Academic freedom.

"What's behind the Student Bill of Rights?" explains the return of McCarthy-style witch hunts under the ironically named Student Bill of Rights. Considering that 13 states have introduced legislation that would prohibit the introduction of controversial or provocative ideas in the classroom, it is not surprising that during spring semester, 2005, ten professors at Santa Rosa Junior College were reprimanded for teaching with "leftist bias," the new words to replace the "communism" of the 1950s (truthout, http://www. truthout.org/issues_05/060705LA. shtml).

In spring 2005, The Forum, a journal of applied research in contemporary politics, published a report arguing that conservative faculty members are less likely to advance in academe. A new report by four scholars from the University of Pittsburgh, also published in The Forum, suggested that conservative professors do not want to work at research institutions and prefer not to work in large metropolitan areas on the West and East Coasts, thus limiting their chances for advancement. Both sides of the controversy seem to have little data to support either side of the argument (http://chronicle.com/ daily/2005/08/200508090n.htm).

Clarion (Summer 2005), the newspaper of the Professional Staff Congress of the City University of New York, reports that the American Association of University Professors will conduct an inquiry into the state of academic freedom at CUNY, where four recent cases have raised concerns about a pattern of political interference in academic affairs. In two cases at Brooklyn College in May 2005, faculty members came under attack in the news media. Katha Pollitt's "Brooklyn Prof in Godless Shocker" (The Nation, June 27, 2005) describes how one atheist professor was considered ineligible to assume the chair of the Sociology Department and a Professor of Education was accused of attacking standard English as the "language of oppressors," based on one reading assignment. Pollitt ends her article by writing, "People who believe in academic freedom have got to take these incidents seriously and get active before it's too late.

An art professor at the State University of New York at Buffalo, and a founding member of the Critical Art Ensemble, faces possible prison sentences of up to twenty years for using bacteria in art projects criticizing genetically modified food and the history of American biowarfare (The Nation, July 22, 2005).

"Monkey Trial or Kangaroo Court?" describes how John Calvert, the lawyer who directs the Intelligent Design Network of Shawnee Mission, Kansas, took over the stage for three days in May 2005 in a cramped auditorium across the state from the Kansas Capitol building, lecturing on the state of science education in the United States. Calvert and his 22 witnesses, from the fields of science, philosophy, and teaching, portrayed evolutionary biology as a "tyrannical, 'naturalistic' discipline that can be salvaged only by letting the bright light of the supernatural shine in." (AlterNet, May 19, 2005, www.alternet.org/story/22042/).

In "Inside Higher Education," a Ph.D. student who is also a City University of New York adjunct writes about the vulnerability of graduate assistants and adjunct faculty that relates directly to discussions of political and academic freedom (insidehighered. com/views/2005/06/07/skinner).

The University of California Press is publishing a book that Alan Dershowitz considers anti-Semitic and has done everything possible to keep off the presses. The book, Norman Finkelstein's Beyond Chutzpah: On the Misuse of Anti-Semitism and the Abuse of History, pushed Dershowitz to write first to Arnold Schwarzenegger, the governor of California, to intervene with the publisher (the Governor would not "exert influence in this case because of the clear, academic freedom issue it presents") and then to ask the University of California president to intervene with the press (The Chronicle of Higher Education and The Nation, both July 11, 2005).

The Ninety-First Annual Meeting of the American Association of University Professors expressed its grave concern over "increased attacks on the academic freedom of teachers and scholars across the nation and the resulting threat these attacks pose to the tradition of institutional independence in American higher education.... In some instances, these attacks have been marked by reprehensible tactics of intimidation and harassment."