidental College along with Nelson Lichtenstein, a U.C. Santa Barbara 20th century historian, plans to pay for academic research that can “service in the battle with conservative ideas,” says author John Leo.
Known as the “Cry Wolf” project, it is sponsored by the Center on Policy Initiatives, and will offer 50 cents a word to academics who submit information showing how “conservatives control the political narratives by predicting disaster if progressive policies are pursued.”
The “briefs are supposed to be scrupulously accurate, but obviously prepared to pursue a pre-determined agenda to be spread through the mainstream media” noted Leo.
Erin O’Connor, writing on her website Critical Mass, agrees, noting that the “Cry Wolf” project “explicitly supports the arguments of those who would say that large swaths of academia are little more than publicly funded mechanisms for disseminating and producing an ideologically driven world view.
Deborah Lambert writes the Squeaky Chalk column for Accuracy in Academia.
