A Philosopher Looks at the “Academic Bill of Rights”

 What happens when you apply the standards of logic to an illogical rgument?

By Kurt Smith

A political scientist could probably help us understand the impact of the so-called Academic Bill of Rights(ABOR) across the nation. And a student of government might be able to tell us whether legislation based on it is likely to pass muster in a particular state. It takes a philosopher, however, to explain the faulty logic behind the ABOR—the brainchild of right-wing activist David Horowitz, who advocates government oversight of university curricula, day-to-day coursework, and classroom discussions on college campuses. So come with me through a course in basic logic to see not only why the ABOR is unnecessary, but also why its central claim about the academy is false.

In his attack on higher education, Horowitz looks suspiciously like a sophist of ancient Greece. By the time of Socrates, sophists had earned a reputation much like that of today’s lawyers in that their primary aim was seen as simply to win a debate; they had little or no interest in the pursuit of truth. Folks who did not have truth on their side would often hire sophists to make their cases or to teach them how to do so by making weaker arguments appear stronger.

Protagoras, a famous sophist, was a relativist, believing that all truth was in principle open to challenge; that is, no one had a monopoly on the truth. Simplistic versions of epistemic (knowledge-based) relativism are incoherent; they go something like: “There is no absolute truth, and this is absolutely true.” Which brings us to Horowitz and the ABOR, which states:

From its first formulation in the General Report of the Committee on Academic Freedom and Tenure of the American Association of University Professors, the concept of academic freedom has been premised on the idea that human knowledge is a never-ending pursuit of the truth, that there is no humanly accessible truth that is not in principle open to challenge, and that no party or intellectual faction has a monopoly on wisdom.1

Here, Horowitz claims that the concept of academic freedom, as formulated by the AAUP, is grounded in epistemic relativism: “there is no humanly accessible truth that is not in principle open to challenge.” Because the claim to academic freedom rights is based on relativism, he contends, professors abuse their students when they teach as if they have a monopoly on the truth. The ABOR is Horowitz’s remedy. It requires professors to consider different sides of an issue, as Horowitz told The Temple [University] News in January 2006. “You can’t get a good education,” he said, “if they’re only telling you half the story.”

But even a superficial study of the 1940 Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure, formulated jointly by the AAUP and the Association of American Colleges and Universities, would show that the AAUP takes no epistemological stand on relativism, either for or against it. Contrary to Horowitz’s contention, therefore, the concept of academic freedom as formulated by the AAUP is not based on epistemic relativism.

If, as Horowitz appears to believe, the ABOR is needed only if the concept of academic freedom as formulated by the AAUP is based on epistemic relativism, and if the concept of academic freedom as formulated by the AAUP is not based on epistemic relativism, it follows that the ABOR is not needed. To avoid this conclusion, Horowitz would have to stop connecting the ABOR to the concept of academic freedom as formulated by the AAUP and simply claim that regardless of what the AAUP says, the concept of academic freedom as he understands it is based on epistemic relativism. Of course, Horowitz provides no evidence or argument for thinking that epistemic relativism is the form of epistemology operating throughout academe; he simply assumes that it is. Without this assumption, he loses the need for the ABOR. Whether he likes it or not, Horowitz must own his assessment. So let us examine logically his claim that academe is rooted in epistemic relativism.

A Lesson in Logic

It seems to me that a minimal necessary condition for being able to challenge some claim P is to be able to conceive of P’s opposite. That is, it must be possible to conceive of the conditions that would render P false. If one could not conceive of P’s opposite, in what sense could one be thinking that P was false? And if one could not conceive of P’s being false, in what sense could one take oneself to be challenging P? The minimal necessary condition can be stated thus: P is challengeable only if the opposite of P is conceivable.

There are several points worth noting here. The logical structure of the minimal necessary condition (it is a conditional statement) guarantees certain things. First, given that P is challengeable, the claim guarantees that the opposite of P is conceivable. Second, given that the opposite of P is not conceivable, the claim guarantees that P is not challengeable. So far, so good.

There are things that the claim does not guarantee, however. For example, given that the opposite of P is conceivable, the claim does not guarantee that P is challengeable. This logic may look unnecessarily technical, even ugly. But the sophist banks on precisely such a reaction—Horowitz is no exception. After all, by getting one to ignore such details, a sophist can make a weaker argument appear stronger.

Let’s make this clearer. Let P be the claim that “Abraham Lincoln was a U.S. president.” We can conceive of a world in which this claim is false. To be sure, in doing so, we are imagining a different world from the actual one. But the point is that we can conceive of a world in which Lincoln was never president. Even so, as was noted above, simply because we can conjure up the opposite of the claim that Abraham Lincoln was a U.S. president, it does not follow that the claim is challengeable.

Obviously, other things are needed to warrant a challenge. For example, one would require a reason for thinking that he was never the president or for supposing that historians who tell us he was have somehow got it all wrong. Simply being able to conceive of the possibility of his not being president is not in itself a reason to believe that he was not. Of course, a reasoned challenge to such a claim would be dead in the water—despite the fact that it is logically possible to imagine that Lincoln was never president.

Now let P be the Pythagorean Theorem: “For all right triangles, the sum of the squares of the two sides is equal to the square of the hypotenuse.” The truth of this claim is necessary: it cannot be false. We cannot conceive of the conditions that render it false. This example differs from that about Lincoln. In that example, we could conceive of the conditions that would render the claim false. But conceive as one might, one will never imagine a (Euclidean) world in which the Pythagorean Theorem is false. This is not because of some deficiency in our capacity to conceive. Rather, the opposite of the Pythagorean Theorem is a logical (or conceptual) contradiction. Conceivability is determined by logical possibility. And so the logically impossible is coextensive with the inconceivable.

A world in which Lincoln had not been president is not logically impossible (that is, it is logically possible), and so it is conceivable. A world in which space is described by the axioms of Euclid and yet (for all right triangles) the sum of the squares of the two sides does not equal the square of the hypotenuse is logically impossible. And so it is inconceivable. In light of the above minimal necessary condition, then, given that the opposite of the Pythagorean Theorem cannot be conceived, it follows that it cannot be challenged. This is the case for all mathematical claims.

Given that mathematical claims are humanly accessible truths that cannot be challenged, it follows that there are humanly accessible truths that cannot (in principle) be challenged, after all. Consequently, Horowitz’s central claim in the ABOR that all humanly accessible truth is open to challenge is false.

Twisted Logic

As literary theorist Stanley Fish pointed out in “Academic Cross-Dressing” in the December 2005 issue of Harpers Magazine, the Christian right and other neoconservatives (like Horowitz) use epistemic relativism as part of their strategy to wedge themselves into the classroom. Now, the former do not believe for a second that truth is relative. They adopt relativism only as a means to win. Like Horowitz, they appear to be practitioners of ancient Greek sophistry. In the recent push for intelligent design, for example, the Christian right adopts relativism, arguing that if every truth is open to challenge, and no one has a monopoly on the truth, then who is to say that intelligent design is false? (The intelligent design movement aims to discredit the evolutionary sciences and promote the notion that scientific evidence exists in nature for an “intelligent designer.”) To be sure, biologists believe that evolution is true, but that is simply what they believe, proponents of intelligent design assert. They are just a political or intellectual faction, and no such faction has a monopoly on the truth, and so on.

The strategy involves making it look as if the scientific convictions of biologists are political in nature. And politically, of course, folks have a right to believe what they want. The concern, then, is that in refusing to teach intelligent design, biologists violate the right of students to believe what they want by imposing their political viewpoint on them.

Horowitz comes to the rescue by offering the ABOR, which states that “academic freedom is most likely to thrive in an environment of intellectual diversity that protects and fosters independence of thought and speech.” The ABOR argues that because no one’s political viewpoint should be kept out of the classroom, laws need to be in place to keep biologists from ruling out intelligent design. Those advocating for intelligent design need protection.

Horowitz has continually denied that the ABOR will determine what gets taught in the classroom, especially when it comes to intelligent design. The ABOR is politically neutral, he claims. But politicians say something different. Rep. Dennis Baxley of Florida told the University of Florida Alligator in March 2005, for example, that legislating the ABOR will provide a legal basis for students to sue their professors if they teach evolution and ignore creationism. Rep. Paul Clymer of Pennsylvania has argued the same thing, according to a March 2006 issue of the City University of New York’s Clarion.

As opponents of the ABOR have made clear, professors would be forced to teach not only what intelligent designers believe, but also what Holocaust deniers believe if the ABOR becomes law. Horowitz has denied that professors would have to teach “such silliness.” But the ABOR casts the classroom as a political or public forum for the exchange of ideas, and it recognizes no authority in the classroom other than the individual who holds a belief. It thus puts the beliefs of professors and students on equal footing. That is, as bearers of beliefs, professors have no more authority than students, even when it comes to the subjects being taught.

The trouble with Horowitz’s view, it seems to me, is that it fails to understand the nature of the undergraduate classroom. Horowitz draws no distinction between introductory undergraduate courses, graduate seminars, research laboratories, professional colloquia, and professional conferences. What is more, he sees no difference between these academic venues and the public square outside academe. His failure to do so is reflected in the ABOR. Thus, for the ABOR, the debate between scholars at a professional conference is in principle no different from the debate between a professor and an undergraduate in an introductory course or between two citizens at a town council meeting. By not recognizing the huge differences between such arenas of debate, Horowitz’s ABOR falls far short.

Let’s take what goes on in biology class. For starters, the undergraduate is not a biologist. She simply has nothing yet to contribute to scientific debates going on at the moment. What the professor is doing in the context of an introductory course, among other things, is introducing the student to the professional debates of the discipline. The professor is not asking the student to participate in them. The student’s view with respect to biology does not have the same weight as her professor’s. In fact, within the context of the community of professional biologists, the student is not taken to even have a view. In failing to understand the nature of an undergraduate classroom, Horowitz takes this assessment of students by professional biologists as a sign of totalitarianism and consequently urges the legislating of his ABOR, which will entitle the student to a view. The Baxleys and Clymers of the movement contend that she should be able to sue her professors if they refuse to recognize her right to a view and to have her view taught if she so demands.

Things are quite different, of course, if the biologist and her student are debating public policy. In this context, the student as a citizen is entitled to a view and is guaranteed the right to express it and have it considered. Of course, this freedom does not guarantee that others will accept or adopt the student’s view.

Academic Freedom

Horowitz’s failure to draw the distinction between what goes on in a classroom and what goes on in a town council meeting reveals his failure to grasp the concept of academic freedom as formulated by the AAUP. According to the AAUP, professors are entitled to academic freedom in their teaching and research. However, it is not a freedom conferred to them as individual citizens (unlike freedom of speech). Rather, it is a freedom given to a professor as a member of a community of scholars. It is not identical to any freedoms given to students. In the context of a classroom, the views of professors—that is, the views held by their academic disciplines—carry more weight than the nonscholarly views brought to class by students. Horowitz, in failing to distinguish the classroom from the public square, sees the classroom as a political environment rife with inequality. His ABOR is intended to remedy this situation by establishing equality between professors and students.

That the classroom is not a public space may come as a surprise to some. If taxpayer money is paying for the classroom, isn’t it by definition a public space? No, it is not. A person from off the street, who is not an enrolled student, cannot just walk into a classroom, take a seat, and hang out. The professor could have the police escort him or her out of the classroom. The taxpayer who is not an enrolled student has absolutely no right to be in the classroom, period. The classroom is not an extension of the public streets; in fact, it is not even a democracy. As a taxpayer, a citizen has as much right to the classroom as she has to medical treatment at the veteran’s hospital. And even though the taxpayer pays for the patient-examination room there, she does not have a right to determine what goes on in that room. Likewise, even though the taxpayer pays for the classroom, her doing so does not give her any right to determine what goes on in it. This is something that Horowitz fails to understand.

We finally come to an argument that Horowitz must accept: the protections afforded by the ABOR are needed only if the classroom is a public forum. But the classroom is not a public forum. Thus protections afforded by the ABOR are not needed.

Note

1. Although not crystal clear, it appears that what Horowitz refers to as the General Report of the Committee on Academic Freedom and Tenure is actually the AAUP’s 1915 Declaration of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure.

Kurt Smith is associate professor of philosophy at Bloomsburg University of Pennsylvania. He was among those who testified at recent hearings on academic freedom held across Pennsylvania. His e-mail address is ksmit4@bloomu.edu.

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