During a recent round of web-surfing, I found an interesting piece written by Malcolm Kline, the executive director of Accuracy in Academia--a rightwing organization based in DC that regularly attacks academics that it deems "biased" (ie. academics that the AIA perceives as liberal, progressive, populist, green, feminist, or multiculturalist--or even committed to the theory of evolution and the growing international consensus among scientists on global climate change.)
The piece, entitled "Environmentally Correct Again," was part of a series of op-eds by Kline that challenges what the AIA sees as the US Left's overwhelming "exploitation of the classroom or university resources to indoctrinate students; discrimination against students, faculty or administrators based on political or academic beliefs; and campus violations of free speech." I found his piece particularly interesting because Kline opened the article by naming me as one of the prime examples of a teacher guilty of these violations of academic freedom. My biggest sin is that I brainwash students and force them to become unwilling "foot soldiers in environmental campaigns." As he put it: "Steve Chase of the Antioch New England Graduate School, for example, led some of his lucky students on an 'Environment Justice in the Mississippi Delta junket last spring. Chase described it as a '10-day field studies trip to Louisiana's Cancer Alley-the 90-mile strip of the Mississippi River between Baton Rouge and New Orleans that houses more than 150 oil refineries and petrochemical plants.'" He then adds that this is just one of many examples where "students have been used as pawns of environmental activists when they should be in class." Kline fails to mention a few important things in his article, however. First, he neglects to mention the fact that the graduate students who participated in this field studies trip voluntarily signed up for this elective course and even paid extra money to take it. Second, he neglects to mention that during the trip the students engaged in conversations with a wide variety of stakeholders, including elected officials, journalists, petrochemical industry executives, union leaders, scientists, EPA officials, environmental activists, and members of polluted communities--and then debated with each other about the validity of each of these people's perspectives. Even more interesting, Kline neglects to mention Exxon Mobil's effort to suppress these students' legal right to do research on pollution and public health issues in Louisiana, or that it pressured the Attorney General of Louisiana to force a staff member of the Attorney General's Office out of his job after 26 years of distinguished public service-all because this staff member stood up for our students' legal right to engage in research when they were being detained by Exxon Mobil employees. Now, Kline knows all this, because he quoted me from an an email I sent out in 2005, along with the press release that Antioch immediately issued out this situation. It therefore appears that Kline and AIA are actually against graduate students having the option to 1) take a field studies course focused on environmental justice and 2) exploring a wide variety of perspectives about the issue, including from people who are critical of corporate power and industrial pollution. According to Kline, all of this should be viewed as a serious violation of academic freedom. Yet, Kline apparently has no problem at all with a giant corporation having off-duty police officers in its employ detain students for over an hour, lie about the law, and threaten students with being added to Homeland Security's "terrorist list" for engaging in the completely legal act of photographing an industrial facility from a public side walk as part of their research. He also doesn't seem to believe it is a violation of free speech for a giant corporation to pressure the Attorney General of Louisiana to force a courageous civil servant out of his job for defending the legal rights of students to do academic research in his state. I'm glad Kline and Accuracy in Academia are not "biased" in any way--and that they are such ardent defenders of "free speech" and "academic freedom." NOTE: If you would like access to online inks related to this post, please check out the hotlinked version on the Environmental Advocacy and Organizing Program's "Well-Trained Activist" blog at: http://eaop-blog.blogspot.com/ All my best, Steve * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Steve Chase Director, Environmental Advocacy and Organizing Program Department of Environmental Studies @ Antioch University New England 40 Avon Street, Keene, NH 03431 [EMAIL PROTECTED]; 603-283-2336 (office); 603-357-0718 (fax) * EAOP's Main Website: http://www.antiochne.edu/es/eao/ * EAOP's "Well-Trained Activist" Blog: http://eaop-blog.blogspot.com * EAOP's Online Activist Bookstore: http://www.antiochne.edu/es/eao/bookstore.cfm (7.5% of the purchase price is donated to the EAOP Scholarship Fund at no extra cost to you) To learn more, you can also check out the study, ACTIVIST TRAINING IN THE ACADEMY: DEVELOPING A MASTER'S PROGRAM IN ENVIRONMENTAL ADVOCACY AND ORGANIZING, at http://www.antiochne.edu/directory/page.cfm?page_id=230&id=1800014802&Type=Page --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Global Change ("globalchange") newsgroup. Global Change is a public, moderated venue for discussion of science, technology, economics and policy dimensions of global environmental change. Posts will be admitted to the list if and only if any moderator finds the submission to be constructive and/or interesting, on topic, and not gratuitously rude. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/globalchange -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
