While many legislatures are still grappling with state budgets and funding for higher education, the 2009 legislative season ended in victory for the free exchange of ideas this month. Bills that would have imposed restrictions on what can be taught and what students can learn in college and university classrooms were defeated in all of the states they were introduced—Alabama, Indiana, Iowa, Missouri and West Virginia.
Working alongside our partners in the Free Exchange on Campus Coalition, we worked in particular with students and faculty in Iowa to build opposition to their anti-academic freedom bill. Iowa House File 183 would have changed the way that science was taught in classrooms across Iowa by telling science professors how to teach and grade students understanding of evolution. With support from our field organizer, Colin Grask, they were able to get hundreds to sign a petition opposing the bill and generated dozens of articles highlighting its problems. Thanks to that hard work, the bill was voted down this spring.
This year marks a big victory for students and faculty across the country. In both 2007 and 2008, at least a dozen bills to restrict the free exchange of ideas on campus were introduced, many of which came close to passing. Only after we worked with students and faculty to testify, hold media events and get hundreds of calls and emails in to their legislators were we able to stop bills and efforts to curb academic freedom in Missouri, Virginia, Montana, Arizona and many others.
This year, only five bills were introduced, none of which came close to passing. Students and faculty across the country that were involved in defeating any of David Horowitz or the American Council of Trustees and Alumni’s legislation should take a victory lap—without the strong opposition to these bills in the past four years, the 2009 legislative session could have gone in a far more dangerous direction.