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Unnecessary intervention

The best news about Rep. Dennis Baxley's misnamed "academic freedom" bill came not from the hearing where he promoted it but from Gov. Jeb Bush, who said he doubts that it's necessary. Senate President Tom Lee having made the same point, will Baxley get the message?

Probably not. Like the infamous Joe McCarthy, whose tactics they are emulating, Baxley and his mentor, national political activist David Horowitz, have found a soapbox they are enjoying altogether too much.

Tuesday's hearing, reminiscent of McCarthy's senatorial witch hunts for loose charges unsupported by facts, reinforced suspicions that one object is to intimidate Florida's college professors with the fear of lawsuits from discussing anything controversial, whether related to the curriculum or not. Baxley and Horowitz did not even attempt to establish that Florida's universities and community colleges are unable or unwilling to respond fairly and fully to a justified complaint.

Among the spectators was J. Stanley Marshall, a former president of Florida State University and present member of the Board of Governors, who founded the deeply conservative James Madison Institute at Tallahassee. Marshall's judgment: There are occasional missteps by faculty of all persuasions, but college administrators do not need the Legislature's help in dealing with them.

Southern history wisely informed the creation of a Board of Governors to insulate higher education from cheap politics. For purging professors, Georgia Gov. Eugene Talmadge got his state's white universities disaccredited and lost the 1942 election to a liberal. In the late 1950s and early '60s the Florida Legislature's Johns Committee disgraced itself and severely damaged the university system with a witch hunt for communists and homosexuals. Baxley is treading in some very muddy footprints.

[Last modified April 7, 2005, 01:23:19]