...the most disingenuous claim that the DePaul administration has made is that they are institutionally neutral. I have been very involved in faculty governance at DePaul for the last ten years, as the chair of my department for three years and as a member of the faculty council for six years. I can assure you that there is no institutional neutrality in the selection of speakers, the support of conferences, the choice of general education requirements, the hiring preferences, the criteria about admissions and financial aid and the overall allocation of resources. The university is agenda driven (in their words it is mission driven) and the agenda is political.

A simple check of outside speakers at DePaul include, Bernadine Dohrn, Deval Patrick, Julian Bond, Kwame Toure (Stokeley Carmichael) Sami El-Arian, Kathy Kelly, Eric Foner, Michael Dyson, Angela Davis, Hurricane Carter, Sister Helen Prejean, Norman Finkelstein, and Jesse Jackson to name just a few of the more prominent ones. While there have been exceptions, the school generally brings in speakers who favor abortion, oppose Israel, favor gun control, support affirmative action, oppose the death penalty, oppose American foreign policy, and oppose the war in Iraq. While the school sponsored several forums prior to the war in Iraq, there wasn’t a single speaker chosen who spoke in favor of the government’s policy...