Academic Bill of Rights

The Academic Bill of Rights (ABOR) is a document created and distributed by Students for Academic Freedom (SAF), a public advocacy group spun off from the Center for the Study of Popular Culture, a think tank founded by the conservative activist and writer David Horowitz. The document was created as a foundational part of SAF's mission, to "end the political abuse of the university and to restore integrity to the academic mission as a disinterested pursuit of knowledge."

The Bill focuses on eight broad-based principles that call for an academic environment where decisions are made irrespective of one's personal political or religious beliefs. The Bill (and its drafting organization) have come under sharp attack, however, for using broad-based egalitarian principles and a self-identified "bipartisan" framework to promote what critics identify as an ideological agenda.

A number of organizations representing a variety of political viewpoints have expressed pointed critique of both the ABOR's aims and its content.

One of the first organizations to come out in opposition to the bill was the American Association of University Professors (AAUP). While agreeing with the underlying principles of freedom, equality, and pluralism in the university community, the association said that the bill "infringes academic freedom in the very act of purporting to protect it."

Some individual academics regard the ABOR, along with the Santorum Amendment, as a threat to academic freedom. Others have suggested that the ABOR may allow students to claim discrimination when tested on evolution.

Moderate, libertarian, and conservative critics of the ABOR have asserted that it would open the door to a right wing version of the campus speech code. An article by David T. Beito, Ralph E. Luker and K.C. Johnson in the Perspectives magazine of the American Historical Association warned that the ABOR "could snuff out all controversial discussion in the classroom. A campus governed by the ABOR would present professors with an impossible dilemma: either play it safe or risk administrative censure by saying something that might offend an overly sensitive student."

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