Kramer vs. Yale

Martin Kramer attacked this Yale Daily News editorial opposing the creation of the Title VI advisory board. He does this mainly by linking it to this other opinion piece (which I admit seems rather attackable) and going on to say:

"So the newspaper is dutifully following the lead of the administration and faculty. It reminds me of how Pravda picked up signals from the Politburo and amplified them—including the crude falsehoods...So Yale is running a deliberately misleading campaign, relying on distortions, incitement, and the pliant editors of the campus newspaper, in order to leverage Sen. Dodd into opposing the bill."

Kramer must not be a Yale Daily News regular, however, or he would have seen this and maybe this, which do not exactly cater to the hard left of campus. In fact, the first article could merit the charge of distortion as easily as Benita Singh's as it keeps pushing Stanley Kurtz's mischaracterization of Edward Said's influence on the field. (See here for my Said post.)

True, the advisory board as written into the bill does not have the power to make regulations or hand down sanctions of some kind. However, there is a larger context to this: The advisory board is being pushed for by a specific group as a tool to advance a specific agenda. As quoted by, well, Yale Daily News, Kurtz said in his testimony: "If you read something that is more mainstream -- [it would represent] the role of the United States as a builder of democracy, and that's what [Congress] wants to see at colleges." If the people pushing for this committee are later appointed to it, it will simply become a platform for pushing their agenda in the same way Campus Watch is, only this time on the taxpayers' dollar as part of the United States government. And given what these groups have sometimes called for, that really might put us on the road to government supervision of curriculum as the government effectively gains a right to have support for whatever policies it wants taught in universities lest the "advisory board" deem the funding programs which sustain international studies useless.

Here is a list of Senators in a position to affect this bill. If none of them are your state, I suggest to e-mail Presidenial candidate John Edwards and let him know how you feel.

UPDATE: I just have to add something. Does anyone else find it hard to picture a student newspaper taking marching orders from its school's administration?