By Malcolm A. Kline

February 25, 2004 - In our experience, college administrators usually view free speech as a privilege rather than a right. Moreover, it is a favor they willingly confer on their friends but readily withhold from those whose viewpoints differ from their own.

For example, scholar David Horowitz took a poll in which he found that, over the course of a decade, "22 of the 32 schools surveyed did not have a single Republican or conservative commencement speaker in the entire ten years surveyed."

"The same schools invited 173 liberals and Democrats to address their graduating classes in the same ten-year period."

While we do not expect administrators to rush to redress this well-documented imbalance in the next three months, we must note that across the country, some college and university officials have made several notable concessions to conservative groups on their campuses. For instance, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education reports, school administrators recently relented and allowed conservative and libertarian groups to hold "affirmative action bake sales" at the University of California at Irvine, the University of Colorado at Boulder and the College of William and Mary in Virginia.

In order to demonstrate their opposition to race-based college admission policies, these groups typically hold "bake sales" in which they charge whites the highest prices for cookies and brownies while offering the same goods to African-Americans at the lowest rates. We covered the Sons of Liberty's last aborted attempt to hold such a bake sale at William and Mary.

Administration officials took an even more surprisingly laissez faire approach to a unique affirmative-action protest at Roger Williams University in Rhode Island. When Jason Mattera, an imaginative junior classman of Puerto Rican descent, dreamed up a "Whites Only" scholarship to be awarded by African-American conservative Reginald Jones, the school unexpectedly responded by taking no punitive action.

This response by school officials to Mattera's project stands in stark contrast to their reaction to stories published in the journalism major's newsletter last year. When Mattera's periodical, The Hawk's Right Eye, published several pieces critical of the gay rights movement, the school froze the publication's funding.

But at least Mattera's group, the College Republicans, has received school recognition. Ryan Cooper's Young Americans for Freedom chapter at Southwest Missouri State University (SMSU) had to go to federal court to achieve this acknowledgement. As we noted last year, the president of the student government at SMSU, Rafiel Warfield, vetoed every attempt the group made to obtain recognition. When I repeatedly asked Warfield why he would not recognize the group, he gave me a series of odd answers.

Cooper told me that when he read my story on the interview to Warfield, the latter said, "I didn't give that interview and if I did I was misquoted." This Warfield lad may not have an immediate future as a talking head.

Last summer, Cooper, with the aid of the Alliance Defense Fund, sued the school in order to obtain recognition for YAF at SMSU. Cooper later told me that earlier this year the school's administration settled out of court.

When Warfield made another attempt to block university recognition of YAF, the president of SMSU overruled the head of the school's student government and granted Cooper's group their long-deserved recognition. Encouraging as they are for the free flow of debate, victories such as Cooper's still represent the minority of free speech cases on campus.

To capitalize on the gains that they have made, though, conservative groups holding bake sales in which they demonstrate their opposition to affirmative action could provide a valuable service by posing some key questions. For instance, they could ask how many African-Americans received private sector jobs through affirmative action.

They could also go on to ask what tangible difference it has made in the education of the very people the policy of affirmative action was designed to benefit.

Malcolm A. Kline is the executive director of Accuracy in Academia.

If you would like to comment on this article, please e-mail mal.kline@academia.org