Excerpted below, "Defending Civilization" is written by the American Council of Trustees and Alumni, as part of setting up their "Defense of Civilization Fund". The purpose of ACTA (and the National Alumni Forum before them) is to organize the university donor base in order to censor progressive and "leftist" professors, university staff and curriculum.
The ACTA National Council includes such notables as Lynne V. Cheney (American Enterprise Institute), Saul Bellow (author), William J. Bennett (former Secr'y of Education), Georgie Anne Geyer (columnist), Irving Kristol (The Public Interest), Joseph I. Lieberman (US Senator), Philip Merrill (The Washingtonian), Martin Peretz (The New Republic), and Laurence H. Silberman (US Court of Appeals).
The authors of the report are the officers of ACTA and longtime cronies of Lynne Cheney who originally organized the ACTA under the name "National Alumni Forum." Jerry L. Martin, president of ACTA, was a senior official at the NEH during the G.H.W. Bush and W.J. Clinton administrations (1988 - 1995), including acting chairman in 1993. Anne Neal, vice president of ACTA, was general counsel and congressional liaison for the National Endowment for the Humanities (1990-1992) during the G.H.W. Bush administration. Lynne V. Cheney was chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities from 1986 to 1992. Cheney is married to Dick Cheney, currently vice president under G.W. Bush.
The complete report is available from the ACTA web site as http://www.goacta.org/Reports/defciv.pdf
Defending Civilization:
How Our Universities Are Failing America
and What Can Be Done About It
"At a time of national crisis, I think it is particularly apparent that we need to encourage the study of our past. Our children and grandchildren ‹ indeed, all of us need to know the ideas and ideals on which our nation has been built. We need to understand how fortunate we are to live in freedom. We need to understand that living in liberty is such a precious thing that generations of men and women have been willing to sacrifice everything for it. We need to know, in a war, exactly what is at stake." - Lynne V. Cheney, October 5, 2001
A Project of the Defense of Civilization Fund
American Council of Trustees and Alumni
Jerry L. Martin
Anne D. Neal
November 2001
Acknowledgments
This report was prepared by the staff of the American Council of Trustees and Alumni, primarily by Anne D. Neal and Jerry L. Martin. Special thanks go to The Randolph Foundation, the William and Karen Tell Foundation and Jane H. Fraser for their support of this effort.
The American Council of Trustees and Alumni is an educational non-profit based in Washington, D.C. dedicated to academic freedom, quality and accountability. ACTA has also published Losing America's Memory: Historical Illiteracy in the 21 st Century (2000); The Shakespeare File: What English Majors Are Really Studying (1996); and The Intelligent Donor's Guide to College Giving (1996).
At this critical time in our history, ACTA has launched the Defense of Civilization Fund. The Fund will be used to support and defend the study of American history and civics and of Western Civilization. The Fund's first project is this report. For further information about ACTA and its programs, please contact:
American Council of Trustees and Alumni
1726 M Street, NW, Suite 800
Washington, D.C. 20036
Telephone: 202-467-6787; 1-888-ALUMNI-8
Facsimile: 202-467-6784
Email: info@goacta.org
Internet: http://www.goacta.org
Defending Civilization:
How Our Universities Are Failing America
and What Can Be Done About It
In the wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks, Americans across the country responded with anger, patriotism, and support of military intervention. The polls have been nearly unanimous - 92% in favor of military force even if casualties occur - and citizens have rallied behind the president wholeheartedly.
Not so in academe. Even as many institutions enhanced security and many students exhibited American flags, professors across the country sponsored teach-ins that typically ranged from moral equivocation to explicit condemnations of America.
While America's elected officials from both parties and media commentators from across the spectrum condemned the attacks and followed the President in calling evil by its rightful name, many faculty demurred. Some refused to make judgments. Many invoked tolerance and diversity as antidotes to evil. Some even pointed accusatory fingers, not at the terrorists, but at America itself.
Leaders from Both Parties
"In this conflict, there is no neutral ground. If any government sponsors the outlaws and killers of innocents, they have become outlaws and murderers, themselves. And they will take that lonely path at their own peril." President George W. Bush.
"What happened on Tuesday, September 11 th , was not simply an attack against America. It was a crime against democracy, and decency. It was a crime against humanity." Joint Statement by Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle and Minority Leader Trent Lott.
"This was not just an attack on the City of New York or on the United States of America. It was an attack on the very idea of a free, inclusive, and civil society.... On one side is democracy, the rule of law, and respect for human life; on the other is tyranny, arbitrary executions, and mass murder. We're right and they're wrong. It's as simple as that." New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani.
Voices on Campus
"[I]magine the real suffering and grief of people in other countries. The best way to begin a war on terrorism might be to look in the mirror." Professor of anthropology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
"There is a terrible and understandable desire to find and punish whoever was responsible for this. But as we think about it, it's very important for Americans to think about our own history, what we did in World War II to Japanese citizens by interning them." Dean of the Woodrow Wilson School, Princeton University.
"[Students and teachers] do not need to be fighting against fellow-workers under other flags and gods but rather against their own corporate or government employers." Professional Staff Congress, City University of New York.
"[T]his war can end only to the extent that we relinquish our role as world leader, overhaul our lifestyle and achieve political neutrality." Professor of anthropology, Brown University School of Medicine:
Rarely did professors publicly mention heroism, rarely did they discuss the difference between good and evil, the nature of Western political order or the virtue of a free society. Indeed, the message of much of academe was clear: BLAME AMERICA FIRST.
"What happened on September 11 was terrorism, but what happened during the Gulf War was also terrorism." Professor of English, Brown University.
"We are complicit." Speaker at Haverford College meeting. "Anyone who can blow up the Pentagon gets my vote." Professor of history, University of New Mexico.
"If I were the president, I would first apologize to all the widows and orphans, the tortured and the impoverished, and all the millions of other victims of American imperialism." "[T]here are few if any nations in the world that have harbored more terrorists than the United States." Journalist at University of North Carolina teach-in.
"[W]e should be aware that, whatever its proximate cause, its ultimate cause is the fascism of U.S. foreign policy over the past many decades." Professor of English, Rutgers University.
"The ultimate responsibility lies with the rulers of this country, the capitalist ruling class of this country." Mathematics instructor at City University of New York teach-in.
"[T]he only way we can put an end to terrorism is to stop participating in it." Professor Emeritus, MIT.
"[The American flag is] a symbol of terrorism and death and fear and destruction and oppression." Professor of physics, University of Massachusetts-Amherst.
"[The terrorist attack] was no more despicable than the massive acts of terrorism ... that the U.S. government has committed during my lifetime." Professor of journalism, University of Texas-Austin.
"Why should we support the United States, whose hands in history are soaked with blood?" Professor of Hawaiian studies, University of Hawaii.
These are only a few of the more than a hundred statements documented here. And they are in pointed contrast to America's reaction in 1941: "Everyone wanted to cooperate and feel like they were helping the country," said Elmer Cornwell, professor of political science at Brown University. "When Pearl Harbor was bombed there was a tremendous swell of patriotism," recalled Brown physics professor Leon Cooper, the Thomas J. Watson Sr. professor of science. "One thing outsiders don't always understand about the United States is we're a fractious nation but we come together during times like these."
But, after September 11, it was higher education that did not understand. Although most faculty presumably shared America's horror and condemnation of the terrorist attacks, some did not. And while professors should be passionately defended in their right to academic freedom, that does not exempt them from criticism. The fact remains that academe is the only sector of American society that is distinctly divided in its response. Indeed, expressions of pervasive moral relativism are a staple of academic life in this country and an apparent symptom of an educational system which has increasingly suggested that Western civilization is the primary source of the world's ills - even though it gave us the ideals of democracy, human rights, individual liberty, and mutual tolerance.
Until the 1960s, colleges typically required students to take surveys of Western civilization. Since then, those surveys have been supplanted by a smorgasbord of often narrow and trendy classes and incoherent requirements that do not convey the great heritage of human civilization. Accompanying this basic failure is an atmosphere increasingly unfriendly to the free exchange of ideas. Students have reported more and more that they are intimidated by professors and fellow students if they question "politically correct" ideas or fail to conform to a particular ideology. In some cases, students have even been subject to official sanctions for speaking their minds in class. So pervasive is the climate of intimidation one New York reporter covering a City University of New York teach-in recounted the piteous tale of a student who feared retribution. "ŚMy grade depends on a lot of the professors who spoke,' the student explained. "'If you voice an opinion of dissent, professors look down on you.'"
Students and often professors, especially if they are untenured, are reluctant to question publicly the dominant campus ideology. In light of this campus climate, it is not surprising that often the students who feel free to speak out are those who oppose the war on terrorism. According to the New York Times, students at more than 146 campuses in 36 states had rallied to urge the country to avoid any military response.
It is urgent that students and professors who support the war effort not be intimidated. If both sides are heard, students and all of us benefit. Where the faculty is so one-sided that there are no campus voices to oppose them, visiting speakers should be brought in so that students will hear both pros and cons.
Ironically, instead of ensuring that students understand the unique contributions of America and Western civilization - the civilization under attack - universities are rushing to add courses on Islamic and Asian cultures. UCLA created 50 new courses in response to the terrorist attacks while other institutions expanded existing offerings. It is indeed important that Americans know about the ideas and achievements of all of the world's cultures. But in the rush to add courses, these institutions frequently reinforced the mindset that it was America - and America's failure to understand Islam - that were to blame. "To say that it is more important now [to study Islam] implies that the events of Sept. 11 were our fault, that it was our failure ... that led to so many deaths and so much destruction," said the American Council of Trustees and Alumni's founding chairman Lynne V. Cheney in a speech on October 5. Instead, said Cheney, students need to "know the ideas and ideals on which our nation has been built. ... If there were one aspect of schooling from kindergarten through college to which I would give added emphasis today, it would be American history."
America's first line of defense is a confident understanding of how and why this nation was founded, and of the continuing relevance and urgency of its first principles. It depends on its intellectuals for passing its heritage on to the next generation. Yet America's elite college students are graduating woefully ignorant of the foundations of Western Civilization as well as American history and its founding.
In a study by the American Council of Trustees and Alumni, Losing America's Memory: Historical Illiteracy in the 21st Century, ACTA found that students can now graduate from 100% of the top 55 colleges without taking a single course in American history. Of those same institutions, a mere handful - only three - required a course on the history of Western civilization, while 77% permitted students to graduate with no history at all.
We learn from history what happens when a nation's intellectuals are unwilling to sustain its civilization. In 1933, the Oxford Student Union held a famous debate over whether it was moral for Britons to fight for king and country. After a wide-ranging discussion in which the leading intellectuals could find no distinction between British colonialism and world fascism, the Union resolved that England would "in no circumstances fight for king and country." As the Wall Street Journal reported: "Von Ribbentrop sent back the good news to Germany's new chancellor, Hitler: The West will not fight for its own survival."
We believe that the West will fight for its own survival. But only if we know what we are fighting for. It has never been more urgent for education at all levels to pass on to the next generation the legacy of freedom and democracy. We call upon all colleges and universities to adopt strong core curricula that include rigorous, broad-based courses on the great works of Western civilization as well as courses on American history, America's Founding documents, and America's continuing struggle to extend and defend the principles on which it was founded. If institutions fail to do so, alumni should protest, donors should fund new programs, and trustees should demand action.
What is not taught will be forgotten, and what is forgotten cannot be defended. Lynne Cheney has put it best:
"At a time of national crisis ... we need to encourage the study of our past. Our children and grandchildren - indeed, all of us - need to know the ideas and ideals on which our nation has been built. We need to understand how fortunate we are to live in freedom. We need to understand that living in liberty is such a precious thing that generations of men and women have been willing to sacrifice everything for it. We need to know, in a war, exactly what is at stake."
In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107, this material is distributed without profit or payment to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving this information for non-profit research and educational purposes only.
[posted 11/24/01]
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