The New Wave of Intellectual Diversity Legislation

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CounterCurrent: Week of 2/23
The New Wave of Intellectual Diversity Legislation

CounterCurrent is the National Association of Scholars’ weekly newsletter, bringing you the biggest issues in academia and our responses to them.
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Category: Intellectual Diversity; Reading Time: ~2 minutes
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** Featured Article - Missouri and Iowa Legislators Introduce Campus Intellectual Diversity Bills by NAS ([link removed][UNIQID])
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NAS is pleased to hear that state representatives Mike Moon (R-MO) and Sandy Salmon (R-IA) have joined Anthony Kern (R-AZ) in introducing campus intellectual diversity bills ([link removed][UNIQID]) to their respective state legislatures. All three are modeled after Stanley Kurtz’s NAS-endorsed Campus Intellectual Diversity Act (CIDA) ([link removed][UNIQID]) drafted in 2019. Kurtz himself describes ([link removed][UNIQID]) these bills as what may be a “new wave of state-level legislation designed to increase viewpoint diversity throughout America’s public-university systems.”

The last wave of legislation was designed to safeguard free expression on public campuses— Wisconsin’s S.B. 403 ([link removed][UNIQID]) is a good example. This bill would require all schools within the University of Wisconsin and Wisconsin Technical College Systems to implement free expression policies that 1) reaffirm the university’s primary purpose of fostering disinterested scholarship and 2) punish those who interfere with free expression. Most notably, the bill would suspend a student after two major infractions and expel them after a third. These are necessary provisions and represent negative movement towards intellectual diversity. That is, they protect the environment necessary for viewpoint diversity to flourish by telling faculty, students, and administrators what they can’t do. Free expression is the wellspring of higher education through which all else flows, so it’s only logical to protect it as a first step.

This (potential) new wave of legislation started by Arizona, Missouri, and Iowa takes efforts a step further through positive movement. Rather than requiring punishment for those who disrupt free expression, these new bills actively promote intellectual diversity through the creation of an Office of Public Policy Events. Each public college and university in the state would be required to establish such an office, an entity responsible for hosting debates, forums, and lectures featuring speakers of diverse viewpoints.

The fundamental goal of these offices is to ensure that intellectually-diverse discourse occurs somewhere on campus rather than nowhere, which is the unfortunate state of most campuses today. Offices of Public Policy Events would be stand-alone entities, allowing academic departments and student groups to be as biased as they please. Viewpoint diversity in higher education is too important to wait for academic culture to change—it must be pursued by other means, and we trust that its undeniably-positive effects will stimulate large-scale change throughout academia.

NAS supports the legislative efforts of representatives Kern, Moon, and Salmon and urges their state legislatures to take this important step toward intellectual diversity.

Until next week.

John David
Communications Associate
National Association of Scholars
Read More ([link removed][UNIQID])
For more on intellectual diversity in higher education:
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February 3, 2020


** Arizona State Legislator Introduces Bill Modeled on Campus Intellectual Diversity Act ([link removed][UNIQID])
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NAS

Arizona State Representative Anthony Kern recently filed HB 2238, a new intellectual diversity bill closely modeled after Stanley Kurtz's Campus Intellectual Diversity Act.

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February 21, 2020


** An Invitation Renewed ([link removed][UNIQID])
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NAS

The Army War College canceled Raymond Ibrahim's talk last year after protest from CAIR and others. The speech is now back on.

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January 17, 2020


** Partisan Registration and Contributions of Faculty in Flagship Colleges ([link removed][UNIQID])
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Mitchell Langbert & Sean Stevens

In this paper, Mitchell Langbert and Sean Stevens triangulate earlier findings of faculty voter registration with the partisan affiliation of federal contributions listed in the FEC database.

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December 02, 2019


** Academic Freedom, Academic Diversity, and Research Integrity at UCLA ([link removed][UNIQID])
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NAS

NAS urges WSCUC to call on UCLA to admit wrongdoing in the case of Jim Enstrom and implement reforms to prevent similar violations of academic freedom.


** About the NAS
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The National Association of Scholars, founded in 1987, emboldens reasoned scholarship and propels civil debate. We’re the leading organization of scholars and citizens committed to higher education as the catalyst of American freedom.

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