Andrew Jones didn’t want to be part of the official UCLA
Alumni Association. So the recent UCLA graduate started his own.
Enter the Bruin Alumni Association. The local non-profit
organization, founded and run by Jones, wants to tackle what Jones
alleges is a strong liberal bias ““ he calls it a
“cancer of political radicalism” ““ at UCLA by
soliciting donations from alumni, then using the money to campaign
against activist professors, the UCLA Alumni Association and
administrators in Murphy Hall. Allegations of political bias are
nothing new at UCLA, or even in higher education in general. But
many prior attempts at addressing it have focused on what can or
cannot be said in the classroom. Jones is taking aim at two areas
UCLA is considered strongest: outside fundraising and alumni. Last
year, the university raised $262 million in donations, the most out
of any public university in the nation. In the last week alone,
Campaign UCLA, one of the university’s main fundraising arms,
collected over $2.3 million in donations. And the UCLA Alumni
Association can tap into a network of over 86,000 members, with
chapters that range as far away as Hong Kong and Thailand. Jones,
meanwhile, estimates he has raised about $1,550 to date, with a
mailing network of about 1,750. But points of comparison have not
cooled his ambition. “I want this to be as broad a voice as
the UCLA Alumni Association, and perhaps even UCLA itself,”
said Jones, who graduated from UCLA in 2003 with a degree in
political science and a minor in public policy. Jones is not alone.
In the past 10 years, there has been a growing trend of alumni at
colleges nationwide founding unofficial, unsanctioned alumni groups
to try to exert influence over policy and curriculum changes at
their alma maters. Though not all these groups are overtly
political, they are willing to challenge the university
administration and the university-affiliated alumni organization
when they have concerns over the direction of the campus, said Anne
Neal, president of the American Council of Trustees and Alumni. In
the past, “the general modus operandi (among alumni) has been
put up and shut up, and that’s what the administration of
university campuses wanted,” Neal said. “They wanted
their money and operating support, and they wanted them not to
raise concerns.” Now there are signs of change. Jones, who
was chairman of Bruin Republicans when he was a student and is a
former Daily Bruin columnist, cites a long list of grievances from
the time he spent at UCLA. He alleges, among other things, that
liberal professors try to indoctrinate students in the classroom,
and that the conservative voice is silenced by professors,
administrators and other student leaders. An open letter that was
posted on the Bruin Alumni Association’s Web site calls UCLA
“a school in deep crisis” and says, “Radicals
““ students, staff and faculty ““ have taken over our
university and are subverting it to their own ends.” Jones
accuses the chancellor and the UCLA Alumni Association of hiding
these issues from donors. He is banking on donors who currently
support UCLA jumping ship once his campaign gains momentum.
“If we really were able to successfully convey the reality of
the undergraduate experience to the alumni … 50 percent would
want to join,” he predicts. Both Chancellor Albert Carnesale
and the UCLA Alumni Association declined to comment for this story.
The Bruin Alumni Association’s achievements so far are
something of a mixed bag. It does have an advisory council of over
20 members, consisting of conservative activists, scholars ““
including four UCLA professors ““ and state Sen. Bill Morrow,
R-San Diego. “It’s not just a bunch of outside
bomb-throwers,” said Jones, who was known as a firebrand
conservative activist when he was at UCLA. And Jones claims his
group’s first campaign ““ to get Mayor Antonio
Villaraigosa to renounce his membership of MeCHA when he was a UCLA
student in the 1970s ““ was a success. But at the same time,
Jones said he hasn’t raised enough money to even pay his own
salary ““ though he’s quick to point out that his
organization has only been around since April.
Allegations of bias Though neither the UCLA
administration or the alumni association has made any official
statements regarding Jones’ group (campus media
representatives weren’t even aware it existed when contacted
for comment), there has been debate as to whether the Bruin Alumni
Association will ultimately help ““ or harm ““ the
university. Political science Professor Thomas Schwartz is one of
the four UCLA professors who has joined the association’s
advisory board. Schwartz, a lifelong Republican who taught in Texas
before coming to Los Angeles, met Jones when he was a student, and
the two had talks about their shared concerns on politics and
education. Schwartz doesn’t share Jones’ particularly
strong views on how political bias impacts UCLA, and he said he
can’t substantiate all of Jones’ allegations against
the university. But he does feel at times there is a “skewing
of the curriculum in a left-wing direction.” He says
Jones’ group might be a good step toward rectifying a
perceived political imbalance at the university. “Insofar as
there’s any voice that people hear that gets written up …
it’s almost entirely a left-leaning voice,” Schwartz
said. “And (Jones) wants to balance it. He wants to say,
“˜Here’s a conservative and Republican voice, and I
support that.'” “If someone wants to start a
contrary voice for Republicans on campus, that’s
great.” But not all Republicans are as welcome to
Jones’ group. Thomas Wortham, the chair of the English
department and also a registered Republican, declined an invitation
to join the advisory board of the Bruin Alumni Association because
he disagreed with Jones’ mission. To Wortham, monitoring what
professors say in class to catch them out on political bias smacks
of crippling academic freedom, to the point where “someone is
so afraid to say something in class because it might be considered
inflammatory.” “If you don’t question things in a
university, where are you supposed to question them?” Wortham
asks. “At a university, you have independent thinkers.”
Jones emphasizes that his fight is not with the majority of the
university. And he insists he is not looking to infringe on
anyone’s freedom of expression. But Jones cites some specific
instances in his allegations of bias. For example, in an open
letter he refers to a 2003 vote by the academic senate in which the
faculty passed a resolution to oppose the war in Iraq. Jones points
to the vote as evidence of liberal bias, and critics say the vote
was superfluous because professors had no control over whether the
country went to war or not. But Maurice Zeitlin, a sociology
professor who co-authored the resolution, feels not only did the
professors have a right to pass the resolution, they also had a
responsibility. “We’re talking about sending Americans
on false pretenses into a unilateral invasion of a sovereign
country. That is an exceptional circumstance that I thought ““
we thought ““ members of the academy should have spoken
on,” he said. Though Zeitlin acknowledges conservative voices
tend to get lost in academia, he does not agree that political
biases inappropriately seeps into the classroom. He also said
people like Jones don’t have a “shred of evidence
anywhere about the suppression” of the conservative voice.
Schwartz said he has never seen political bias influence faculty
hiring decisions, and that he does not know whether
professor’s political views affect students. Wortham said,
given the sheer size of UCLA, statistically speaking there have
probably been professors or TAs who have graded a student based on
factors other than academic performance. But he said he is not
aware of any specific cases.
A national trend When Chris Gillot graduated
from Pennsylvania State University in 2000, he was concerned with
the policies of the university’s administration, which he
thought leaned too far to the left. So Gillot and his brother, who
graduated in 1995, founded the Nittany Freedom Foundation, a
non-profit group of conservative Penn State alumni geared toward
providing support for the minority conservative voice on campus.
The Nittany foundation (named after the Penn State mascot) is an
indication of what a conservative group of alumni ““ like the
Bruin Alumni Association ““ can do. Though the foundation is
significantly smaller than the Penn State-affiliated alumni
organization, it raised about $10,000 last year, and Gillot said
they managed to tap into a couple donors who have given significant
sums of money to Penn State. “We found out there’s a
lot of people who give to the university who are not completely
satisfied with the way the university is operating,” said
Gillot, who is a legislative aid to Rep. Bobby Jindal, R-LA.
“And this provides a forum for them to give back to Penn
State in a way they agree with.” With the creation of the
Bruin Alumni Foundation, UCLA joins a small but growing number of
universities that have a group of alumni who are dissatisfied with
what is happening at their alma maters, and who join together and
form unsanctioned alumni groups to take action.
“They’re organizations concerned about the direction of
their institutions, the academic quality, the academic freedom, and
they’re banding together to address those issues,” said
Neal, the president of the ACTA, which tracks trends among alumni
and trustees. Recently, at Hamilton College in upstate New York,
alumni concern with the direction of the college led to the first
contested election for Hamilton’s Board of Trustees in 30
years. The group of alumni cited among their concerns a Hamilton
speaking invitation to Ward Churchill, a University of Colorado
professor who made controversial remarks about the attacks of Sept.
11, 2001. So a group of four alumni successfully petitioned to
appear on the trustee’s ballot, alongside three candidates
who were nominated by the college’s Alumni Council. Usually
the candidates who come out of the Alumni Council run for election
uncontested. Neal said she wouldn’t define the group of
alumni at Hamilton as conservative, or even political. “What
they are saying is if students are going to see Ward Churchill,
they should hear from other people,” she said.
“That’s a focus on academic freedom and diversity,
which is really the essence of a liberal education.” Neal
said outside groups of alumni at Amherst and Dartmouth have also
appeared to address issues with their universities’
curriculum, with some success. At Penn State, Gillot said his
foundation is more focused on supporting the conservative student
group on campus than attempting to bring about reform, as the Bruin
Alumni Association is. But Gillot said the foundation is still
making its presence felt among alumni. In fact, the Nittany
foundation caused enough concern among some alumni that they
contacted Penn State, causing the Penn State alumni association to
send out a letter to reassure its donors and refute the Nittany
foundation’s claims. Such incidents are small victories for
outside alumni groups and a sign that their influence might be
starting to take hold. And Gillot said he has been contacted by
alumni at other colleges, among them Texas Tech, who are interested
in starting similar groups. “We envision it continuing well
into the future,” Gillot said, referring to the Nittany
foundation. “That’s one of the advantages of creating
such a foundation: to allow for longevity and stability.” So
far, outside alumni groups have been mostly at private colleges,
though there is room for them at public colleges, Neal said.
“There’s some increasing concerns from taxpayers and
parents about what they’re paying for at public schools, and
whether students are being educated,” she said.
“I’d take it in a second.”
Jones seeks to distinguish the Bruin Alumni Association from groups
like the Nittany Freedom Foundation, saying their approach to
reform is “too simplistic.” To Jones, his group is an
opportunity to continue the conservative activism he espoused as a
student, but never had the time to pursue. “All these things,
if only we had the time to dig into it, I could turn these things
inside out,” he said. “But I had to be a student.
That’s what I want the BAA to do, to be the opposition voice
to the administration and the fundraising line at UCLA.” But
Jones also said he does not regret his decision to attend UCLA. In
addition to running his non-profit, Jones is also considering
applying to law school. And one familiar college made it to the top
of his list ““ UCLA School of Law. Would he accept, if UCLA
admitted him? “Oh, I’d take it in a second,”
Jones said.