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Welcome, AFL-CIO, to the Free Exchange on Campus Coalition |
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Megan Fitzgerald, field director of the Free Exchange on Campus, welcomes all of us in the AFL-CIO union movement as a new coalition partner—and we share the warm welcome with the members of the Free Exchange who are doing great work for students across the nation.
Over here at the Free Exchange on Campus, a coalition of faculty, student, civil liberties and other groups working to ensure that colleges and universities can have a free exchange of ideas, we’re thrilled to welcome the AFL-CIO as the newest member of our coalition.
The work of our coalition, which includes the AFT, an AFL-CIO affiliate, stems from a number of recent legislative and media attacks against higher education institutions and their faculty. David Horowitz and the American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA) take the view that hard-working professional faculty are abandoning their mission of teaching in favor of indoctrinating students with their personal political views. Without any evidence of a genuine problem in higher education—in fact, in spite of evidence to the contrary—these organizations and pundits have been able to get 28 states to take their accusations seriously, sponsoring legislation or administrative policy to restrict the free exchange of ideas on campus.
While these fights are damaging to higher education directly, putting intense political pressure on faculty to self-censor, they also take time and attention away from real problems students and their families face all the time (and that the AFL-CIO has recognized with its Opportunity for All initiative)—that more and more students are either unable to afford a higher education or graduate with debt levels that limit their post-graduation options.
These attacks on the professional integrity of college educators and the distractions they cause go beyond just being an education issue—they are labor issues which impact an important institution that provides for the social mobility of American workers.
Our coalition is excited that the AFL-CIO shares these concerns and is looking forward to working with the 10 million workers you represent, both nationally and in the states where most of these battles are fought.
2 Comments
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You can’t have open and honest debate on campus when the PC police, Al Sharpton, CAIR and their ilk are waiting to pounce and race bait every discussion. These people/groups have no credibility and yet the media bring them on like attack dogs every chance they get. It’s the new McCarthyism. Just shut up and follow the script if you want to keep your job!!!!
I have never considered learning about other points of view and having open-minded, liberal thinking professors as any form of indoctrination. On the contrary, one of the best outcomes of receiving a college education is learning to see things from a variety of perspectives and seeing things with an open mind. David Horowitz, along with the American Council of Trustees, is stuck in their own archaic malcontent. This is sad, because if ever we needed fresh ideas, and better ways of solving the problems we are faced with today, it is now. The more information that people are exposed to, the more ideas they become familiar with, the more progress can be made. And since a college education is becoming more of a luxury item these days, the media sees this as a way to limit information and ideas, because colleges have always been the best source of both.