Class Notes

AAUP Does (a) Right Thing

While Accuracy in Academia has criticized the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) for selective indignation on abuse of academic freedom, we must note that in a recent report the group makes a sharp departure from this tradition.

Fired essentially for no other reason than acting on her conservative Republican beliefs in her free time, acclaimed sociologist Jean Cobbs has long been a dissident whose tribulations AIA has followed with concern. After an exhaustive review of the controversy at Virginia State Univerity, where Cobbs worked for more than 30 years, the AAUP basically agreed.

“The investigating committee can find no justification for the administration’s suspending Professor Cobbs from her teaching duties, even with pay,” the AAUP concluded. “So far as the committee is aware, the administration made no claim that her continuance in those duties represented a threat of immediate harm.”

Commencement Cover-up?

We reported last week that Dr. Shirley Ann Jackson, president of the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) in Troy, N. Y., invited New York Senator Hillary Clinton to give the commencement address at this year’s graduation ceremonies despite the voted preference of graduating seniors for another notable. Former Secretary of State Colin Powell, for example, was a favorite in the senior voting.

When asked to explain her decision, Dr. Jackson said that she tried to get former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani only to be told to “call back in five years.” But, the RPI College Republicans (CRs) did some research and found this to be a claim that does not quite resound with accuracy.

“I handle all of the requests we receive from schools for speaking opportunities and do not recall receiving one from RPI for Mr. Giuliani,” Kristy Ballard, vice-president of the Washington Speakers Bureau states. “It is also not our practice to advise someone to call back in 5 years.”

Elite History?

Those of us who thought that the aura of elitism that goes with an Ivy League degree stretched back through time immemorial might be surprised by the findings of policy analyst Marie Gryphon [pictured].

“As recently as the 1950s, admission to college was not academically competitive,” Gryphon writes in “The Affirmative Action Myth.” “Harvard accepted 3 out of 4 applicants during that period, and its students had credentials virtually indistinguishable from the top half of many state universities.”

The SAT, Gryphon says, allowed Ivy League schools to recruit among the best and brightest rather than merely the richest. Before the 1950s, financial aid packages that today’s students take for granted mostly did not exist.

“Academic elitism is not a 300-year tradition in American colleges,” Gryphon writes in her Cato Institute policy analysis. “It is a 50-year experiment.” The Cato Institute is a libertarian public policy research foundation, or think tank, based in Washington, D. C.

That 50-year timeline tracks nicely with the devolution of standards in education, from corner kindergartens to most colleges and universities. Gryphon does not quite see it that way.

“Harvard,” she insists, “is not less rigorous.” She allows that colleges in general are less rigorous and that the test scores in lower grades show, at best, stagnation.

As it happens, Gryphon is currently pursuing a Ph.D. at Harvard. She was partly chosen for the program at Cambridge, Massachusetts to bring ideological diversity to the public policy post-graduate program with her extensive achievements and scholarship. In that program and at that level, Harvard has a program in which it recruits for ideological diversity.

Malcolm A. Kline is the executive director of Accuracy in Academia.