Free Speech and the Shame of DePaul

David Horowitz, ex-communist turned conservative, is in the news again. The author of "The Professors:The 101 Most Dangerous Academics in America" is the subject of a story in USA Today on his advocacy of an Academic Bill of Rights for students:

All Horowitz wants, he says, is a return to the kind of liberal arts education he got at Columbia University in the 1950s, when he still embraced communism, where professors "taught me what the intellectual life should be like, where you focus on the ideas. It's not a political food fight like so much of our culture has become".....

It basically says professors should stick to their area of scholarly expertise in the classroom and welcome a diversity of approaches "to unsettled questions," and students should be graded on academic merit, not on the basis of their political or religious beliefs. The bill borrows heavily from standards followed by the American Association of University Professors, an organization that Horowitz sees as part of the problem. Horowitz says his goal is to force universities, through legislation or voluntarily, to extend the same rights to students that faculty have.

But of course, some faculty have more rights than others. There is another standard for conservative professors. A case in point is DePaul University's shabby treatment of Professor Thomas Klocek, which is now in the courts. Initial rulings favor Prof. Klocek. John Ruberry at Marathon Pundit has been on top of this story from Day 1. Latest here.