{"id":296,"date":"2005-03-25T23:20:22","date_gmt":"2005-03-26T03:20:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/shermandorn.com\/wordpress\/?p=296"},"modified":"2005-03-25T23:20:22","modified_gmt":"2005-03-26T03:20:22","slug":"is-the-abor-language-a-fig-leaf","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/?p=296","title":{"rendered":"Is the ABOR language a fig leaf?"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’ve written before<\/a> that Florida’s House Bill 837 (our version of the David Horowitz ABOR<\/a>) does not write into law any insulation of the curriculum from legislative meddling (such as the attempt to foist a chiropractic school onto Florida State last year). This Tuesday, the first committee hearing the bill recommended it on a party-line vote<\/a>, and Students for Academic Freedom<\/a> National Campus Director Sara Dogan wrote a glowing article about the event for FrontPage<\/a> (Horowitz’s online outlet).
\nRegardless of the wisdom of the ABOR in toto<\/em>, it seems that to enshrine only a portion of it (that giving students the apparent standing to sue professors and universities), but not all of it, is only paying lip service to academic freedom. Is the flowery language only a fig leaf for intimidation of faculty? Let’s test that:…<\/p>\n


\nThis evening, I wrote the following to Ms. Dogan, to see whether she’ll stand up for the principles that her organization says it supports:<\/p>\n

As national campus director of Students for Academic Freedom, you must
\nbe aware of the full text of David Horowitz’s ABOR, and I do not know if
\nyou have noticed the important differences between ABOR and House Bill
\n837 currently pending in the Florida legislature. HB 837 puts much of
\nthe BOR in the “whereas” clauses, especially one crucial bit about
\nnoninterference in curriculum matters, such as the use of state
\nappropriations bills to affect the curriculum.<\/p>\n

You may not be familiar, however, with the history of academic-freedom
\nencroachments in Florida. There was last year’s attempt by the
\nlegislature to force Florida State to create a chiropractic school
\nregardless of the faculty’s opinions on this, coming on the heels of the
\nlegislature forcing new graduate schools onto FSU and Florida A&M a few
\nyears before. I could list a number of other incidents, but this should
\nbe sufficient at least for now. This is precisely the type of meddling
\nthat the Horowitz language is supposed to bar, or so I assume.<\/p>\n

Yet that language is not written into statute with HB 837. Regardless
\nof what else we may agree or disagree with [sic<\/em>—ouch], I hope you will agree with
\nme that academic freedom requires that the legislature not interfere
\nwith the curriculum, and that a bill that does nothing to stop such
\npractices is far from a true protection of academic freedom. For that
\nreason, I urge you to distance yourself from HB 837 as the bill’s
\nlanguage currently stands.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

We’ll see how she responds.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ve written before that Florida’s House Bill 837 (our version of the David Horowitz ABOR) does not write into law any insulation of the curriculum from legislative meddling (such as the attempt to foist a chiropractic school onto Florida State last year). This Tuesday, the first committee hearing the bill recommended it on a party-line […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-296","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-academic-freedom"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pag0MB-4M","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/296","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=296"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/296\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=296"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=296"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=296"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}