Patriotic Correctness by John K. Wilson

Author:John K. Wilson [Wilson, John K.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, Sociology, General
ISBN: 9781317254706
Google: 9WEeCwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2015-12-03T05:05:37+00:00

Defunding Student Groups

The right-wing attack on campus speakers is matched by a similar campaign against liberal student organizations. In the 1990s, conservative groups took the University of Wisconsin all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, hoping to abolish all student fees at public colleges that might be used to fund controversial student groups offensive to conservatives. The Supreme Court unanimously defended the use of student fees in the Southworth case, but the right wing continues to seek defunding of left-leaning groups.147

Academic Bill of rights cosponsor representative Walter B. Jones (R-NC) issued a press release that declared, “Statistics have shown that while campus funds are available for distribution to all on-campus organizations, funding is doled out to organizations with leftist agendas by a ratio of 50:1. Such biased financing results in a deluge of liberal speakers being invited to step up to their soapboxes far more often than those with a conservative bent.”148 This claim, like others made by Horowitz and his political allies, is completely imaginary. There has been no accurate study of funding for campus speakers, and the notion that groups with “leftist agendas” receive fifty times as much funding as all other organizations is absurd.

According to representative Jack Kingston (R-GA), the head of the House republican Conference and chief House sponsor of Horowitz’s bill, “At almost every American university,… the number of liberal guest speakers outnumbers the number of conservative guest speakers by a margin greater than 10–1, limiting the opportunities for conservatives or anyone else who does not sing from the same liberal songbook.”149 An editorial in Investor’s Business Daily proclaimed, “A study of bias in the selection of college speakers by David Horowitz and Students for Academic Freedom found that over a 10-year period at 32 elite colleges and universities the ratio of speakers on the left to speakers on the right was more than 15 to 1.”150

No one knows about the ideological leanings of speakers on campuses, because no systematic study has ever been done on even one campus, and certainly not a statistically valid sample of colleges in America. Because the most common student organizations are Christian-based, and these groups frequently have guest speakers, it is quite possible that there are more conservative speakers on college campuses than liberal ones.

But if conservative speakers are rarer than liberal ones on college campuses, one reason is that it is financially more difficult to bring conservatives. Dinesh D’Souza has noted, “I lecture to college groups and to business groups. The business groups pay me better and treat me better.”151 When conservatives like D’Souza have business groups to offer huge fees, they are much less likely to take the relatively small amounts of money offered by universities.

Sean Hannity’s standard $100,000 lecture fee, for example, would almost never be paid by any university, and only corporations and trade groups typically can afford him. But liberal speakers are rarely hired by corporations, which means they are more likely to speak at colleges that can afford their cheaper rates. David

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