Much Talk, Little Action
Accuracy in Academia started slowly, but it has
already drawn fire from both the left and the right
What 'a to be made of Accuracy in Aca
demia? Is it just a roup of feisty
consumer activists, eager to correct
professorial errors and expand the bound
aries of campus debate-’ Or is it a gang of
neo-McCarthyite*, determined to first chill
and then skewer any left ist t hey find teach
ing on campus-’ The answer may depend on
the eye of the beholder This much, howev
er, is clear: after a semester's work, the
young men who run AlA have shown a
genius for at trading publicity, but thus far
have produced only a handful of teachers
whom even they might cart* to indict
A! A was born during last summer’s vaca
tion, an outgrowth of Accuracy in Media
(AIMi. which is committed to combating
left-wing influence in the mass media AIM
founder Reed Irvine,“a right-wing activist
who prefers the description "freedom de
fender," edits AIA's news|>aper and pro
vides office spuce for AIA’s staff -two
young veterans of campus ideological wars
lea (sorha III is a 19KT> graduate of the
Universityoft’aliforniu,Davis Asasenior,
he organized protests about the lectures of
a filmmaker named Saul landau, who,
among otherthings, had made what Oiorba
considered a favorable profile ofC’uban dic
tator Fidel Castro. The other is Matthew
Scully, a former columnist for the student
(wiper at Arizona State, where
he had publicly flayed teachers
for what he thought to be objec
tionable instruction
The AIA men have opened
t wo fronts First they criticized
a few professors in their news
letter, in a column they sent to
college pupers and in various
public appearances. Several of
AIA’s targets were already
• ell-known leftists Hut they
•ilsoattuckcd an Knglish teach
er at the University of Mary
land for allegedly sugg**sting
' hut there was more injustice in
1 he Unit«>d States than in Hit
ler’sfiermany. And they indict
“d an old foe of Scully’s, a pro
le,ssorat Arizona State, who was
harged with converting a sur
vey course in Western political
ihought into a personal plat
form todenounce nuclear urms,
warfare and energy More at
tention was attracted by their
econd front taking informa
tion from student "reporters"about profes
sors whose classroom performance seemed
suspect to A1A They rented a toll-free num
Is-r i8<X) 334-9141* and promised to keep
secret the names of tipsters, lest they be
penalized with a lower grade.
frightsitimmemories Tocritics, AlA’sopen
ing siilvos echoed the turmoil of the early
1950s. AIA staffers talked about lists of
K).(XX) Marxists teaching on campus. The
invocation of the word "list” reminded
many of Sen Joseph McCarthy, who spoke
of having a list of communists in the federal
government He didn't, but his movement
was launched And the prospect of students
reporting on their teachers caused its own
sensation For some, it was a reminder of
the secret informers of the '50s, for others,
the radicals of the '60s—an odd coupling
joined by a common taste for tormenting
professors whose views t hey opposed.
The. informant label stuck to—and
stung—AIA The chancellor of the City
University of New York, Joseph Murphy,
called AIA the "thought pol ice. "Such com
ments hurt For instance, at the University
of Wisconsin at Madison, the Republican
club quickly reassessed its interest in
AIA "The idea of harassing professors
is not what we had in mind,” says James
L. McFarland, president of the GOP group
In response, AIA staffers insist that they
are not trying to build a network of "spies.”
Says associate editor Scully: "The idea got
exaggerated into a nationwide network of
classroom monitors. The idea was to raise
the whole question of academic freedom...
| with] a few students here and there send
ing in complaints.” As for their basic
mission, they point to the views of other
academics, most notably comments made
by Boston University president John
Silber. "To the extent that (AIA ] is con
cerned simply in pointing out errors, in
argument or fact. 1 don’t know why any
honest professor would worry about it,”
Silber said in a CBS interview.
For all this push and pull, the most inter
esting aspect of the debate is that AIA has
drawn fire from the right as well. Secretary
of Education William J. Bennett and neo
conservative writer Midge Decter, the ex
ecutive director of the Committee for the
Free World, agree that America’s faculties
are too sympathetic to the left But both
find fault with AIA Bennett argues that
"criticizing individual professors . . . will
ullow the left to portray itself as an embat
tled minority ..Decter says that bias
itself isn't the problem, because educated
people are entitled to their opinions. The
issue is whether teachers have the "decen
cy and honor” to test their views against
other texts and opinions. Assessing that,
and instilling that, she says, is "no job for
kids ” AIA respectfully disagrees, proving
that at least when it is taking incoming fire,
the group can find something critical to say
about conservatives, too.
Amr I’hkbsu’iM Annk McOrory in Amherst,
Mass. Angila Cam hi i.i. in College Park. Md,
Elizabeth Cosin in Washington. RC,
Tim K K1.1. R Y hi Madison, Wis. and bureau reports
IINIVKIOIAt.PRISM8VNIMCATK I 1«H* <iH THI'ltKAU
I-—-1 I
G. B. TRUDEAU