First published on the website of the California chapter of the American Association of University Professors (CA-AAUP), this essay was taken down as part of a subsequet site overhaul. I still have people asking me where they can find a copy, so it is republished here for posterity. The text is unchanged despite the inevitable misgivings, and links are published in full, regardless of whether or not they still work.

The first of many statements about a very real threat to academic freedom, this essay received a lot of play in the months following its publication, and culminated in my hour-long encounter with Horowitz on the conservative TV program Uncommon Knowledge, which was aired in heavily-redacted form here. My essay has been reprinted, along with the subsequent exchange with David Horowitz as “The Graham Larkin-David Horowitz Debate” in Stephen H. Aby (ed.), The Academic Bill of Rights Debate: A Handbook (Westport, CT: Praeger Press, 2007) pp. 67-90. – GL

Locking up my bike on the way to the office on May 3, 2004, I noticed that events were underway in the large pavilion pitched in front of the Hoover Center, the right-wing think tank overshadowing my office in the Nathan Cummings Art Building at Stanford University. The voice on the microphone was introducing prominent ultra-conservative intellectual David Horowitz. As the representative for private universities on the steering committee of the California Conference of the American Association of University Professors (CA-AAUP), I had recently taken a pressing interest in Mr. Horowitz’s activities. He is, after all, the brains behind the mischievously-named-and-crafted Academic Bill of Rights— Continue reading →

Here’s an account of an academic freedom debate I had with Republican Senator Bill Morrow on March 23, 2005, as published in the April 5, 2005 edition of the Cal State San Marcos Pride.* Morrow had recently proposed Senate Bill 5—a worrisome effort to legislate speech constraints and ‘both sides’ ideological diversity requirements in university classrooms—to the California State Legislature.

A version of the Academic Bill of Rights, the bill did not pass. But it was pretty dicey for a while there, so I was fighting vigorously in my capacity as Vice President for Private Universities and Colleges, California Conference of the American Association of University Professors. Continue reading →