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I don't understand why you posted this, Alison: it's a lazy rehash by the
Guardian's LA local-interest correspondent (who mainly covers Hollywood with
all due shallowness) of a story from mid-November about a conservative
"watchdog" group that briefly scandalized academia with a list of 100
academics it deemed "unpatriotic." The implied link to funding cuts for
courses taught by the ACTA 100 appears to be extremely tenuous at best,
since this group plays no role in academic funding and has little or no
influence in academia, so far as I know, despite founder Lynne Cheney's past
celebrity. The fact that a few faculty members at two or three schools have
made this allegation hardly amounts to evidence of such influence, and even
the spurious implication that liberal antiwar academics are _the_ target is
undermined by reference to Arab and Muslim student complaints about
conservative professors' racist remarks in the classroom. Moreover, many
teach-ins were held (and reported to have been successful) at campuses
across the country on Veterans Day--November 12th--the day after the ACTA
100 list was reported in the US press--but Duncan Campbell doesn't rehash
that related story.

Am I missing something newsworthy here?

Candice



on 12/20/01 4:19 PM, Alison Croggon at [log in to unmask] wrote:

> Another disturbing swallow...
>
> A
>
> At 1:20 PM +0000 20/12/2001, Guardian Unlimited wrote:
>> Today, Duncan Campbell in Los Angeles says course funds are threatened
>> and professors denounced and suspended for organising teach-ins on
>> the war and voicing criticism of American foreign policy.
>>
>> The universities of the United States often become the battlegrounds
>> on which ideological and political wars are waged so it should be no
>> surprise that there have been some metaphorical skirmishes taking
>> place on campuses over the last three months.
>>
>> What is interesting is that it is the academics rather than the
>> students that are getting involved more publicly in the dust-ups.
>>
>> Liberal academics who have organised teach-ins on the war, voiced
>> opposition or criticised American foreign policy, claim that they
>> have been identified as unpatriotic and that funding of their courses
>> is now at risk.
>>
>> They blame the American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA), the
>> conservative watchdog group founded by Lynne Cheney, wife of the
>> vice-president, and Senator Joe Lieberman, for targeting them.
>>
>> * Read on here
>> http://www.guardian.co.uk/elsewhere/journalist/story/0,7792,621053,00.html
> --
>
>
> Alison Croggon
>
> Home page
> http://www.users.bigpond.com/acroggon/
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