Correction: In “Media impacts Jones’ Web
site” (News, Jan. 27), Andrew Jones was misquoted in saying
his offer to pay students for information on UCLA professors
“may have acted as a cudgel for the overall academic freedom
movement.” Actually, he said the offer to pay students may
have been a “cudgel against the overall academic freedom
movement.”
After something explodes, there’s usually a mess to clean
up.
And once UCLA alumnus Andrew Jones’ attempt to pay
students to expose “radical professors” led to an
explosion of media coverage, the fallout for his conservative Bruin
Alumni Association was varied, though not entirely negative.
While the possibility of lawsuits from UCLA and resignations
from several of his group’s advisory board members set the
group back, the media coverage succeeded in fulfilling one of the
group’s fundamental goals: to bring their concerns to a wider
audience.
Since the story broke last week, Jones said, the
association’s Web site has had 60,000 visitors.
“I think this offer caught everyone’s attention and
may have acted as a cudgel for the overall academic freedom
movement,” Jones said.
For Jones’ group, the “academic freedom
movement” is the struggle of conservative students to expose
and reform what they consider a substantial liberal bias among
university professors. Eight months ago Jones took up that struggle
when he started the Bruin Alumni Association, which is not
associated with the university.
As the group’s founding and only member, Jones set out to
assemble an advisory board of influential and scholarly
conservatives and recruited a large number of members. The
board’s role has been purely advisory and is thus inactive
until Jones solicits its advice. He did not begin to consult the
board until his tactics began generating controversy.
“So far (being on the board) has entailed nothing except
that if he wants to discuss something with us he can,” said
Thomas Schwartz, a UCLA political science professor and member of
the advisory board. “With all the criticism he has taken, he
has fallen back on taking advice from some of us.”
Jones drew the ire of many board members last week when local
news sources began reporting on his now-retracted offer to pay UCLA
students up to $100 to record lectures and submit course materials
from professors who express their political views in class. As the
story was picked up by national and international media outlets,
controversy brewed.
Patricia Jasper, UCLA legal counsel, sent a letter to Jones
advising him that “the activities that you and your
organization are encouraging, in the university’s opinion,
violate university policy” since the faculty owns the
copyright to their course materials, and could bring a litigious
response from UCLA.
Additionally, five members of the advisory board stepped down
because they did not want to be associated with Jones’
controversial tactics ““ primarily his offering of cash for
class materials.
“That seems to me to be crossing the line,” said
Stephan Thernstrom, a professor of history at Harvard University
who resigned from the advisory board last week. “It does seem
to me if students have some grievances about the way the professor
conducts his class, they should be motivated enough to provide
information on that professor to organizations designed to combat
that sort of thing without money changing hands. It just seems very
tacky.”
Thernstrom said he was concerned that offering money to students
could “produce information that is distorted or just plain
false.”
Jones said if he had known the tactic of offering money to
students would be used to condemn his group’s larger mission
he “probably would not have used it.” On Sunday he
withdrew his offer but maintained that he believed his actions to
be legal.
Jones did not consult the board before he offered the cash
payouts and many of the members had only vague ideas about what the
group was about.
“Up to this point all they had were our general ideas of
what we wanted to do. Our advisory board got to find out with the
whole nation watching exactly what that meant,” Jones said.
Those who stepped down “just disagreed with our specific
tactics,” he said.
Some of the disagreement came on legal grounds. Though Jones
rescinded his money offer, Jasper said there are still several
activities “under review,” including Jones’ use
of photographs of prominent UCLA buildings on his Web site and his
use of “UCLA” in the domain name UCLAprofs.com.
In a Jan. 18 e-mail to Jones, former California congressman and
board member James Rogan, wrote “I am uncomfortable to say
the least with this tactic. It places students in jeopardy of
violating myriad regulations and laws.”
Along with Thernstrom and Rogan, Republican State Sen. Bill
Morrow, UCLA English Professor Jascha Kessler, and conservative
radio talk-show host Al Rantel also resigned from the board in the
past week. The board, which at one time had over 20 members, has
been whittled down to 14 in what Jones characterized as “a
shakeout period.”
Jones’ positive outlook could stem from the fact that the
Bruin Alumni Association’s first two stated objectives as an
organization are to document and publicize the partisan slant they
see in so many classrooms. As his group’s mission was
transmitted across the world via newspapers and Web logs, Jones
received over 1,000 e-mails, and he said about 25 percent of them
were supportive.
“Considering our organization’s only 8 months old, I
really feel a groundswell of support,” he said. “I
think the folks who support our ideas are now hearing about
us.”
As the media coverage subsides, Jones can again focus on his
group rather than weathering the media storm (he said he has done
at least 35 interviews since the story broke), and Schwartz said
with Jones’ experience and ambition his group will likely
continue to grow.
And the media storm has left Jones with numerous connections
““ he said he now has “a Rolodex of media
contacts.”