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Tuesday, January 27, 2004

Title VI update

In this post:  three recent essays on H.R. 3077, the bill that would create a federal Advisory Board to oversee international studies programs that are funded under Title VI of the Higher Education Act, and its prospects in the Senate.  The board in question would consist of seven people:  two members would be appointed by the president pro tem of the Senate and two by the Speaker of the House, on recommendations from the majority and minority leaders. The other three would be appointed by the Secretary of Education, two of whom would represent agencies with national security responsibilities.  That’s right-- a board determined mostly by Bill Frist, Rod Paige, and Tom DeLay, with Nancy Pelosi and Tom Daschle getting one recommendation each.  No reason for concern here, folks.

As a recent memo from the National Humanities Alliance puts it: “The House bill creates what it calls an ‘advisory board’ that in fact is much more. This board has the power to ‘investigate’ individual faculty members and specific classes on campus and it can issue reports. An advisory board ought to be truly advisory. It shouldn’t have broad, nearly unlimited powers and it should not be free of reasonable supervision by the Department of Education. What’s more, the composition of the board is too narrow to reflect the broad range of needs in international education.”

And as you might guess, the culture warriors behind this bill-- people such as Stanley Kurtz, Martin Kramer, Daniel Pipes-- couldn’t care less about the vast majority of work done by international-studies programs in the United States.  For them there’s only one issue:  Israel and the Arab world.  (Sad to say, the American Jewish Committee released a six-page single-spaced memo last week strongly supporting H.R. 3077.) But you can read the arguments for yourselves:  Martin Kramer’s, Zachary Lochman’s, and Todd Gitlin’s.

Posted by Michael on 01/27 at 08:13 AM
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