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reprinted from The Community College Perspective, May, 2005,

From San Diego to Sacramento, a specter haunts California higher education. The ghost of McCarthyism has risen in the form of an intrusive piece of legislation, SB 5, misnamed the “student bill of rights.” The bill calls for “balancing” classroom discussion when controversial material is introduced with opposing viewpoints, and protecting students from arbitrary actions by their professors. But it takes the power to make decisions about what constitutes “controversy” and “balance” out of the hands of faculty and places it in the hands of politicians.

For Harry Steinmetz, a communications instructor at Mesa College in San Diego, the resemblance of the so-called “Student Bill of Rights” to the political witch hunts of half a century ago isn’t just an academic question. His father, a professor at San Diego State, was a co-founder of the NAACP in San Diego, and a national vice-president of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT). Recalls the younger Steinmetz, “He was intellectually fearless, and his classroom reflected that.”

That’s also what got him into trouble. “The FBI used to sit in Dad’s classes in their pork pie hats and take notes,” Steinmetz told The Perspective. “By the third or fourth week Dad would ask them if they had any questions, and if they were learning anything.”

But Professor Steinmetz’s sense of humor failed to protect him in what followed. He was fired in 1954 because he refused to tell the House Un-American Activities Committee and the state college board whether he was a Communist. And for long afterward he received anonymous threats—including death threats—due to the publicity surrounding his case.

“SB 5 is trying to chill discussion and inquiry on the community college campuses,” says Steinmetz. “It’s very vague about who decides what’s acceptable discourse, and how they decide, and by what right they decide in someone else’s classroom.”

Undermining progressive ideas
A staple rhetorical device of the political right over the past decade has been its oft-stated accusation that higher education is rife with “political correctness,” a nasty phrase meant to undermine progressive ideas by asserting that they are identical with intolerance and authoritarian rule over academic life.

One of the most vociferous proponents of this viewpoint, conservative activist David Horowitz, drafted a model “academic bill of rights” as well as a “student bill of rights” so that the presumed victims of left-wing academia might fight back. These documents, draped in democratic-sounding verbiage, propose that “intellectual diversity” would best result when the government legislates what can and can’t be said in a classroom.

But Horowitz, the founder of a well-funded far-right think tank called the Center for the Study of Popular Culture, didn’t rest after drafting models. He has been actively promoting these ideas among Republican state and national office-holders, and has found takers in Congress and a number of states, including California.

On April 20, SB 5, the “Student Bill of Rights” received a hearing by the state senate education committee. Fortunately, the arguments of its proponents did not impress the majority, and it went down to defeat. The legislators who voted against SB 5 said adequate mechanisms, such as student grievance procedures, already exist in most colleges and universities to address the bill’s ostensible concerns.

The author of SB 5, Oceanside Republican Bill Morrow, protests that jump-starting a new McCarthyism is the last thing on his mind. Rather, he asserts, “Because you have inadequate rules to protect students, you have liberal professors harassing and haranguing them.” And while the evidence contradicts him, some students agree.

The Santa Rosa Ten
Late in the evening of February 24, someone posted flyers, each adorned with a bright red star, on the office doors of ten faculty members at Santa Rosa Junior College. The flyer cited Education Code section 51530, which prohibits “the advocacy or teaching of communism with the intent of indoctrinating or inculcating a preference in the mind of any pupil for such doctrine.”

The individuals responsible remained anonymous until a few days later, when a student club, the SRJC College Republicans, claimed credit. A press release from the organization said, “We did this because we believe certain instructors at SRJC are in violation of California state law.”

That day, the president of the club, Molly McPherson, posted to a College Republican blog that “this is just in time for one of our senators introducing the academic bill of rights in April.”

The campus student newspaper, the Oak Leaf, followed up with a story in which McPherson, backpedaling, maintains that she didn’t have “specific complaints, no threats or specific accusations” about the targeted instructors. The College Republicans, she said, just wanted to open up “dialogue.” But the story quickly moved on to right wing websites and radio programs, where baseless charges of student intimidation by bullying leftwing professors flew thick. In an article appearing in the online journal Inside Higher Ed (March 7) McPherson reiterated her plans to build support for SB 5.

Marty Bennett, who teaches social science at SRJC, received one of the flyers on his office door. He posed a question: “Isn’t it interesting that not one student filed a grievance using the established college procedures? If there was a problem with any of these teachers, the students could have used this avenue, but they didn’t.” So far as he knows, no student involved with the Republican club attends any of the red star instructors’ classes.

Bennett supposes he was honored with a star because he is a well-known labor activist in the community. He was one of the movers behind a recent study of income inequality in the North Bay (see article on page 5).

Adds Bennett, “These actions show a kind of recklessness, an utter lack of civility and respect for civil rights and academic freedom. They don’t care about a ‘dialogue.’ They want publicity. I don’t think SB 5 has a chance in the California legislature, but it’s worrisome nonetheless.”

Over the next few weeks, the SRJC Academic Senate, the Academic Senate for California Community Colleges, and the Sonoma State University Academic Senate passed resolutions either supporting the red-starred faculty, condemning the student actions, opposing SB 5, or involving some combination of the three.

These California-based resolutions join others. Last year, in response to the threats to academic freedom posed by Horowitz’s deceitful campaign, the national AFT and the American Association of University Professors weighed in with similar positions.

For Harry Steinmetz the issue remains as relevant today as it was fifty years ago. “My father cared deeply about freedom of discussion, freedom of speech, freedom of association. He didn’t care what your ideas were or who you were so long as you could back up your assertions. He believed passionately that ignorance breeds fear. And he was right.”

–Fred Glass