The withdrawal of George Mason University’s (GMU) speaking invitation to controversial filmmaker Michael Moore stands out in a school year in which the presidential election gives college professors and administrators the chance to vividly display their partisan biases.
“How can GMU justify a $35,000 payment for any speaker?,” Retired Colonel Richard H. Black asked the president of the university. “How can GMU pay one political operative so much for one campaign appearance when families are straining to pay your tuition and fees?’
“Profligate spending for liberal speakers sets a tone for slipshod financial practices permeating the university system. Tax money is being spent poorly, and for partisan purposes.”
A volley of calls to the school and letters, including the one from Col. Black, a delegate to the Virginia state legislature, forced the hand of the president of GMU. The university is located in Fairfax, Va.
When GMU president Allan G. Merten rescinded the speaking invitation to Moore, the director of Fahrenheit 9-11 told The Washington Post that he would come to the campus regardless. “I’m going to show up in support of free speech and free expression,” Moore told The Post.
College administrators may want to follow Merten’s example in order to cut the cost of Moore’s usual $35,000 a night honorarium. Moore asks for more money for a nights’ work than most people make in a year. When the California State University at San Marcos cancelled a Moore appearance, the director insisted that the school pay him his asking price whether he appeared or not.
He expected the same of the University of North Florida (UNF), even though he was the one to bow out of the one-night stand he was scheduled to make there. Although a scheduling conflict prevented Moore from making an agreed-upon lecture appearance at UNF, the rotund auteur insisted that the school pay him his usual lecture fee. As Abraham Taylor noted in a recent article for Campus Report, Moore invited himself to Utah Valley State College.
Across the country, schools showed Moore’s film, Fahrenheit 9-11, as part of their September 11th memorials. Many professors offer extra credit to their students who view the film, which Moore unabashedly calls an attempt to influence the presidential election.
School officials and instructors, themselves, are hardly passive in this election season. Federal election records show that universities make up one of the largest groups of individuals donating to the Democratic Party. Professors and college administrators, in turn, make most of their political contributions to Democrats. Here in the Washington, D. C. metropolitan area, for example, political contributions from faculty members at both Georgetown University and the University of Maryland go overwhelmingly to the Democratic Party.
The voting bloc that these authorities deliver is prized by the political party that benefits from it. The Chronicle of Higher Education noted that when Harvard found that schools were falling behind in their efforts to register student voters, ten congressmen complained of this failure: All ten were Democrats.
