Ask the Expert: How to Ditch Your Political Malaise

I feel like all the progressives on my campus are completely burnt out right now. What are some good issues to start talking about that would engage my peers?
-Natalie Pojman, Junior, UC Davis

The Progress Report’s Christy Harvey and Jon Baskin give you a few hot-button issues to keep an eye on:

INTELLECTUAL FREEDOM:

One thing college progressives should be energized about is defending intellectual freedom on campus. Right now, conservatives in the Ohio State Senate are considering a bill that would prohibit public and private college professors from introducing “controversial matter” into the classroom. The bill would shift oversight of college course content away from trained professors and administrators and into the hands of state governments and courts.

The language of the bill comes from right-wing activist David Horowitz’s “Academic Bill of Rights,” which recommends states adopt rules to “restrict what university professors could say in their classrooms.” The bill is both redundant and misleading – most colleges already have rules ensuring free expression (political and otherwise) and Horowitz and his supporters have been able to offer scant evidence of widespread political bullying. But a variation of the bill was introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives and has made inroads in six states.

It’s important college progressives fight back against attempts at censorship from the left and the right. They should be able to build coalitions on this issue, possibly even with conservative groups, many of whom also object to the state’s intrusion into the college classroom.

MEDIA MANIPULATION:

It’s time to get outraged at how conservatives are trying to manipulate the media.  

By now, almost everyone’s heard of Jeff Gannon/James Guckert. He’s the fake reporter with a false name given all-too-real press credentials by the White House. He’s known for asking biased, softball questions during press briefings before finally being exposed a month ago as a right-wing operative with no journalism experience, a fake name, and a shady past complete with porn websites like hotmilitarystuds.com. He obtained a press pass under a phony name two months before his on-line pseudo-publication even existed. The White House is claiming ignorance, but with a breach this big, someone on the inside was either in on it or the White House has a frighteningly flawed security system.

The White House has also become proficient in tricking the public with propaganda filmed to look like a real news segment. One example featured paid actress Karen Ryan posing as a "reporter" extolling the benefits of the government’s confusing Medicare program. Another video, intended for Hispanic viewers, showed a government official being interviewed in Spanish by an actor posing as a reporter named "Alberto Garcia." Just months later, the White House was caught using taxpayer money to secretly pay off conservative commentator Armstrong Williams in return for glowing reviews of the president’s woefully underfunded No Child Left Behind plan.

Arnold Schwarzenegger recently borrowed the technique and used taxpayer dollars to produce a "mock news story" in California that pushes a government-backed, corporation-friendly proposal that would kill mandatory lunch hours. Eighteen stations ran the Schwarzenegger spots as news reports, complete with positive promo text for the local anchors which read: "If approved, the changes would clear up uncertainty in the business community and create a better working environment throughout the state." Never mentioned was the fact that organized labor opposes the rule change, nor that the proposal is backed by the California Restaurant Assn., "which donated $21,000 to one of Schwarzenegger’s campaign funds last year and provided food for his 2003 inauguration."

JUDICIAL NOMINEES:

Don’t underestimate the effect of conservative changes to the judiciary. Judges are nominated for life, meaning any decisions they make will have giant impacts on the life of current college students for decades. President Bush keeps nominating radical, extremist, activist judges who will wreak havoc on the environment, health, fundamental freedoms and privacy.

There’s the anti-environment activist, William G. Myers III, who is up for a seat on the 9th Circuit. (That’s the circuit that encompasses much of the American West.)  He’s a former drilling, ranching and mining lobbyist who spent his time at the Department of the Interior trying to roll back land protections.

Also up for a judgeship is William J. Haynes IV—for a second time. Haynes led the group of attorneys responsible for the memos contending " the president wasn’t bound by laws prohibiting torture and that government agents who might torture prisoners at his direction couldn’t be prosecuted by the Justice Department."

Or Janice Rodgers Brown. Brown has attacked the elderly ("Today’s senior citizens blithely cannibalize their grandchildren because they have a right to get as much "free" stuff as the political system will permit them to extract.") and has argued racial discrimination in the workplace is protected by the First Amendment.

And don’t forget William Pryor. He’s the judge who considers Roe v. Wade to be "the worst abomination of constitutional law in our nation’s history." Further, he has defended restrictions on abortion in Alabama even when they lacked "the constitutionally required exception to protect the health of the pregnant woman."

So what are you waiting for?