"academic freedom" nationally

Bring It On calls our attention to H.R. 609, the "College Access and Opportunity Act of 2005", which just passed Congress. It's a precursor bill, meant to prepare the way eventually for some version of Horowitz's "Academic Bill of Rights" that he's been peddling to various state legislatures. Claiming to just mandate "fairness" and to prohibit grading students according to their political beliefs (unobjectionable principles, those), the "Bill" is truly intended to establish a quota system for hiring academics because, in Horowitz's view, academia is too liberal. Stanford's Graham Larkin, writing for the American Association of University Professors, provides a compelling argument against this Trojan horse idea here.