The Right Wing on College Campuses and the Battle
of the Frame
By Jon R. Pike
Liberal Arts faculties at most universities are politically and
philosophically one-sided, while partisan propagandizing often
intrudes into classroom discourse. It is appropriate for faculty
to want open-minded students in their classes, not disciples." This
dire quote about academia is on the webs ite of a group called
Students for Academic Freedom, a Washington D.C.-based group supported
by rig conservative activist David Horowitz. What the quote doesn't
say is that the group only approaches this issue from one side
and that the group's mission is to win the war of words on this
issue using a tactic called "framing."
In a 1993 scholarly
article one of framing's chief theorists, Robert Entman, defined
framing as, "to select some aspects of a perceived reality
and make them more salient in a communicating text, in such a way
as to promote a particular problem definition, causal interpretation,
moral evaluation, and/or treatment recommendation for the item
described." Like a picture frame,
framing shows some parts of the world outside the window, but not all. Framing
is successful when it becomes part of the media discourse.
In December of 2003,
the Colorado State Legislature heard from students and faculty
about alleged persecution of conservatives on campus. Brian Glotzbach,
a student who worked at the bookstore at Metro State University in Denver,
said that while conservative authors like Sean Hannity were not making it on
to required reading lists, authors like Michael Moore were. About 30 students
and faculty members were there to testify in favor of a nationally promoted
measure called the Academic Bill of Rights. Coverage of this hearing by the
Rocky Mountain News demonstrates that the frame has been successfully embedded
in this paper's coverage. The article says that the Academic Bill of Rights
is "a proposal to ensure political diversity on campus." The article
goes on to say, "The bill was dropped by its sponsor earlier this month
after he received assurances from officials of several colleges that students
would be protected against discrimination for their views." The article
carries the frame that conservative students are being persecuted for their
views and need protection.
This frame has traveled through Colorado, Georgia,
Missouri, Michigan, Oklahoma, Massachusetts, California, Utah, Washington,
and Ohio, where state legislators supported an Academic Bill of Rights. Student
governments at Brown, University of Montana, and Utah State passed resolutions
supporting measures similar to the Academic Bill of Rights. Chapters of Students
for Academic Freedom exist on 135 college campuses. The frame is traveling
through the media as well, as a search of the Proudest database shows that
over the last year, at least 69 newspapers and newsweeklies covered this
issue.
But, as a picture frame only shows part of the view, a news
frame tells only part of the story. Students for Academic Freedom
encourage members to keep records on the party affiliation of faculty.
This has already produced faulty data. According to data compiled
by Horowitz's Center for the Study of Popular Culture, registered
Democrats at 32 schools far outnumber registered Republicans. However,
an even greater number are listed as unaffiliated. A footnote says
the unaffiliated category includes faculty for whom they could not find voting
records. The categories are blurred. There is also no way of knowing how
many of the registered faculty are conservative Democrats or liberal Republicans.
There is no justification for the conclusion that "most students probably
graduate without ever having a class taught by a professor with a conservative
viewpoint." Also, keeping track of party affiliation just doesn't sound
like a non-partisan activity.
A survey by the Center that purports to show
that Ivy League faculty have an overwhelmingly left-wing bias has an unacceptably
high sampling error of plus or minus 8 percent. A 5 percent margin of error
is the usual acceptable limit for survey research. This high sampling error
comes from the fact that the survey got responses from only 151 faculty
members from all the Ivy League Schools. Statistician Howard Feinberg
raised questions about the sample size in an article for the liberal
Internet magazine, Alternet. He wanted to know if the pollster
hired to conduct the survey only intended to survey that number
of professors, or if that was all that they could get. He didn't
get a response.
But framing isn't a rational argument, it's a story.
If the frame of campuses dominated by left-wing professors is accepted
then it doesn't matter if the data used to support that position
is faulty. An April 13, 2004 editorial in the Washington Times
repeated the survey's results with no mention of the sample size
or margin of error. While the Washington Times is a conservative
news source, framing is successful the more it gets repeated.
A May 23,
2004 article from the Christian Science Monitor, speaks of the
frame when reporting about the congressional and state initiatives
to support the Academic Bill of Rights, "Horowitz, who wrote
the bill, said it was intended to protect conservative academics
from discrimination on overwhelmingly liberal campuses." This
is the frame in its entirety, reported as objective news. Los Angeles
Times syndicated columnist, David Kelly, wrote in a November 29,
2003 column: "Some students have complained of being forced to attend
abortion-rights rallies, of being required to write essays critical of
the Bush administration and of having a strident anti-religion agenda pushed
on them. Some who protested have said they received poor grades or were
asked to leave the class." Kelly provides no evidence for these charges.
But, again, a frame isn't an argument, it is a story. A March, 16, 2004
USA Today article adds to the story as it discusses the movement "to
create an 'academic bill of rights' for college campuses, which sponsors
say would promote intellectual diversity among faculty and protect students
whose political views differ from those of their professors." This
quote carries the frame.
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